Notes

Chapter 21: Revolution, Socialism, and Global Conflict: The Rise and Fall of World Communism, 1917–Present
I. Global Communism
A. Marxism’s path to the future
B. Communist revolutions in agrarian societies
C. Communist parties outside of communist regimes
D. Internationalism
E. Conflict among communist states

II. Revolutions as a Path to Communism
A. Russia: Revolution in a Single Year
1. Romanov collapse in WWI, February 1917
2. Continued chaos under the Provisional Government
3. Bolsheviks seize power, October 1917
4. Lenin’s revision of Marxism
5. Civil War, 1918–1921
6. Stalin in Eastern Europe after WWII
B. China: A Prolonged Revolutionary Struggle
1. CCP not founded until 1921
2. Conflict with Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang
3. Chinese peasant villages
4. Mao Zedong
5. Appeal to women
6. Japanese invasion, 1937–1945
7. CCP triumphant in 1949

III. Building Socialism
A. Communist Feminism
1. Soviet state enacts reforms for women
2. Zhenotdel, 1919–1930
3. “Women can do anything”
4. Limits
B. Socialism in the Countryside
1. Peasants seize land in Russia, 1917
2. “Speak bitterness meetings” in China, 1949–1952
3. Collectivization and famines
C. Communism and Industrial Development
1. Anticapitalist but ardently pro-modernizing
2. Planned economies with an emphasis on industry
3. Urbanization, exploitation of the countryside, and rise of privileged bureaucrats and technocrats
4. Stalin accepted social changes, Mao did not
5. Great Leap Forward, 1958–1960
6. Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969
7. Environmental consequences
D. The Search for Enemies
1. Old regime remnants and high-ranking party officials
2. Counterrevolutionary conspiracies?
3. Stalin’s Terror and Great Purges, 1936–1941
4. Mao’s Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969

IV. East versus West: A Global Divide and a Cold War
A. Military Conflict and the Cold War
1. Europe divided by the Iron Curtain
2. “Hot wars” in Korea and Vietnam
3. Marxism versus Islam in Afghanistan
4. Cuba
B. Nuclear Standoff and Third World Rivalry
1. Fear of nuclear war
2. Aid and intervention in the Third World
C. The Cold War and the Superpowers
1. “Imperial” presidency, “national security state,” and “military-industrial complex”
2. American economic and cultural power
3. Soviet military spending and propaganda
4. Conflicts within the communist world

V. Paths to the End of Communism
A. China: Abandoning Communism and Maintaining the Party
1. Deng Xiaoping’s post-Mao reforms
2. Mao’s worst fears?
3. Message of Tiananmen Square, 1989
B. The Soviet Union: The Collapse of Communism and Country
1. Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost
2. Nationalist movements
3. Collapse of regimes in Eastern Europe, 1989
4. USSR becomes Russia and 14 other states, 1991

VI. Reflections: To Judge or Judge Not
A. Are moral judgments on history appropriate?
B. Difficulty of discussing communism in the United States
C. Freedom or justice?
D. Modernization at what cost?