Chapter 22

I. Beginning

A. The Berlin Wall was breached on November 9, 1989.

1. built in 1961 to seal off East Berlin from West Berlin

2. became a major symbol of communist tyranny

B. Communism had originally been greeted by many as a promise of liberation.

1. communist regimes had transformed their societies

2. provided a major political/ideological threat to the Western world

a. the cold war (1946–1991)

b. scramble for influence in the third world between the United States and the USSR

c. massive nuclear arms race

3. and then it collapsed

II. Global Communism

A. Communism had its roots in nineteenth-century socialism, inspired by Karl Marx.

1. most European socialists came to believe that they could achieve their goals through the democratic process

2. those who defined themselves as “communists” in the twentieth century advocated revolution

3. “communism” in Marxist theory is the final stage of historical development, with full development of social equality and collective living

B. At communism’s height in the 1970s, almost one-third of the world’s population was governed by communist regimes.

1. the most important communist societies by far were the USSR and China

2. communism also came to Eastern Europe, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Afghanistan

3. none of these countries had the industrial capitalism that Marx thought necessary for a socialist revolution

4. communist parties took root in many other areas

C. The various expressions of communism shared common ground:

1. a common ideology, based on Marxism

a. an international revolutionary movement was more important than national loyalties

2. inspiration of the 1917 Russian Revolution

a. USSR provided aid and advice to aspiring revolutionaries elsewhere through Comintern (Communist International)

3. during the cold war, the Warsaw Pact created a military alliance of Eastern European states and the USSR

a. Council on Mutual Economic Assistance tied Eastern European economies to the USSR’s

b. Treaty of Friendship between the USSR and China (1950)

4. but relations between communist countries were also marked by rivalry and hostility, sometimes war

III. Comparing Revolutions as a Path to Communism

A. Communist revolutions drew on the mystique of the French Revolution.

1. got rid of landed aristocracies and the old ruling classes

2. involved peasant upheavals in the countryside; educated leadership in the cities

3. French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all looked to a modernizing future, eschewed any nostalgia for the past

4. but there were important differences:

a. communist revolutions were made by highly organized parties guided by a Marxist ideology

b. the middle classes were among the victims of communist upheavals, whereas middle classes were chief beneficiaries of French Revolution