Commie Russia or Commie China?

When Stalin ruled in Soviet Russia, Communism was the main priority. Stalin was distinctly against rights of the individual, and his goal was to equalize the people and make success and life in itself a team effort. Mao Tse-tung idolized Stalin and intended to model China after Stalin's Russia. Once Khrushchev took over, however, things changed and Communism wasn't as heavily enforced in the USSR. Said takeover crushed Mao, because the changes made in the USSR were in an effort to achieve "peaceful coexistence," meaning that the USSR would not necessarily be at war with Capitalist nations. After Khrushchev came Khrushchev 2.0, or by his biological name, Makhail Gorbachev.

People referred to Gorbachev as "Khrushchev 2.0" due to his similar values and intentions. Gorbachev, though, went to greater lengths to achieve his goals; he started mass amounts of reforms in order to give freedom to the people and put an end to the Cold War and all of its disputes. In contradiction to his belief in freedom of the people, Gorbachev kept the government Communist. In spite of its negative connotations, Communism was put in place to provide equality to everyone so that no one had any feelings of discontent to one another for having more privileges than others. Gorbachev simply wanted to treat everyone fairly, because he had to appease both the conservatives as well as the liberals. Therefore, his choice of keeping Communism yet allowing more rights and cutting censorship was the best way to go about ruling a country that had such great differentiating parties.

When Mao was aware of Khrushchev replacing Stalin, he was infuriated. The changes which Khrushchev made were essentially going completely against Stalin, but even more so, Khrushchev directly stated that Stalin was the reason for the decline of the USSR. Such words were blasphemy to Mao's ears, because he had thought of Stalin as a great leader and he saw Khrushchev as a traitor to his predecessor's intentions.

Communist China was a completely different story; Mao created "three-year plans," as a form of mimicry of Stalin's five-year plans. The two main pieces of Mao's plans were the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Great Leap Forward. The Hundred Flowers Campaign was meant to be a "comment box" campaign, which offered the general public the chance to criticize the government. Mao had lured the people in with trickery, because as soon as one decided to legitimately criticize his or her government, he or she was sent into "re-education," which entailed stern lessons on his or her wrongdoings and on the fact that he or she should regard the leader with high reverence. Mao blamed any areas on which he received criticism on those who were not supportive of his ideas.

The Great Leap Forward was a way to rob the farmers of their farming equipment and use it for industrializing China. The fact was, though, that the products were insufficient and useless. The government promised to provide regions that were not farming with food, which merely added to the stockpile of deceit. Eventually, thirty million people died in China, resulting from such deceit. Thus, Communist Russia, under Khrushchev, or rather Gorbachev, would be preferable.