How important are the founding myths of a nation? What happens if those myths become founding crimes ? Consider the Soviet Union and Khrushchev’s famous speech in 1956 denouncing the crimes of Stalin – the show trials, the mass executions, the gulag. According to philosopher Slavoj Žižek, “After [Khrushchev’s] speech, things were never the same again, the fundamental dogma of infallible leadership had been fatally undermined.…” In the short run, this exposure of the seamy side of the Soviet state “strengthen[ed] the communist movement…the Khrushchev era was the last period of authentic communist enthusiasm of belief in the communist project.” But Khrushchev was deposed in 1964, and a “resigned cynicism” set in “until Gorbachev’s attempt at a more radical confrontation with the past” led to the utter collapse of the system. By contrast, the Chinese Communist Party managed to throw overboard the whole communist project and take up “Western-style ‘liberalization’ (...