Boris Ryvkin

As the second world war entered its final months, Anglo-American forces advanced into Nazi Germany to finish off Hitler’s Reich. In the East, the Red Army attacked up the Danube toward Vienna. Meanwhile, at the Yalta conference in February 1945, Stalin moved to cement his post-war political control over Eastern and central Europe. Germany’s defeat was imminent, but western leaders began to worry about how much Stalin’s forces would seize before the final surrender.  As Russia continues to endure heavy casualties in Ukraine, we’re in a similar predicament today. The war shows no signs of ending any time soon – and casualties continue to mount on both sides. But might the end of the second world war show a way out?

The General Secretary of China’s Communist Party is a different kind of leader. Now in his third five-year term, Xi Jinping believes that time is running out for him to secure his legacy as Mao Zedong’s true successor. He spent a decade dismantling the technocracy and politburo consensus government ushered in by Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death, rolled back the authority of local party nomenklatura in favour of more centralised control from Beijing, and worked to subordinate China’s economy to the Communist Party’s (meaning Xi’s) political priorities. In abandoning the ‘to get rich is glorious’ social contract of the post-Tiananmen Square era, Xi has come to bury Deng and not to praise him.