Chapter 21

Global Communism
  • jokes from Soviet-era highlight hypocrisy of the communist system
    • reflect growing disbelief that the communist system could deliver promised equality and abundance
    • the collapse of the communist regime greeted by many as a promise of liberation
  • almost everywhere communist regimes gained power through war or revolution
    • communist regimes transformed societies
    • provided major political/ideological threat to the West
      • Cold War between 1946-1991
      • scramble for influence in Global South between the U.S and USSR
      • a massive nuclear arms race
    • then it collapsed
  • communism had roots in the 19th-century socialism inspired by Karl Marx
    • European socialists believed they could achieve goals through the democratic process
    • 20th-century "communists" advocated revolution
    • "communism" in Marxist theory is the final stage of historical development
  • 1970's: height of communism, almost one-third of the world's population governed by the communist regime
    • most important communist societies were USSR and China
    • communism arrived in eastern Europe, Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, and Afghanistan
    • none of these had industrial capitalism that Marx deemed necessary for socialist revolution
    • communist parties took root in other areas
  • various communist regimes shared common ground
    • common ideology, based on Marxism
    • inspired by the 1917 Russian Revolution
    • during the Cold War, Warsaw Pact created a military alliance of eastern European states and USSR
      • council of Mutual Economic Assistance tied eastern European economies to USSR's economy
      • 1950: Treaty of Friendship between USSR and China
    • relations between communist countries marked by rivalry and hostility
Revolutions as a Path to Communism
  • communist revolutions drew on a mystique of the French Revolution
    • ousted aristocracies and old ruling class
    • peasant rebellions; educated leadership
    • French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all looked to modernizing future, rid any nostalgia of past
  • important differences
    • communist revolutions made by organized parties guided by Marxist ideology
    • middle classes among victims of communist upheavals, where they were chief beneficiaries of the French Revolution
    • communist revolutions carried an explicit message of gender equality
  • 1917 Russan Revolution was sudden and explosive
    • Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate throne Feb. 1917
    • massive social upheaval
  • deep-seated social revolution soon showed the inadequacy of Provisional Governments
    • wouldn't/couldn't meet the demands of revolutionary masses
    • refused to withdraw from WWI
    • left opening for rising of radical groups
    • the most effective opposition groups were Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ulyanov
  • Bolsheviks seized power in a coup in October 1917
    • claimes to act on behalf of "soviets"
    • 3-year civil war followed: Bolsheviks vs a variety of enemies
    • 1921: Bolsheviks won
  • during the Civil War, Bolsheviks:
    • regimented economy
    • suppressed nationalist rebellions
    • committed atrocities
    • integrated lower-class men into the Red Army and local governments
    • claimed to defend Russia from imperialists and internal exploiters
    • strengthened tendencies toward authoritarianism
  • for 25 years, new USSR only communist country
    • expansion into eastern Europe because of Soviet occupation at end of WWII
    • Stalin sought buffer of "friendly" governments in eastern Europe; imposed communism from outside
    • local communist parties had some domestic support
    • in Yugoslavia, a communist government emerged with little Soviet help
  • 1949: communism won in China
    • 1911: Chinese imperial system collapsed
    • 1921: Chinese Communist Party (CCP) founded
  • CCP grew immensely over the next 25 years and transformed strategy under Mao Zedong
  • a formidable enemy in the Guomindang (Kuomintang - Nationalist Party), which ruled China after 1928
    • Chiang Kai-shek led Guomindang
    • Guomindang promoted modern development in cities
    • countryside remained impoverished
  • CCP driven from cities developed a new strategy
    • looked to peasants for support, not city workers
    • gradually won respect and support of peasants
  • recruit women made reforms in controlled regions
    • outlawed arranged marriages
    • made divorce easier
    • gave women the right to vote and own property
    • women and men receive equal shares during land reform initiatives
    • women's associations promoted
    • male reactions led to modifications
  • given boost by Japan's invasion of China
    • reputation for resisting Japanese occupation
    • more effective than Guomindang
  • CCP addressed both foreign imperialism and peasant exploitation
    • expressed Chinese nationalism and demand for social change
    • reputation for honesty, unlike Guomindang
Building Socialism
  • 1920's and 1930's: Joseph Stalin built a socialist society in USSR
  • 1950's and 1960's" Mao Zedong did the same in China
    • the first step: modernization and industrialization
    • a serious attack on class and gender inequalities
  • created political systems dominated by the Communist Party
    • high ranking party members were expected to exemplify socialism
    • other parties are forbidden
    • the state controlled almost the entire economy
  • China's communist conversion was an easier process than USSR
    • USSR paved the way
    • Chinese communists won the support of rural masses
    • but China had more economic problems to resolve
  • pioneered "women's liberation"
    • largely directed by state
    • USSR almost immediately declared full legal and political equality for women
    • divorce, abortion, pregnancy leave, women's work all enabled and encouraged
  • 1919: USSR's Communist Party set up Zhenotdel (Women's Department)
    • pushed feminist agenda
    • male communist officials and ordinary people opposed it
    • 1930: Stalin abolished it
  • communist China worked for women's equality
    • Marriage Law of 1950 ordered free choice of marriage, easier divorce, end of concubines and child marriage, and equal property rights for women
    • the CCP implement pro-female changes against strong opposition
    • women became more active in the workforce
  • limitations on communist women's liberation
    • 1930: Stalin declared women's question "solves"
    • no direct attack on male domination within family
    • women retained burden housework and child care and paid employment
    • few women made it into top political leadership
  • both China and Russia: communists took the land and redistributed to peasants
    • Russia: peasants took and redistributed the land themselves
    • China: land and reform team mobilized poor peasants to confront landlords
  • second stage rural reform: effort to end private property by collectivizing agriculture
    • China: 1950s collectivization largely peaceful and went further than the Soviet Union
    • USSR: 1928-1933 collectivization imposed by violence
  • industrialization as fundamental
    • end humiliating backwardness and property
    • create military strength to survive in a hostile world
  • Chin followed USSR model
    • state ownership of property
    • centralized planning (5-7 year plans)
    • priority is given to heavy industry
    • massive mobilization of resources
    • intrusive party control of the whole process
    • both experienced major economic growth
  • USSR accepted social outcomes of industrialization
  • Mao Zedong tried to combat the social effects of industrialization
    • Great Leap Forward: 1958-1960
      • promoted small-scale industrialization in rural areas
    • Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: mid-1960's
    • Cultural Revolution rejected feminism for strikingly masculine gender-neutral model
  • confidence in centralized planning
    • struggle against nature led to immense environmental damage
  • paranoid lifestyle
    • fear communists corrupted by bourgeois ideas; became class enemies
    • fear of vast conspiracy to restore capitalism
  • USSR: The Terror (Great Purge) in the 1930s
    • millions of Russians, tens of thousands of communists
    • sentenced to harsh labor camps (the gulag)
    • 1936-1941: nearly a million people executed
  • China: public process
    • 1966-1969: Cultural Revolution, escaped the control of communist leadership
    • Mao called for rebellion against Communist Party itself
    • a purge of millions of alleged capitalist sympathizers
    • Mao called in the army to avert civil war
  • Terror and Cultural Revolution discredited socialism and contributed to the eventual collapse of the communist experiment
East versus West: A Global Divide and a Cold War
  • Europe was the Cold War's first arena
    • Soviet concern for security and control in eastern Europe
    • American and British - open societies linked to the capitalist world economy
  • rival military alliances: NATO and Warsaw Pact
    • American sphere of influence: western Europe was voluntary
    • Soviet sphere of influence was imposed
    • "Iron Curtain" divided 2 spheres
  • communism spread into Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam) caused conflict
    • North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950
    • Vietnam: massive U.S. intervention in the 1960s
  • major Cold War-era conflict in Afghanistan
    • 1978: Marxist party took over power but alienated population
    • 1979-1989: Soviet military intervention led to little success
    • 1989: USSR withdrew under international pressure; Afghani communist rule collapsed
  • a battle that never happened: Cuba
    • 1959: Fidel Castro comes to power
    • naturalization of the U.S. assets provoked its hostility
    • Castro aligned with USSR
    • Cuban Missle Crisis in October 1962
  • 1949: USSR nuclear weapon success
  • massive arms race; by 1989 world had 60,000 nuclear warheads with complex delivery systems
  • 1949-1989: feared massive nuclear destruction and possible human extinction
  • both sides aware of destructive power
    • careful avoidance of nuclear provocation
    • avoidance of direct military confrontation, since it might turn into a nuclear war
  • the U.S. and USSR courted third world countries
    • the U.S. intervened Iran, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, the Congo, and elsewhere where they feared communist penetration
    • the U.S. often supported corrupt, authoritarian regimes
    • third world countries resisted being used as pawns
    • some countries like India claimes "nonalignment" status
    • some played superpowers against each other
  • the U.S. became the leader of the west against communism
    • led to creation of "imperial" presidency
    • the power was given to defense and intelligence agencies created "national security state"
    • strengthened "military-industrial" complex
  • the U.S. military effort sustained by a flourishing economy and increased middle-class society
    • the U.S. industry wasn't harmed by WWII unlike other industrial societies
    • Americans were "people of plenty"
    • the growing pace of the U.S. investment abroad
  • American pop culture spread
    • jazz, rock-and-roll, rap found foreign audiences
    • the 1990s: American movies took 70% European market
    • around 33,000 McDonald's restaurants in 119 by 2012
  • 1953: Nikita Khrushchev took power in USSR
  • 1956: denounced Stalin as criminal
  • Cold War justified Soviet emphasis on military and defense industries
  • conflicts among communist countries
    • Yugoslavia rejected Soviet domination
    • 1956: Soviet invasions of Hungary
    • 1968: Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
    • early 1980s: Poland threatened with invasion
    • brutal suppression tarnished Soviet image, gave credence to western views of cold war (tyranny vs freedom)
    • sharp opposition between USSR and China
    • 1979: China went to war against communist Vietnam
    • late 1970s: Vietnam invaded communist Laos
  • 1970s: world communism reached greatest height
Paths to the End of Communism
  • comunist era ended fast and peacefully, 1970s-1991
    • 1976: China - Mao Zedong died
    • 1989: Europe - popular movements overthrew communist governments
  • economic failure of communism
    • communist states couldn't catch up economically
    • Soviet economy was stagnant
    • economic failure limited military capacity
    • failures known worldwide
  • moral failure of communism
    • Stalin's Terror and gulag
    • Mao's Cultural Revolution
    • near-genocide in Cambodia
    • all happened in global climate that embraced democracy and human rights
  • 1976: Deng Xiaoping came to power
    • relaxed censorship
    • released 100,000 political prisoners
    • dismantled collectivised farming system
  • China: opened to world economy
    • result: economic growth and prosperity
    • massive corruption among officials, urban inequality, pollution, and coast/interior inequality
  • CCP has kept political monopoly
    • late 1980s: brutall crashing of democracy
    • Tiananmen Square massacre
  • China - "strange and troubled hybrid" that combines nationalism, consumerism, and new respect for ancient traditions
  • mid-1980s: Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary
    • 1987: launched economic reform program
    • openness to greater cultural and intellectual freedoms
      • revealed the mess of the USSR: crime, prostitution, suicide, corruption
        • extend of Stalin's atrocities incovered
        • new religious expression
        • ending of government censorship of culture
  • 1989: democratization and free elections
  • ending of Cold War by making unilateral military cuts, negotiating arms control with the U.S.
  • Gorbachev's reforms led to the collapse of USSR
    • planned economy dismantled before the market-based system could develop
    • new freedoms led to more strident demands
    • subordinate states demanded greater autonomy/independence
    • Gorbachev refused using force to crush protestors
  • eastern European states broke free
  • August 1991: conservatives attempted coup
  • 15 new and independent states emerged from the breakup of USSR
  • 2000: communist world shrunk
    • communism lost complete dominance in USSR and eastern Europe
    • China mostly abandoned communist economic policies
    • Vietnam and Laos remained officially communist - pursued Chinese-style reforms
    • the 1990s: Cuba - economic crisis, began to allow small businesses, private food markets, tourism
    • North Korea is the most unreformed and Stalinist communist state
    • international tensions remain in eastern Asia and the Caribbean

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