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Article: Communists Today
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- November 29, 1987
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Jeane Kirkpatrick's essay "The New Bolsheviks" {op-ed, Nov. 23}
is wrong on at least two accounts. First, she refers to Zhao Ziyang
and Daniel Ortega as Bolsheviks. They are not. Ortega is a
Sandinista, and Zhao Ziyang is a member of the Chinese Communist
Party. Neither man is rooted in the Bolshevik tradition, although
each may pay a certain amount of homage to Lenin.
This is not merely an academic argument. To view all communists
as Bolsheviks or as Marxist-Leninists is to oversimplify the nature
of modern communism. Each Communist Party views the application of
the principles of communism from its own perspective. Not even
during the heyday of the Comintern, founded in 1919, was ...