Page 319 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1620 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Norton, M. B. (1980). Liberty’s daughters. Boston: Little, Brown. Caribbean Fidel Castro led a revolutionary nationalist
Wood, G. S. (1991). The radicalism of the American Revolution. New movement against a repressive and U.S.-backed regime in
York: Vintage Books.
Cuba and after coming to power in 1959 moved rapidly
toward Communism and an alliance with the Soviet
Union. Finally, a shaky Communist regime took power in
Afghanistan in 1979, propped up briefly only by massive
Revolutions, Soviet military support.At its maximum extent during the
1970s, Communism encompassed about one-third of the
Communist world’s population and created a deep division in the

world community.
uring the twentieth century Communist parties
Dcame to power in a number of countries and in a Communist and
number of ways. In Russia (1917) and China (1949), Democratic Revolutions
Communist parties seized power as part of vast revolu- The great Communist revolutions of the twentieth cen-
tionary upheavals that swept away long-established soci- tury, especially those of Russia and China, drew upon the
eties and political systems. In sparsely populated “liberal” or “democratic” revolutions of the eighteenth cen-
Mongolia an independence movement against Chinese tury, such as the American (1776) and particularly the
control turned for help to the Soviet Union in the early French (1789). Communist revolutionaries, like their
1920s and subsequently established a Communist state French counterparts, believed that violent upheavals
closely allied to the Soviet Union. After World War II could open the way to new and better worlds con-
Communist regimes were established in several countries structed by human hands, but they worried lest their rev-
of central and eastern Europe, largely imposed by Soviet olutions end up in a military dictatorship like that of
military forces that had liberated these countries—eastern Napoleon after the French Revolution. Like the French
Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Revolution, those of Russia and China also involved vast
Bulgaria—from Nazi rule. The local Communist parties peasant upheavals in the countryside, an educated urban
that the Soviets installed in power initially had some pop- leadership, the overthrow of old ruling classes, the dis-
ular support deriving from their commitment to reform possession of landed aristocracies, the end of ancient
and social justice and from their role in resistance to the monarchies, and hostility to established religion. The
Nazis. However, in Yugoslavia and Albania Communist Communist revolutions in Russia and China, like the
parties genuinely independent of the Soviet Union also French,“devoured their own children.” All three turned on
came to power with considerable popular support. some of their most faithful followers: in the French Ter-
After Japan’s defeat in World War II, its Korean colony ror (a period of the revolution characterized by execu-
was partitioned, with the northern half coming under tions of presumed enemies of the state); in Communist
Soviet and therefore Communist control. In Vietnam a leader Joseph Stalin’s purges in the Soviet Union; and in
much more locally based Communist and nationalist Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong’s Cultural Rev-
movement under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh battled olution (1966–1976).
Japanese, French, and later U.S. invaders and established However, the Communist revolutions were distinctive
Communist control first throughout the northern half of as well. They were executed by highly organized parties
the country and after 1974 throughout the whole coun- guided by a Marxist ideology; they were committed to an
try. The victory of the Vietnamese Communists spilled industrial future; they pursued economic as well as polit-
over into neighboring Laos and Cambodia, where Com- ical equality; and they sought the abolition of private
munist parties took power during the mid-1970s. In the property. In doing so they mobilized, celebrated, and