Why was Tibet colonized and made part of China, instead of being set up like an SSR

[Adi Shankara]

I mean, the USSR set up independent governments led by natives of the regions they inhabited, set up by domestic communist parties independent of Russia and the Greater USSR.

why wasn't China following this model? why wasn't Tibet and Xinjiang made into seperate ethnic SSRs?

[Queercommie Girl]

Apart from the actual terms used, objectively there was no real difference between SSRs and Autonomous Regions. There was only one Communist Party in the USSR, and there was only one Communist Party in the PRC. In ethnic minority regions the party leadership was often taken up by ethnic minority people in both countries.

The local communist parties were absorbed into the structure of the Chinese/Russian Communist Party. Just like for example many of the early leaders of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the early PRC were ethnic Uyghurs who led the Three Districts Revolution against the bourgeois Chinese KMT government earlier.

It is therefore ridiculously inconsistent to call Soviet forces entering Kazakhstan an act of liberation but Chinese forces entering Tibet an act of colonisation.

[RedStarOverChina]

The entire leadership of Three District Revolution in Xinjiang (with the notible exception of Bughraxan (包尔汉) and Saifuddin Azizi (赛福鼎)) was virtually wiped out in a plane crash while they were on the way to Beijing to negotiation the autonomous status of Xinjiang with the CCP. That lead to a power vacuum and was the biggest reason there weren't that many high level minority(Uyghur or otherwise) officials in Xinjiang.

Tibet, on the other hand was completely autonomous until the 1959 rebellion led by the aristocrats with tacit support of the Dalai Lama. There were small PLA garrisons in Tibet, but all the government officials were Tibetans. The downside to that was, of course, the Lamas and the slaveowners called the shot until 1959, since the Tibetan Communist Party (absorbed into the CCP) was tiny and powerless at the time of the Liberation.



Tha being said, the CCP COULD have done a lot more to promote minority cadres. Mao Zedong himself, in fact, wanted more minority cadres within the CCP. However, because of the culture of conformity as well as racial prejudice within the ranks of CCP, few minority cadres ever made high ranks. Most of those who were promoted were either highly "sinicized" or a bunch of "yes-men". The plight of Phuntsog Wangyal (平措汪杰) highlights the difficulties that independent-minded minority officials faced within the ranks of CCP.

[Queercommie Girl]

The entire leadership of Three District Revolution in Xinjiang (with the notible exception of Bughraxan (包尔汉) and Saifuddin Azizi (赛福鼎)) was virtually wiped out in a plane crash while they were on the way to Beijing to negotiation the autonomous status of Xinjiang with the CCP. That lead to a power vacuum and was the biggest reason there weren't that many high level minority(Uyghur or otherwise) officials in Xinjiang.


You don't seriously think that was a conspiracy do you?

Even if it was, it was the KGB's doing, not Mao's.



Tha being said, the CCP COULD have done a lot more to promote minority cadres. Mao Zedong himself, in fact, wanted more minority cadres within the CCP. However, because of the culture of conformity as well as racial prejudice within the ranks of CCP, few minority cadres ever made high ranks. Most of those who were promoted were either highly "sinicized" or a bunch of "yes-men". The plight of Phuntsog Wangyal (平措汪杰) highlights the difficulties that independent-minded minority officials faced within the ranks of CCP.That's basically true, but the essential point is that such things definitely also existed in the USSR under Stalin and later leaders. Despite calling ethnic minority regions by different names, ethnic policies in the USSR were not "more progressive" in the concrete sense compared those of China's.

[Adi Shankara]

That's basically true, but the essential point is that such things definitely also existed in the USSR under Stalin and later leaders. Despite calling ethnic minority regions by different names, ethnic policies in the USSR were not "more progressive" in the concrete sense compared those of China's.

You think seperate SSRs set up to promote ethnic development wasn't progressive? Xinjiang was (and to this day, still is in many ways) managed directly from Bejing by Han Chinese politicians. meanwhile, in Tannu Tuva and Kazakh SSR, ethnic governments ran states that promoted ethnic economic development and were de facto independent of the USSR. they were a part of the USSR, but they weren't managed from Moscow.

[Crux]

That's basically true, but the essential point is that such things definitely also existed in the USSR under Stalin and later leaders. Despite calling ethnic minority regions by different names, ethnic policies in the USSR were not "more progressive" in the concrete sense compared those of China's.
I agree. Both were based on varying degrees of national-oppression.
Trotsky on Ukrainian independence. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/07/ukraine.htm)

[RedStarOverChina]

You don't seriously thinking that was a conspiracy do you?

Even if it was, it was the KGB's doing, not Mao's.
Of course not. I never said it was. The plane was provided by the Soviet Union and had nothing to do with the CCP, who saw the Three District Revolutionaries as valuable allies (at least Mao did) against the KMT, which was yet to be defeated entirely.



That's basically true, but the essential point is that such things definitely also existed in the USSR under Stalin and later leaders. Despite calling ethnic minority regions by different names, ethnic policies in the USSR were not "more progressive" in the concrete sense compared those of China's.
China's minority policies were largely copied from that of the USSR. These policies look extremly progressive on paper, but in practice a politically backward country like China could not live up to it 100%. I highly suspect that was also the case in USSR.

[Queercommie Girl]

You think seperate SSRs set up to promote ethnic development wasn't progressive? Xinjiang was (and to this day, still is in many ways) managed directly from Bejing by Han Chinese politicians. meanwhile, in Tannu Tuva and Kazakh SSR, ethnic governments ran states that promoted ethnic economic development and were de facto independent of the USSR. they were a part of the USSR, but they weren't managed from Moscow.


Autonomous regions also promoted "ethnic development". "A rose by any other name smells just as sweet".

Today Xinjiang might be more tightly controlled from Beijing, but frankly today's PRC isn't exactly the ideal model of how the PRC is supposed to be like. I mean the PRC is supposed to be a worker's state, that's written into the constitution. I don't think workers slaving for 14 hours a day is really a "typical manifestation" of daily life in a worker's state.

If we go by analytical articles written by Trotskyist organisations like the CWI, which are certainly not biased towards Mao or China in any way, then actually Maoist PRC was objectively even more de-centralised politically and economically than Stalinist USSR was, since for one thing, the prices of goods were more centrally controlled in the USSR than they were in the PRC, and the PRC didn't even "centrally manage" many of the ethnic Han provinces, let alone ethnic minority regions. Of course, objectively the actual effects of greater de-centralisation on ethnic minority development are certainly mixed, you can't really prove that greater de-centralisation is always going to be better in the concrete sense at all.

And being influenced by Trotskyism, I think it is ridiculously utopian to think that there was no racism etc in the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party, just because terms like SSR were used. In fact, Trotsky literally wrote material on the existence of national oppression in post-Lenin USSR. Not that I'm utopian about the situation in the Maoist PRC either of course. But all I'm doing is countering your ridiculously inconsistent double standard.

[Adi Shankara]

And being influenced by Trotskyism


Didn't you say you admire Stalin in another thread?

[
I'm not saying Stalin and Mao didn't make mistakes, but I'd rather support people like Stalin and Mao than those revisionist pro-capitalist scumbags in both Russia and China that came after them.

You make no sense. I never met a Trotskyist who views Stalin favorably.

[scarletghoul]

Didn't you say you admire Stalin in another thread?

[

You make no sense. I never met a Trotskyist who views Stalin favorably.
pro-tip: some communists are not cardboard cut outs of the particular tendency they're labelled as.

[Queercommie Girl]

Didn't you say you admire Stalin in another thread?

[

You make no sense. I never met a Trotskyist who views Stalin favorably.

I'm not actually a Trotskyist, I've been influenced by Trotskyism, which is not the same thing.

I don't completely reject Stalin like ultra-leftists do, but I don't exactly "admire" him either. In fact, I'd say between him and Trotsky, I'm somewhat more on the latter's side.

Also, I'm of the opinion that though Stalin was wrong in many ways, the revisionist leaders after him were even worse and deviated even more from Lenin (and Trotsky)'s original political line. I put economic analysis before considerations of human rights. The fact that Stalin killed more people than the later revisionist leaders doesn't make Stalin worse, because at least in his day economic equality was better and there was no private capitalism.

The world isn't so simplistic black-and-white like in your superstitious "good-vs.-evil" religious books.

[pranabjyoti]

The answer is short, Tibet was in much worse condition than Soviet Republics and it's geographically so much alienated from world, IT'S SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE TO SET UP AN SSR THERE.
Before being a part of China, it was almost like a Buddhist Afghanistan.

[Jayshin_JTTH]

The answer is short, Tibet was in much worse condition than Soviet Republics and it's geographically so much alienated from world, IT'S SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE TO SET UP AN SSR THERE.
Before being a part of China, it was almost like a Buddhist Afghanistan.
Actually, countries like Turkmenistan for example, weren't even 'nations' before becoming SSR's, when the Bolsheviks first went into Turkmenistan, it was sparsely populated by nomadic herders who had no concept of an outside world, they often traveled across the border into Afghanistan. A Bolshevik actually asked a few tribesmen who their ruler was, one answered the Ottoman prince, and the other said Nicolas II of Russia. They didn't even understand feudalism, let alone capitalism, so a miniature version of an NEP they set up failed because they didn't understand the concept of cash.

Compare that to Turkmenistan today, one of the most nationalist and self-identified nations in the world.

Colonizations was the exact OPPOSITE to what the USSR (and China too) did, they effectively built these nations from the ground up.

Much of the radical actions taken in Tibet were done by ethnic Tibetan Red Guards who, inspired by Mao, wanted to tear down and destroy every last trace of the feudal serfdom that was Tibet before Chinese liberation.