blindpig
I am at a disadvantage here as I have not read 'Socialism Betrayed', intention back-filed & old-timered.
Both states were right, after a fashion. There can be little doubt that the capitalists would(will) risk all when their economic arrangement faces existential threat. Yet the denial of the intractability of class war was false and very damaging, the sort of thing one expects from social democrats. The Chinese were right but they'd get us all killed.5d. Stephen Gowans has argued that Peaceful Coexistence was mainly a slogan with little actual content that was used in the hope of dialing down mutual aggression without capitulating much of anything. Sure it pissed off communists in the West but its not as if they were going to foment revolution either way (the Soviets took a dim view of the matter dating at least back to when Trotsky kept stalling the signing of Brest to give the German masses time to wise up and rise up..which didn't happen)
Gowans is mistaken here because Khruschev/the Soviets clearly saw disarmament as an existential issue and were by all accounts very sincere on the matter. In fact, the story goes that specialists were withdrawn from China after Gromyko (a guy who had a job to do and did it solidly) was told by the Chinese that 300 million deaths were an acceptable cost to drive the US out of Taiwan. This gives you an insight into the DEEPLY abiding differences in mentality between the two states.
This is the part that makes me crazy. Given the scenario how is it that these bastards were not put against the wall?I personally feel that the only way Keeran can even hope to advance his case is to outright replace Gorbachev with Yakovlev as his villain. Gorbachev as the chief antagonist is facile and too problematic. Yakovlev was the chief architect of glasnot and perestroika and also the man responsible for stirring up (and mostly replacing with Westernized cronies) the intelligentsia who became the drivers of the counterrevolution. It is estimated that this action was carried out by less than 100 men through journals, newspapers, tv, and other media.