Page 55 - Encyclopedia Of World History

communism and socialism 405

Of course, we do not want socialism in Latin America to be an imitation
or a copy. It must be a heroic creation.We must inspire Indo-American
socialism with our own reality, our own language. That is a mission
worthy of a new generation. • José Carlos Mariátegui (1928)

reducing state control over the economy and permitting allowed the flowering of more democratic political sys-
unprecedented freedom of expression, backfired badly. tems. Despite the continued dominance of Communist
His reforms sent the economy spiraling downward and parties in China, Cuba,Vietnam, and North Korea, expec-
stimulated nationalist and anti-Communist movements tations of a socialist future had largely disappeared every-
that led to the complete disintegration of the country where and the Communist phenomenon in world history
itself in 1991 and the repudiation of its Communist had ended.
Party. In China, the Communist Party retained power but
Robert W. Strayer
abandoned many Communist economic policies during
the 1980s and 1990s, ending collectivized agriculture, See also Cold War; Comintern; Eastern Europe; Lenin,
permitting massive foreign investment, and allowing Vladimir; Revolution—China; Revolution—Cuba; Rev-
many private or semiprivate businesses to operate freely. olutions, Communist; Russian-Soviet Empire; Stalin,
These reforms sparked an enormous boom in the Chi- Joseph
nese economy that contrasted sharply with the economic
disasters that accompanied the disintegration of the
Further Reading
Soviet Union.
Chang, J. (1991). Wild swans: Three daughters of China. New York:
Scholars continue to debate the reasons for the quite
Anchor Books.
sudden end of the Communist era in world history. In Chen,Y.-T. (1980). The dragon’s village:An autobiographical novel of rev-
large measure, the fundamental failure of Communism olutionary China. New York: Penguin Books.
Chukovskaya, L. (1999). Sofia Petrovna. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Uni-
was economic. By the 1980s, it was apparent that the versity Press.
economies of major Communist countries were stagnat- Dommen, A. J. (2001) The Indochinese experience of the French and the
Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-
ing, clearly unable to compete effectively with the more
nam. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
dynamic economies of the capitalist West.This perception Ferdinand, P. (1991). Communist regimes in comparative perspective. Sav-
drove the reform process in both the Soviet Union and age, MD: Barnes and Noble Books.
Fitzpatrick, S. (1982) The Russian revolution, 1917–1932. Oxford, UK:
China. A further factor was the erosion of belief. An ear- Oxford University Press.
lier idealism about the potential for building socialism Fowkes, B. (1993). The rise and fall of Communism in eastern Europe.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
had largely vanished amid the horrors of Stalinism and
Grass, J., Corrin, J., & Kort, M. (1997). Modernization and revolution in
Maoism, replaced, especially in the U.S.S.R., by a self- China. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
seeking cynicism. Heng, L., & Shapiro, J. (1983). Son of the revolution. New York: Vintage
Books.
The collapse of Communism, like its revolutionary Hinton, W. (1984). Shenfan: The continuing revolution in a Chinese vil-
beginnings, had global implications. It marked the end of lage. New York: Random House.
Lawrence, A. (1998). China under Communism. New York: Routledge.
the Cold War, which had dominated international life in
MacFarquhar, R. (1997). The politics of China:The eras of Mao and Deng.
the second half of the twentieth century and had threat- New York: Cambridge University Press.
ened a nuclear holocaust. As the bipolar structure of the Meisner, M. (1999). Mao’s China and after. New York: Free Press.
Perez-Stable, M. (1998). Cuban revolution: Origins, course, and legacy.
Cold War era faded away, the United States emerged as New York: Oxford University Press.
the world’s single superpower, bringing with it new Read, C. (2001). The making and breaking of the Soviet system. New York:
Palgrave.
charges of an American global empire in the making. Fur-
Rosenberg,W. G., & Young, M. (1982). Transforming Russia and China:
thermore, the end of Communism signaled the closure of Revolutionary struggle in the twentieth century. New York: Oxford Uni-
a century-long global debate about socialism and capi- versity Press.
Spence, J. (1999). The search for modern China. NewYork:W.W. Norton.
talism as distinct and rival systems. Market economies Strayer, R. (1998). Why did the Soviet Union collapse? Armonk, NY: M.
and capitalist ideologies had triumphed, at least tem- E. Sharpe.
Suny, R. G. (1998). The Soviet experiment. New York: Oxford University
porarily. In Eastern Europe and more tentatively in the
Press.
former Soviet Union, the demise of Communism also Ward, C. (1993). Stalin’s Russia. London: Edward Arnold.