Report on the trip: Return to Socialism and the Problems of Marxism

Rustem Vakhitov, Sovetskaya Rossiya, September 4, 2024 — 

At the end of this August, an amazing event happened in my life – I was lucky enough to get back into socialism for six whole days! Let the reader not be in a hurry to be surprised! I know as well as he does that on December 25, 1991, after Mikhail Gorbachev’s abdication from power, the red banner of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was lowered over the Kremlin and Russia, like other republics of the USSR, plunged into the wildest, backward and cynical peripheral capitalism. And, of course, I don’t have a fantastic “time machine” to return to the Soviet socialism that I remember from my childhood and early youth – with posters “Forward to the victory of communism!”, portraits of Lenin on the facades of houses, with pioneers and Komsomol members near schools, with bus tickets for 6 kopecks…

But you don’t need a time machine to get into socialism. A modern comfortable aircraft is quite suitable for this. After all, Russia’s southeastern neighbor, China, which has long become the leader of the world economy, remains a “red superpower” and is not going to turn away from the path indicated by Marx, Engels and Lenin.

So, in the evening of August 18, in Domodedovo, I boarded the Moscow-Beijing plane, and in the morning Beijing time I found myself at the airport of the “Middle State”, as the Chinese themselves call their country. Then there was a transfer and in 2 hours at the Harbin airport I was met by Chinese comrades. From August 19 to 23, the Third International Forum was held in Harbin, dedicated to the problems of modern Marxism and the cultures of Russia and China. The forum was organized by the institutes (“schools”) of Marxism of Shanghai and Heilongjiang (Harbin) universities, as well as the Chinese Society for the Study of Russian Philosophy and Moscow State University (and the Center for Contemporary Marxism operating under it).

The Russian delegation was representative: it included scientists from the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the journal “Problems of Philosophy”, Moscow State University, the Higher School of Economics, universities of St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Ufa.

Harbin greeted us not only with red flags and portraits of Lenin (which warm our hearts – as if we had returned to childhood!), but also with many posters in English and Chinese about the Ninth Asian Winter Games, which will be held in this northern Chinese city in February 2025. These Games, by the way, are the real Asian Winter Olympics (they are called the Asian Games), which have been held since 1986. Every four years, they bring together athletes from China, both Koreas, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and even … Australia! Nevertheless, I have never heard that these Games were broadcast in Russia, let alone that they were mentioned at all! And this is despite the fact that we have the longest border with the countries of Asia – Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan, Turkey (only the land border with Asia is more than 15 thousand kilometers!), and lately only the lazy have not been talking about a “turn to the East”. By the way, Russia itself could well send its Olympians to the Asian Games – after all, 80% of the territory of Russia is located in Asia, beyond the Ural Mountains! But no, we did not look away, we watched the Olympics in Paris and choked on bitterness that we were not allowed there!

The Chinese comrades accommodated us in the luxurious, 23-story Sheraton Hotel, which soared skyward in Harbin in 2015. And it, of course, is not the tallest building in the city. Long gone are the days when Chinese cities were clusters of small houses piled on top of each other (people of the older generation remember that this is why people ironically called semi-slums on the outskirts of the USSR “Shanghai”). Modern Harbin is more reminiscent of American metropolises – with huge skyscrapers, roads and interchanges, spirals rising upwards, streams of the latest cars (including electric cars), a station that has retained the architectural features of the old Russian station, but now accepts high-speed trains.

It will not be superfluous to mention that Harbin is “the most Russian Chinese city”. It was built by Russian specialists to service the Chinese Eastern Railway. In the 1920s and 1940s, there were almost more Russians (then already emigrants) in the city than Chinese. To this day, here and there, among the skyscrapers of Harbin, you can see the domes of Russian churches, turned into museums by the Chinese.

Recently, “Sovetskaya Rossiya” recalled that it was in Harbin in September 1945 that the Victory Parade over militaristic Japan was held, in which Soviet military units took part, fighting with the Japanese in Manchuria.

The bulk of Russians left here during the era of the Cultural Revolution, but there is still a Russian community in the city, which includes more than 3 thousand people. For a city of 11 million people, this, of course, is not enough, but in general for a Chinese city this is rare.

But I will return to the conference. It was held in the Sheraton conference hall – large, well-equipped, with a huge screen, with booths for simultaneous translation.

The Chinese are very interested in the causes of the catastrophe that destroyed the USSR in 1991. One of the main reasons, they believe, was the dogmatization of Soviet ideology, in which even those who were supposed to propagate it and defend the USSR from enemies ceased to believe. Our Chinese colleagues are very interested in what modern Russian Marxists and researchers of Soviet Marxism think about the reasons for the fall of the USSR. As I understand it, the point of view of Chinese scholars is that Marxism should develop in the direction of convergence of leftist and national-civilizational values. An example of a successful synthesis of this kind, they consider the “Sinicization of Marxism”, which was started by Deng Xiaoping and continued by Xi Jinping. There was a lot of talk about socialism with Chinese characteristics, since this concept was declared by the CPC as the official program of action. The Chinese asked what their Russian colleagues thought about the prospects for socialism with Russian characteristics. More than once or twice in the reports of Chinese colleagues, the name of Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov and mentions of “Russian socialism” were heard.

In addition to the meetings, there were also informal meetings. The Chinese comrades introduced their Russian colleagues to traditional Chinese northeastern cuisine (each province of China, of course, has its own gastronomic traditions). We were also taken to a Russian restaurant in Harbin, founded 100 years ago by Russian merchants.

However, in an informal setting, during conversations and greetings, they did not forget about business: they talked about the current political situation, about Deng Xiaoping’s reform program, about the combination of socialism and the market. The Chinese asked about the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, about the life of Marxists and supporters of socialism in post-Soviet Russia. My statement that I was also a journalist of the newspaper “Sovetskaya Rossiya” was greeted with delight and applause. The left-patriotic Russian press in China is known and appreciated, and the difficult political struggle of the CPRF is followed with interest. The Chinese comrades conveyed warm greetings to all those Russians who remain faithful to the precepts of Soviet socialism in their hearts.

The days of the conference passed quickly. We agreed on further scientific cooperation, that we will strengthen friendship between left-wing intellectuals in Russia and China. We flew home with a bit of sadness and with a great desire to visit the hospitable neighboring country again. After all, I really want to return to socialism again for at least a few days…