Communism

Article Outline

Introduction; Early Forms of Communism; The Ideas of Marx and Engels; Communism in the Soviet Union; Communism in China; Communism in Eastern Europe; Communist Governments in Other Regions; Communist Influence in Noncommunist Countries; Features of Communist States; The Future of Communism

Political Unrest

Aside from Yugoslavia and Albania, with their homegrown systems, the Marxist-Leninist regimes of Eastern Europe were, from the start, deficient in legitimacy and popular support. The death of Stalin in 1953 set off a series of crises in the Soviet satellites. The first wave of de-Stalinization in the USSR sparked a workers’ rebellion in East Germany in June 1953. The Soviets put it down with force. In 1956, in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing Stalin, political turbulence rocked Poland and Hungary. In Poland, workers staged demonstrations for government reforms, but the communist regime survived after Moscow allowed the release and return to power of Władysław Gomułka, who had been purged from the party by Stalin in 1948 and imprisoned. In Hungary, a struggle ensued between hardliners and reformers in the Hungarian Communist Party, which soon erupted into a large anti-Soviet revolt in October and November 1956 (see Hungarian Revolt of 1956). Soviet forces intervened, and thousands of insurgents were killed. The USSR installed a new government under János Kádár, who several years before had served time in prison as a supposed follower of Tito.

The most exciting changes in the Soviet bloc were attempted in Czechoslovakia in 1968, during its so-called Prague Spring. Rallying behind a new party first secretary, Alexander Dubček, Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party committed itself to a bundle of liberalizing reforms: enshrining individual rights in the constitution, opening up debate in the party and the press, investigating the Stalinist past, and introducing market incentives into the planned economy. However, the Prague Spring proved unacceptable to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the USSR’s keenest allies in Eastern Europe. On August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact forces, with only Romania exempting itself, invaded Czechoslovakia in overwhelming force. Dubček was removed in favor of Gustav Husák in April 1969. Step by step, Husák reversed most of the reforms and succeeded in reestablishing a tightly controlled communist state loyal to Moscow. One of the few reforms to survive was the makeover of Czechoslovakia into a federation of distinct Czech and Slovak republics.

Decline and Collapse

Between the Prague Spring and accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, East European communist rulers were weighed down by their internal difficulties and by the burden of loyalty to Moscow. As economic growth ground to a halt, the local populations grew more and more disaffected and foreign debt rose. The one country where domestic change was bold enough to throw Soviet control into question was Poland. Anticommunism there was buoyed by anti-Russian feeling, a tradition of working-class militancy, and the election of a Polish pope, John Paul II, in 1978. In 1980 a spontaneous workers’ revolt by the upstart Solidarity trade union, led by Lech Wałęsa, forced the government to make painful concessions to popular sentiment. In December 1981, though, the Polish Communists, led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, bowed to Moscow’s wishes and decreed martial law, banned Solidarity, and undid most of the preceding year’s concessions.

The death knell of East European communism was the initiation of perestroika, Gorbachev’s program of domestic reform in the USSR. Gorbachev’s willingness to revamp communism in its birthplace undercut status-quo governments in the area. He also made it abundantly clear that he would not authorize the use of Soviet tanks to maintain unpopular communist regimes in office. In the spring of 1989 the Communist parties in Poland and Hungary made a dignified exit by negotiating a transitional formula for sharing power and the organization of competitive elections. In Czechoslovakia and East Germany mass protest unseated party leaders Husák and Erich Honecker and, in the latter case, brought down the Berlin Wall between East and West Germany in November 1989, leading to their unification the next year. President Todor Zhivkov of Bulgaria resigned under pressure from reformers, touching off the transition to a multiparty state. In Romania, President Nicolae Ceauşescu refused to step down and was overthrown after a wave of public demonstrations in December 1989; several days later a firing squad executed him and his wife. The two remaining communist umbrella organizations, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact, were dissolved in 1991. Repatriation of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe began in 1990 and was over by 1994.

Communist Governments in Other Regions

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Outside of the USSR, China, and Eastern Europe, Marxist-Leninists scored victories in a string of other countries. Successful communist movements were mostly tied to the Soviet camp, which supplied them with arms, economic aid, and advisers. The Chinese also exercised influence in some of these countries, but when relations chilled between China and the USSR in the early 1960s, Moscow generally insisted on conformity with the Soviet position.

Asia

Mongolia

Mongolia, an appendage of the Chinese empire until 1911, was the first country outside Soviet frontiers to accept a communist regime. Local, Russian, and Chinese factions fought for mastery there from 1911 until 1921, when the Mongolian People’s Party (later the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, or MPRP), a pro-Soviet group headed by Damdiny Sühbaatar, won out. A Mongolian People’s Republic was proclaimed in the capital city, Ulaanbaatar, in 1924, and the MPRP became the sole legal party. Under the long-lived leadership of Horlogiyn Choybalsan and then of Yumzhagiyen Tsedenbal, Mongolia was a pliant ally of the Soviet Union. It sent troops to help Soviet forces fight Japanese divisions crossing over from China in the late 1930s, and it again sent troops during the Soviet occupation of Manchuria in 1945. It also sided with Moscow during the Sino-Soviet conflict, the rift in relations between China and the USSR that developed in the early 1960s. Developments in Mongolia after 1985 paralleled those in Eastern Europe. Reforms began slowly, but by the early 1990s the country had instituted a multiparty system and embarked on market reforms. In 1993 President Punsalmaagiyn Ochirbat, who had split from the MPRP and aligned himself with the opposition, was reelected president in the country’s first direct presidential elections. The MPRP regained control of parliament in 2000, and today it remains the largest political party in Mongolia.

Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos

There was a longstanding communist tradition in French-governed Indochina, and the Indochinese Communist Party was founded in 1930 in Hong Kong. Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the party and of the Viet Minh nationalist movement, proclaimed the independence of the Vietnamese lands from the French in 1945. After a lengthy guerrilla war and the defeat of French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, France granted the Vietnamese request (see First Indochina War). France and the Viet Minh agreed to the temporary partition of Vietnam into two zones: North Vietnam, to be ruled by Ho and the communist Lao Dong (Workers’ Party), and South Vietnam, which would be controlled by noncommunists. National elections were to be held in 1956 to bring about a reunified Vietnam. But the South Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to hold elections after it appeared likely that Ho would win.

In 1960 the National Liberation Front (NLF) was formed with the goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government. Although controlled by the Lao Dong, the NLF was largely composed of native southerners disaffected by Diem’s repressive rule. Subsequently, a military struggle raged for control of Vietnam, with the government in South Vietnam backed after 1964 by American troops and air forces. The United States justified its support of the South Vietnamese government in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) by the “domino theory”: the belief that if all of Vietnam fell under communist rule, communism would quickly spread to other countries in Asia and beyond. In 1973, its resolve sapped by antiwar protests at home, the United States negotiated the withdrawal of its forces. In 1975 Vietnam was reunified under communist rule, and in 1976 it officially became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. For years, communism in Vietnam by and large followed the Soviet model, and the government accepted large subsidies from Moscow.

In 1979, following several years of tension and border skirmishes with the Khmer Rouge communist regime in Cambodia, Vietnam invaded its neighbor and established a pro-Vietnamese government. This incident in turn touched off a short war between Vietnam and China, the protector of the Khmer Rouge. The subsequent loss of Chinese trade led to even closer ties between Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Beginning in 1986 the Vietnamese Communist Party put forward a package of economic reforms quite similar to those mounted in China by Deng Xiaoping. Party leaders ended collective farms, encouraged private industrial activity, and passed legislation aimed at attracting foreign investment. As in China, these reforms spurred economic growth but did not include political changes that would end single-party rule. Today, the Vietnamese Communist Party remains the only legal political party in Vietnam.

Cambodia and Laos gained their independence from France in 1953. Both were to be destabilized by the Vietnam War. In Cambodia, General Lon Nol deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk in 1970 and sent troops to fight North Vietnamese guerrilla groups that had established bases in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge movement (controlled by the Communist Party of Kâmpŭchéa, or CPK), which had waged a guerrilla war against the government since 1967, gained control of large zones of Cambodian territory. The United States postponed a Khmer Rouge victory with an intensive bombing campaign, begun in 1969, aimed at cutting off the Cambodian supply lines of the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese forces (see Secret Bombing of Cambodia). In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia and immediately began a radical transfiguration of the country, which it renamed Democratic Kâmpŭchéa. Headed by Pol Pot, the regime terrorized the population for the next four years while claiming to build what it called an authentic Cambodian socialism. It forced millions of city dwellers to move to rural areas to work as farmers and to build canals, dikes, and dams. All land was nationalized, as were other means of production, and barter took the place of money. Khmer Rouge leaders severely restricted freedom of speech, movement, and association and suppressed religious practices. The regime’s brutal policies, along with outright terrorism and political murder of real and imagined opponents, resulted in the deaths of nearly 1.7 million Cambodians. Millions of others were tortured, deprived of food, or sent into forced labor.

Vietnam’s 1979 invasion brought to power a less brutal communist government, which established the pro-Vietnamese Kâmpŭchéan People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) as the sole legal party. In 1990 the party abandoned socialism and introduced a range of free-market reforms, including the ending of collectivized agriculture. The following year the party changed its name to the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). Multiparty elections were held in 1993 for the first time in decades, Sihanouk was restored to the throne, and the country was renamed the Kingdom of Cambodia. By 1999 the last Khmer Rouge troops and leaders had surrendered or been captured.