Chapter 22: Chapter Outline
The following annotated chapter outline will help you review the major topics covered in this chapter.
Instructions: Review the outline to recall events and their relationships as presented in the chapter. Return to skim any sections that seem unfamiliar.
| I. Opening Vignette | ||
| 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 | ||
| 2. inspiration of the 1917 Russian Revolution | ||
| 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 inthe 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 | ||
| B. Russia: Revolution in a Single Year | ||
| 1. Russia ’s revolution (1917) was sudden, explosive | ||
| a. Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate the throne in February 1917 | ||
| b. massive social upheaval | ||
| 2. deep-seated social revolution soon showed the inadequacy of the Provisional Government | ||
| a. it would not/could not meet the demands of the revolutionary masses | ||
| b. refused to withdraw from WWI | ||
| c. left opening for the rise of more radical groups | ||
| d. most effective opposition group was the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) | ||
| 3. Bolsheviks seized power in a coup (October 1917) | ||
| a. claimed to act on behalf of the “soviets” | ||
| b. three-year civil war followed: Bolsheviks vs. a variety of enemies | ||
| c. by 1921, Bolsheviks (now calling their party “communist”) had won | ||
| 4. during the civil war, the Bolsheviks: | ||
| a. regimented the economy | ||
| b. suppressed nationalist rebellions | ||
| c. committed atrocities (as did their enemies) | ||
| d. integrated many lower-class men into the Red Army and into local governments | ||
| e. claimed to defend Russia from imperialists as well as from internal exploiters | ||
| f. strengthened their tendency toward authoritarianism | ||
| 5. for 25 years, the new USSR was the only communist country | ||
| a. expansion into Eastern Europe thanks to Soviet occupation at the end of WWII | ||
| b. Stalin sought a buffer of “friendly” governments in Eastern Europe ; imposed communism from outside | ||
| C. China: A Prolonged Revolutionary Struggle | ||
| 1. communism won in China in 1949, after a long struggle | ||
| a. the Chinese imperial system had collapsed in 1911 | ||
| b. the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was not founded until 1921 | ||
| 2. over the next 28 years, the CCP grew immensely and transformed its strategy under Mao Zedong | ||
| 3. had a formidable enemy in the Guomindang (Nationalist Party), which ruled China after 1928 | ||
| a. Chiang Kai-shek led the Guomindang | ||
| b. the Guomindang promoted modern development, at least in cities | ||
| c. the countryside remained impoverished | ||
| 4. the CCP was driven from the cities, developed a new strategy | ||
| a. looked to the peasants for support, not city workers | ||
| b. only gradually won respect and support of peasants | ||
| c. given a boost by Japan ’s invasion of China | ||
| 5. the CCP addressed both foreign imperialism and peasant exploitation | ||
| a. expressed Chinese nationalism and demand for social change | ||
| b. gained a reputation for honesty, unlike the Guomindang | ||
| IV. Building Socialism in Two Countries | ||
| A. Joseph Stalin built a socialist society in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s; Mao Zedong did the same in China in the 1950s and 1960s. | ||
| 1. first step: modernization and industrialization | ||
| 2. serious attack on class and gender inequalities | ||
| 3. both created political systems dominated by the Communist Party | ||
| a. high-ranking party members were expected to exemplify socialism | ||
| b. all other parties were forbidden | ||
| c. the state controlled almost the entire economy | ||
| 4. China ’s conversion to communism was a much easier process than that experienced by the USSR | ||
| a. the USSR had already paved the way | ||
| b. Chinese communists won the support of the rural masses | ||
| c. some Chinese revolutionaries had actually governed parts of their country for decades, gaining valuable governing experience | ||
| d. but China had more economic problems to resolve | ||
| B. Communist Feminism | ||
| 1. communist countries pioneered “women’s liberation” | ||
| a. largely directed by the state | ||
| b. the USSR almost immediately declared full legal and political equality for women | ||
| c. divorce, abortion, pregnancy leave, women’s work were all enabled or encouraged | ||
| 2. 1919: USSR ’s Communist Party set up Zhenotdel (Women’s Department) | ||
| a. pushed a feminist agenda | ||
| b. male communist officials and ordinary people often opposed it | ||
| c. Stalin abolished it in 1930 | ||
| 3. communist China also worked for women’s equality | ||
| a. Marriage Law of 1950 ordered free choice in marriage, easier divorce, the end of concubinage and child marriage, and equal property rights for women | ||
| b. the CCP tried to implement pro-female changes against strong opposition | ||
| c. women became much more active in the workforce | ||
| 4. limitations on communist women’s liberation | ||
| a. Stalin declared the women’s question “solved” in 1930 | ||
| b. no direct attack in either state on male domination within the family | ||
| c. women retained burden of housework and child care as well as paid employment | ||
| d. few women made it into top political leadership | ||
| C. Socialism in the Countryside | ||
| 1. in both states, the communists took landed estates and redistributed the land to peasants | ||
| a. Russia : peasants took and redistributed the land themselves | ||
| b. China : land reform teams mobilized poor peasants to confront landlords and wealthier peasants | ||
| 2. second stage of rural reform: effort to end private property in land by collectivizing agriculture | ||
| a. in China , collectivization was largely peaceful (1950s) | ||
| b. in the USSR , collectivization was imposed through violence (1928–1933) | ||
| c. China ’s collectivization went further than the USSR ’s | ||
| D. Communism and Industrial Development | ||
| 1. both states regarded industrialization as fundamental | ||
| a. need to end humiliating backwardness and poverty | ||
| b. desire to create military strength to survive in a hostile world | ||
| 2. China largely followed the model established by the USSR | ||
| a. state ownership of property | ||
| b. centralized planning (five-year plans) | ||
| c. priority given to heavy industry | ||
| d. massive mobilization of resources | ||
| e. intrusive party control of the whole process | ||
| f. both countries experienced major economic growth | ||
| 3. the USSR leadership largely accepted the social outcomes of industrialization | ||
| 4. China under Mao Zedong tried to combat the social effects of industrialization | ||
| a. the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960) promoted small-scale industrialization in rural areas | ||
| b. the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (mid-1960s) | ||
| E. The Search for Enemies | ||
| 1. the USSR and China under Stalin and Mao were rife with paranoia | ||
| a. fear that important communists were corrupted by bourgeois ideas; became class enemies | ||
| b. fear of a vast conspiracy by class enemies and foreign imperialists to restore capitalism | ||
| 2. USSR : the Terror (Great Purges) of the late 1930s | ||
| a. enveloped millions of Russians, including tens of thousands of prominent communists | ||
| b. many were sentenced to harsh labor camps (the gulag) | ||
| c. nearly a million people were executed between 1936 and 1941 | ||
| 3. China : the search for enemies was a more public process | ||
| a. the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969) escaped control of communist leadership | ||
| b. Mao had called for rebellion against the Communist Party itself | ||
| c. purge of millions of supposed capitalist sympathizers | ||
| d. Mao had to call in the army to avert civil war | ||
| 4. both the Terror and the Cultural Revolution discredited socialism and contributed to eventual collapse of communist experiment | ||
| V. East versus West: A Global Divide and a Cold War | ||
| A. Military Conflict and the Cold War | ||
| 1. Europe was the cold war’s first arena | ||
| a. Soviet concern for security and control in Eastern Europe | ||
| b. American and British desire for open societies linked to the capitalist world economy | ||
| 2. creation of rival military alliances (NATO and the Warsaw Pact) | ||
| a. American sphere of influence ( Western Europe ) was largely voluntary | ||
| b. Soviet sphere ( Eastern Europe ) was imposed | ||
| c. the “Iron Curtain” divided the two spheres | ||
| 3. communism spread into Asia ( China , Korea , Vietnam ), caused conflict | ||
| a. North Korea ’s invasion of South Korea in 1950 led to a bitter three-year war and resulted in a still-divided Korea | ||
| b. Vietnam : massive U.S. intervention in the 1960s, but Vietnamese communists successfully united the country by 1975 | ||
| 4. major cold war–era conflict in Afghanistan | ||
| a. a Marxist party took power in 1978 but soon alienated much of the population | ||
| b. Soviet military intervention (1979–1989) met with little success | ||
| c. USSR withdrew in 1989 under international pressure; communist rule of Afghanistan collapsed | ||
| 5. the battle that never happened: Cuba | ||
| a. Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 | ||
| b. nationalization of U.S. assets provoked U.S. hostility | ||
| c. Castro gradually aligned himself with the USSR | ||
| d. Cuban missile crisis (October 1962) | ||
| B. Nuclear Standoff and Third World Rivalry | ||
| 1. the USSR succeeded in creating a nuclear weapon in 1949 | ||
| 2. massive arms race: by 1989, the world had nearly 60,000 nuclear warheads, with complex delivery systems | ||
| 3. 1949–1989: fear of massive nuclear destruction and even the possible extinction of humankind | ||
| 4. both sides knew how serious their destructive power was | ||
| a. careful avoidance of nuclear provocation, especially after 1962 | ||
| b. avoidance of any direct military confrontation, since it might turn into a nuclear war | ||
| 5. both the United States and the USSR courted third world countries | ||
| a. United States intervened in Iran , the Philippines , Guatemala , El Salvador , Chile , the Congo , and elsewhere because of fear of communist penetration | ||
| b. the United States often supported corrupt, authoritarian regimes | ||
| c. many third world countries resisted being used as pawns | ||
| d. some countries (e.g., India ) claimed “nonalignment” status in the cold war | ||
| e. some tried to play off the superpowers against each other | ||
| C. The United States : Superpower of the West, 1945–1975 | ||
| 1. the United States became leader of the West against communism | ||
| a. led to the creation of an “imperial” presidency in the United States | ||
| b. power was given to defense and intelligence agencies, creating a “national security state” | ||
| c. fear that democracy was being undermined | ||
| d. anticommunist witch-hunts (1950s) narrowed the range of political debate | ||
| e. strengthened the influence of the “military-industrial complex” | ||
| 2. U.S. military effort was sustained by a flourishing economy and an increasingly middle-class society | ||
| a. U.S. industry hadn’t been harmed by WWII, unlike every other major industrial society | ||
| b. Americans were a “people of plenty” | ||
| c. growing pace of U.S. investment abroad | ||
| 3. American popular culture also spread around the world | ||
| a. jazz, rock-and-roll, and rap found foreign audiences | ||
| b. by the 1990s, American movies took about 70 percent of the European market | ||
| c. around 20,000 McDonald’s restaurants in 100 countries | ||
| D. The Communist World, 1950s–1970s | ||
| 1. Nikita Khrushchev took power in the USSR in 1953; in 1956, he denounced Stalin as a criminal | ||
| 2. the cold war justified a continuing Soviet emphasis on military and defense industries | ||
| 3. growing conflict among the communist countries | ||
| a. Yugoslavia rejected Soviet domination | ||
| b. Soviet invasions of Hungary (1956–1957) and Czechoslovakia (1968) to crush reform movements | ||
| c. early 1980s: Poland was also threatened with invasion | ||
| d. brutal suppression of reform tarnished the image of Soviet communism, gave credence to Western views of the cold war as a struggle between tyranny and freedom | ||
| e. sharp opposition between the USSR and China | ||
| f. China went to war against a communist Vietnam in 1979 | ||
| 4. world communism reached its greatest extent in the 1970s | ||
| VI. Comparing Paths to the End of Communism | ||
| A. The communist era ended rapidly and peacefully between the late 1970s and 1991. | ||
| 1. China : Mao Zedong died in 1976 | ||
| 2. Europe : popular movements overthrew communist governments in 1989 | ||
| 3. both cases show the economic failure of communism | ||
| a. communist states couldn’t catch up economically | ||
| b. the Soviet economy was stagnant | ||
| c. failures were known around the world | ||
| d. economic failure limited military capacity | ||
| 4. both cases show the moral failure of communism | ||
| a. Stalin’s Terror and the gulag | ||
| b. Mao’s Cultural Revolution | ||
| c. near-genocide in Cambodia | ||
| d. all happened in a global climate that embraced democracy and human rights | ||
| B. China: Abandoning Communism and Maintaining the Party | ||
| 1. Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1976 | ||
| a. relaxed censorship | ||
| b. released some 100,000 political prisoners | ||
| c. dismantled collectivized farming system | ||
| 2. China opened itself to the world economy | ||
| a. result: stunning economic growth and new prosperity | ||
| b. also generated massive corruption among officials, urban inequality, pollution, and inequality between coast and interior | ||
| 3. the Chinese Communist Party has kept its political monopoly | ||
| a. brutal crushing of democracy movement in late 1980s | ||
| b. Tiananmen Square massacre | ||
| 4. China is now a “strange and troubled hybrid” that combines nationalism, consumerism, and new respect for ancient traditions | ||
| C. The Soviet Union : The Collapse of Communism and Country | ||
| 1. Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary in mid-1980s | ||
| a. launched economic reform program (perestroika, or “restructuring”) in 1987 | ||
| b. was met with heavy resistance | ||
| c. Gorbachev responded with glasnost (“openness”) to greater cultural and intellectual freedoms | ||
| 2. glasnost revealed what a mess the USSR was (crime, prostitution, suicide, corruption, etc.) | ||
| a. the extent of Stalin’s atrocities was uncovered | ||
| b. new openness to religious expression | ||
| c. ending of government censorship of culture | ||
| 3. democratization—free elections in 1989 | ||
| 4. move to end the cold war by making unilateral military cuts, negotiating arms control with United States | ||
| 5. but Gorbachev’s reforms led to collapse of the USSR | ||
| a. the planned economy was dismantled before a market-based system could develop | ||
| b. new freedoms led to more strident demands | ||
| c. subordinate states demanded greater autonomy or independence | ||
| d. Gorbachev refused to use force to crush the protesters | ||
| 6. Eastern European states broke free from USSR-sponsored communism | ||
| 7. conservatives attempted a coup (August 1991); collapsed within three days | ||
| 8. fifteen new and independent states emerged from the breakup of the USSR | ||
| D. By 2000, the communist world had shrunk considerably. | ||
| 1. communism had lost its dominance completely in the USSR and Eastern Europe | ||
| 2. China had mostly abandoned communist economic policies | ||
| 3. Vietnam and Laos remained officially communist but pursued Chinese-style reforms | ||
| 4. Cuba : economic crisis in the 1990s, began to allow small businesses and private food markets | ||
| 5. North Korea is the most unreformed and Stalinist communist state left | ||
| 6. international tensions remain only in East Asia and the Caribbean | ||
| VII. Reflections: To Judge or Not to Judge: The Ambiguous Legacy of Communism | ||
| A. Many think that scholars shouldn’t make moral judgments. | ||
| 1. but we can’t help being affected by our own time and culture | ||
| 2. it’s more valuable to acknowledge the limits of cultural conditioning than to pretend to a dream of objectivity | ||
| 3. judgments are a way of connecting with the past | ||
| B. Many continue to debate whether the Russian and Chinese revolutions were beneficial and whether the late twentieth-century reforms were good or bad. | ||
| 1. communism brought hope to millions | ||
| 2. communism killed and imprisoned millions | ||
| C. Is it possible to acknowledge such ambiguity? | ||