Communism

A

3

North Korea

Korea, a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, was partitioned after World War II into Soviet- and American-occupied zones. In 1948 a Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea, was established in the Soviet zone, and a Republic of Korea, or South Korea, was established in the American zone. In a bid to unify the country under communist rule, North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950. The United States and small contingents of troops from other nations came to the defense of South Korea, while China joined the North Korean offensive. Millions of soldiers and civilians died in the Korean War, which ended with a truce in 1953.

Kim Il Sung was party leader and head of state in North Korea from 1948 until his death in 1994. Throughout that time, North Korea was an unvarnished Stalinist dictatorship, with harsh internal repression, an extravagant cult of Kim’s personality, and a colossal military machine that positioned large numbers of troops along the demilitarized zone that separates North Korea from South Korea. All industry was nationalized and agriculture was collectivized. North Korea maintained cordial relations with both the Soviet Union and China and accepted aid from both. In the 1990s the North Korean economy deteriorated markedly, with food shortages leading to malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic disease. Kim’s son Kim Jong Il succeeded him as leader of North Korea in 1994. His main priorities have been to end the food crisis, achieve a rapprochement with South Korea, and negotiate with the United States on trimming North Korean weapons programs in exchange for economic relief. Today, North Korea remains one of the world’s most insular societies. The Korean Workers’ Party, the ruling communist party, tightly controls almost all aspects of economic, political, social, and intellectual life.

B

Latin America

B

1

Cuba

In 1959 a guerrilla force commanded by Fidel Castro, a leftist revolutionary, unseated Cuba’s dictatorial ruler Fulgencio Batista in the Cuban Revolution. In 1961 Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and pronounced Cuba a socialist country, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Castro allied Cuba with the Soviet Union and gave the Soviets the right to station intelligence units and dock their naval vessels in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, triggered by the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, brought Havana and Moscow into an even more enthusiastic partnership. Within several years, Cuba had acquired the trappings of a communist state. Although Castro had not been a member of Cuba’s communist party (the Socialist People’s Party, or PSP, established in 1925), in 1961 he forced a merger of the PSP and his own political group, the 26th of July Movement. In 1965 the merged party was renamed the Communist Party of Cuba.

Castro’s Cuba adopted many features of Soviet communism, including a state-owned economy, but it also experimented with features different from both the Soviet and Chinese models. The government eliminated fees and charges for sporting events, telephone calls, and funerals, and it mobilized thousands of urban dwellers to bring in the annual sugar crop. It made major improvements in public health and education and introduced policies to eliminate racial discrimination against blacks and mulattoes (people of mixed black and white ancestry). The Castro regime’s radicalism peaked from 1966 to 1970. In 1968 it shut down all surviving private businesses, and in 1970 it mounted a drive to harvest 10 million tons of sugar by mobilizing the masses. When the effort failed to achieve its target, Castro was forced to moderate his economic policies, which after 1970 were close to Soviet practice. In 1976 Castro introduced an economic management system that enlarged the autonomy of state enterprises and lifted price controls on some agricultural products.

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With Moscow’s backing, Cuba promoted communist and revolutionary movements across Latin America, training and arming their fighters. The main agent of this policy, Che Guevara, was killed in fighting in Bolivia in 1967. In the 1970s Cuba dispatched troops and specialists to aid the pro-Soviet regimes in Ethiopia and Angola. About two-thirds of Cuba’s foreign trade was with the USSR, which exchanged Cuban sugar for petroleum and machinery. Castro’s regime was hence badly hurt by Soviet economic stagnation in the 1980s and especially by the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. As Soviet subsidies and most trade with Russia vanished, Cuba’s economy dwindled by one-third between 1991 and 1993. Castro buffered the national crisis by conducting some cautious economic reforms, such as promotion of foreign investment, tourism, and self-employment in certain occupations. Beyond that, he proudly reaffirmed his belief in Marxism-Leninism and faulted other communists for selling out to the capitalists.

B

2

Nicaragua

The only other Latin American country to be governed along communist lines was Nicaragua. An uprising led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1979 deposed the dictatorial regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle and made Nicaragua the second Soviet client state in the hemisphere. Nicaragua was governed first by a Sandinista junta (council), and after 1984 elections by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra and a Sandinista-controlled legislature. The new government established friendly ties with the USSR and Cuba, nationalized the banks and many large firms, and expanded public spending on health care and education. Although the Sandinistas allowed opposition parties to operate, they restricted the media and manipulated the political process; most opposition parties, therefore, boycotted the 1984 election. Throughout the 1980s an opposition guerrilla force known as the contras (short for “counterrevolutionaries” in Spanish), supported financially and militarily by the United States, sought to overthrow the Sandinista government. In 1990, facing a deteriorating Nicaraguan economy and pressure from the contras and the United States, the Sandinistas eased restrictions on political opponents and allowed a presidential election. The opposition candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, defeated Ortega, and the Sandinistas became the major opposition political party. By the end of the 1990s more competitive elections had been held and civil liberties were better defended than before the 1979 revolution.

C

Middle East

C

1

Afghanistan

Afghanistan, one of the world’s most impoverished countries, was ruled into the 1970s by a conservative monarchy. The communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, founded in 1965, carried out a coup in 1978 and set about revolutionizing Afghan society, in the process alienating its middle class and Muslim clerics. The party was bitterly divided between a radical Khalq wing and the more restrained pro-Soviet Parcham faction. The 1978 government, chaired by Noor Muhammad Taraki, was under Khalq control. In late 1979 Hafizullah Amin, an extremist member of Khalq, deposed and killed Taraki in a palace coup. Fearing further tumult, the Soviet Union in December 1979 landed paratroops in Kābul, killing Amin and installing a member of the Parcham faction, Babrak Karmal, as president. The Soviets then sent in an occupation force of more than 100,000 troops, who incurred massive resistance and were unable to stabilize the situation. The fighting with the anticommunist mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters), who were aided by Pakistan and the United States, devastated the countryside and forced more than 4 million refugees into surrounding countries. In 1986 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev engineered Karmal’s replacement by Mohammed Najibullah, the head of the Afghan secret police, and in 1988 the USSR began pulling out its troops. The Soviet exodus was complete by February 1989. Najibullah remained in office until April 1992. He was tortured and executed by soldiers of the Taliban Islamic movement when they occupied Kābul in 1996.

C

2

South Yemen

The southern section of the present-day Republic of Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula, was from 1967 to 1990 a Soviet-aligned country. Great Britain had administered the area as a colony (known as the Aden Protectorates and later the Federation of South Arabia), but British troops withdrew in 1967 after challenges from guerrilla groups. The National Liberation Front (NLF), which endorsed a Marxist ideology, took control of the government and proclaimed the People’s Republic of South Yemen, known commonly as South Yemen. The country was renamed the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in 1970. The NLF instituted a socialist regime, drawing economic aid from the USSR. In the 1970s violence flared between South Yemen and North Yemen, known officially as the Yemen Arab Republic. But the two Yemeni governments cooperated during the 1980s and in 1990 reunited as the Republic of Yemen. In 1993 multiparty elections were held.

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