The Guardians of the Party: Embedded Military Structures and Diverging Regime Outcomes in China and the Soviet Union

• In Event: The Authoritarian Playbook: Tactics Across Time and Regime Type

Abstract

Why do some Leninist armies remain loyal in a crisis while others fragment, conspire, or defect? This article addresses that question by comparing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the 1989 Tiananmen crisis with the Soviet Armed Forces during the failed August 1991 coup. Although both were structured by the same format of state formation with hierarchical party control over mighty troops, their responses to regime-threatening crises diverged sharply, shaping the survival or collapse of their respective states. The PLA ensured the regime's survival, while the Soviet military’s hesitation, fragmentation, and partial defection accelerated the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The article proposes the Embedded Guardianship Framework, which argues that military compliance depends on three mutually reinforcing ties to the ruling party: ideological socialization, organizational fusion, and career interdependence. Employing the most similar systems design alongside process tracing, the study analyzes how these three threads of embedded guardianship placed the two militaries on divergent paths. In China, the strong emphasis on a clear, united structure of command, and a party-mediated promotion network that helped create swift military obedience and loyalty. In contrast, the Soviet case reveals how ideological training had withered, command channels had fragmented, and military advancement was no longer tied to party patrons.

The findings revise scholarship on coup-proofing and offer an alternative framework for forecasting military loyalty in contemporary authoritarian regimes such as Russia, Vietnam, and even 21st-century China. More broadly, the study contributes to civil–military relations debates and challenges the assumption that party control is a static blueprint always immune to the risk of military defection or coup.

Author

• Vu Luong, University of Florida