Chapter twenty-two: The Rise and Fall of World Communism

Global Communism had its roots in nineteenth-century socialism, inspired by Karl Marx. In the 1970s Global communism’s height, almost one-third of the world’s population was governed by communist regimes. The ideology based on Marxism, inspired the 1917 Russian Revolution. The 1917 Russia’s revolution was sudden, and explosive. Deep-seated social revolution soon showed the inadequacy of the provisional Government, Bolsheviks seized power in a coup (October 1917), for 25 years, the new USSR was the only communist country. Chinese Communist Party was founded 1921. It had a formidable enemy in the Nationalist Party, which ruled China after 1928. The Chinese Communist was driven from the cities, but it developed a new strategy that addressed both foreign imperialism and peasant exploitation under Mao Zedong.  Finally, In 1949 Communism won in China after a long struggle.

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. Communist countries pioneered “women’s liberation” 1919: USSR’s Communist Party set up Zhenotdel (Women’s Department), moreover communist China also worked for women’s equality, and there was a limitations on communist women’s liberation.

By 2000, the communist world had shrunk considerably. First, communism had lost its dominance completely in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Second, China had mostly abandoned communist economic policies. Third, Vietnam and Laos remained officially communist but pursued Chinese-style reforms. Fourth, Cuba: economic crisis in the 1990s, began to allow small businesses and private food markets. Fifth, North Korea is the most unreformed and Stalinist communist state left, sixth, international tensions remain only in East Asia and the Caribbean.