CQGR Communism Today

Communism TodayARE ITS DAYS NUMBERED?

When Fidel Castro said earlier this year that communism had failed in Cuba, one might have

thought the sun had finally set worldwide on the Marxist-Leninist ideology. But, despite Cuba’s

shaky economy and the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellite states nearly 20 years ago, one

in five people on the planet still lives under communist rule. Single-party authoritarian com-

munist governments still run five countries: Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and — most significantly — China, with

its 1.3 billion inhabitants. In addition, elected communist parties run the governments in Nepal and Cyprus, while

communist parties are members of ruling coalitions in South Africa, Belarus, Brazil and six other nations. In Europe

and elsewhere, modern communist par-

ties are more centrist than their leftist

ancestors. Academics still debate whether

the threat of communism was overrated

during the Cold War, whether President

Ronald Reagan was responsible for the fall

of the Soviet Union and if today’s com-

munist economies are sustainable.

Kaysone Phomvihane — beloved former leader of theLao People’s Revolutionary Par ty — smiles down froma billboard announcing the opening of the par ty’s 9th

national congress in Vientiane, in March. The one-par tycommunist government of Laos, one of the world’s

poorest countries, recently began experimenting withmarket-based economic reforms.

AUG. 2, 2011 VOLUME 5, NUMBER 15 PAGES 367-394 WWW.GLOBALRESEARCHER.COM

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368 CQ Global Researcher

COMMUNISM TODAY

THE ISSUES

369 • Are communist countrieseconomically and politicallysustainable?• Did President RonaldReagan hasten the end ofcommunism?• Was the threat of com-munism overrated?

BACKGROUND

378 ‘Workers Unite!’The Communist Manifestowas published in 1848.

381 The BolsheviksVladimir Lenin ousted Tsar Nikolas II in 1917.

382 World War IIAt least 20 million Russiansdied.

383 Chinese CommunismChina mobilized farmersrather than urban workers.

383 Soviet CommunismThe Cold War quickly followed World War II.

CURRENT SITUATION

386 Modern ChinaIts communism resembles“Industrial Revolution-eracapitalism.”

387 Rogue StatesCuba and North Koreahave embraced dynasticsuccession.

OUTLOOK

388 Waning Days?Many experts say commu-nism’s days are numbered.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

370 Roster of Communist Countries Down to FiveSeveral others have govern-ing communist parties.

371 Profiles of Today’s Communist LeadersMost are loosening state con-trol of their economies.

372 Cuban Communist Party toTest Market Economy“Radical transformation” couldresult.

374 Last of the CommunistNationsAll have low per capita GDPs.

377 Communist Nations aDying BreedLine-up featured a high of23 nations in 1979.

379 ChronologyKey events since 1848.

380 American Communist PartyQuietly Soldiers OnShort-term goal is a socialistsociety — but without therevolution.

385 At IssueShould the embargo againstCuba be lifted?

394 Voices from AbroadHeadlines and editorials fromaround the world.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

391 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

392 BibliographySelected sources used.

393 The Next StepAdditional articles.

393 Citing CQ Global ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

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Communism Today

THE ISSUESF idel Castro made head-

lines around the worldlast year when he con-

fessed to an American jour-nalist that “the Cuban modeldoesn’t even work for usanymore.” 1

To the outside observer,of course, this had been self-evident for decades in the im-poverished Caribbean nation.Indeed, since the aging 84-year-old revolutionary passedthe leadership reins to hisyounger brother Raúl in 2006,the government in Havana has— with excruciating slowness— relaxed its grip on the econ-omy in a tacit admission thatreform was needed.In fact, the government ini-

tiated a series of tentative re-forms last spring, includingallowing Cubans to gain smallmeasures of individual eco-nomic autonomy. They willsoon be able to sell theirhomes and cars with onlyminimal government inter-ference, for the first time sincethe 1959 revolution.“The state can regulate its

relations with individuals, but not re-lations between them,” the 80-year-oldRaúl Castro said recently. 2

In addition, small businesses willnow have some autonomy, foreign in-vestors will be able to buy Cuban realestate and a ban on cell phone own-ership has been relaxed for those fewCubans who can afford them. 3

Yet the state still controls about90 percent of the economy, citizensbuy food with ration cards and dissi-dents who question the regime areroutinely jailed. 4

“Cuba’s new Ráulist political struc-ture takes its inspiration from the purest

tradition of Latin American militarycaudillismo [authoritarian dictatorship],using communist ideology pragmati-cally,” writes Carlos Pérez Llana, vicepresident of the University of the 21stCentury in Cordoba, Argentina. 5

Cuba and four Asian nations —North Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos— are the world’s last five communistcountries, down from 23 at the move-ment’s peak in the late 1970s. (Seegraph, p. 377.) Yet, while communistgovernments continue to use therhetoric of Marxism, each has adopt-ed market-based reforms or is con-sidering it, even though such measures

are antithetical to commu-nism’s anti-capitalist tenets.But even if the countries have“deviated” — as the theoristsused to say — from the truepath, experts say it is too soonto write communism’s epitaph.Indeed, 20 years after the vastSoviet Union collapsed, onein five people on the planetstill live under some versionof communist rule.Communism was con-

ceived in response to wide-spread economic inequalitiesand political oppression inindustrializing countries in themid- to late-19th century. So-cialism — originally seen asan intermediate stage on theroad to communism — hasproved more durable, hav-ing evolved into a doctrineof offsetting the excesses ofcapitalism with a robust statesector. But past Marxist-Lenin-ist-inspired regimes — no-tably the Soviet Union andits satellite states — not onlyfailed to end economic in-justices but also constructedtotalitarian state apparatusesbased on terror and repres-sion. Today’s five communistcountries remain repressive,

even as they deviate from foundingeconomic principles. 6

Besides the five remaining commu-nist countries, Nepal and Cyprus aregoverned by elected communist parties,and nine other countries have rulingcoalitions that include communist par-ties.* 7 (See map, p. 370.) Some 80 othercountries across the globe, including theUnited States, have active communist orcommunist-inspired political parties, butmostly as peripheral players.

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Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, left, who confessed lastyear that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,”confers with his brother Rául during the Sixth Cuban CommunistParty Congress in April 2011. Rául, who took over from Fidel in2006, initiated several economic reforms this year, including

allowing Cubans to buy and sell their homes and relaxing somerestrictions on real estate purchases by foreign investors.

* Ruling coalitions include communists in Be-larus, Bolivia, Brazil, South Africa, Sri Lanka,Syria, Ukraine, Uruguay and Venezuela.


Communism’s decline represents aremarkable turnaround for an ideologythat ruled half the world only a fewshort decades after its birth in czaristRussia in 1917. When Castro and hisrebels came to power in 1959, nascentcommunist insurgencies and regimeswere emerging as vibrant alternatives tocorrupt, authoritarian regimes in LatinAmerica, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.The five remaining communist na-

tions are single-party states that main-tain strict control over society with op-pressive security forces. Religiousgroups, churches, trade unions and

other independent social and politicalorganizations are outlawed or mar-ginalized as governments once estab-lished by revolutionaries determinedto disrupt the status quo now are ded-icated to preserving their own power.Countries adopted communism in

a variety of ways, often followingpaths unique to their cultures and dis-tinct from the ideological foundationslaid down in 1848 by Karl Marx andFrederich Engels in The CommunistManifesto. For example, both Cuba andNorth Korea have embraced dynasticsuccession and a cult of national “self-

reliance.” 8 Laos and Vietnam, mean-while, have experimented with eco-nomic reforms. “Laos and Vietnam aremore like Singapore already,” saysJohn McCreary, a retired senior Pen-tagon intelligence analyst.Even in China, where Deng Xiaoping

introduced sweeping economic reformsin 1978, the government has said it op-erates not as a communist state but asone based on a “theory of socialism withChinese characteristics.” 9 That has pro-duced skyrocketing economic growth,rapid industrialization and modernizationof urban centers — a remarkable feat

COMMUNISM TODAY

Roster of Communist Countries Now Down to FiveFour of the world’s Þve remaining communist countries are in Asia: China, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam. Cuba is the only communist country in the Western Hemisphere. In nearly a dozen other countries, elected communist parties either govern or belong to the ruling coalition, including Brazil, Belarus and South Africa.

Communism Today

Source: Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009). Map by Lewis Agrell

One-party communist countries

LAOSNEPAL

SRILANKA

VIETNAM

CHINA

NORTHKOREA

SYRIACYPRUS

BELARUS

UKRAINE

SOUTHAFRICA

BRAZIL

VENEZUELA

CUBA

URUGUAY

BOLIVIA

Ruled by elected communist party

Communist party belongs to rulingcoalition


for centralized economic planning in anation of 1.3 billion people.Whatever their differences, modern

communist nations all have madeprogress toward eradicating certain so-cial inequities. While data is often un-reliable and claims of universal literacyand health care often are key compo-nents of state propaganda, communistcountries nonetheless have made signif-icant strides in some areas. Health careand education are universal in China,North Korea, Cuba and Vietnam, whilethe health-care system in Laos is tot-tering. Literacy rates are generally high,and there is often equality between gen-ders. 10 (See chart, p. 374.) Infant mor-tality in Cuba, the government claims, isfar lower than in the United States. 11

A formerly-secret cable sent from aU.S. diplomat in Havana in 2008 re-ported that, contrary to the government’sassertions, conditions in Cuban hospi-tals were abysmal. The cable reports: “ACuban woman in her thirties confides,‘It’s all about who you know. I’m okaybecause I am healthy and I have“friends” in the medical field. If I didn’thave my connections, and most Cubansdo not, it would be horrible.’ ” 12

Communism in China and Soviet Rus-sia has been credited with the rapidmodernization of undeveloped, agrariancountries. “Our party has . . . led theChinese people in writing a grand epicin the history of human development,”Chinese President Hu Jintao said recentlyon the 90th birthday of the ChineseCommunist Party. 13

The loss of Moscow’s rigid ideo-logical guidance and generous finan-cial support has left communist par-ties in non-communist countries adiverse group. In the Czech Republic,Hungary and other formerly commu-nist nations — now integrated intothe European Union — the partieshave adopted distinctly nationalisticrhetoric, and some have taken stronganti-immigrant stands. 14 In Greece,communists have incorporated ele-ments of both the far right and far

left to protest the ruling party’s recentausterity measures. 15

Echoing rhetoric used to rally theworking classes nearly a century ago,Alexandra “Aleka” Papariga, head of

Greece’s Communist Party, warned thatthe budget cuts will leave Greeks “inshackles for the next 100 years.” 16

French and Spanish communistparties today are more center-left than

ProÞles of Today’s Communist Leaders

ChinaPresident Hu Jintao, 68, was elected by the National Peoples’ Congress in March 2003. He has continued to promote China’s unique “market authoritarian” form of government, which permits a free market but retains a Þrm grip on political activity. Recently, he has focused on creating a “harmonious society” by promoting a stable middle class while suppressing dissent.

North KoreaSupreme Leader Kim Jong Il, 70, assumed power after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, in 1994. Under the son’s leadership, North Korea has remained isolated, secretive and antagonistic toward outsiders and has insisted on developing nuclear weapons despite international condemnation. The ailing leader apparently has named his son Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20s, to succeed him.

CubaPresident Rául Castro, 80, was tapped in 2006 by his ailing brother, longtime Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, 85, to succeed him. Rául has since scaled back government control of the economy and adopted a friendlier stance toward the United States.

LaosPresident Choummaly Sayasone, 75, was elected by the National Assembly on March 21, 2006. Under his leadership, Laos has strengthened ties and economic cooperation with neighboring Vietnam and has begun opening the economy to some private enterprise. Nevertheless, he insists, “Marxist-Leninist theory is practical and is suitable for the current situa-tion in Laos.”

VietnamPresident Nguyen Minh Triet, 68, was elected by the National Assembly on June 27, 2006. Although an enthusiastic supporter of Vietnam’s economic liberalization, he also has been harsh on critics, sentencing dissidents to lengthy prison terms.

Source: Political Handbook of the World, 2011 (2011)


their more Moscow-controlled leftistpredecessors. Those in South Africahave become fiscal conservatives. InIndia, communist parties hold region-al offices in various coalition arrange-ments. Japan’s communist party, whichhas revitalized amid the ongoing eco-nomic malaise, is the country’s fourth-largest party. 17 Most communist par-ties fall on the far left of the politicalspectrum and advocate for a greaterstate role in national economic affairs.The Communist Party USA is at besta fringe brand, lacking a single leaderof national significance. 18 (See side-bar, p. 380.)

The global financial collapse hasproved somewhat of a boon for com-munist parties in Europe, as some vot-ers turn to communist candidates. “We’renot given to predicting the imminentcollapse of capitalism,” the head ofBritain’s Communist Party, WelshmanRobert Griffiths, told The Sunday Timesin London as the global recession wasbeginning to hit Europe. “But our mes-sage for some time has been that [cap-italism] is a system based on crisis andinstability, and we’re finding there is avery receptive audience.” 19

And yet, even as they rally sup-porters to the streets, communist par-

ties have been unable to block aus-terity measures passed across Europe.Indeed, the point man for warding offfinancial calamity in Italy is a formerleader of the now-defunct Italian Com-munist Party. 20

In the five remaining communist na-tions, there is a distinct sense among somecitizens and outside analysts that the gov-ernments are prone to sudden collapse,as with the collective demise of the So-viet satellite states that began in 1989. 21

“At the end of the day, the Cold Warand the larger struggle between com-munism and capitalism was a contest be-tween two imperfect worlds: the West

COMMUNISM TODAY

Cuba’s Sixth Communist Party Congress in April became“one of the more decisive” ever held when it agreed toallow the government to “adjust” Cuba’s ailing economy

by introducing a cautious experiment in capitalist economics,says Antoni Kapcia, a professor of Latin American studies atNottingham University, in England.The delegates approved a plan espoused by President Rául

Castro to allow some tightly controlled growth in private, small-business start-ups and in the housing and automobile markets. 1

But experts disagree over how much the changes will affectdaily life for most Cubans. Economist Emily Morris, a senior re-search fellow at the London-based International Institute for theStudy of Cuba, says the projected reforms are “the beginning ofa massive change in the way the Cuban economy works, andtheir society as well.” Likewise, Julia Sweig — a Cuban specialistat the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank— says the changes could produce “a significant, perhaps evenradical transformation” of the Cuban economy.But Kapcia thinks the impact may be a bit less profound.

“The reforms are ‘round the edge of the system and ‘round theedge of small business enterprises — and very small enterprisesat that,” he pointed out.Allowing Cubans to buy and sell houses is a key compo-

nent of the plan. According to Morris, 85 percent of Cubansown their homes, having been given them outright by the stateat the beginning of the revolution. Until now, however, Cubansweren’t allowed to sell their houses. Loosening up the housingmarket could boost the construction trades and lead to the intro-duction of mortgage loans — not exactly a Marxist concept.But Marx may not matter much to the communist regime

in Cuba — which Morris calls “a relic of the Cold War” — in

its struggle to cling to power, especially since the demise ofthe Soviet Union. Castro compared the 1989 collapse of theSoviet system to “the sun not rising.” It devastated the Cubaneconomy: Exports to the Soviet Union (notably, most of Cuba’ssugar crop in return for Soviet oil) plummeted from 66 per-cent in 1990 to almost zero by 1993. 2 Cuba’s gross domesticproduct dropped from $5.2 billion to around $2 billion duringthe same period. 3

Eventually, trading partnerships with Canada, the Nether-lands and, more significantly, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela filledthe gap. Now, explained Rafael Hernandez — editor of theCuban magazine Temas (“Themes”), which sometimes is quitecritical of the government — Cuba is transitioning from whathe calls “socialism A to socialism B. Socialism B is a less state-centered model of socialism. It is expanding the nonstate sec-tor, which means not only private, but cooperative.” 4

A crucial element in the transition is the cheap oil suppliedby Venezuela under the so-called “oil for doctors” arrangement.In return for the oil, Havana staffs and provides medicines atChávez’s medical clinics. But the Caracas-Havana axis may be fac-ing an uncertain future. Recent revelations that Chávez has beentreated for cancer in Cuba raise questions about whether his even-tual successor would be as friendly toward the Cuban leadership.“I think the Cubans, who, after all, rely on Venezuela for 100,000

barrels of oil a day, are very worried about any change in govern-ment,” said Michael Shifter, president of The Inter-American Dialogue,a Washington think tank. “There’s no guarantee that whoever followsChávez will continue to provide that to Cuba.” 5

Surprisingly, Castro also proposed a limit of two five-yearterms for the top Cuban leadership, including himself, and Cubawatchers think he plans to stand for re-election in 2013. But

Cuban Communist Party to Test Market Economy“Radical” economic transformation could result.


and the Communist East. Both were im-perfect, but one was imperfect and free,with a respect for human rights, whilethe other was imperfect and repressive,”says political scientist Vladimir Tisman-eanu, president of the Scientific Councilof the Institute for the Investigation ofCommunist Crimes in Romania.Indeed, some see Fidel Castro as

the personification of global commu-nism today: Like the aging former dic-tator, communism is alive but not well.As the world’s remaining commu-

nists continue to redefine their ownvision of the future, here are somequestions being asked:

Are communist countries econom-ically and politically sustainable?Each of the remaining communist

governments faces its own sustainabilitychallenges, even as they all have shuf-fled toward a market-based economy.“The more market-oriented com-

munist states may continue to enjoybroad support and the others — no-tably Cuba and North Korea — maybe able to withstand pressures for re-form,” says Richard Caplan, a profes-sor of international relations at OxfordUniversity in London. Cuba’s attempt-ed adjustments to capitalism have comemost recently and more limited, than,

say, China’s. North Korea only recent-ly has been considering setting up afree-trade zone, at China’s suggestion.North Korea and Cuba have the most

fragile economies. Despite some tenta-tive reforms — particularly in Cuba —their economies are still overwhelming-ly dominated by the state. Both also arehobbled by economic boycotts — a U.S.embargo on Cuba and international sanc-tions on nuclear-armed North Korea.The collapse of the Soviet Union

in 1991 severely damaged botheconomies. Cuba, for instance, lost$4.3 billion in annual subsidies fromMoscow and then-President Fidel Castro

his political future is linked to the economic experiment. “Thereal difficulty now is putting it into effect,” says Kapcia. Evenafter 66,000 meetings to discuss the changes, attended by 8.9million people, 3 million of whom made statements and de-manded modifications, there is still resistance to the proposals.Diehard communists oppose what they see as deviation from

socialist orthodoxy, while bureaucrats worry about Rául’s de-termination to reduce the bloated state employment ranks,which account for 90 percent of the Cuban workforce (at anaverage monthly salary is $20). Castro wants to shrink publicemployees’ ranks to 65 percent over five years and trim Cuba’scradle-to-grave social system — another unpopular strategy.If Castro’s plan falls apart, there probably won’t be a for-

eign bailout — least of all from the United States, which listsCuba as a repressive state. In July 2010, 52 activists jailed in a2003 crackdown were released in a deal between the regimeand the Catholic Church in Cuba. 6 But critics say the regime’shuman rights situation remains patchy at best. Repressive cam-paigns come in sporadic waves, and dissidents with allegedcontacts with U.S. diplomats are prime targets.Because Cuban-U.S. relations are driven by American politi-

cal considerations, el bloqueo — the 47-year U.S. trade andbanking blockade — remains in place and is likely to remainso. But unofficially, the relationship is unobtrusively changing.For example, a State Department travel ban for Americans isstill in force, yet Cuban-Americans can now travel to Cuba tovisit relatives. And Abercrombie & Kent, a leading U.S. tour or-ganizer, openly advertises trips to Cuba — for cultural and aca-demic tourists only.“The door is left open and nobody announces it,” says Morris.

— Roland Flamini

1 Rory Carroll, “Cuban Communist Party Keeps Old Guard in Power,” TheGuardian, April 19, 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/19/cuban-communist-party-old-guard.2 Julia Buxton and Emily Harris, “The Chávez Connection: Analysing the‘Bolivarian revolution,’ ” seminar, International Institute of Cuban Studies,February 2008, www.cubastudies.org/past-events/buxton-and-morris.cfm.3 Ibid.4 Nick Miroff, “Cubans Await Communist Party Reforms,” National PublicRadio, April 15, 2011, www.wbur.org/npr/135444568/cubans-await-communist-party-reforms.5 “Chávez Health Fuels Power Struggle in Venezuela,” “The NewsHour,” PBS,July 5, 2011, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec11/venezuela_07-05.html.6 “Cuba frees prisoners of conscience,” Amnesty International, March 23,2011, www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/cuba-frees-prisoners-conscience-2011-03-23.

The Ladies in White — friends and relatives of jailed politicaldissidents — hold a silent vigil in Havana on, Feb. 27, as they havedone every Sunday since a 2003 crackdown on activists. Cuba

released 115 political prisoners earlier this year and flew them toSpain. But others remain in jail, indicating that even though

Cuba has initiated some economic reforms, political freedoms remain curtailed.

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told Cubans their revolution faced dis-aster. 22 By 1994, power blackouts inHavana were common, two-thirds ofthe island’s industrial facilities wereshuttered and over half the countrywas out of work. 23

But a new group of internationalbackers appears to have given theCuban revolution a reprieve. Supportfrom Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s so-cialist leader, and increased trade withChina have helped Cuba’s communistsretain power. Russia, now flush withoil cash, has helped as well. And de-spite the embargo, because the Cubaneconomy is so dependent on out-siders, the United States in the lasteight years has become Cuba’s fifth-largest trading partner and principalfood supplier.Nevertheless, long-time Cuba watch-

er Irving Louis Horowitz, a sociologyprofessor at Rutgers University in NewJersey, wrote in 2000: “Even if the sys-tem cannot be readily toppled by eco-nomic rationality, the problem for [Fidel]Castro and his associates remains real:how to maintain ideological fervor and

street-level mobilization in such a down-wardly spiraling political economy.The limits of charisma should be sore-ly tested in the near term.” 24

Still, “reforms, and martial vigilance,important as they were, do not bythemselves explain the regime’s sur-vival. A critical additional factor was theweakness at the time of the Cubanmovement of civic opposition,” wroteCarl Gershman, president of the Na-tional Endowment for Democracy inWashington. 25 Since then, the govern-ment has continued to repress dissent.However, the relatives of jailed po-

litical dissidents known as the Ladiesin White have managed to hold silentweekly Sunday vigils in Cuba since agovernment crackdown on activists in2003, hoping to spur action. “Cubansociety is on the cusp of changes,”says Miriam Leiva, one of the group’sfounders. “It is not a matter of natur-al generational decay but the exhaus-tion of a system that has fallen into adeep economic, political and socialcrisis, with no solution other than deepchanges. They might come from the

power structure [itself], aware of theirinevitability, or from the people, outof desperation.” (See “At Issue,” p. 385.)In Vietnam and Laos, political op-

position is not tolerated, experts say.Laos is a poor protégé of Vietnam andhas not liberalized its economy as fastas its mentor. From 1990-2007, Vietnamboasted one of the fastest-growingeconomies in the world, averaging around8 percent annual GDP growth. By 2010,that blistering expansion had slowedonly slightly. 26 Many credit Vietnam’sprogress to the government’s 1986 de-cision to liberalize economic policies —a process called doi moi or “renovation”— says Johns Hopkins University Viet-nam expert Frederick Brown.“The trajectory in Vietnam is in the

right direction of more efficient gov-ernment, which will be beneficial forthem and their stability in the long run,”says Brown, a fellow in Southeast AsianStudies at Johns Hopkins’ School forAdvanced International Studies (SAIS).“Now, it’s a crazy free-market societywith many different players, but thestrongest player must be the state.”

COMMUNISM TODAY

Last of the Communist NationsFour of the world’s Þve remaining communist regimes are in Asia. While communist countries vary — from tiny Cuba to vast China — all have low per capita gross domestic products (GDP) compared to the rest of the world. They all have literacy rates above 90 percent, except Laos. None are considered “free” by the human rights advocacy group Freedom House. China, which has aggressively pursued market reforms, is the fastest-growing.

Sources: The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html; “Freedom in the World 2011,” Freedom House, January 2011, www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/Þw/FIW_2011_Booklet.pdf

Infant mortality Average Freedom Country Area Population GDP per capita GDP growth rate per 1,000 no. of years Literacy House (in sq. mi.) (July 2011 est.) (world ranking) (world ranking) live births children rate rating (world ranking) attend school

China 3,705,407 1.3 billion $7,600 (2010 est.) 10.3% (2010 est.) 16 (113th) 12 92% Not free (126th) (6th)North 46,540 24.5 million $1,800 (2009 est.) -0.9% (2009 est.) 27 (77th) n/a 99% Not free Korea (193rd) (197th)Cuba 42,803 11.1 million $9,900 (2010 est.) 1.5% (2010 est.) 5 (185th) 18 99% Not free (110th) (160th)Laos 91,429 6.5 million $2,500 (2010 est.) 7.7% (2010 est.) 59 (36th) 9 73% Not free (176th) (23rd)Vietnam 127,881 90.6 million $3,100 (2010 est.) 6.8% (2010 est.) 21 (95th) 10 94% Not free (167th) (39th)


Vietnam has not liberalized socialfreedoms, however. Last October, justbefore U.S. Secretary of State HillaryRodham Clinton visited, the govern-ment arrested bloggers and activistswho complained about the country’sprison system. That followed a year-long crackdown on dissent — how-ever low key — before the first PartyCongress in five years, in January 2011.Laos officially, is a one-party democ-

racy, and only members of the Com-munist Lao People’s RevolutionaryParty are allowed to contest elections;dissent from the party line is banned.“Marxist-Leninst theory is practical

and is suitable for the current situationin Laos,” President Choummaly Saya-sone told military veterans in 2009. 27

Yet capitalism is making inroads inLaos, which has been communist sincethe Vietnam War ended, and some gov-ernment offices are encouraging entre-preneurship. In fact, just three monthsbefore Sayasone’s speech, the Obamaadministration lifted a ban preventingLao companies from securing financingfrom the U.S. Export-Import Bank, de-claring that Laos had “ceased to be aMarxist-Leninist country.” 28

Indeed, today the capital Vientianeis awash with symbols of consump-tion and capitalism, from fancy carsand casinos to the country’s first stockexchange. The capital’s wealth, how-ever, is outpacing the progress of somegovernment institutions and many cit-izens. Lessons from communism’schief architects, Lenin and Marx, are“still important,” said KlongmaneeBoonliang, a clerk in a government-run bookshop, because poverty stillplagues other towns and villages. 29

In any case, Laos can’t afford toprovide basic necessities for its pop-ulation, unlike the stereotypical pater-nalistic communist government. Pub-lic spending accounts for only 11percent of the economy — half thelevel in the United States. 30

Meanwhile, China and North Koreaare closely linked economically. But

while China is an economic successstory, Kim Jong Il’s regime constantlyseeks food aid, especially from China,which also provides fuel and funding.“The end of the regime in North

Korea is inevitable. Without China,North Korea would collapse very quick-ly,” says Sung-Yoon Lee, an adjunctassistant professor of international pol-itics at the Fletcher School at TuftsUniversity. But other Korea watcherssay China — which fears an influx ofNorth Korean refugees if the regimecollapses — will ensure North Korea’sstability. Andrei Lankov, a history pro-fessor at Kookmin University in Seoul,suggests that China is leaning hard onthe Kim government to implement eco-nomic reforms. 31

“Stability is a key word for Chinesepolicy,” Lankov contended. “Chinaconcentrates on economic growth andneeds a peaceful and predictable en-vironment in order not to be distract-ed from this goal. Hence, any crisisin the vicinity of China is an anathe-ma for the Chinese strategists andshould be avoided at all cost.” 32

But stability works both ways. Last

November North Korea shelled a SouthKorean island and, according to theSouth Koreans, sank one of their war-ships in May. If the North Korean regimedoes something wildly provocative again,the Chinese could quickly decide thattheir pugnacious client state is no longerworth protecting, experts warn.

Did President Ronald Reaganhasten the end of communism?It is said that victory has a thou-

sand fathers, and a more appropriatetruism couldn’t be found for describ-ing the collapse of communism. Noone expected the Cold War to end,along with the Soviet Union, as quick-ly and peacefully as it did. Since itscollapse, many analysts and scholarshave disagreed on why it happened.Conservatives argue that Reagan’s

tough talk in Berlin (“Mr. Gorbachev,tear down this wall!”) and a massive U.S.arms build-up pushed the Soviets to thepoint where their shaky economy sim-ply couldn’t keep up. Liberals say movestoward détente and disarmament led togreater discussion of human rights andthe peaceful end to the Cold War. 33

A mammoth military parade in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang features massedtroops and mobile missiles on April 25, 2007, to mark the 75th anniversary of the foundingof the North Korean Army. Frequently in need of food aid from abroad, North Korea recentlybegan considering reforms to its state-run economy, such as creation of a free-trade zone.

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Recently declassified documentsfrom Soviet and U.S. archives leave nodoubt that Reagan was a key factor,contends former Moscow-based BostonGlobe correspondent Fred Kaplan.Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense

Initiative (SDI) — which critics deri-sively called the “Star Wars” defensesystem — is the foundation for the ar-gument that Reagan’s bellicose rhetoricand military spending bankrupted theSoviets. The SDI was a theoretical de-fensive shield that envisioned usinguntested technologies, including space-based missiles. Reagan’s administrationcited misleadingly high estimates ofSoviet military strength to justify fund-ing the expensive program, which Con-gress initially approved, but later large-ly defunded. 34

SDI was part of a larger “strategyof technology” — a military doctrinearguing that a technologically superi-or country can ruin a weaker adver-sary by forcing it to spend money onunaffordable countermeasures.In the mid-1980s — exhausted by

a military catastrophe in Afghanistanand suffering from a sharp drop inglobal oil prices (from $66 per barrelin 1980 to $20 in 1985 35) — Gor-bachev told the Politburo on the eveof his trip to Reykjavik, Iceland, for asummit with Reagan, that the Ameri-cans “are a pistol against our head.”Without cuts to the Soviet nuclear ar-senal “we will be pulled into an armsrace that is beyond our capabilities,and we will lose it, because we areat the limit of our capabilities. . . .

The pressures on our economy willbe unbelievable.” 36

But while the cost of the arms racemay have contributed to the collapseof the U.S.S.R., other historians say do-mestic issues were equally important.Oxford historian Richard Caplan says,“Several factors contributed to thedemise of the Soviet Union, but themost significant ones were internal —the crises of the Soviet system and thereform processes launched by MikhailGorbachev that ushered in radicalchanges that Gorbachev did not an-ticipate and could not control.”Gorbachev now says the Iceland

summit signaled the end of the super-power stand-off. That is a memory,“tinged with nostalgia; compared tothe domestic political struggles thatchallenged him after Reykjavik, thedebate [at the summit] with RonaldReagan must have come to seem be-nign,” writes American historian RichardRhodes in his 2007 book Arsenals ofFolly. “At the time it left him with mixedfeelings of anger, frustration and hope;he said later that its effect on him was‘comparable to Chernobyl.’ ” 37

The 1986 accident at the Chernobylnuclear power plant in Ukraine hadperhaps an equally important impacton the Soviet leader, former Globe cor-respondent Kaplan argues. In its wake,he contends, the Soviet governmentrealized that it had to be more trans-parent with its own people for theirsafety. Plus, Kaplan says, it helped toconvince Gorbachev that nuclearweapons were an evil far greater thanlosing out to the capitalist world.In any event, Gorbachev’s main pri-

orities were domestic — most importanthis economic reform agenda, dubbedperestroika (“restructuring”). In 1987, somestate enterprises were allowed to sell sur-plus goods above their state quotas. Someprivate businesses were allowed to ownand operate services and manufacturingenterprises, the first liberalization ofthose sectors since the days of VladimirLenin, the founder of the Soviet Union.

COMMUNISM TODAY

Standing in a breach in the Berlin Wall, a West Berliner prepares to hand a West Germanflag to East German policemen on Nov. 11, 1989, as crowds on both sides of the infamousbarricade celebrate its fall. Destruction of the wall separating communist East Germany and

the democratic West marked the beginning of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which began when mostly peaceful revolutions brought down communist governments in

East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.

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In an effort to rejuvenate a sclerotic andcorrupt government, Gorbachev also al-lowed multi-candidate elections for localCommunist Party positions. By 1989,the reforms had been extended to non-communist party candidates for thenational legislature.Another move that sowed the seeds

of the Soviet Union’s eventual collapsewas the government’s decision to signthe Helsinki Accords — a peace andsecurity treaty designed to reduce ColdWar tensions, signed by 35 nations inHelsinki, Finland, on Aug. 1, 1975. Atthe time, Moscow was pleased at thetreaty’s clause recognizing the nation-al sovereignty of the signing states, as-suming that it would prevent Westernmeddling behind the Iron Curtain. How-ever, the accord also included a clausestipulating that all member states wouldrespect universal human rights.Almost immediately, human rights

campaigners in Eastern-bloc countriessuch as Poland and Czechoslovakiabegan pushing for greater rights tofree speech and assembly. TheCatholic Church, under Pope JohnPaul II — himself a Pole — also playedan important role, both as a center ofanti-communist resistance in places likePoland and as an avenue for diplo-macy between Moscow and the grow-ing dissident movements. 38 Spurredon by the Helsinki Accords, dissidents— such as Czech writer and activistVáclav Havel and Polish Solidarity Move-ment union leader Lech Walesa —dealt communism’s final death blows.The Helsinki Accords “gradually be-

came a manifesto of the dissident andliberal movement,” said Soviet ambas-sador to Washington Anatoly Dobrynin,according to Cold War scholar andYale University historian John LewisGaddis. 39

Even so, says Sara Snyder, a lectur-er in international history at UniversityCollege London, Reagan did play a role.“I don’t think Ronald Reagan single-handedly caused the end of the ColdWar or the end of the Soviet Union, but

he did contribute to a process where-by both ended peacefully,” she says.In the final analysis, though, com-

munism in the Soviet Union — andthus in its satellite states too — provedremarkably durable against both outsidecriticism and internal decay. In the end,the death blow came not from outsidethe Kremlin but from its very center.“We cannot go on living like this,” Gor-bachev told his wife in 1985. 40

By 1989, the Soviet Union was moreopen, and East European states weregiven more latitude to act indepen-dently of Soviet control, such as Hun-gary’s abolition of controls on its bor-der with Austria, effectively beginningto dismantle the Iron Curtain. Whenmass demonstrations erupted in thestreets of Eastern-bloc states and hard-liners called for the use of force to re-

store order, Gorbachev refused. “Someof these events stemmed from Gor-bachev’s miscalculations,” argues JosephNye, a professor of international rela-tions at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “Afterall, he wanted to reform communism,not replace it. But his reforms snow-balled into a revolution driven frombelow and impossible to control.“It is plausible that the declining So-

viet Union could have held on for an-other decade or so. It did not have tocollapse so quickly,” Nye continued.“Gorbachev’s humanitarian tinkeringcontributed greatly to the timing.” 41

Was the threat of communismoverrated?In one of the Cold War’s most tren-

chant satires, the movie “Dr. Strangeloveor: How I Learned to Stop Worrying andLove the Bomb,” an intensely patriotic,if psychotic, Air Force general is so para-noid about the Soviet threat that he imag-ines an “international communist con-spiracy to sap and impurify all of ourprecious bodily fluids.” 42 It was a farci-cal exaggeration, but it did reflect thetenor of the times, when schoolchildrenwere taught to duck under their desksin the event of an all-out nuclear war.The movie debuted after the 1962

Cuban Missile Crisis, when the worldcame close to a nuclear exchange be-tween the major powers. By 1965, theUnited States had amassed an arsenalof 32,400 nuclear weapons, comparedwith the Soviet’s 6,300. 43 Russian writerand dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn laterexplained, “For us in Russia, commu-nism is a dead dog. For many peoplein the West, it is still a living lion.” 44

Even in retrospect, historians disagreeabout the true extent of the threat posedby communism. “The fear of the mili-tary threat was justified; also the ideo-logical threat,” says Graeme Gill, a pro-fessor of government and internationalrelations at Australia’s University of Syd-ney. “Even though it now seems that thecommunist regimes had feet of clay, theywere real competitors in their time.”

Communist Nations a Dying BreedIn the late 1970s, nearly two dozen countries were run by communist governments, and half the people on the planet lived under communist rule. Today only Þve countries — including China, with its 1.3 billion inhabitants — are communist, representing one in Þve people worldwide.

Source: Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism, HarperCollins, 2009

Number of Communist Nations, 1979 and 2011

0

5

10

15

20

25

20111979

23

5


And the competition moved acrossthe globe rapidly. Within a few decadesof its birth as a political movement in1917, around half the world’s popula-tion lived under regimes whose officialideology was communism. 45 Commu-nism’s rapid spread largely grew out ofthe end of the Second World War andthe collapse of colonialism, but it wasalso a function of the aggressiveness ofcommunist infiltration and ideology.“The democratic, capitalist world con-

flated the ideological threat of com-munism with the threat of Soviet poweras part of its general strategy of fight-ing the Cold War — especially in theyears before the U.S. accepted the ideaof co-existence,” says John Kent, a pro-fessor of international relations at theLondon School of Economics.“At times the threat was overstated,

even hysterical,” says Harvey Klehr, ahistory professor at Atlanta’s Emory Uni-versity and author of several books oncommunist espionage in the United States.“But consider that from the beginning,the communists stated that they wereat war with capitalism internationallyand that it was a war they were goingto win. As late as the 1980s, the Sovi-et Union was subsidizing [communist]movements in countries around the worldthat were committed to both subversionand intelligence gathering for Moscow.”But Gordon Barrass, a former British

diplomat who served on the Joint In-telligence Committee in London at theend of the Cold War, contends, “Thefirst myth that needs to be slain is thatthe Soviet Union was not ever a threat.It was a serious threat.” Saying it wasnot a serious threat “deflects attentionfrom the sustained and complex effortsrequired to deal with adversaries dri-ven by deeply rooted hostility.”Fear of communism took many forms.

Anti-communist “red” scares flared inmany Western countries during the 1950s,including Great Britain, Australia and theUnited States, where the rabidly anti-communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., claimed the State Department and

Hollywood were rife with communistsympathizers. His anti-communist cru-sade reached its heyday in 1952, whendozens of communists, former com-munists and those insufficiently non-communist, were subjected to publicpersecution and worse. 46

“Exaggeration of the communistthreat has led to consequences Amer-icans did not intend, and to activitiesthat have violated their professed idealsof self-determination, democracy andopportunity,” argued diplomatic histo-rian Thomas Paterson, a professor emer-itus of history at the University of Con-necticut. 47 As a result, Americans “haveassigned themselves the roles of worldpoliceman, teacher, banker, and socialworker. . . . They have overspent tremen-dously . . . built up massive quantitiesof nuclear-tipped weapons, . . . talkedcarelessly about using them [and] re-peatedly dispatched troops to other na-tions.” Indeed, the West fought nu-merous wars against communist forces,most notably in Greece, Guatemala,Korea and Vietnam.At times, Western governments even

undermined other democracies, espe-cially if they elected Marxist-orientedgovernments. The West, for instance,helped to overthrow left-leaning leadersin Iran, Congo, Guatemala, Grenada andChile. 48 Meanwhile, the Soviets helpedto overthrow right-wing regimes, includingin Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.Besides trying to overthrow Marxist

regimes — notably in the spectacular-ly unsuccessful CIA-assisted Bay of Pigsinvasion of Castro’s Cuba in 1961 —the West also supported staunchly anti-communist dictators, death squads andother unsavory groups that were anti-thetical to Western values.On the other hand, recent evidence

from the formerly secret archives in theSoviet Union gives credence to muchof the paranoia surrounding the com-munist threat. Records show thatMoscow was indeed spying on theWest, trying to destabilize regimes op-posed by the U.S.S.R. and various other

activities. “There is . . . strong evidencethat the communist system was a realthreat for the West, in my view,” saysthe political scientist Tismaneanu.Though the Cold War never “went

hot,” the West fought numerous proxywars to prevent communist takeovers,successfully in the case of Korea andunsuccessfully in Vietnam. It is “ab-surd,” as British historian Niall Fergu-son has argued, “for us to rememberthe Cold War fondly as a time of peaceand stability. The reality is that the sec-ond half of the twentieth century wasnot much less violent than the first. . . .[The] venues of violence had changed.. . . But to those caught up in themthere was nothing peripheral aboutthese numerous hot wars.” 49

To be sure, says Philip Hirsch, anexpert on China and Southeast Asiaat the University of Sydney’s Schoolof Geosciences, opposing communismmay have been a worthy goal in placeslike Vietnam, but “not taken to thelevel of waging war on people tryingto determine their own future.”

BACKGROUND‘Workers Unite!’

German philosopher and politicaltheorist Karl Marx, widely con-

sidered the father of communism, be-lieved early humans who hunted andgathered for their sustenance were prac-ticing an early form of communal liv-ing that he called communism. And,according to Plato’s Republic, the earlyGreeks also experimented with sharedresources. Later, small-scale communaland egalitarian groups have existedthroughout the world for millennia.But for all its historical antecedents,

the modern concept of communism

COMMUNISM TODAY

Continued on p. 380

˘


Chronology1800s-1900sIndustrial Revolution increasesboth wealth and the income gapbetween the rich and poor.

1848German economist/philosopherKarl Marx and Frederich Engels, arevolutionary socialist, write TheCommunist Manifesto, outliningtheir concept of communism.

•

1910s-1940sEurope is shattered by twoworld wars, as old colonialempires fall. The United Statesand the Soviet Union emergeas the two superpowers.

1917Vladimir Lenin launches OctoberRevolution in Moscow, ousting TsarNikolas II, triggering a civil war.

1932Josef Stalin’s forced collectivizationtriggers a famine that kills atleast 7 million Russians.

1949Chinese Communist Party takespower under Mao Zedong.

•

1950s U.S.-Soviet ColdWar heats up.

1953Stalin dies. . . . Soviet scientistsbuild their first nuclear weapon.

1956Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at-tacks Stalin’s legacy in the “SecretSpeech,” setting off a series of smallreform efforts in Soviet satellite

states. Soviet army invades Hungaryafter reform effort turns to revolt.

1958Mao begins rapid industrializationand collectivization in China,which eventually kills tens of mil-lions. . . . Nuclear arms race be-tween U.S. and U.S.S.R. heats up.

1959Fidel Castro takes power in Cubaand establishes a communist gov-ernment.

•

1960s-1980sThe Cold War shifts to theThird World. Soviet Union be-gins to disintegrate.

1962Cuban missile crisis pits UnitedStates against Soviets. . . . Nucleartesting peaks with 178 nuclearbombs detonated, mostly by U.S.and U.S.S.R.

1969Relations between China and Russiasour over border, ideological disputes.

1970Communists win elections in Chile;are ousted three years later byU.S.-backed military coup.

1972President Richard M. Nixon meetswith Mao in historic visit to China.

1975Communist North Vietnam invadessouth, reunites country under com-munist control. . . . Khmer Rougeseizes power in Cambodia, beginspurge of intellectuals that eventuallykills an estimated 2 million people.U.S.S.R. signs Helsinki Accords, en-dorsing universal human rights.

1979Cuban-supported Sandinistas winpower in Nicaragua. . . . Viet-namese oust Khmer Rouge inCambodia. . . . U.S.S.R. invadesAfghanistan.

1980Solidarity reform movement beginsin Polish shipyards.

1987Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachevinitiates economic liberalizationknown as perestroika.

1989Chinese troops kill hundreds ofpro-democracy demonstrators inBeijing’s Tiananmen Square. . . .Berlin Wall falls, reuniting East andWest Germany. . . . Communistregimes begin to fall throughoutEastern Europe.

•

1990-2011Soviet Union implodes, leavingUnited States as the last re-maining superpower, even asthe Chinese economy soars.

1991Soviet Union formally dissolves.

1992China’s economy is the world’sthird largest.

2001China joins the World Trade Orga-nization.

2006Fidel Castro informally steps downin Cuba; brother Rául takes power.

2011Rául Castro formally becomeshead of the Cuban government.


dates to 1848, when Marx and fellowGerman political theorist Frederich En-gels published The Communist Man-ifesto, a 12,000-word pamphlet essen-tially predicting the fall of capitalistsystems and the eventual rise of com-munism. 50

Marx envisioned a society in whichproperty and the means of productionwere shared for the good of the en-tire population — a stateless and class-less society — that he called commu-nism. It would be a society “withoutclass and without private property,” buthe provided few details, insisting thatcommunism should develop historicallyrather than from a pre-existing idea.To achieve this classless society, Marxand Engels urged the proletariat (work-

ers) to revolt against the bourgeoisie(capitalist class) and demand social,economic and political reforms. Themodern, industrialized world with itsautomaton-like factory jobs had alien-ated men from their freedom, and so-ciety’s real power lay with the work-ers, Marx argued.Marx postulated that human soci-

eties had passed through primitivecommunism, slavery, feudalism andcapitalism — a progression he saideventually would culminate in com-munism. Like many intellectuals of thetime, Marx had been obsessed with the1789 French Revolution, the violentoverthrow of a corrupt monarchy. Marx’sideas would eventually be modifiedand adapted to a variety of politicalcircumstances, some of which resulted

in the forceful seizure of power. JosefStalin, for instance, would later twist So-viet communism into a form of stateterror aimed primarily at ensuring thesurvival of his brutal, totalitarian regime.The Manifesto was published dur-

ing a tumultuous year in Europe. In1848, the combustible mixture ofdreadful working conditions, cripplingpoverty, unresponsive and repressivegovernments and a relatively new massmedium — newspapers — led to na-tional revolutions in Italy, Prussia (Ger-many), Hungary, France, Austria, Ire-land, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland,Belgium and Poland. 51 Given the up-heavals, it initially seemed that Marx’sprognostications of an impending classwar against capitalism could sooncome true.

COMMUNISM TODAY

Continued from p. 378

The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is biding its time, lead-ers say, until the world is more receptive to its messagethat society should be reorganized to advance workers’

rights over business privileges.It may take some patience. Today, the group has only about

2,000 members, says the party’s national chairman, Sam Webb. 1

And even during the aftermath of the recent worldwide re-cession, which has seen the gap between the planet’s rich andpoor reach historical extremes, the CPUSA’s message simplyhasn’t resonated.“People around the world see that things are not fair

and not equal and not just,” says Webb. “The progressionof society toward communism isn’t going to happen withan overnight revolution, but our goal remains the long-termcompletion of the construction of a socialist society.” Inclassical Marxist terms, communism — a society in whicheach produces according to his or her abilities and receivesin accordance to his or her needs — is a distant objective.Socialism, in which the working class is in power, is con-sidered a more achievable short-term goal as a transitionto full communism.Indeed, the party no longer wants to destroy capitalism,

choosing instead to work within the system. In the last twopresidential elections the party even urged members to sup-port Barack Obama and Sen. John Kerry — both Democrats.Republicans and Democrats are both capitalists, but the Re-publican right is far more dangerous, Webb says.

Yet the party is hampered by some weighty historical bag-gage. The CPUSA had more than 100,000 members before WorldWar II, when the pact between Germany’s Adolf Hitler and So-viet premier Josef Stalin drove many from the ranks. Thenmembership plummeted again after Soviet leader NikitaKhrushchev acknowledged in 1956 that Stalin had ordered thou-sands murdered in a late 1930s purge of party ranks — aslaughter U.S. communists had denied or minimized.Reexamining the party’s history, historians Harvey Klehr, of

Emory University in Atlanta and John Earl Haynes, of the Li-brary of Congress, wrote, “The onset of the Cold War castAmerican Communists into political purgatory after World War II,McCarthyism, etc.,” referring to the rabidly anticommunist cam-paign of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., in which real and al-leged communists and communist sympathizers were drivenfrom their jobs. Then in 1956, Klehr and Haynes conclude,“Khrushchev’s devastating exposé of Stalin’s crimes . . . torethe American Communist Party apart.” 2

Moreover, despite its early and recent efforts on behalf ofwomen’s and gay rights and other progressive causes, the CPUSAis inextricably linked with the totalitarian Soviet Union, whichsurreptitiously gave the party about $2 million a year until 1991,when the U.S.S.R. collapsed. 3

At times, the CPUSA has appeared to receive more attentionthan its size and meager achievements would warrant. Recordsshow Moscow used the party as a cover for spying and othermischief-making, particularily before 1950, and may have allowed

American Communist Party Quietly Soldiers OnShort-term goal is a socialist society.


Marx’s ideas threatened the estab-lishment, because he was advocatingsocial upheaval. 52 “Let the ruling class-es tremble at a Communist revolution,”Marx wrote. “The proletarians havenothing to lose but their chains. Theyhave a world to win. Workers of theWorld, Unite!” 53

The workers did rise up in 1848,but they did not unite. National-ism, among other factors, kept therevolts from globalizing under asingle banner.In fact, communism, in the hypo-

thetical sense imagined by Marx, hasnever actually existed. However, nu-merous countries did adopt versionsof communism that Vladimir Leninadvocated — the dictatorship of theproletariat.

The Bolsheviks

The world’s first major communistpower rose out of the social and

political upheaval that gripped Russiaand its monarchy during World War I.As discontent exploded, a coalition ofRussian liberals, socialists and com-munists ousted Czar Nikolas II. Monthslater, the Bolsheviks, a faction of Rus-sia’s Marxist Social Democratic Party,ousted their allies and seized statepower under Lenin’s leadership, in thename of the proletariat.In traditional Marxist terms, the Bol-

shevik movement rewrote the rules ofrevolution. Marx and Engels had fore-seen the working class coming to powerin the advanced industrial societies of

Western Europe — not in the vastreaches of the impoverished Russianempire, where serfdom had beenabolished only decades earlier. ButLenin and his comrades held that theycould speed up modernization in Rus-sia — and that a Russian communiststate would spark revolutions in West-ern Europe.After ceding vast swaths of territo-

ry to Germany, the Bolsheviks endedRussia’s participation in the war, na-tionalized industries and confiscated landand property from the wealthy, whichthey then redistributed to the peasants.After a civil war between communistsand those fighting to restore the monar-chy, Lenin further consolidated powerand in 1922 proclaimed the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republics. 54

the Soviets to build a nuclear weapon faster than they wouldhave on their own. But opponents can’t cite examples of theCPUSA posing an existential threat to the United States.On the other hand, socialism has often been more palat-

able to a sizable group of Americans. In 1932, for instance,Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist candidate for presi-dent, garnered nearly 1 million votes.While the CPUSA was publicly flogged throughout the Mc-

Carthy period, it also was a breeding ground for the counter-culture movement in the 1960s. “For all its flaws, [the CPUSA]had an important impact on social movements,” says MichaelKazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent magazine. “Communists were . . . one of thefew groups that stood for racial equality for African Americansbut also for Asian and Latino Americans at a time when nei-ther major political party was doing that.”Its members also had an outsized influence on American cul-

ture. Beloved folk singers Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, for in-stance, were longtime party sympathizers or, according to somehistorians, party members. So were Hollywood figures such as Sid-ney Buchman, screenwriter for the classic film about Washingtoncorruption, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” But the party nevermanaged to transform itself into a significant national electoral force.Last fall, the CPUSA helped a coalition of leftist groups — in-

cluding the NAACP, the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO— organize a demonstration on the National Mall in Washingtonto respond to a large, earlier rally by conservative talk show hostGlenn Beck, who frequently warns about the threat posed by

communists. 4 But the “One Nation Working” rally largely fizzled,organizers later conceded, blaming the low turnout on fallingunion membership and the declining power of leftists.Meanwhile, the CPUSA soldiers on. The Daily Worker — the

online incarnation of its famous newspaper — receives tens ofthousands of hits per week. Recent articles have proclaimedsolidarity with anti-austerity protesters in Greece and highlightedformer Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s new book warningagainst launching a new Cold War with China. 5

“A better and peaceful world is possible — a world wherepeople and nature come before profits,” the site proclaims.“That’s socialism. That’s our vision.” 6

— Alex Kingsbury, with Daniel Bauer

1 Joseph Berger, “Workers of the World, Please See Our Web Site,” The NewYork Times, May 23, 2011, p. 18, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/nyregion/leftist-parties-in-new-york-have-new-appeal.html.2 Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, The American Communist Movement:Storming Heaven Itself (1992), p. 4.3 John Powers, “The Last Comrade,” The Boston Globe Magazine, Jan. 10,1993, p. 12.4 Steven Greenhouse, “Liberal Groups Planning to Rally On National Mall,”The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/pol-itics/27rally.html.5 Gerald Horne, “Kissinger’s China Confessions: A Review of ‘On China,’ ”Political Affairs, July 5, 2011, www.politicalaffairs.net/kissinger-s-china-confes-sions-a-review-of-on-china/ (linked from cpusa.org) and “Statement of Soli-darity with Greek Communists, Workers, People, July 5, 2011,” http://cpusa.org/statement-of-solidarity-with-greek-communists-workers-and-people/.6 www.cpusa.org.


He also launched the CommunistInternational (Comintern), an extensionof the government in Moscow aimedat organizing and fostering leftist move-ments worldwide. Spurred on by theRussian Revolution, various leftist groupsacross Europe, including communists,organized and took political action, butuprisings usually were forcefully sup-pressed. 55 And communist groups oftenwere persecuted by their own gov-ernments, even when they didn’t takeup arms. It was a clash of ideologies,as Lenin described it in 1917: “We can-not live in peace; in the end, one orthe other will triumph.” 56

Lenin died in 1924 after a thirdstroke. Stalin, another leader of therevolution, assumed power after afour-year power struggle with fellowrevolutionary Leon Trotsky. Stalin tooka much harder line than his prede-cessor — ending Lenin’s free-marketexperiments and forcibly collectivizingfarms. But these policies led to wide-spread famine that killed up to 7 mil-lion people in Ukraine. 57

Meanwhile, Stalin launched a cam-paign of state-sponsored terror againstindependent landowners, known askulaks, whom he called enemies ofcollectivization. More than 1 millionwere sent to labor camps, and hun-dreds of thousands perished. 58

As he tightened his grip on the in-ternal levers of power, Stalin also movedto purify the Comintern, forcing it tostop supporting any movements thatdeviated from Soviet policies. Manygroups in Europe were affected, suchas Lenin’s onetime political allies, theSocial Democrats — moderate social-ists like those he had swept aside dur-ing the Bolshevik revolution. The formof socialism advocated by the SocialDemocrats — then and now — callsfor greater worker rights but not armedrevolution. (Pre-World War II socialistsalso wanted public control of majorindustries, a demand that has faded.)Soviet enmity toward European So-

cial Democrats who resisted Comintern

control hobbled resistance to fascism.The fervently nationalistic, militaristicmovement appeared first in Italy in the1920s, led by Benito Mussolini, who in1922 became prime minister and even-tually the country’s dictator. Germany’sversion of fascism — National Social-ism (Nazism) — gathered strengththroughout the 1920s, led by WorldWar I veteran Adolf Hitler.Nazism and Soviet communism even-

tually turned out to have much in com-mon. But the differences were signifi-cant. Above all, Nazism’s fervent racism— which led to the attempted extermi-nation of the Jewish population in Eu-rope — had no communist equivalent.The Social Democratic Party, which

opposed the Nazis, was the second-most powerful party in Germany in theearly 1930s, followed by the commu-nists. But the Comintern denounced theSocial Democrats, so German commu-nists refused to join forces with themagainst the Nazis. The Nazis won firstplace in parliamentary elections in 1932,leading eventually to Hitler’s appoint-ment as chancellor and his seizure ofstate control.“While not itself directly responsi-

ble, this ultra-sectarian policy towardsthe left certainly facilitated the elec-toral victory of Adolf Hitler,” writes his-torian Alan Wood in his book Stalinand Stalinism. 59

In the wake of the Nazi victory, theComintern supported the leftwing gov-ernment of Spain against a revolt byfascist generals, who were supportedby Italy and Germany. But in 1939,Stalin and Hitler shocked the world bysigning a nonaggression pact — whichpaved the way for Germany to invadePoland, igniting World War II. Duringthat early phase of the war, the Sovi-et Union and Comintern-controlledcommunist parties in the West took anantiwar line.Germany then invaded the Soviet

Union in 1941 — a move that shockedStalin, who by all accounts hadn’t ex-pected Hitler to violate the 1939 pact.

World War II

In the wake of the Cuban missile cri-sis, President John F. Kennedy gavea major speech in which he, unchar-acteristically for an American presi-dent, acknowledged the Soviet Union’sheroic role during World War II.“No nation in the history of battle

ever suffered more than the SovietUnion suffered in the course of theSecond World War,” the president toldgraduates from American University in1963. “At least 20 million lost theirlives. Countless millions of homes andfarms were burned or sacked. A thirdof the nation’s territory, including near-ly two-thirds of its industrial base, wasturned into a wasteland — a loss equiv-alent to the devastation of this coun-try east of Chicago.” 60

As remarkable as it was, Kennedy’sspeech perhaps understated the dam-age suffered by the Russians duringthe war. Given the vast casualty num-bers, the man most responsible for de-feating Hitler was Stalin. The WorldWar II battles between the Germansand Russians on the Eastern Front rep-resented the largest military engagementin history. It was fueled by the ideo-logical opposition of the belligerents —fascism vs. communism. 61 By war’send, the Soviet army occupied nearlyall of what would become the satel-lite buffer states of the U.S.S.R., landsthat would remain under Moscow’sthumb until the late 1980s, adminis-tered by communist parties loyal, invarying degrees, to Moscow.In its Eastern European satellite

states, the Soviets established locallyadministered, single-party nations thatfunctioned like Soviet colonies. In somecapitals, such as Prague, Czechoslo-vakia, the communists were welcomedby some; in Warsaw, Poland, they werenot. Nations under Soviet occupationwere stripped of a large part of theirindustrial base, which was carted backto the Soviet Union.

COMMUNISM TODAY


This further weakened the fledglingstates, making them even more de-pendent on Moscow. A leading Britishexpert on communism, Oxford Uni-versity Professor Archie Brown, in hiscomprehensive postmortem The Riseand Fall of Communism, concludesthat the most successful states werethose that developed their communistgovernments indigenously, rather thanhaving it imposed on them from theoutside, as was the case in EasternEurope. And to be sure, one of themost durable communist states hasproven to be China. 62

Chinese Communism

Before Japan invaded China in1937, the Chinese Communist Party

under Mao Zedong had been at warwith the Nationalists and their leaderChiang Kai-shek for 10 years. By 1934,the war had not gone well and thecommunists were forced into a lengthystrategic retreat known as the LongMarch, which allowed them to avoidtotal defeat at the hands of Chiang.Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 led

the Nationalists and the communists tojoin forces. After the Japanese were de-feated in 1945, the civil war resumed.The Nationalists, who had taken thebrunt of the Japanese campaign but weresupported by the United States, weresoundly defeated by the communistsand fled to Taiwan. In 1949, Mao pro-claimed the establishment of the Peo-ple’s Republic of China.The Soviets and Mao distrusted

each other over ideological differ-ences. Mao’s own version of commu-nism, Maoism, aimed to mobilize therural peasantry, rather than the urbanworkers Marx had targeted. To thatend, the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) began an aggressive modern-ization program in the late 1950s, calledthe Great Leap Forward, which re-sulted in a famine that killed millionsof Chinese from starvation.

In the mid- to late-1960s, Mao initiat-ed the infamous Cultural Revolution, asocial movement in which he purged orsent to the countryside for “re-education”anyone perceived as not following a strictcommunist path. In 1966, more than1,700 people were beaten to death inBeijing alone, and more than 85,000 wereexiled to the countryside. Up to 1 mil-lion Chinese, mainly the educated, arebelieved to have perished at the handsof the state during the purge. 63

By 1969, relations between Moscowand Mao, who by then was reveredas a deity in China, had deterioratedinto border clashes in Manchuria. Thefighting made clear that the Westernnightmare of Sino-Soviet communistmonolith had proved illusory.Since 1976, China has deviated

drastically from the Marxist course.The Chinese system of “state capital-ism” has produced enviable results:Between 1981 and 2001, the propor-tion of Chinese living in poverty fellfrom 53 percent to just 8 percent. 64

Collective ownership is a thing ofthe past, and the party chairman nolonger owns every factory, railroad

and farm. If anything, Hu Jintao, theCCP general secretary, seems likely todeviate even further toward privatiza-tion and a partial market economy.

Soviet Communism

After World War II, communism ad-vanced across the globe as the old

European colonial empires began tocrumble. Communist groups seized the

chance to bring newly independent na-tions — or those fighting for their in-dependence — into the communist fold.Many former colonies in sub-Saharan

Africa, for instance, were very attractedto communism after their independencein the 1960s, given the brutal treatmentmany had suffered at the hand of cap-italist colonial masters. “The Soviets —partly in competition with Maoist China— employed propaganda, foreign aid,diplomatic intervention, trade, espionage,cultural agencies, front organizations,military assistance, and subversion toexpand their influence,” wrote HooverInstitution historians Peter Duignan andLewis Gann. 65

A doctor in Havana checks a patient’s blood pressure last Dec. 20. Cuba has a much-vaunted universal health-care system, but a secret cable sent by a U.S. diplomat in Cuba in

2008, recently released by WikiLeaks, called conditions in Cuban hospitals abysmal.

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COMMUNISM TODAY

Of course, Western powers weredoing the same thing, particularly theUnited States, which worked clandes-tinely and openly to subvert nascent

communist regimes across the globe.Fearful of a so-called “domino effect,”whereby it was assumed that commu-nist nations inevitably would topple

their democratic neighbors, the Westadopted a foreign policy of contain-ment of the communist world. Thispolicy of active opposition debuted inGreece and Turkey, where in 1947 theUnited States used its resources to blockcommunists from taking power. 66

The communists helped left-leaningnationalists eject foreign forces, suchas the French — and later the Amer-icans — in Vietnam. In Latin America,the Soviets supported leftist and na-tionalist groups to install communist-friendly regimes.But communist expansion had its

limits and encountered resistance fromboth nationalist and Western-supportedforces. At its height during the late1970s, the communist world num-bered 23 countries, many of whichhave now splintered in multiple na-tions since the collapse of the U.S.S.R.*In all, 36 modern countries were, atone time, under communist rule. 67

It is difficult to describe all the fail-ures of the various communist states,save to say that they each tended tobehave incoherently, were “riven byturf wars and hyper secrecy,” and ul-timately were not accountable to theircitizens, according to East Europeanand Soviet affairs scholar StephenKotkin in his 2010 book, Uncivil So-ciety: 1989 and the Implosion of theCommunist Establishment. 68

“Decision making remained a blackbox even within the upper echelons,while wiretapping and informing wereso widespread that elites often hesi-tated to socialize,” the authors contin-ue. “Indeed, the paradox of uncivil so-ciety was that its members had

Continued on p. 386

Two Views of Chinese CommunismA woman washes clothes in a shanty town in Shenyang, in Liaoning Province (top).The slum’s residents were scheduled to move into the public housing apartmentsnext door, built by the Chinese government. Shanghai’s spectacular Financial Districtskyline (bottom) symbolizes China’s dramatic recent growth under its unique versionof communism, called “state capitalism.” Between 1981 and 2001, the proportionof Chinese living in poverty plummeted — from 53 percent to 8 percent. Collectiveownership is being discontinued as the country adopts some privatization and apartial market economy.

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* In 1979, the world’s communist nationsincluded Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Benin,Bulgaria, Congo-Brazzaville, China, Cuba,Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Grenada, Hun-gary, Kampuchea [Cambodia], Mongolia,Mozambique, North Korea, North Vietnam,Poland, Romania, Somalia, South Yemen, SovietUnion, Yugoslavia.

no


At Issue:Should the embargo against Cuba be lifted?yes

yesMIRIAM LEIVAINDEPENDENT JOURNALIST AND FOUNDINGMEMBER, LADIES IN WHITE*

FROM STATEMENT BEFORE U.S. HOUSE COMMITTEEON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, NOV. 18, 2009

t o know the developments in a country and its people, toexchange ideas and experiences, to disseminate democratictraditions, it is essential to be there. Citizens of almost all

countries find traveling commonplace, except for Americans andCubans, although we are only separated by the short distanceof the Florida Straits. The comprehensive links forged by gener-ations, which intertwined our history through commerce, science,culture, music, sports, dreams and families, have suffered a greatdeal during the last five decades of estrangement.It is very difficult to understand that in the last eight years

the United States has become Cuba’s principal food supplierand fifth-largest trading partner, but Americans cannot walkour streets and chat with our people.Only recently we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall

of the Berlin Wall. It should be recalled that the Iron Curtainstarted to be opened by millions of Westerners visiting thecountries beyond it. East Germans, for instance, were shockedby the economic benefits of their peers; free trade and tech-nology provided by the German Federal Republic astonishedthe country with the best living standard in the Soviet bloc,discrediting the propaganda of the “real socialism.”We are aware of the concern of many distinguished congress-

women and men over the financial impact of American tourismon the Cuban economy, fearing the possibility of giving breathto the totalitarian regime. We have been thinking about the oddsfor many years, and the developments have led us without anydoubt to believe that many thousands of Americans visitingCuba would benefit our society, and hence our people.Cuban authorities have blamed the American embargo for the

great economic problems existing in our country, and deceivednational and international public opinion by expressing a desireto [see it lifted]. In fact, [Cuban officials] have used the embargoto justify all their wrongdoings, economic inefficiency, mismanage-ment and repression. After 50 years of being locked away fromthe world, Cuban society is on the cusp of changes. It is not amatter of natural generational decay but the exhaustion of asystem that has fallen into a deep economic, political and socialcrisis, with no solution other than deep changes. They mightcome from the power structure, aware of their inevitability, orfrom the people out of desperation, as well as civil commitment.We are positive that less tension in the relations between Cubaand the United States will favor our goals.

* Female relatives of the 75 Cuban dissidents jailed in 2003.no

JAMES C. CASONPRESIDENT, CENTER FOR A FREE CUBA

FROM STATEMENT BEFORE HOUSE COMMITTEE ONFOREIGN AFFAIRS, NOV. 19, 2009

t he debate on what, if anything, the United States can doto induce the Cuban authorities to liberalize has com-menced again in earnest. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce,

the Farm Bureau and Midwest senators and agricultural interestsare arguing that more trade and travel with Cuba will bringgreater freedom to Cubans, and that the more we engage withthe Cuban regime, the greater the likelihood democracy willflourish there. . . .We typically hear four arguments for liberalizing travel and

trade with Cuba. The first . . . is that flooding Cuba withAmerican tourists will instill among Cubans a yearning fordemocracy. Secondly, tourist spending, it is argued, will helpaverage Cubans by improving their living standards or wages.Third, some argue that our policy of isolating the regime hasfailed, so we should try something different. . . . Finally, liber-tarians will assert Americans have a constitutional right to gowherever they choose, including Cuba.These arguments are dead wrong and fundamentally reflect

our inability to understand what it’s like to live in a totalitariansociety. . . . As most Americans have never experienced totali-tarianism, they make assumptions about what can be achievedin such a state that are not grounded in reality.The fact is that tourists go to Cuba for rum, sun, cigars,

song and sex. That is what Cuban government recruiting adssubliminally promise. Tourists don’t go to Cuba to spreaddemocracy.Lifting the travel ban now will amount to giving away fu-

ture leverage for nothing in return. We should hold this in re-serve until the demise of the brothers [Castro], or until the to-tally unexpected happens and they are forced by circumstancesor forces in Cuba . . . to put ahead of their personal intereststhe interests of the Cuban people. An end to the travel banshould be used as leverage, as a carrot, in support of thosein a future transitional regime who will have a voice inwhether Cuba goes towards more or less freedoms.Before we normalize relations with Cuba, the regime must

show it’s normal. It must engage in dialogue with its own citi-zens. . . . We can’t normalize with a totalitarian regime or castaside our longstanding focus on human rights in Cuba in aquest to “do something different” or in our haste to end theCuban problem as a foreign policy issue. Normalization willresult from Cuban actions to respect internationally recognizedobligations and principles.


unlimited authority and commandover almost all natural resources, yetthey were paralyzed. . . . Incompe-tence in communist systems was there-fore structural.” 69

Some communist officials did pushfor reforms, none of which endedwell. In 1956, communist reformers inHungary tried to replicate Moscow’srebukes of Stalin, but their reformswent too far; the Russian army in-vaded and killed more than 3,000 peo-ple. 70 In 1968, the Soviets again in-vaded a neighboring country trying toinitiate reforms, Czechoslovakia; againblood flowed in the streets.By the late 1980s, however, demands

for human rights proved more dam-aging for entrenched communistregimes in Europe than earlier effortsat economic reform. “The regimes ofEastern Europe were indeed rotten atthe core,” writes journalist MichaelMeyer, former Newsweek bureau chiefin Germany during the 1989 turmoil.“But the push to collapse came lessfrom the outside than from within.” 71

The world watched in astonishmentin 1989 as peaceful revolutionsbrought down communist governmentsof Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgariaand East Germany — marked by theNov. 9 spectacle of Germans on bothsides of the Berlin Wall attacking thehated barricade with sledge hammers. 72

The 1989 overthrow of Romanian dic-tator Nicolae Ceauçescu, however, wasnot peaceful. A week of street protestsand clashes with police in severalcities prompted Ceauçescu and his wifeto flee Bucharest. They were eventuallycaptured, tried by a military tribunal forgenocide and abuse of power and exe-cuted on Christmas Day.The push for change had begun in

Poland, when an alliance between theCatholic Church and the Solidarity labormovement demanded, and got, freeelections. In East Germany, the gov-ernment collapsed over travel restric-tions, established in 1961 when the

Berlin Wall was erected, that prevent-ed East Germans from traveling to theWest. In Czechoslovakia, Havel led amovement of intellectuals who de-manded basic human rights.Back in Moscow, economic reforms

pushed through by Gorbachev even-tually led to the collapse of the Sovi-et Union in 1991. 73 It was a surpris-ingly quiet end to what had been oneof history’s most violent political con-structions. “No other territorial empirein recorded history,” Judt wrote, “everabandoned its dominions so rapidly,with such good grace and so littlebloodshed.” 74

CURRENTSITUATION

Modern China

The Communist Party of China (CPC)celebrates its 90th birthday this year,

complete with newspapers printing red— literally — editorials, sing-alongs,speeches and other festivities bedeckedin red. Yet few independent scholarsconsider modern China a purely com-munist state. 75

China is “Leninist, perhaps, in theparty structure, but no one would con-sider China Marxist says Josh Kurlantz-ick, a former Economist correspondent

in Southeast Asia now with the Coun-cil on Foreign Relations.* “It’s actuallymore like ruthless, Industrial Revolution-era capitalism with an authoritariangovernment.”Since the state relaxed its grip on

the economy and opened its marketsto trade with the rest of the world,China’s economic growth has been noth-ing short of stellar. This year, Chinabought more General Motors cars thanwere sold in the United States. Its econ-omy — the world’s second-largest(after the U.S.) and fastest-growing —is galloping ahead at an annual rate of8-10 percent, despite the global eco-nomic slowdown. Between 1990 and2004, its economy grew at a blisteringaverage yearly rate of 10 percent. 76

Chinese President Hu credits thatsuccess to the Marxist policies of theCommunist Party of China. “What hashappened shows that in the great causeof China’s social development andprogress since modern times, historyand the people have chosen the CPC,Marxism, the socialist road, and the re-form and opening up policy,” he saidat a CPC event this summer. 77

Yet, the government still exhibits re-pressive characteristics of traditionalcommunist states, such as broad cen-sorship, strict one-party rule and anomnipresent security police. This year,jailed activist Liu Xiaobo was award-ed the Nobel Peace Prize, although heremains in a Chinese jail serving a10-year sentence for “subversion.” Whenthe award was announced, Liu’s wifewas placed under house arrest. 78

When the popular revolts spreadacross the Arab world last spring, Bei-jing launched one of its largest repres-sion campaigns yet — targeting humanrights campaigners, further restricting theInternet and closing public spaces inhopes of muzzling anyone who mightspread the spirit of popular unrest toChina. Nevertheless, despite such peri-odic crackdowns, some 80,000 to90,000 protests are held in the countryeach year. 79

COMMUNISM TODAY

Continued from p. 384

* Leninism is shorthand for the Soviet leader’sdoctrine that revolution should be led by aparty of professional revolutionaries, whosedecisions are binding on all members. Leninalso argued that the overthrow of capitalismcould begin in economically backward coun-tries, while Marx had argued that revolutionswould occur first in the most advanced cap-italist societies. Both Marx and Lenin agreedthat the post-revolutionary workers’ state shouldown the means of production.


Yet, there is no immediate prospectof China “moving to a multipartydemocracy,” says the University of Syd-ney’s Hirsch. “In part, this may dependon the ability of their one-party gov-ernment to continue to deliver higheconomic growth and to be respon-sive to tensions and contradictions ata societal level.”Sitting astride this enormous economic

engine, fueled by its 1.3 billion citizens,the 73-million-member CommunistParty of China controls the military, po-lice, banks and media, enforces socialcodes — such as the one-child policy— and owns all land. 80

The CPC maintains a highly struc-tured national party apparatus, which atthe local level parallels civic govern-ment. The system contains enormousinefficiencies common to most largegovernmental organizations, but in re-cent years the government has adopt-ed market-based incentives — includ-ing evaluations of lower-level regionalleaders based on performance metrics— to drive innovation and growth.

Rogue States

North Korea is only slightly largerthan Cuba, but it has more than

twice the population. 81 The two com-munist outposts are also unique in theirdistinctly anti-Marxist feature: They haveembraced dynastic succession.In Cuba, the government has an-

nounced some economic reforms, in-cluding shrinking the bloated publicsector and integrating much of the in-formal economy into the formal sector.Half a million state employees havebeen dismissed so far, and some small,private businesses have been created. 82

(See sidebar, p. 372.)Though some minor economic

policies have been relaxed and therehas been some movement toward so-cial reforms, longtime Cuba hands saylittle has changed on the Caribbeanisland 90 miles off Florida’s coast. In

fact, they say, some economic reformsinitiated during an earlier period ofliberalization have been rolled back,including a flirtation with “dollarizing”the Cuban economy in 1993. 83

“The average Cuban’s standard ofliving remains at a lower level thanbefore the downturn of the 1990s,which was caused by the loss of So-

viet aid and domestic inefficiencies,”according to the latest estimates fromthe CIA. 84

For the past decade, Venezuela hasstepped in to fill Cuba’s foreign aidneeds. In exchange for Venezuelan oil,Cuba trains medical professionals from

Venezuela. When Venezuelan PresidentChávez needed treatment for cancerthis summer, he went to a Cuban hos-pital. The island has a long history oftraining excellent doctors and export-ing their services to friendly countries.However, Cuba watchers see little

weakening of control by the Castrogovernment. Political prisoners con-

tinue to serve jail sentences, eventhough 115 were released this yearand flown to Spain. 85 Fidel contin-ues to blame Cuba’s woes on the U.S.embargo that has been in place sincethe early 1960s. President BarackObama has indicated he’d like to relax

A street vendor hawks his wares next to a shop selling communist propaganda posters in theancient quarter of Hanoi, Vietnam, on April 25, 2011. Vietnam began liberalizing its economicpolicies in 1986, and from 1990-2007 its robust economy grew about 8 percent per year.

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the embargo and has already endedprohibitions against visiting the islandfor expatriate Cubans and certain U.S.citizens. But little else has happenedin the Washington-Havana detente.The North Korean regime is in the

midst of a leadership transition as the“Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, apparent-ly is preparing his youngest son, KimJong Un, to take power. In one of hisfirst public statements, the presumed

heir struck a conciliatory tone, ac-cording to the Chinese state-controlledpress: “In the past, it was all right tohave bullets and no food, but nowwe must have food even though wedon’t have bullets.” 86

A month later North Korea report-edly bombed the small South Kore-an island of Yeonpyeong, killing fourpeople. The bombing soured theNorth’s already tenuous relationshipwith both South Korea and the Unit-ed States.Moreover, decades of ruinous

economic and agricultural policieshave taken a human toll. More than13 million North Koreans suffer frommalnutrition, according to the WorldHealth Organization, including 60 per-

cent of all children. 87 This year, theregime confirmed a major outbreakof hoof and mouth disease amongits livestock.“Human rights abuses and econom-

ic deprivation have been widely docu-mented, but the international commu-nity has no effective policy instrumentsto produce improvements,” concludedthe International Crisis Group, a non-governmental group that works to re-

solve conflicts. “The recent tightening ofeconomic sanctions [against North Korea],compounded with domestic problems,is exacerbating [North Korea’s] humansecurity tragedy.” 88

And the international communitycontinues to pressure Pyongyang overits nuclear program. A U.N. report thisspring warned that the North has un-declared uranium enrichment facilitiesand was continuing to sell missile tech-nology to Iran. 89 (China has blockedthe official release of the report.) Dur-ing a visit to China this year, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gatessaid the North is becoming a directthreat to the United States. 90

OUTLOOKWaning Days?

Will there still be communist na-tions in 20 years?

“Ask a fortuneteller,” says Hirsch, theChina expert from Australia. His col-league Gill, who also specializes in thenations of Asia, is equally unsure. “It’simpossible to answer,” he says. “Butthey will all probably change some-what from the way they are now.”In 1988, many experts on the So-

viet bloc would have been unwillingto predict a collapse either. 91 And fewpeople in 1989 would have predictedthat more than 50 years after his death,surveys would consistently show thatJoseph Stalin would be one of themost well-considered historical figuresin Russia. 92

In places like China, says Kurlantzick,of the Council on Foreign Relations,“it’s a question of the sustainability ofthat authoritarian government, but ithas little to do with communism.”“Authoritarian systems can sur-

vive a very long time on a pooreconomic base,” says the veteransenior intelligence analyst McCreary.“The Chinese innovation is to de-tach the economics from the au-thoritarian politics. Heck, China isalmost a democracy except for theauthoritarian tactics of keeping thecommunist party in power. At thispoint, I can foresee a strong prob-ability of great upheaval in China inthe next 30 years.”The Johns Hopkins University’s

Brown says the government of Viet-nam has only one key concern. “It’sall about stability, stability, stability forthe Communist Party,” he says. “What-ever the other challenges, economicor otherwise, that it deals with in thecoming years, stability is always the

COMMUNISM TODAY

“The new-fashioned comrades, in places like China,

are not the old-fashioned comrades. The communist

utopian idea may still be alive in the minds of some

small groups of believers, but it simply doesn’t have

the power that it had during the 20th Century.”

— Vladimir Tismaneanu,

President, Scientific Council of the Institute for the

Investigation of Communist Crimes in Romania

˘


primary concern. They have a vibrantstock market, and people can gather,as long as they don’t talk about pol-itics and the regime.”In North Korea, says Tufts Univer-

sity’s Sung-Yoon Lee, “They are inca-pable of changing even gradually, be-cause the government views changeas threatening. So, they will do any-thing they can to stay in power andkeep things unchanged.”Romanian political scientist Tisman-

eanu believes communist countrieseventually will abandon Marxism,though he won’t commit to a time-line. “The new-fashioned comrades,in places like China, are not the old-fashioned comrades,” he says. “Thecommunist utopian idea may stillbe alive in the minds of some smallgroups of believers, but it simplydoesn’t have the power that it hadduring the 20th Century.”In the United States, the more rad-

ical communists — such as the Revo-lutionary Communist Party — see newreasons to call for overthrowing thecapitalist system, especially in thewake of new state efforts to rein inburgeoning public sector costs bystripping unions of their collective-bargaining rights. 93

“If revolutionaries [help] people tosee the true . . . roots of these out-rages in the system of capitalism, . . .then these struggles can contribute to. . . building a movement for revolu-tion and getting to a world free of alloppression,” says an editorial fromRevolution, the Chicago-based news-paper of the Revolutionary CommunistParty, U.S.A. 94

Meanwhile, Sam Webb, head of themore moderate Communist Party USA,still calls people “comrade” but sees aless revolutionary albeit a long andwinding road to Marx’s dream.“We are working toward a world

that will be a better place for work-ers, regardless of race or gender. Wewould like to see all governmentsmoving in a direction that does that,

whatever their path to socialism is,”he says. “Marx didn’t make specificthe path to communism, nor exactlywhat the outcome would look like.We just don’t know.”

Notes

1 Jeffrey Goldberg, “Fidel: ‘Cuban ModelDoesn’t Even Work For Us Anymore,’ ” TheAtlantic, Sept. 8, 2010, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/09/fidel-cuban-model-doesnt-even-work-for-us-anymore/62602/.2 Marc Frank, “In Cuba, reforms bring cheersbut also jeers,” Reuters, July 13, 2011.3 Mark Milke, “Cuba mulls economic freedoms— at last,” Financial Post, Sept. 28, 2010.4 Paul Haven, “Report: Castro says Cubanmodel doesn’t work,” The Associated Press,Sept. 8, 2010.5 Carlos Pérez Llana, “Has Cuba lost its chance?”Project Syndicate, June 10, 2011, www.pro-ject-syndicate.org/commentary/llana3/English.6 “The Worst of the Worst 2011,” FreedomHouse, 2011, www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/101.pdf.7 World Fact Book, CIA, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html.8 For background, see Robert Kiener, “NorthKorean Menace,” CQ Global Researcher, July 5,2011, pp. 315-340.9 Joseph Fewsmith, China Since Tiananmen:The Politics of Transition (2001), p. 180. Forbackground, see Roland Flamini, “U.S.-ChinaRelations,” CQ Researcher, May 7, 2010, pp. 409-432, updated, May 24, 2011; and Thomas J. Bil-litteri, “Human rights in China,” CQ Researcher,July 25, 2008, pp. 601-624, and Peter Katel,“Emerging China,” CQ Researcher, Nov. 11, 2005,pp. 957-980.10 Susan LaFont, “One step forward, two stepsback: women in the post-Communist states,”Communist and Post-Communist Studies, June2001, pp. 203-220.11 “2010 Data Sheet,” Population ReferenceBureau, www.prb.org/pdf10/10wpds_eng.pdf.12 “Cuban healthcare: ‘aqui nada es facil,’ ” U.Sdiplomatic cable, Jan. 31, 2008, www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2008/01/08HAVANA103.html.13 Hu Jintao, “Full Text of Hu Jintao’s speechat CPC anniversary gathering,” chinadaily.com,July 1, 2011, www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/cpc2011/2011-07/01/content_12818048_2.htm.

14 Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau, Commu-nist and Post-Communist Parties in Europe(2008), p. 558.15 Yiorgos Karahalis and Gina Kalovyrna, “AthensAcropolis reopens for tourists after protests,”Reuters, Oct. 15, 2010. For background, seeSarah Glazer, “Future of the Euro,” CQ GlobalResearcher, May 17, 2011, pp. 237-262.16 “Papariga addresses party event in Chania,”Athens News, June 26, 2011, www.athensnews.gr/portal/8/43802?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=750&width=600&caption=Athens+news+-+News?action=print.17 Danielle Demetriou, “Japan’s young turnto Communist Party as they decide capitalismhas let them down,” The Telegraph, Oct. 17, 2008.18 Russell Berman, Anti-Americanism in Eu-rope: A Cultural Problem (2004), p. xv.19 Quoted in Matthew Lynn, “The State StrikesBack,” The Sunday Times (London), May 24,2008, pp. 8-9, http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6349889.ece.20 Barry Moody, “Analysis: Ex-communistpresident holds the line in Italy,” Reuters,July 20, 2011.21 “Keep calm and carry on: How Deng Xi-aoping neutralized the country’s worst mo-ment,” The Economist, Nov. 5, 2009.22 “Rethinking Cuba: The Maturation of U.S.Foreign Policy,” Pepperdine School of PublicPolicy, p. 13, http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/master-public-policy/content/capstones/rethinkingcuba.pdf.23 John Sweeney, “Why the Cuban trade em-bargo should be maintained,” The HeritageFoundation Backgrounder, Nov. 10, 1994.24 Louis Horowitz, Cuban Communism (2003),p. xv.25 Carl Gershman and Orlando Gutierrez,“Ferment in Civil Society,” Journal of Democ-racy, January 2009, p. 36.26 “Background Note: Vietnam,” The U.S. StateDepartment, June 3, 2011, www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/4130.htm.27 Thomas Fuller, “Capitalism Makes Inroadsin Laos,” The New York Times, Sept. 18, 2009,query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E05EFDB163DF93BA2575AC0A96F9C8B63.28 Ibid.29 Ibid.30 Ibid.31 “North Korea after he’s gone,” The Econ-omist, Feb. 17, 2010.32 Andrei Lankov, “Why does China continue tosupport North Korea?” Korea Times, May 6, 2010.33 Fred Kaplan, “How Reagan Won the ColdWar,” Slate, June 9, 2004.

˘


34 Mira Duric, The Strategic Defence Initia-tive: U.S. Policy and the Soviet Union (2003),p. 21. For background, see William Sweet,“Science Wars Over Star Wars,” Editorial Re-search Reports, Sept. 19, 1986, available atCQ Researcher Plus Archive; and Mary H.Cooper, “Missile Defense,” CQ Researcher,Sept. 8, 2000, pp. 689-712.35 Leon Aron, “Everything you think youknow about the collapse of the Soviet Unionis wrong,” Foreign Policy, July/August 2011.36 Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly (2007),chapter 12.37 Ibid., chapter 13.38 Anne Applebaum, “How the Pope ‘de-feated communism,’ ” The Washington Post,April 6, 2005, p. A19.39 John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A NewHistory (2005), p. 190.40 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of EuropeSince 1945 (2005), p. 585.41 Joseph Nye, “Gorbachev and the end of theCold War,” New Straits Times, April 5, 2006.42 Stanley Kubrick, “Dr. Strangelove or: HowI Learned to Stop Worrying and Love theBomb,” Hawk Films, 1964.43 Stephen Schwartz, “Atomic Audit: The Costsand Consequence of U.S. Nuclear WeaponsSince 1940,” Brookings Institution Press, 1998,www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/figure3.aspx.44 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, East and West: TheNobel Lecture on Literature, A World SplitApart, Letter to the Soviet Leaders, and anInterview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn byJanis Sapiets (1980), p. 163.45 William Outhwaite and Larry J. Ray, SocialTheory and Postcommunism (2005), p. 1.

46 For background on McCarthyism, see R.M. Boeckel, “Record of 83rd Congress (firstsession),” Editorial Research Reports, Aug. 4,1953, available at CQ Researcher Plus Archive.47 Thomas Paterson, Meeting the CommunistThreat: Truman to Reagan (1989), p. xi.48 Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Cen-tury of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq(2007), p. 5.49 Niall Ferguson, The War of the World:Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descentof the West (2006), pp. 612-613.50 Ted Gottfried, The Road to Communism(2002), p. 45.51 Michael Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution(2009).52 Peter Watson, Ideas (2005), p. 566.53 Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, The Com-munist Manifesto, section 4.54 Robert Service, Lenin: a Biography (2000),p. 455.55 Richard Evans, The Coming of the ThirdReich (2005), p. 336.56 Gordon Barrass, The Great Cold War (2009),p. 17.57 Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons, Cen-tury of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewit-ness Accounts (2008), p. 78.58 Adam Jones, Genocide: A ComprehensiveIntroduction (2010), p. 192.59 Alan Wood, Stalin and Stalinism (2005),p. 50.60 John Kennedy, “Commencement Addressat American University,” June 10, 1963.61 Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler: TheAge of Social Catastrophe (2007).62 Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Com-munism (2009).

63 Ferguson, op. cit., p. 620.64 “Fighting Poverty: Finding Lessons in China’sSuccess,” The World Bank, http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,contentMDK:20634060~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469382,00.html.65 Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan, Commu-nism in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Reappraisal(1994), p. ii.66 Howard Jones, “A New Kind of War” —America’s Global Strategy and the TrumanDoctrine in Greece (1997), p. 36.67 Brown, op. cit., p. 3.68 Kotkin, op. cit., p. 13.69 Ibid.70 Erwin A. Schmidl, László Ritter and PeterDennis, The Hungarian Revolution 1956(2006), p. 26.71 Michael Meyer, The Year that Changed theWorld: The Untold Story Behind the Fall ofthe Berlin Wall (2009), p. 216.72 For background, see Kenneth Jost,“Democracy in Eastern Europe,” CQ Researcher,Oct. 8, 1999, pp. 865-888.73 Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern:The Revolution of ‘89 Witnessed in Warsaw,Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (1993).74 Judt, op. cit., p. 633.75 Adam Minter, “Scandal Crashes ChineseCommunist Party’s 90th Birthday: World View,”Bloomberg, June 30, 2011.76 “World Economic Outlook Database,” Inter-national Monetary Fund, April 2005.77 Hu Jintao, op. cit.78 “Wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner talksabout daily struggle,” Deutsche Welle, Oct. 10,2010, www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6093674,00.html.79 “Why China Fears the Arab Spring,” Finan-cial Times, Feb. 28, 2011, www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3442a77c-4377-11e0-8f0d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1SKQRyMvT.80 Christopher Beam, “How Communist is China?”Slate, July 26, 2010.81 “Cuba,” and “DPRK” (North Korea), WorldFact Book, CIA.82 John Keefe, “Cuba Starts Move to a PrivateEconomy,” CBS News, Sept. 14, 2010.83 Mario Conzalez-Corozo, “Cuban MonetaryReforms and Their Relationship with Politics

COMMUNISM TODAY

About the Author

Alex Kingsbury is producer at WBUR, Boston’s NPR newsstation. Before that, he spent seven years at U.S. News &World Report, where he wrote about national security, theintelligence community and various historical topics. Hecovered the war in Iraq for the magazine in 2007 and2008. He holds a B.A. in history from George WashingtonUniversity and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia Uni-versity.


to Attract Remittances During the Special Pe-riod,” Cuba in Transition, ASCE 2007, www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume17/pdfs/gonzalezcorzo.pdf.84 “Cuba,” op. cit.85 Juan Tamayo, “Spain unlikely to take morepolitical prisoners from Cuba after Friday,government says,” The Miami Herald, June 8,2011, www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/08/2157794/spain-unlikely-to-take-more-political.html#storylink=mirelated.86 “Kim Jong-un: Food more important thanbullets,” China.org, Oct. 27, 2010, www.china.org.cn/world/2010-10/27/content_21212218.htm.87 See “North Korea: Suspicious Minds,” “Front-line,” PBS, www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/northkorea/facts.html.88 “Asia Briefing No. 101, North Korea underTightening Sanctions,” International Crisis Group,March, 15, 2010.89 Louis Charbonneau, “North Korea, Iran, trademissile technology: U.N.,” Reuters, May 14, 2011.90 Larry Shaughnessy, “Gates: North Koreacould have long-range missiles with 5 years,”CNN, Jan. 11, 2011.91 Many experts missed the fall of the U.S.S.R.,but the CIA particularly has been criticizedfor failing to warn about it. Recent evidencesuggests otherwise: Indeed, “far from ignoringthe Soviet economic malaise, by the middleof the Reagan administration the intelligencecommunity understood as a matter of coursethat the Soviet economy had been consis-tently slowing down, slipping to mediocre— and, in some years, negligible — growthrates,” write intelligence historians BruceBerkowitz and Jeffrey Richelson, in “The CIAvindicated: the Soviet collapse was predicted,”The American Interest, fall 1995.92 Dmitry Solovyov, “Stalin voted third mostpopular Russian,” Reuters, Dec. 29, 2008,www.reuters.com/article/2008/12/29/us-russia-stalin-idUSTRE4BR17620081229.93 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “Public-Employee Unions,” CQ Researcher, April 8,2011, pp. 313-336.94 “Attacks . . . Resistance . . . and the Move-ment for Revolution,” Revolution, March 20,2011, http://revcom.us/a/227/madison-en.html.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONCold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Centerfor Scholars, 1 Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington,DC 20004-3027; (202) 691-4000; www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-interna-tional-history-project. Disseminates information and perspectives on the history ofthe Cold War, with a focus on declassified documents originating in formerlycommunist countries to offer “the other side” of the conflict.

Cold War Research Center, Dohány u. 74, H-1074 Budapest, Hungary; (361)322 4026; www.coldwar.hu. Provides online database of documents and resourceson the history of the Soviet bloc; operated in partnership with the University ofBudapest.

Cold War Studies Center, The London School of Economics and Political Science,Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, U.K.; (44) 20 7405 7686; www2.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/programmes/coldWarStudiesProgramme/Home.aspx. A London School ofEconomics resource for the study of international affairs and diplomacy.

Federal Military Archives, Bundesarchiv Finckensteinallee 63, 12205 Berlin, Ger-many; +49 (030) 18/7770-0; www.bundesarchiv.de/bundesarchiv/index.html.en. Afederal archive providing mostly online documents, papers, maps, pictures, filmsand other materials on modern German history.

Modern History Research Centre, HKBU, 9/F, Oen Hall, Ho Sin Hang Campus,Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR; www.hkbu.edu.hk/~mhrc/. A historical research center focused on China’s relations with the West.

National Security Archive, Suite 701, Gelman Library, The George WashingtonUniversity, 2130 H St., N.W., Washington, DC, 20037; (202) 994-7000; www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html. An independent nongovernmental research institute andlibrary that collects and publishes declassified U.S. government documents — in-cluding about the Cold War — obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Project on Cold War Studies, Massachusetts Hall, Harvard University, Cam-bridge, MA 02138; (617) 495-1000; www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/. Promotesarchival research in former East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrichwhat is known about Cold War events and themes.

Public Records Office, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew,Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU, U.K.; +44 (0) 20 8876 3444; www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/default.htm. Contains millions of documents relating to U.K. policy towardthe former communist nations of the Eastern Bloc.

Russian Archives, www.rusarchives.ru/. Website maintained by the Russian gov-ernment containing extensive archival documents, search aids and contact infor-mation for researchers.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Books

Brown, Archie, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Oxford,2009.Britain’s leading authority on communism penned this de-finitive history of the movement examining its origins, de-velopment, collapse and continued presence around the globe.

Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of aGamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964: TheSecret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, W. W. Norton,2007.With exclusive access to newly opened Soviet archives, twohistorians show how President John F. Kennedy blinked toosoon during the Cuban missile crisis, and that it was Khruschevwho declared victory.

Gaddis, John Lewis, The Cold War: A New History, Penguin,2006.Based on his popular Yale University course, the dean ofpopular U.S. historians of the Cold War period reappraisessome of his earlier convictions in light of newly releaseddocuments from U.S. and communist archives.

Lewis, Ben, Hammer and Tickle: A Cultural History ofCommunism, Pegasus Books, 2010.A light-hearted look at the legacy of 80 years of commu-nism uses archival material to document the less-serious butnonetheless poignant aspects of life under communist rule.

Mastny, Vojtech, and Malcolm Byrne, A Cardboard Castle?An inside history of the Warsaw Pact, 1955-1991, CentralEuropean University Press, 2005.A senior fellow at the National Security Archive, where he co-ordinates the Parallel History Project on NATO and the WarsawPact (Mastny) and the director of research at the National Se-curity Archive (Byrne) use relevant, often declassified, documentsto tell about the now-defunct communist military alliance.

Szalontai, Balazs, Kim Il Sung in the Khruschev Era:Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Role of North KoreanDespotism, 1953-1964, Stanford University Press, 2006.A historian at Mongolian International University of Scienceand Technology explains how North Korea became moredespotic, even as other nations rejected Stalinism.

Zhang, Shu Guang, Economic Cold War: America’s Em-bargo Against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance,1949-1963, Stanford University Press, 2002.A history professor at the University of Maryland examineshow and why the United States imposed economic sanc-tions against China in the 1950s and how the embargo im-pacted Chinese policy, both domestically and between Bei-jing and Moscow.

Zizek, Slavoj, and Costas Douzinas, eds., The Idea ofCommunism, Verso, 2010.The editors have assembled a collection of discussions oncommunism by prominent, radical European intellectuals pre-sented during a conference in London in 2009.

Articles

Aron, Leon, “Everything You Think You Know About TheCollapse Of The Soviet Union Is Wrong,” Foreign Policy,July/August 2011, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/20/everything_you_think_you_know_about_the_collapse_of_the_soviet_union_is_wrong.The director of Russian studies at the conservative Ameri-can Enterprise Institute reexamines the end of the Cold War.

Garrett, Laurie, “Castrocare in Crisis,” Foreign Affairs,July/August 2010.Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow examines how lift-ing the U.S. embargo may cripple Cuba’s health care system.

Lankov, Andrei, “Changing North Korea: An Informa-tion Campaign Can Beat the Regime,” Foreign Affairs,December 2009.A history professor at Kookmin University in Seoul arguesthat regime change is possible if North Koreans were ex-posed to the truth about their government.

Wong, Ed, “By-the-Book Celebration for China’s Communistson Party’s 90th Birthday,”The New York Times, July 1, 2011,www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/asia/02china.html.The New York Times’ Beijing correspondent reports fromthe Chinese Communist Party’s 90th-birthday bash.

Reports and Studies

Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr, “Alexander Vassiliev’sNotebooks: Provenance and Documentation of Soviet In-telligence Activities in the United States,” Journal of ColdWar Studies, Summer 2009, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cws/summary/v011/11.3.haynes.html.Original documents from the KGB archives in Moscow out-line the extent of pre-World War II spying by the infamousSoviet spy agency.

Kalinovsky, Artemy, “The Blind Leading the Blind: SovietAdvisors, Counter-Insurgency and Nation-Building inAfghanistan,” Woodrow Wilson International Center, Jan-uary 2010, www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-blind-leading-the-blind-soviet-advisors-counter-insurgency-and-nation-building.A Cold War International History Project working paper de-tails elements of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, withmany echoes of the current NATO effort.

Selected Sources


Bibliography

China

Mitter, Rana, “A New Chapter in Chinese History,”GuardianUnlimited (England), July 15, 2011, www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/15/new-chapter-chinese-history.As communism is being abandoned in China, new interpre-tations of the country’s historical progression are being offered.

Richburg, Keith B., “Communist Party Aims to RegainGlory,” The Washington Post, July 1, 2011, p. A6, www.washingtonpost.com/world/chinas-communist-party-tries-to-reclaim-glory/2011/06/28/AGNVXurH_story.html.Many members of China’s Communist Party are questioningwhether current leaders have lived up to the ideas of theparty’s original founders.

Steiden, Bill, “Unrest Stems From the Core,” AtlantaJournal-Constitution, Feb. 13, 2011, p. A14.The Chinese Communist Party’s ability to crack down on dissi-dents has allowed it to last longer than its European counterparts.

Reagan

“Czechs Do Not Forget Reagan’s Role in Fall of Commu-nism — Klaus,” Czech News Agency, June 30, 2011.Czech President Václav Klaus has supported naming a streetin Prague after former President Ronald Reagan as a tributeto his contributions in the fall of communism in Europe.

“Why the Cult of Reagan Still Rules in Washington,” TheIndependent (England), Feb. 5, 2011, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/why-the-cult-of-reagan-still-rules-in-washington-2205042.html.Ronald Reagan is no longer mocked by intellectuals for declar-ing that communism would end up “on the ash heap of history.”

Joch, Roman, “To Eastern Eyes, a Liberator,” The Wash-ington Times, Feb. 4, 2011, p. E4, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/3/joch-to-eastern-eyes-reagan-a-liberator/.Communism did not collapse on his own, but rather be-cause figures such as Ronald Reagan put Western pressureon the Soviets to change their ways.

Sustainability

Ford, Peter, “China’s Communist Party: Light on Ideology,Heavy on Control,” The Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 2,2010, www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2010/0802/The-Party.China’s Communist Party has attracted more loyal sup-porters by aligning itself with the material comforts that “re-form and opening” have brought about in the past 30 years.

Lewis, Peter, “The Country Where Birthdays Are Banned,”Daily Mail (England), Aug. 6, 2010.The author reviews Nothing to Envy, a book by Americanjournalist Barbara Demick, who provides shocking detailson the grimness of life in North Korea based on seven yearsworth of interviews with defectors.

Mthombothi, Barney, “Smash and Grab,” Financial Mail(South Africa), Oct. 1, 2010, www.fm.co.za/Article.aspx?id=122436.Modern-day capitalism has not necessarily addressed thesufferings of the poor and unemployed any better than com-munism has.

Threats

“ ‘De-Stalinisation’ Poses Threat to Russia’s Sovereignty,”Press Trust of India, July 2, 2011.A “de-Stalinisation” project could pose a threat to Russia’s sov-ereignty, according to one of the country’s communist leaders.

“Red North Korea Threat to U.S.,” Chattanooga (Tenn.)Times Free Press, Jan. 15, 2011, p. B7, timesfreepress.com/news/2011/jan/15/red-north-korean-threat-to-us/.Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned that the erraticNorth Korean dictatorship poses a direct threat to the Unit-ed States and the American people.

Depasupil, William B., “Military Admits NPA Still a PotentForce,” Manila Times, Dec. 27, 2010.The Philippine military says the New People’s Army — thearmed wing of the country’s communist party — remainsthe biggest threat to the government.

Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

CITING CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHERSample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography

include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats

vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.

MLA STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher 1 Apr. 2007: 1-24.

APA STYLEFlamini, R. (2007, April 1). Nuclear proliferation. CQ Global

Researcher, 1, 1-24.

CHICAGO STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Researcher,

April 1, 2007, 1-24.

www.globalresearcher.com Aug. 2, 2011 393

The Next Step:

Voices From Abroad:

SHINTARO ISHIHARAGovernor, Tokyo, Japan

Communism is theproblem, not China“I certainly oppose com-

munism. I like Chinese cul-ture, but dislike Chinesecommunism. I’m not againstthe country, but China is athreat to Japan as long as theCommunist Party is in power.”

South China Morning PostOctober 2010

LO LEEFormer Major

Hmong Army, Laos

Americans saved us“Our people had been liv-

ing with communism anddidn’t like the system. TheAmericans came, and Ameri-ca was a superpower that hada good chance to win the war.”

Central Wisconsin SundayDecember 2010

JOACHIM GAUCKFormer dissident leader

East Germany

A watershed moment“Those in government

thought they were openinga valve [with the fall of BerlinWall], but once it was open,much more happened.”

The Washington Post November 2009

ROMAN JOCHDirector, Civic Institute

Czech Republic

Reagan tipped the balance“Communism did not col-

lapse on its own. Tyranniescan endure for long periodsif they are brutal enough. Whydid the Soviet empire collapsein the late 1980s instead of thelate 1970s? Because previous-ly, there was no Western pres-sure against the Soviets. . . .There was, however, very def-inite and sustained pressure inthe 1980s — generated byRonald Reagan.”

The Washington Times February 2011

ZUO WENLINRetiree, Beijing, China

Always an ideal“Communism has always

been an ideal for us — whenI was young we sang songs‘Communism is paradise.’ Icannot say China now is acommunist country, but it isstill on the way to becom-ing a communist country. Ibelieve the ‘route’ of the partyhasn’t changed, and ulti-mately it will reach that goal.”

Irish Times, October 2010

FIDEL CASTROFormer President, Cuba

An outdated model“The Cuban model doesn’t

even work for us anymore.”

The Atlantic, Sept. 8, 2010

MICHAL VALCOProfessor of TheologyLutheran Bible College

Slovakia Dario La Crisis

RAHUL GANDHIGeneral Secretary, Indian

National Congress

Communism is finished“Communism is finished

in the rest of the world. Whatkind of communism is [beingpracticed] in West Bengal,which does not look afterthe poor? The Left Front isin power in this state forover 32 years, and their think-ing is also 30-40 years old.”

The Hindu (India) April 25, 2009

‘Rotten to its core’“People tend to believe it

did not work because of somespecific historic circumstancesor corrupt communist leaders.This is a huge misconception.The communist ideology is rot-ten to its core and its resultsare devastating. Few peoplerealize Stalin killed more peo-ple in his own country thanHitler during the SecondWorld War.”

Roanoke (Va.) Times December 2010

CQGR Communism Today

Documents

Transcript of CQGR Communism Today