Reflections on July 1st Party Founding Day: 

Why Was There "Not a Single Real Man" During the Soviet Collapse? 

On the "Spiritual Calcium" of a Revolutionary Party

By Zi Hengmo, July 1, 2025

"If the foundation is not solid, the earth will shake and the mountains will tremble." This simple yet profound Chinese wisdom applies not only to material engineering construction but also reveals, in a heart-stopping way, the iron law governing the spiritual world and the rise and fall of political power. As General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "When beliefs are not firm, there will also be earth-shaking and mountain-trembling." Looking back at that world-shocking historical upheaval at the end of the 20th century, a massive red alliance that once made the entire capitalist world tremble collapsed thunderously with almost no meaningful resistance. Among all this, the most lamentable and thought-provoking was the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party itself.

The General Secretary incisively pointed out that historical paradox and tragedy: "The Soviet Communist Party seized power with 200,000 members, defeated Hitler with 2 million members, but lost power with nearly 20 million members... In that upheaval, there was not a single real man among them, no one came forward to resist." This deafening "question of manhood" transcends time and space, striking directly at each of our souls.

Why would a ruling party with nearly 20 million members, controlling the most powerful nuclear arsenal, display such unbelievable political numbness, ideological confusion, and paralysis of action at the moment of life and death? The answer, as the General Secretary profoundly revealed: "It was because ideals and beliefs had completely vanished." This article aims to use this as a framework to deeply analyze how the Soviet Communist Party step by step lost its "spiritual calcium," ultimately leading to that unprecedented great collapse.

I. The Source of Faith: The Transformation from "Vanguard Warriors" to "Parasitic Party Members"

The nature of a political party is ultimately determined by the composition and spiritual state of its members. The tragedy of the Soviet Communist Party began with its organizational pathology—the qualitative change in party member composition from revolutionaries to bureaucrats.

1.1 The Bolsheviks: Revolutionary Vanguard Forged from "Special Material"

In Lenin's era, Bolshevik party members were made of "special material." They were battle-tested, indomitable professional revolutionaries. Becoming a party member at that time did not mean any material benefits; instead, it meant imprisonment, exile, and even sacrifice. What sustained their relentless struggle was that well-worn copy of The Communist Manifesto in their hands and the unshakeable, burning ideal of achieving world communism in their hearts. It was precisely such a small but steel-willed force that unleashed enough tremendous energy to "move the earth," creating humanity's first socialist state.

1.2 "Nomenklatura": The Rise of a New Self-Serving Class

However, after seizing power, especially when the country entered a period of long-term peaceful construction and during what was called the "developed socialism" stage of the Brezhnev era, a profound and fatal transformation occurred. A privileged class called "Nomenklatura" [注: номенклатура, the Soviet system of party-controlled appointments] gradually formed and solidified. For this new class, party membership was no longer a symbol of sacrifice and dedication but a "ticket" to power, status, and various material privileges. Joining the party was for getting better housing, shopping at special supply stores, and securing brighter futures for one's children. The oath to "struggle for communism for life" was quietly replaced by the unspoken rule of "scheming for personal and family interests for life." Party membership transformed from a lofty political faith into a kind of "political sinecure" that could be exchanged for practical benefits.

1.3 The "Quantity" and "Quality" of Twenty Million Party Members

When the Soviet Communist Party's membership swelled to nearly 20 million, its numbers reached a historic peak, but its "quality" as a revolutionary vanguard plummeted to a historic low. Countless opportunists, careerists, bureaucrats, and mediocre "fair-weather party members" filled its ranks. They might be familiar with party charter provisions but had long forgotten the color of the party flag; they might shout Marxist-Leninist slogans at meetings, but in their hearts, they calculated their own fame and fortune. This massive body of 20 million members had already become loose and fragile in its internal "spiritual skeleton" due to the loss of ideals and beliefs. Once history's storm arrived, the seemingly powerful muscles, without strong bones for support, would only become a pile of rotten flesh collapsing thunderously.

II. The Ideological "Master Switch": Theoretical Betrayal Beginning with Khrushchev's "Secret Report"

If the degeneration of party members was the shaking of the organizational foundation, then the revisionist transformation of guiding ideology was the complete opening of the "master switch" for the Soviet Communist Party's collapse. This process began with the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956.

2.1 The "Secret Report": A Dagger Thrust at History and Faith

Khrushchev's "Secret Report" completely negated Stalin in an extremely crude, anti-historical manner, and through this, completely negated the magnificent, though arduous and error-filled but also brilliantly successful, construction history under the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party. This dagger was not only thrust at a historical figure but, more profoundly, at the entire party's, army's, and people's faith in their past path. It caused unprecedented ideological chaos throughout the international communist movement, allowing "historical nihilism"—this most powerful ideological virus—to invade the heart of the Communist Party for the first time from the enemy camp. From then on, Pandora's box of doubting everything and negating everything was opened, and the first fatal crack appeared in the Soviet Communist Party's ideological dam.

2.2 "Three Peacefuls and Two Alls": A Revisionist Program of Self-Destruction

After opening the breach of historical nihilism, Khrushchev and his successors further proposed a complete systematic revisionist theory—the so-called "Three Peacefuls and Two Alls" [注: 三和两全: peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, peaceful transition; all-people's state, all-people's party]. The line of "peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, peaceful transition" completely abandoned Lenin's basic views on war and peace in the imperialist era, blurred the irreconcilable antagonistic contradictions between socialism and capitalism, and ideologically disarmed vigilance against Western "peaceful evolution."

The theory of "all-people's state, all-people's party" fundamentally betrayed Marxist theories of state and party. It declared that Soviet society no longer had classes and class struggle, that the dictatorship of the proletariat was "outdated," and that the Soviet Communist Party was therefore no longer the vanguard of the proletariat. This theory was tantamount to announcing to the world that the Soviet Communist Party had voluntarily and consciously laid down the most core and fundamental weapon of self-defense—the dictatorship of the proletariat.

2.3 The Vacuum of Faith and the Prevalence of Cynicism

Under the long-term erosion of this revisionist theory, Marxism-Leninism in the Soviet Union was gradually "dogmatized" and "hollowed out." It became a set of dead vocabulary used only for meetings and writing reports, no longer the scientific truth that could guide practice and inspire people. When the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party themselves no longer believed in the theories they espoused, how could they expect ordinary party members and the masses to believe in them? Thus, a vacuum of ideals and beliefs inevitably appeared. In its place came widespread, cynical nihilism and vulgar materialism. People no longer believed in lofty ideals but only in immediate interests. The entire society fell into a spiritual state of "weightlessness."

III. Political Consequences: From "Privileged Corruption" to the Proliferation of "Open Betrayal"

Ideological confusion and betrayal inevitably led to political corruption and wavering. From the Brezhnev era to the Gorbachev era, the political body of the Soviet Communist Party was already riddled with diseases and terminally ill.

3.1 The Solidification of the Privileged Class and the Spread of Corruption

The theory of "all-people's party" provided the best protective talisman for the existence of the bureaucratic privileged class. Since there were no longer classes, the various privileges they enjoyed were no longer manifestations of class oppression but became "natural" treatment. During the Brezhnev period, corruption among the upper echelons of the Soviet Communist Party had developed to an outrageous degree. They engaged in embezzlement and bribery, nepotism, and luxurious living, with their distance from the people being farther than from Earth to the moon. When a political party no longer represents the people's interests but only represents the interests of a corrupt bureaucratic group fundamentally opposed to the people's interests, it fundamentally loses the legitimacy to govern.

3.2 Gorbachev's "New Thinking": From Revision to Open Betrayal

If Khrushchev still operated under the banner of "restoring Leninism" when "revising" theory, then Gorbachev simply tore off the last fig leaf, sliding from "revision" to "open betrayal." His advocated "glasnost" and "pluralism" were essentially the complete lifting of propaganda controls on Western bourgeois liberalization ideology, allowing it to run rampant domestically. He completely negated Soviet history and the socialist path, promoting so-called "common human values." His "new thinking" was not theoretical innovation but thorough, unconditional surrender to bourgeois ideology. As General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, he personally dug away the last theoretical pillar of the Soviet Communist Party's ruling edifice.

IV. The Final Collapse: A Political Psychological Analysis of "Not a Single Real Man"

When Yeltsin and others launched the "August 19th Incident" [注: 八一九事件, referring to the 1991 coup attempt], delivering a fatal blow to the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet Union, why did that massive group of nearly 20 million party members, already devoid of ideals and beliefs, perform so weakly and numbly?

4.1 The "Total Collapse" of Ideals and Beliefs Led to "Total Paralysis" of Political Will

An army cannot have the will to fight after its flag has been negated and humiliated by the enemy, especially by its own commanders. For Soviet Communist Party members, this was exactly the situation. When they were told by their own General Secretary that the red flag they had struggled for seventy years, and everything that red flag represented—revolution, leaders, the socialist system—were all "wrong" and "evil," what were they fighting for? For whom were they fighting? Without the banner of faith, there was no reason to fight. Ideological disarmament inevitably led to paralysis of action. They had been completely disarmed spiritually by their own leadership.

4.2 The "Self-Preservation" and "Betrayal" of the Privileged Class

For the middle and upper-level bureaucrats and privileged class within the Soviet Communist Party, their choice was more "pragmatic." Many of them had long established countless connections with the Western world through various channels. For them, the choice was no longer between "defending socialism" or "surrendering to capitalism" but how to use their power during the regime's collapse to legally and safely transform the "state wealth" they had previously appropriated into "personal private property." This was indeed the case—after the Soviet Union's dissolution, those who got rich first and became "oligarchs" overnight were precisely the former highest-level party and government officials. They were the most active promoters and biggest beneficiaries of that collapse. They were not "real men" but the most shameless "traitors" who had long been prepared.

4.3 The "Silence" of the People

The broad masses of ordinary Soviet people witnessed all this with heartbreaking "silence." They remained silent not because they yearned for capitalism, but because the Soviet Communist Party that once represented and led them had become unrecognizable. That corrupt, privileged, people-alienated party was no longer "their party." They didn't feel they were losing their country but rather watching a power struggle within the "Kremlin" that had nothing to do with them. How could a party abandoned by its own people expect the people to stand up and defend it at the final moment?

V. Historical Mirror: How to Forge the Spiritual "Calcium" of Communists

The Soviet tragedy provides the most profound and painful mirror for Marxist parties worldwide in the most extreme form. It tells us that what ultimately determines a party's life or death is not the number of party members, not economic growth, not even military strength, but whether it possesses rock-solid ideals and beliefs.

5.1 The Source of "Spiritual Calcium"

As the General Secretary metaphorically puts it, ideals and beliefs are the spiritual "calcium" of Communists. Without "calcium," one gets "rickets" spiritually and falls at the slightest push. So where does this "spiritual calcium" come from?

It comes from profound mastery of Marxist scientific theory—not dogmatic recitation, but truly using it as a powerful weapon for understanding and transforming the world.

It comes from flesh-and-blood connections with the people. Only by always breathing with the people, sharing their destiny, and connecting hearts can one obtain the deepest and most lasting source of strength.

It comes from serious, regular inner-party political life. We must use criticism and self-criticism, through relentless ideological struggle, to cleanse various political dust and microorganisms from our ranks.

It comes from a scientific attitude toward history. We must both acknowledge the hardships and twists of the struggle process and confidently defend the mainstream and essence of revolutionary history, resolutely struggling against any form of historical nihilism.

5.2 An Eternal Lifelong Task

The firmness of ideals and beliefs is not achieved once and for all. It needs to be "cultivated and refined as a lifelong task." In peaceful environments and conditions of holding power, the erosion of various non-proletarian thoughts becomes more hidden and dangerous. Therefore, the only way to prevent "earth-shaking and mountain-trembling" is to constantly and meticulously reinforce the "ideological foundation" of our ideals and beliefs.

Conclusion

In summary, the Soviet tragedy of "not a single real man" was not a sudden event but a systematic great collapse spanning decades—from ideological theory to political line to organizational form. Its root cause was the open betrayal of Marxism-Leninism beginning with the Khrushchev clique and the resulting complete collapse of ideals and beliefs throughout the party.

A party that has lost its soul, no matter how many members it has or how massive its body, is nothing but a walking corpse whose ultimate fate can only be to turn into a pile of decayed dust in history's storms.

The collapse of the Soviet Communist Party profoundly demonstrates an unshakeable truth: for a Marxist party, ideals and beliefs are its lifeline, the foundation of its existence, and the fundamental mark distinguishing it from all other parties. Whenever this spiritual banner is no longer bright red, then regardless of what glorious past it may have had, its final outcome is already predetermined.

This is the most painful lesson that Moscow has left for Communists worldwide—one that must be forever remembered.