This article is an effort to set forth certain major similarities and differences between the societies of the Soviet Union and Communist China as of January 1955.

It is evident that the Soviet Union and Communist China have many characteristics in common. They stem mainly from parallel or identical concepts of power and its purposes, internal and external, accepted by the respective top leadership groups. These concepts have been translated into similar methods of societal organization, imposed value standards, and lines of day-to-day policy at home and abroad. Differences between the two countries arise from the nature of the economies controlled by Moscow and Peking; from the length of time the Communist regimes have been established; from certain characteristics of each top leadership group; from elements in the Russian and Chinese cultures that even modern totalitarianism has not wholly erased; and from problems presented by the goal of external expansion that the Soviet Union and Communist China share.

Ten years after the Liberation, the French Communist Party remains the strongest party in France. It can muster a quarter of the nation's votes and claim more “militants” than all other French parties put together. A majority of industrial workers continue to vote for the “party of the working class” even if they are reluctant to strike on its behalf. This persistent strength is both disturbing and puzzling. It is obviously a major source of weakness not only for French democracy, but for the effectiveness of the Western coalition. There is no simple explanation of the continued hold of Communism, since it is both the cause and the consequence of the many-faceted crisis of French society.

While the West is occupied with the cold war, an economic test is slowly shaping in Asia. Upon its outcome may depend the political beliefs and allegiance of half the world's people. The issue may be stated simply, although the forces at work are complex and intricate: Can India, with a population of 360 million, under the democratic process, with free elections and a mixed economy similar to mat of many Western nations, meet the national aspirations for economic betterment and a more abundant life more fully and more rapidly than Communist China, with its totalitarian rule of 500 million people and its forced labor, forced investment, and forced production? In spite of all the propaganda about progress in Communist China, it is probable that the Indian record of actual achievement is more impressive, though less well publicized.

The determination of military policy can be generally conceived as a matter of answering, in order, two questions: for what purposes is military power required, and how much is required? Unfortunately, these questions are more easily asked than answered. The first—military power for what and against whom?—is complicated by the fact that the government is usually confronted with a variety of foreign policy contingencies, many of which seem to call for different kinds of military establishments. The second question—how much military power?—is complicated by the fact that the government must usually allocate its resources among many national values, of which military security is only one. These complicating factors, one a condition of international politics and the other a condition of domestic politics, appear to be as inescapable as the two questions themselves. Consequently, some insight into present and future problems of civil-military relations may be gained by examining the influence of these conditions in the past.

A Major obstacle to analysis of Communist movements is the, absence of firsthand evidence on attitudes and motivations affecting tension and cohesion. The refusal of four thousand members of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Youth Corps to return to the mainland after the Korean War offered an unusually large and representative cross-section of these two organizations for systematic interrogation. The results of such an interrogation conducted by the author in April 1954, while in no way conclusive, provide suggestive statistical and analytical information concerning the composition and motivations of the post-Yenan Chinese Communist.

According to official Communist figures, the Chinese Communist Party numbered approximately three million in December 1948 and more than five million in June 1950. This increase of two million members in eighteen months represents the most rapid expansion of Party rolls in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. It occurred after victory was in sight, but before rigorous measures to consolidate control erupted in the “Three Anti” and “Five Anti” movements of 1951. Those who joined the Party during this period form a group strikingly different from the elite of the Chinese Communist movement, which is composed of devoted revolutionaries trained in the rigorous experiences of the Long March and the wartime days of Yenan.