Week Twelve: Chapter 21

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  Global Communism
  
  
  • Modern communist found its political and philosophical roots in the 19th century European socialism, inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx
  • Marxist theory, communism also was the final stage of historical dev when social equality and collective living would develop
  • Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc. didn't achieve the kind of advanced industrial capitalism that Karl Marx had viewed as a prerequisite for revolution and socialism
  • After WW2 communist parties play an important role in Greece, France, and Italy
  • Communist ideology derived from European Marxism though it was substantially modified
  • During Cold war, Warsaw Pact gathered the Soviet Union & European communist states in a military alliance designed to counter threat Western capitalist countries of NATO alliance
  
  Russia: Revolution in a Single Year
  
  
  • Communist came to power in 1917 
  • Uprise in activist, many of them socialist
  • Feb 1917 Tsar Nicholas II lost support & forced to abdicate the throne ended Romanov dynasty 
  • Non-Russian nationalist demanded greater autonomy or even independence 
  • Lenin believed Russian, despite its industrial backwardness, was ready for a socialist revolution that would spark further revolutions in more developed countries of Europe
  •  During the civil war the bolsheviks harshly regimented the economy, seized grain from the angry peasants, suppressed nationalist rebellions, and perpetrated bloody atrocities
  • After the civil war they renamed the country Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or Soviet Union
  • Soviet Union remained a communist island in a capitalist sea for the next 25 yrs
  
  China: A Prolonged Revolutionary Struggle
  
  
  • Communism triumphed in the ancient land of China in 1949
  • Karl Marx were barely known in China in the 20th century 
  • 1921 Chinese Communist Party CPP founded, aimed at organizing country's working class
  •  Guomindang (Nationalist Party) who governed after 1928 promoted a modern development 
  • Women's associations enrolled hundreds and promoted literacy 
  • Japans brutal invasion of China gave the CCP a decisive opening, that attack destroyed Guomindang's control over the country
  • Guomindang seemed to be more interested in limiting communism than fighting the Japanese
  • CCP reduced rents, taxes, and interest payments for peasants: taught literacy to adults and mobilized women for the struggle
  • CCP addressed Chinas major problems, foreign imperialism and peasant exploitation
  • In 1949 (4 yrs after the wars end) the Chinese communists beat the Guomindang
  
  Building Socialism
  
  
  • Communist parties set the construction of socialist societies
  • Building socialism means the modernization & industrialization of their backward society
  • In 1917 Russian Bolsheviks faced a hostile capitalist world alone
  • Chinese communist established Soviet Union as an ally
  • Chinas population was much greater, industrial base far smaller, and availability for agriculture was far more limited than in the Soviet Union 
  
  Communist Feminism
  
  
  • Earliest & most revolutionary actions of the new communist regime were efforts to liberate & mobilize women 
  • Declared full legal and political equality for women
  • Similar policies occurred in China: Marriage Law of 1950 allowed for equal property laws between man and women, free choice in marriage, easy divorce and widows could remarry
  • By 1978 50% of agriculture workers & 38% non agricultural laborers were women
  • Women rarely appeared on the top political leadership of China or Soviet Union
  
  Socialism in the Countryside
  
  
  • Soviet Union & China expropriated landlords' estates & redistributed land evenly with peasants 
  • In China land, tools, houses and money were redistributed to the poorer members of villages
  • 1 to 2 million landlords were killed by 1952
  • Collective farms in China were peaceful but in Soviet Union they were violent and extensive
  • Russian peasants slaughtered & consumed thousands of animals rather than give them to collectives: Stalin singled them out, killed them or deported them to rural areas
  • Created a famine which killed 5 million from starvation and malnutrition in Soviet Union
  • Chinas disruption of marketing networks & terrible weather created a massive famine: killing 20 million or more between 1959-1962, dwarfing the earlier Soviet famine
  
  Communism and Industrial Development
  
  
  • Soviet Union & China thought industrialization was fundamental 
  • Soviet Union constructed the foundations of an industrialized society that beat Nazi Germany in WW11 during the 1930s: improved living standards by the 1960s & '70s
  • Both countries increased their literary and educational opportunities
  • In the Soviet Union industrialization was centered in rural areas, and had a small elite group that remained in the ruling class, under Stalins rule
  • Chinese under Mao Zedong promoted industrialization in rural areas and had a widespread of practical technological education for all rather than relying on a small group of elites
  • The massive famine temporarily discredited Mao's radicalism 
  • The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution combated the capitalist tendencies that penetrated the highest ranks of the Communist Party
  • Cultural Revolution rejected feminism
  • Late 1980's environmental problems came about: 30% of food products were contaminated
  • 70 million people lived in cities with air pollution 5 times more the acceptable level
  
  The Search for Enemies
  
  
  • Communist societies of the Soviet Union and China were laced with conflict
  • Close to 1 million people were executed between 1936-1941
  • 4-5 million were sent to the gulag, where they were forced to work in horrendous conditions
  • Mao had become convinced that many within the Communist Party had been seduced by capitalist values of self-seeking and materialism
  • Rival Revolutionary groups soon began fighting with one another, violence erupted throughout the country and the civil war threatened China
  
  Military Conflict and the Cold War
  
  
  • The initial arena of the cold war was Europe
  • No shooting war occurred between the two sides
  • The vietnamese united their country under communist control by 1975
  • Soviet forces intervened military and were soon bogged down in a war they couldn't win
  • Revolutionary Fidel Castro came to power in 1959
  • Stalins death in 1953 secretly deployed nuclear-tipped Soviet missiles to Cuba 
  • Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba in return for an American promise not to invade the island
  
  Nuclear Standoff and Third World Rivalry
  
  
  • The Cuban missile crisis gave concrete expressions to the most novel and dangerous dimension of the cold war
  • End of WWII prompted the Soviet Union to redouble its efforts to acquire the weapons, succeeded them in 1949 
  • Delivery systems included bomber aircraft and missiles that could rapidly propel numerous warheads across whole continents and oceans
  • A single bomb is a single instant could have obliterated any major city
  • During the cold war, leaders of the two superpowers knew that in nuclear war both would lose
  • Neither superpower was able to completely dominate its purposed allies
  • Americans refused to assist Egypt in building the Aswan Dam in the mid 1950's, they then developed a close relationship with the Soviet Union
  
  The Cold War and the Superpowers
  
  
  • The need for quick and secret decision making gave rise in the U.S. to a strong or "imperial" presidency and a "national security state"
  • Sustaining this immense military effort was a flourishing U.S. economy and increasing a middle class 
  • Americans sent their capital abroad in growing amounts
  • American movies took about 70% of the market in Europe
  • In Eastern Europe, Yugoslav leaders early on had rejected Soviet domination of their internal affairs
  • Soviets and China found themselves sharply opposed, owing to territorial disputes, ideological differences and rivalry for communist leadership
  • Communist China went to war against a communist Vietnam in 1979, while Vietnam invaded a communist Cambodia in the late 1970s
  
  Paths to the End of Communism
  
  
  • Act 1: began in China during 1970s following the death of leader Mao Zedong
  • Act 2: took place in Eastern Europe in the miracle year on 1989
  • The curtain had fallen on the communist era and on the cold war as well
  • In both economic and moral terms, the communist path to the modern world was increasingly seen as a road to nowhere