GREGORY: Lessons for North Korea?

OPINION:

COMMENTARY:

The Soviet Union did not change and failed; China changed with remarkable success.

In other areas, the successions were alike. Both disavowed “cults of personality” and moved to collective rule. In the Soviet Union, the chosen party leader served until his death; China chose succession through honorable retirement. In both cases, there was a power struggle. The blood of those likely to re-establish one-man rule was spilled.

North Korea is the last unreformed Stalinist state. Kim Il-sung passed power to his son, Kim Jong-il, which has delayed the first real succession. The “Beloved Leader” made no significant modifications when the “Great Leader” died in July 1994. Neither the Soviet Union or China had the dynasty option. V.I. Lenin was childless; Stalin considered his two sons worthless; and Mao’s only surviving son suffered from mental illness. Although Kim Jong-il has three sons, they have not been sufficiently groomed for succession.

What kind of succession should we expect when Kim Jong-il passes from the scene, perhaps shortly? It appears both Kims followed Stalin’s practice of not allowing ambitious, independent leaders to thrive or even survive. Stalin surrounded himself with loyal hard-working “organizers” who knew how to execute his orders, not how to think. Independent thinkers, such as his chief planner, were executed. Of his 65 regional party bosses, only two survived the Great Terror. The new generation of party leaders who replaced those slaughtered (the Nikita Khruschchevs and Leonid Brezhnevs) knew how to please the boss and not rock the boat. On Stalin’s death, none of them considered changing the system or rethinking of the Cold War.

Though Mao imprisoned and exiled independent party leaders, he did not physically exterminate them. As victims of Mao’s system, they were the ones determined to change it when they got the chance.

There are systemic reasons why the Stalins and Kim Jong-ils surround themselves with nonentities. Charismatic independent thinkers can organize coups; they have followers.

The political purges under the Kims would have made even Stalin proud. The successors to Kim Jong-il will be like Stalin’s. There will be no leaders ready to push for real change.

In the Soviet Union, it took three years for Stalin’s timid successors to denounce him, much to Mao’s chagrin, only to reverse themselves. It was not until Mikhail Gorbachev in March 1985 that the status quo was challenged.

Kim Jong-il successors will also reject the “cult of personality” in favor of collective rule. As in the Soviet and Chinese cases, the new leaders will eliminate anyone with ambitions to restore one-man rule. The succession could be a dangerous time for Kim Jong-il’s sons or his security chiefs. In the Soviet case, security chief Lavrenty Beria was executed nine months after Stalin’s passing. As Nikita Khruschchev argued in clandestine meetings with his fellow Politburo fellows, if Beria gets the job “it will be the end of us all.”

For North Korean party leaders, many of whom themselves likely narrowly escaped purges, collective rule would be the best guarantee of their safety.

Collective rule will tie North Korea to the status quo. Most likely, the Soviet system of “collective responsibility” will be invoked. All must agree to changes in policy, which means policy will not change. The Great Leader and the Beloved Leader created the system; the safe path is to follow their lead.

Status quo does not equate with collapse. Studies of the Stalin regime show how little a dictator can control personally. Even in a desperately poor dictatorship, a country is actually run by ministers of propaganda, supply, transport and light industry and the like, in to a well-established routine. The dictator acts through periodic interventions and by rare policy changes. Otherwise the system runs itself. The new collective leaders need not even announce the Beloved Leader’s death until the succession is completed.

Only in rare cases, such as Poland, have Stalinist regimes been “overthrown.” Rather, the leaders themselves decided they would be better off with another system. North Korea’s Stalinist state will likely end in the same fashion.

The wild card is the willingness of the regime’s enablers in China, South Korea and even the United States to keep aid flowing, without which the regime would collapse irrespective of who is in charge.

Paul Gregory is professor of economics at the University of Houston and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, author of “Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives” (Hoover Press) and “Terror by Quota” (Yale Press).