The Rise and Fall of World Communism, 1917-Present

Communism• Communism had originally been greeted by many as a promise of

liberation.• Communist regimes had transformed their societies• Provided a major political/ideological threat to the Western world• The cold war (1946–1991) – was a scramble for influence in the

third world between the United States and the USSR, a massive nuclear arms race

Communism and Marx

• Communism had its roots in nineteenth-century socialism, inspired by Karl Marx.

• Most European socialists believed that they could achieve their goals through the democratic process

• Those who defined themselves as “communists” in the twentieth century advocated revolution

• “Communism” in Marxist theory is the final stage of historical development, with full development of social equality and collective living

• Communism’s height in the 1970s, almost one-third of the world’s population was governed by communist regimes the most important communist societies by far were the USSR and China

Common Grounds of Communism

• Common ideology, based on Marxism an international revolutionary movement was more important than national loyalties

• Inspiration of the 1917 Russian Revolution USSR provided aid and advice to aspiring revolutionaries elsewhere through Comintern (Communist International)

• During the cold war, the Warsaw Pact created a military alliance of Eastern European states and the USSR

• Council on Mutual Economic Assistance tied Eastern European economies to the USSR’s

• Treaty of Friendship between the USSR and China (1950)• Relations between communist countries were also marked

by rivalry and hostility, sometimes war

Communism and French Revolution

• French Revolution had gotten rid of landed aristocracies and the old ruling classes

• Involved peasant upheavals in the countryside; educated leadership in the cities

• French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all looked to a modernizing future, eschewed any nostalgia for the past

• Differences with the French Revolution: Communist revolutions were made by highly organized parties guided by a Marxist ideology. The middle classes were among the victims of communist upheavals, whereas middle classes were chief beneficiaries of French Revolution

Russian Revolution

• Russia’s revolution (1917) was sudden, explosive

• Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate the throne in February 1917, and there was a massive social upheaval

• Deep-seated social revolution soon showed the inadequacy of the Provisional Government, it would not/could not meet the demands of the revolutionary masses

• Most effective opposition group was the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) – They seized power in a coup (October 1917), claimed to act on behalf of the “soviets”

• Three-year civil war followed: Bolsheviks vs. a variety of enemies

• By 1921, Bolsheviks (now calling their party “communist”) had won

Civil War and Spread of Communism• During the civil war, the Bolsheviks: regimented the economy,

suppressed nationalist rebellions, integrated many lower-class men into the Red Army and into local governments

• For 25 years, the new USSR was the only communist country• There was expansion into Eastern Europe thanks to Soviet

occupation at the end of WWII• Stalin sought a buffer of “friendly” governments in Eastern

Europe; imposed communism from outside

China: A Prolonged Revolutionary Struggle

• Communism won in China in 1949, after a long struggle

• The Chinese imperial system had collapsed in 1911

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded 1921

• Over the next 28 years, the CCP grew immensely and transformed its strategy under Mao Zedong

• Had a formidable enemy in the Guomindang (Nationalist Party), which ruled China after 1928

• Chiang Kai-shek led the Guomindang and promoted modern development, at least in cities, the countryside remained impoverished

Chinese Communist Party• CCP’s new strategy - looked to the peasants for

support, not city workers, gradually won respect and support of peasants

• Given a boost by Japan’s invasion of China• The CCP addressed both foreign imperialism and

peasant exploitation and expressed Chinese nationalism and demand for social change

Leaders of Communism

• Joseph Stalin built a socialist society in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s;

• Mao Zedong did the same in China in the 1950s and 1960s.

• First step: modernization and industrialization

• Attack on class and gender inequalities• Both created political systems dominated

by the Communist Party• High-ranking party members were

expected to exemplify socialism, all other parties were forbidden, the state controlled almost the entire economy

• China’s conversion to communism was a much easier process than that experienced by the USSR

Communist Feminism• Communist countries pioneered “women’s liberation”

which were largely directed by the state • USSR almost immediately declared full legal and political

equality for women• 1919: USSR’s Communist Party set up Zhenotdel

(Women’s Department) male communist officials and ordinary people often opposed it, Stalin abolished it in 1930

• Communist China also worked for women’s equality Marriage Law of 1950 ordered free choice in marriage, easier divorce, the end of concubinage and child marriage, and equal property rights for women

• The CCP tried to implement pro-female changes against strong opposition

Socialism in the Countryside

• In both states, the communists took landed estates and redistributed the land to peasants

• Russia: peasants took and redistributed the land themselves

• China: land reform teams mobilized poor peasants to confront landlords and wealthier peasants 1 million–2 million landlords were killed in the process

Collective Farming• Second stage of rural reform: effort to end private

property in land by collectivizing agriculture• China, collectivization was largely peaceful (1950s)• USSR, collectivization was imposed by violence (1928–

1933) kulaks (rich peasants) were killed or deported, the result was a massive famine (around 5 million died)

• China’s collectivization went further than the USSR’s creation of huge “people’s communes” during the Great Leap Forward (late 1950s), the result was a massive famine (1959–1962) in which 20 million people or more died

Communism and Industrial Development• Both states regarded industrialization as

fundamental needed to end humiliating backwardness and poverty and a desire to create military strength to survive in a hostile world

Soviet Model of Industrialization

• China largely followed the model established by the USSR:• State ownership of property• Centralized planning (five-year plans)• Priority given to heavy industry• Mobilization of resources• Intrusive party control of the whole process• Both countries experienced major economic growth improvement in literacy and education, increase in social mobility, urbanization and development of a privileged bureaucratic and technological elite

• USSR leadership largely accepted the social outcomes of industrialization gradual move away from revolutionary values

Social Effects of Industrialization in China

• China under Mao Zedong tried to combat the social effects of industrialization

• The Great Leap Forward (1958–1960) promoted small-scale industrialization in rural areas, tried to spread technological education widely

• Hoped to bring full communism to the “people’s communes” without waiting for industrial development

• Result: massive disruptions, accompanied by natural disasters, caused a massive famine

• The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (mid-1960s) intended to combat capitalist tendencies, an effort to bring health care and education to the countryside and to reinvigorate rural industrialization under local control

The Search for Enemies- Great Purge• USSR and China under Stalin and Mao were rife with paranoia

fear that important communists were corrupted by bourgeois ideas; became class enemies

• USSR: the Terror (Great Purges) of the late 1930s enveloped millions of Russians, including tens of thousands of prominent communists, many were sentenced to harsh labor camps (the gulag)

• Nearly a million people were executed between 1936 and 1941

China’s Cultural Revolution• China: the search for enemies was a more

public process• The Cultural Revolution (1966–1969)

escaped control of communist leadership• Mao had called for rebellion against the

Communist Party itself purge of millions of supposed capitalist sympathizers

• Mao had to call in the army to avert civil war

• Both the Terror and the Cultural Revolution discredited socialism and contributed to eventual collapse of communist experiment

Military Conflict and the Cold War

• Europe was the cold war’s first arena• Soviet concern for security and control in Eastern

Europe• American and British desire for open societies linked

to the capitalist world economy • Communism spread into Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam),

caused conflict• North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 bitter war

(1950–1953), with Chinese and American involvement, ended in a standoff and a divided Korea

• Vietnam: massive U.S. intervention in the 1960s Vietnamese communists successfully united the country by 1975

NATO and Warsaw Pact• Creation of rival military alliances (NATO and the Warsaw Pact)• American sphere of influence (Western Europe) was largely

voluntary• Soviet sphere (Eastern Europe) was imposed• “Iron Curtain” divided the two spheres

Cold War Conflict in Afghanistan• Marxist party took power in 1978 but soon alienated much of

the population• Soviet military intervention (1979–1989) met with little success• USSR withdrew in 1989 under international pressure;

communist rule of Afghanistan collapsed

Cold War and Cuba

• Fidel Castro came to power in 1959

• Nationalization of U.S. assets provoked U.S. hostility

• Castro gradually aligned himself with the USSR

• Cuban missile crisis (October 1962) Khrushchev deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba the U.S. government detected the missiles

• United States nearly invaded Cuba

• Khrushchev and Kennedy reached a compromise

Nuclear Standoff and Third World Rivalry

• The USSR succeeded in creating a nuclear weapon in 1949• Massive arms race: by 1989, the world had nearly 60,000 nuclear

warheads, with complex delivery systems• 1949–1989: fear of massive nuclear destruction and even the

possible extinction of humankind• Both sides knew how serious their destructive power was, there

was careful avoidance of nuclear provocation, especially after 1962

• United States and the USSR courted third world countries• United States intervened in Iran, the Philippines, Guatemala, El

Salvador, Chile, the Congo, and elsewhere because of fear of communist penetration

• Some countries (e.g., India) claimed “nonalignment” status in the cold war

The U.S.A. Superpower of the West 1945 - 1975

• United States became leader of the West against communism led to the creation of an “imperial” presidency in the United States

• Power was given to defense and intelligence agencies, creating a “national security state”, fear that democracy was being undermined

• U.S. military effort was sustained by a flourishing economy and an increasingly middle-class society

• U.S. industry hadn’t been harmed by WWII, unlike every other major industrial society

• American popular culture also spread around the world

The Communist World, 1950s–1970s

• Nikita Khrushchev took power in the USSR in 1953; in 1956, he denounced Stalin as a criminal

• The cold war justified a continuing Soviet emphasis on military and defense industries continuous government propaganda glorified the Soviet system and vilified America

• There were growing conflicts among the communist countries Yugoslavia rejected Soviet domination, Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956–1957) and Czechoslovakia (1968) to crush reform movements

• Brutal suppression of reform tarnished the image of Soviet communism, gave credence to Western views of the cold war as a struggle between tyranny and freedom

USSR vs. China

• Sharp opposition between the USSR and China• Territorial disputes, ideological differences, rivalry for

communist leadership• 1960: the USSR withdrew Soviet advisers and

technicians from China• China developed its own nuclear weapons• USSR and China were close to war by the late 1960s• China went to war against a communist Vietnam in

1979• World communism reached its greatest extent in the

1970s

End of the Communist Era• The communist era ended

rapidly and peacefully between the late 1970s and 1991.

• China: Mao Zedong died in 1976 the CCP gradually abandoned Maoist socialism

• Europe: popular movements overthrew communist governments in 1989

• USSR suffered political disintegration on Christmas Day, 1991

Economic Failure of Communism• Communist states couldn’t catch up economically• Soviet economy was stagnant• Failures were known around the world• Economic failure limited military capacity

Moral Failure of Communism• Stalin’s Terror and the gulag • Mao’s Cultural Revolution• Near-genocide in Cambodia - Pol Pot• All happened in a global climate that embraced

democracy and human rights

China: Abandoning Communism• China: Abandoning Communism and Maintaining the Party• Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1976 relaxed censorship,

released political prisoners, dismantled collectivized farming system

• China opened itself to the world economy result: stunning economic growth and new prosperity

• Generated massive corruption among officials, urban inequality, pollution, and inequality between coast and interior

• Chinese Communist Party has kept its political monopoly• Brutal crushing of democracy movement in late 1980sTiananmen

Square massacre• China is now a “strange and troubled hybrid” that combines

nationalism, consumerism, and new respect for ancient traditions

The Soviet Union – Collapse of Communism• Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary

in mid-1980s• Launched economic reform program

(perestroika, or “restructuring”) in 1987 and was met with heavy resistance

• Gorbachev responded with glasnost (“openness”) to greater cultural and intellectual freedoms in an effort to end the deep distrust between society and state

• Glasnost revealed what a mess the USSR was (crime, prostitution, suicide, corruption, etc.) the extent of Stalin’s atrocities was uncovered, new openness to religious expression, ending of government censorship of culture

• Democratization—free elections in 1989• Move to end the cold war by making unilateral

military cuts, negotiating arms control with United States

Collapse of the USSR• Gorbachev’s reforms collapse of the USSR• Planned economy dismantled before a market-based system could develop• New freedoms more strident demands• Subordinate states demanded autonomy or independence• Gorbachev refused to use force to crush the protesters• Eastern European states broke free from USSR-sponsored communism• Conservatives attempted a coup (August 1991) coup collapsed within three days,

due to popular resistance• Fifteen new and independent states emerged from the breakup of the USSR

Shrinking Communist World• By 2000, the communist world had shrunk considerably.• Communism had lost its dominance completely in the USSR

and Eastern Europe• China had mostly abandoned communist economic policies• Vietnam and Laos remained officially communist but

pursued Chinese-style reforms• Cuba: economic crisis in the 1990s, began to allow small

businesses and private food markets• North Korea is the most unreformed and Stalinist

communist state left• International tensions remain only in East Asia and the

Caribbean