In recent years, it has become fashionable to analyze China by drawing the comparison with the Soviet Union. Not only are current Sinologists using the tools originally meant for Pekingology and Kremlinology, but wider discussion of a ‘New Cold War’ has driven analysts to describe current US-China competition in the same way they once understood the US and USSR.
While some find the idea of using the Soviet Union’s entrails to divine the opaque inner workings of the PRC far-fetched, I like to keep an open mind. The Russian Archives (goofily acronymed GARF) provide a wealth of knowledge on the structure, methods, and even psychology of people working in a certain kind of society. China’s political system, while unique and adapted to the 21st century, is clearly descended from the same ancestor as the USSR and other communist states. In the same way that we ask medical patients for their family history when it comes to certain diseases, historians should look at Marxist-Leninist states for common structural issues, and see how each has tried to overcome challenges inherent in the system.
This is where I pivot and sell you on East Germany.
It’s harder than ever to do research in the Russian archives, especially if you have a passport that ‘gives NATO’. You could of course visit the Hoover Institute’s libraries at Stanford and find most of what you’re looking for, but if you’re in Europe, what to do?
The best reason to use the USSR’s archives is that it is the vast, well-preserved skeleton of a global superpower. To this, I say, “a better fossil exists”. The GDR was not a superpower, but the circumstances of German reintegration meant that GDR, SED, and Stasi files have been well protected from destruction and are generally available in several locations around Berlin.
Additionally, the GDR was special for the time: the West was next door—literally appended to its capital city—and perceived as a threat. The GDR saw the FRG as an existential threat until the Basic Treaty in 1972, where each Germany officially recognized the other. Are there comparisons to be made with the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan? Absolutely. Are China’s and East Germany’s notions of banking, money, and economic development policy also eerily similar? I think so. Are current Chinese digital surveillance technologies the dream of former Stasi officers? Yes.
I don’t claim that East Germany has all the answers. It’s not even similar to China in most respects. But too many researchers these days only know two things: the country they were born in, and the country they’re an expert in. What a ridiculous way to go about things! The GDR (as well as other formerly Soviet states) deserves far more attention from political scientists than it currently receives. Doesn’t an autopsy provide more information than an MRI scan?
Perhaps the idea is ludicrous. But the idea of the 2008 era as China’s ‘Soviet sixties’ is tantalizing, as is the idea that the Chinese 2020s echo the East German ‘70s. The thought that we can understand the thought process behind the Chinese surveillance state by looking at internal memos of the East German Stasi is appealing! And what could we learn if we thought of the Great Firewall as a digital Berlin Wall? Or if we drew parallels from the West German Hallstein Doctrine to the recognition/un-recognition of Taiwan? Tell me more!
Obviously, insider info on the real thing would be far better, but you know the old AllRecipes motto: “If you can’t get it fresh, canned is fine.”