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Chapter 22:
The Rise and Fall of World Communism
Global
Communism
An Overview
* Modern communism evolved to its fullest in the nineteenth century.
* This was inspired by Karl Marx.
*Russia was the first country to undergo an uncompromising revolution.
* The Russian Empire was renamed after its 1917 revolution to the Soviet Union to identify themselves as Communist
Marxist Theory
Communism also referred to as a final stage of historical development when social equality and collective living would be most fully developed ,wholly without private property.(Socialism was an intermediate stage along the way to that final goal)
Communism
In the 1970s
1/3 of the worlds population lived in societies governed by communist regimes
In the 1970s
MOST significant country was the Soviet Union
LARGEST country was China
Not only in those two places did communism existed.
Not only in those two places did communism existed.
* It was introduced to Eastern Europe (World War II)
*In addition, Ho Chi Minh, leader of Vietnam followed a specialist vision and vietnamese nationalism as it battled Japenese, French, and American invaders and established a communist world in the country.
*The victory spreaded to the Laos and Cambodia where they fully became a communist in the late 1970s.
*Fidel Castro led a revolutionary nationalist movement against a repressive and American-backed government in Cuba (1959 he comitted to communism and create an alliance with the Soviet Union)
* Afghanistan in 1979 (Soviet gave military support)
WW II
Ho Chin Min
Fidel Castro
Afghanistan
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*These places all shared common ideology
*The cold war decades, all the communist country joined together in a military alliance to counter the threat from the Western capitialist countries of the NATO alliance.
* In the 1950 the two biggest communist (China and Soviet Union) had a Treaty of Friendship which threatened the west in to fear.
China and Soviet Union
Comparing Revolutions as a path to Communism
The Revolutions
* The twentieth-century upheavals also involved vast peasant upheaveals in the countryside and an educated leadership with roots in the cities.
* All Revolutions (French , Russian, and Chinese) found their vision of the good society in a moderning future, not in some nostalgic vision of the past.
* Communist revolutions were organized by well supported parties guided by marxist theory.
Russia: Revolution in a Single Year
*Communist came to power on the back of a revolutionary upheaval that took place within a single year, 1917.
* Immense pressure of World War I went very bad for the Russians ( the society exploded)
*People protested, organized demonstrations, published newspapers, and plotted revolutions.
* February 1917, Tsar Nichalas II had lost almost all support and was forced to abdicate the throne, thus ending the Romanov dynasty
Tsar Nicholas II
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*Major industrial centers open up due to the ending of the dynasty.
*Trade was opened
*This was a social revolution and it quickly demonstrated the inadequacy of the Provisional Government
*Bolsheviks, a small socialist party leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov leaded them out of World War I
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
China: A prolonged Revolutionary Struggle
*Communism triumphed in the ancient land of china in 1949, thirty years after the Russian Revolution
* The Chinese imperiaal system had collapsed in 1911, under the pressure of foriegn imperialism, its own inadequacies, and mounting internal opposition.
* The ideas of karl Marx were barely known hereuntil 1921.
* The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
The CCP
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*Chinese communists increasingly looked to the countrys peasants villages for support.
*Chinese peasants did not rise up spontaneously aganst their landlords, as Russian peasants have.
* Mao Zedong, the son of a properous Chinese peasant family and a professional revolutionary since the early 1920s, emerged as the partys leader.
* The CCP frontally addressed both of China's major problems- foriegn imperialism and peasant exploitation.It expressed Chinese nationalism as well as a demand for radical social change.
Mao Zedong
Building Socialism in Two Countries
Building Socialism in Two Countries
Building Socialism in Two Countries
Once they came to power the Communist partis of the Soviet Union and China began the construction of socialist societies.
-In the Soviet Union this undertaking happened under the leadership of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s.
-The Chinese effort took place during the 1950s and 1960s under Mao Zedong.
-The communist sought a distinctly socialist modernity.
-They embraced many of the material values of Western capatalist societies and were similar to the new nations of the twentieth centuries.
-Mass organizations for women,workers, students, and various professional groups opertaed under party control, with none of the independence that characterized civil society in the west.
-Chinese revolutionaries had actually governed parts of their huge countries for decades, gaining experience that the new soviet rulers altogether lacked.
Communist Feminism
Communist Feminism
- Communist countries pioneered forms of women's liberation that were adopted in the west.
-In the Soviet Union, where a small women's movement had taken shape in pre-World War I Russia, the new communist government almost immediately issued a series of laws and decrees regarding women.
-In 1919, the party set p a special organization called Zhentodel, whose radical leaders, all women, pushed a decidely feminist agenda in the 1920s.
-Similar politics took shape in communist China. The Marriage Law of 1950 was a direct attack on patriarchal and Confucian traditions.
-In neither the Soviet Union or China did the communist party undertake a direct attack on male domination within the family.
Socialism in the Countryside
Socialism in the Countryside
- in their efforts to build socialism, both the Soviet Union and Chian first expropriated landlords estates and redistributed that land on a much more equitable basis to the peasantry.
-In Russia, the peasants had spontaneously redistributed the land among themselves.
-In China after 1949, trained land reform teams mobilixed the poorer peasants in thousands of seperate villages.
- A second and more distinctly social age of rural reform osught to end private property in land by collectivizing agriculture.
-China pushed collectivization even further than the Soviet Union did during the Great Leap Foward in the late 1950s.
Communism and Industrial Development
- both the Soviet Union and China defined indusrialization as a fundamental task of their regimes.
-Though strongly anticapatalist, communist everywhere were ardent modernizers.
-When The Chinesecommunist began their activ eindustrialization efforts in the early 1950s they followed the model pioneered by the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and 1930s.
-The Soviet Union constructed the foundations of an industrial society in the 1930s that proved itself i the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
-Both countries acheived massive imporvements in thei literacy rates and educational opportunities.
-A highly privilaged group of state and party leaders emerged int he Stalin era and largely remained the unchallenged ruling class of the country until the 1900s.
-The Great Leap Foward marked Mao's first response to these ditortions of Chinese socialism.
Communism and Industrial Development
The Search for Enemies
The Search for Enemies
Despite their tolalitarian tendancies the communist societies of the Soviet Union and China were laced with conflict.
-Under both Stalin and Mao, these conflicts rupted in search for enemies that disfigured both societies.
- In the Soviet Union, the search for enemies occured under the clear control of the state.
-In China it became a much more public process escaping the control of the leadership, particularly during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1969.
-Mao called for rebellion against the Communist Party itself
-Both the Soviet terror and the Chinese Cultural Revolution badly discredited the very idea of socialism and contributed to the ultimate collapse of the communist experiment at the end of the century.
East vs. West:
A
Global Divide and a Cold War
Military Conflict and Cold War
• Communist regimes were a big part in the evolutional changes in societies that they governed.
• Because of the threat of Nazi Germany there where made allies by the soviet union, Britain, and the united states but few years later they went back to going their own ways and this time was called the cold war.
• There were many things in the cold war that changed allies one of them was the Chinese and the U.S fighting for three years (1950-1953) this was caused by the invasion North Korea had on South Korea.
• The Vietnamese ended up also fighting against each other and they ended up untiring there country under communist control by 1975.
Nuclear Standooff and Third World Rivalry
• Also in Afghanistan there were conflicts between power because a Marxist party had taken over power in 178 which then caused a fight with the soviet union and Afghanistan they ended up noticing there limits of power and then the soviet union had retreated and stopped fighting which this fight had been a whole decade.
• Another event that had occurred was the soviet union trying to take over Cuba by deploying nuclear tipped soviet missiles which ended up leading to a nuclear exchange which included the soviet union removing there missiles and never again being able to bomb that island.
• There was then an agreement that it would not be right to use such destructive weapons so they agreed on not being able to use them.
Superpower of the West, 1945-1975
• The U.S was the only major industrial society to escape the physical devastation of war in its own soil.
• The U.S ended up having lots of power because they had increases there capital from 19 billion to 81 billion which was a drastic change.
• There was then a invasion that the Soviet Union had done to their supposed to be ally which was Hungary (1956-1957) and Czechoslovakia (1968).this was because they were fearing that the reform might of lead to contagious defections from the communist.
• By the late 1960s china had developed a modest nuclear capability and the two countries were very close from having a war. But the U.S came and reduced there tension by creating a relationship with china by signing the USSR.
Comparing Paths to the End of Communism
Following the timeline
Following the timeline
During the great 3 periods of communism a negative attitude twards communism from the west starts the dramatic fall of the whole idea of an aristocratic goverment . Commuism a political theory created from Karl Marx. He advocated a class war hoping and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. This system was adopted by the countries known today China, Russia and French Indo Chinese societys alike with a common idea that was soon disregarded because of the west and thus commenced the end of the communist experement.
Periods 1,2 China Europe
Act / period 1 of the communist experement in China began in the 1970's fallowing the death of the reveloutionary leader Mao Zedong in 1976. A goverment communion took place and disbanded a great portion of Maoist communismin brand of their oligarchy of a goverment. Period 2 which took place in Europe and being given the name miracle year of 1989 as many movements destroyed communism. The end of the movement ended with Russia in 1991.
Getting our act together
Aside from the given periods 1,2 the general failures were reconized were reconiozed and measured by there standards of them selves and the west given that communism may have started off as good but not being able to be caught up to the modern society the capital rivals proved to be a great down fall in Russia's communism nation and others general lack of the un updated system kept the people living in poverty.
Act 3
Act 3 ended leaving scars on the countries that used communism by leaving them in great poverty keeping them behind. Cambodia chose superiority to capitalism leaving th eleft over known globalpolitical culture. The aproaching cultural genocide in Cambodia forcing change on the country including the whole of French Indo China. Western powers were to come in and try to stop any form of comunism and force upon them democratic ways the the world was already adopting. this ended the comunist experement.
Reflections:
To Judge or Not to Judge
Summary
Us students and scholars are all alike and stand somewhere. We are members of a particular culture, have values and outlooks of the world that affects the way we think about the past. And so it is better to recognize and acknowledge these limitations . Which is why making judegments is a way of connecting with the past.
Making Judgements in the Communist World
Making Judgements arises strongly in any examination of the communist phenomenon. Within the communist world, even modest criticism was usually regarded as counterrevolutionary and it was forbidden which would lead to harsh punishments. However, few observers were neutral in their assessment of the communist experiment.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Communism
Communism brought hope to millions of people by addressing the manifest injustices fo the past; by providing new opputunities for women and lower classes; by promoting rapid industrial development; and by anding Western Domination. However, Communism was also responsible for countless crimes, numerous killed and wrongly imprisoned; massive famine; violation of human rights; lives uprooted and
distorted by efforts to achieve the impossible.
Big Picture
Questions
Question #1
What was the appeal of communism, in terms of both its promise and its achievements? To what extent did it fulfill that promise?
Answer # 1
• Communism promised a fairer distribution of society’s wealth among the whole population; modernization and industrialization of the economy; and equality of all citizens, including women.
• As evidence that it fulfilled these promises, communism can point to the redistribution and then the collectivization of land; the impressive industrialization of communist countries; and a substantial improvement in women’s rights.
• However, it must be noted that these accomplishments came at the cost of the creation of new elite classes.
Question # 2
Why did the communist experiment, which was committed to equality and a humane socialism, generate such oppressive, brutal, and totalitarian regimes?
Question # 2
Answer # 2
• An elastic concept of enemy came to include not only surviving remnants of the old prerevolutionary elites but also, and more surprisingly, high-ranking members and longtime supporters of the Communist Party who had allegedly been corrupted by bourgeois ideas. Refracted through the lens of Marxist thinking, these people became class enemies who had betrayed the revolution and were engaged in a vast conspiracy, often linked to foreign imperialists, to subvert the socialist enterprise and restore capitalism.
• In an effort to combat capitalism and instill socialist values in society, communist regimes promoted the Communist Party’s penetration of all levels of society in ways that some Western scholars have called totalitarian. As part of this process, the state came to control almost the entire economy; ensured that the arts, education, and the media conformed to approved ways of thinking; and controlled mass organizations for women, workers, students, and various professional groups.
Question # 3
What is distinctive about twentieth-century communist industrialization and modernization compared to the same processes in the West a century earlier?
Answer # 3
• The industrialization of communist countries was far more centrally planned than were the same processes in the West.
• The capital and the factories were owned by the state in the communist world but not in the West.
• The Communist Party controlled industrialization in communist countries, whereas no political party controlled this process in the West.
• Unlike the West, a wealthy industrialist class did not emerge in communist countries, and the equivalent of the middle class in the West was dominated primarily by bureaucrats and the technological elite.
Question # 4
What was the global significance of the Cold War?
Answer # 4
• The nuclear arms race that it spawned brought the threat of annihilation to the whole planet.
• Regional wars and revolutionary insurrections, supported or opposed by one of the cold war superpowers, had an impact on regions across the globe.
• In the postcolonial world, competition between cold war powers led to new relationships between third world countries and the global powers in which the United States and the Soviet Union both courted developing nations while those developing countries sought to define their relations with the superpowers to their advantage
Question # 5
“The end of communism was as revolutionary as its beginning.” Do you agree with this statement?
Answer # 5
• This question has no right answer and depends in large part upon how students define “revolutionary.”
• To advocate the revolutionary nature of the end of communism, students could point to the profound changes that took place within communist countries following the abandonment of communism, and argue that those changes were just as revolutionary for people living in those communist systems as the communist revolution was for those who lived in earlier capitalist systems.
• To advocate the less revolutionary nature of the end of communism, students might emphasize that communist societies were in reality merely adopting aspects of their capitalist counterparts elsewhere in the world, and therefore the “revolutionary” nature of the transition away from communism was less pronounced than the original transition to a never-before-tried communist organization.
Question # 6
In what different ways did the Soviet Union and China experience communism during the twentieth century?
Answer # 6
• While many aspects of their experiences were similar, one critical difference was that, in the Soviet Union, the growth of a privileged bureaucratic and technological elite was largely accepted, whereas in China under Mao Zedong there were recurrent attempts, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, to combat these tendencies and revive the revolutionary spirit.
• As part of this process, Mao pushed several reforms, including the promotion of small-scale rural industrialization over urban industrialization, of widespread technical education, and of an immediate transition to communism in the “people’s communes.”
• The experiences of the Soviet Union and China also diverged dramatically after the mid-1970s, when Soviet communism failed to reform and ultimately collapsed completely, while Chinese communism reformed more slowly and without completely collapsing.
QUIZ
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Question # 5
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Credits:
Shannon Maylor,
Nishal Narain,
Bianca Blanc,
Yalin Toledo,
Carlos Holguin,
Aransevia Jayden