Modern World History: Overview of the Rise and Fall of Communism

The idea of communism had a very large effect on the world throughout much of the twentieth century. This is because communism was used as the central idea for ruling the Soviet Union (largely Russia), the world’s largest country, and China, the country with the world’s largest population. Communism was an idea that tried to create a society in which people were economically equal and there would be no poverty. However, communism in practice created some of the most oppressive governments in history that killed tens of millions of their own citizens. The way communism affected these countries and the conflict between the communist countries and democratic countries defined much of the history of the twentieth century. The collapse of communism at the end of the twentieth century opened the question of whether the former communist countries will become democratic countries or if they will become oppressive authoritarian counties.

Communism and the Industrial Revolution

The German philosopher Karl Marx developed the idea of communism during the Industrial Revolution. Marx was troubled by the hard lives of the industrial workers who worked long hours in dangerous factories for low wages. He did not see these people as gaining anything from the economic system of capitalism. In fact, he thought that capitalist owners of the industrial factories were exploiting the workers. Marx did not see any way the workers would be able to improve their situation in a capitalist system and that over time they would only become poorer. Marx argued that the workers would reach a point where they would not put up with being exploited any longer and they would rebel against the capitalist economic system. The workers would kill the owners of the factories and take control of the factories for themselves. After this, the workers would establish a communist society where the workers would work according to their ability and received according to their needs. In this communist society there would be no poor people and no one would be exploited.

Marx’s ideas about communism became very popular among workers across Europe and by the end of the nineteenth century there were communist parties in many European countries. In addition to writing about communism, Marx also worked with people who supported his idea to organize the First International as a meeting to organize workers for a revolution. Marx believed that the industrial countries of England, France and Germany, were the places that had the right conditions to have a communist revolution. However, communist revolutions never took place in these countries. One reason for this is that over time the workers in these countries began to benefit from the Industrial Revolution. Marx was wrong – capitalism did not make the workers poorer. The wages and living conditions of the workers improved. Despite the failure of Marx's theory, the idea of communism did become a powerful idea for organizing revolutionary groups that wanted to overthrow the monarchies in Central and Eastern Europe – like Russia.

The Soviet Union

Russia was the first country to have a communist revolution in 1917. Russia was a poor agricultural country where most of the people were farmers who were ruled by the czar, an absolute monarch. Marx always thought that Russia would never become communist because it only had a small number of industrial workers. The event that pushed Russia into communist revolution was World War One. In the war, Russia was on the same side as England and France (The Allies). The poorly trained and badly equipped Russian army was often defeated by the Germany Army. By 1917, Russia had lost millions of soldiers and its population was hungry and cold. In the spring of 1917, in the February Revolution the people of Russia rebelled against the Czar and forced him to step down from power. A new government, called the Provisional Government, came to power, but it was very weak and Russia continued to collapse. At this point, Vladimir Lenin, a revolutionary communist leader of a group called the Bolsheviks, began to organize to overthrow the Provisional Government. Lenin gave speeches telling people that if the Bolsheviks came to power they would give the people “Bread, Land and Peace” – this meant bread for the people in cities who were hungry, land for the peasants who had to work for landlords, and an end to the war for soldiers who wanted to go home to their families. In addition, the Bolsheviks formed their own army called the Red Guard (red is the color of communism).

In the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin ordered the Bolshevik Red Guard to attack the Provisional Government’s offices in St. Petersburg, the capital city of Russia. After a few hours of fighting, the Bolsheviks had taken control of St. Petersburg and arrested most of the members of the Provisional Government. However, St. Petersburg is just one city in the very large country of Russia. Overthrowing the Provisional Government did not mean that the Bolsheviks controlled Russia. All across Russia, people opposed to the Bolsheviks began to organize groups and armies to fight the Bolsheviks for power. For the next four years, the Bolshevik Red Army fought a brutal civil war against these groups. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to finally win this war through three tactics. First, the Red Army was highly disciplined because soldiers could advance to higher rank based on their ability and would be harshly punished if they disobeyed orders (often executed). Second, the Bolshevik government used the policy of “war communism” in which everyone in the areas they controlled would be put to work making things for the Red Army. Third, Lenin used a secret police force called “the CHEKA” to arrest and kill anyone suspected of being against the Bolsheviks. Similar to Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror” in the French Revolution, Lenin ordered a “Red Terror “to rule and crush any opposition. By 1921, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the civil war and controlled most of the area of Russia.

In 1921, Lenin established the first communist country when he renamed Russia the Soviet Union and made the city of Moscow the capital of the Soviet Union. For Lenin, the first goal of any communist society was for the government to take over the industrial economy, such as the railroads, factories and mines. However, Russia had very little industry. Most of its population was poor illiterate peasants who lived in rural villages. Before Lenin could build a truly communist society in Russia, he first needed to build up its industry. Lenin decided to do this through a process of large scale education in which everyone would learn to read and write. In addition, women were given equality to men and were given positions of leadership. However, there was a darker side to Lenin’s rule. People who opposed communism were arrested and killed – this often included religious leaders. In addition, Lenin did not clearly say who should take over the Soviet Union after he died. In 1924, Lenin died and this created a power struggle among the Bolshevik leadership over who would become the next ruler of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin won the power struggle for control of the Soviet Union and turned the Soviet Union into a country that would rival the United States as a world power. Stalin was a ruthless Bolshevik leader who used favoritism, charm and brutality to become the leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin made himself into a “totalitarian leader” of the Soviet Union – this meant that he had total control over the lives of the people living in the Soviet Union. The Soviet government had control over all of the newspapers and radio stations in the country. Stalin used this to create the propaganda image that he was a great leader and that the Soviet Union was a great country. Stalin was able to create a “cult of personality” by putting his image everywhere and convincing people that he was all powerful. The cult of personality created a situation in which millions of people in the Soviet Union were willing to support Stalin and his policies no matter how badly things went or how many people died. As part of the program for developing the economy, the government also decided where people worked and where they lived. In short people had no freedom. Stalin enforced his rule through the use of the secret police (now called the NKVD) to arrest anyone thought to oppose Stalin. The NKVD arrested millions of people and either executed them or sent them to work to death in labor camps called the Gulag in Siberia (far eastern Russia).

Stalin turned the Soviet Union into a “command economy” where the government would directly control all parts of the economy. Beginning in 1928, Stalin had the Soviet Government carry out a series of Five Year Plans in which every farm, factory and mine would be given orders of what to produce. Stalin used the secret police (now called the NKVD) to insure that the orders would be achieved. Under Stalin, the failure to achieve the Five Year Plan was a crime, called “industrial sabotage”, and was punished with death or 10 years in the labor campsof the Gulag. Stalin’s goal was to turn the Soviet Union into an industrial country in 10 years and he did not care how many people had to die to make this happen. The process of turning the Soviet Union into an industrial country was a two step process:

  • The first step was to improve farming to grow more food, so fewer farmers were needed to feed the population. Stalin ordered that small peasant farms be turned into large collective farms where farmers could share equipment and be more productive. However, many peasants were against this idea and refused Stalin’s orders. When the farms did not grow enough food, Stalin ordered the NKVD to take the food under armed guard and let the peasants starve – peasants who opposed the NKVD were killed or sent to the Gulag. The result was a famine that killed 6 million people.
  • The second step was to build up the industry of the Soviet Union. Peasants were rounded up and sent to live in new planned industrial cities that were often in the middle of nowhere. When they arrived in these planned cities they first built the factories, hydroelectric dams or mines. Only after these were built, would they build their housing – they lived in tents or railcars during the construction. Many of the workers died in the building of these planned cities.

By the late 1930’s, Stalin’s process of forced industrialization began to take effect and the Soviet Union did become an industrial country that was one of the largest producers of steel, oil and coal in the world. However, this came at a terrible cost in the deaths of millions of people. It is estimated that Stalin’s government killed up to 20 million people during the time he ruled the Soviet Union. In addition, while the Soviet Union’s industry was large, its people were still very poor – especially compared to people in the rest of Europe or the United States. This was because much of the economy was very inefficient and focused on building up the military, instead of making things to improve people's lives.

In 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union which brought the Soviet Union into World War Two. The war between the two countries was a horrifically violent conflict that killed up to 20 million people in the Soviet Union and destroyed large parts of the Soviet Union. During World War Two, the Soviet Union was part of the Allies that included the United States and England. During the war, the Allies put aside their dislike of each other to focus on the common enemy of Nazi Germany. In 1945, the combined power of the United States, the Soviet Union and the British Empire, defeated Nazi Germany. In the process of defeating Germany, the Soviet Red Army was able to take over the countries of Eastern Europe and make them communist. After World War Two, the mutual dislike of the Soviet Union and the United States turned into a global conflict called the Cold War. The Cold War began because the United State opposed the expansion of communism into Easter Europe and lasted for the forty-five years that the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe. It was called the “cold war” because both countries acted as if they were at war with each other, but because both sides had nuclear weapons they could not engage in a real war without destroying the whole world. Instead, the Soviet Union and the United States fought for control of countries around the world.

It was difficult for the Soviet Union to compete against the United States in the Cold War. Over time, the Soviet economy began to stagnate under the weight of supporting a large military. It is estimated that the Soviet Union spend 25% of its output on the military and dedicated 20% of its workers to military production. In comparison, the United States spent 6% of its output on the military and employed 6% of its workers on military production. Soviet military strength created the illusion that the Soviet Union was equal to the United States. An example of this was the Space Race between the two countries to be the first into space. The Soviets were the first to put a satellite, called Sputnik, in to space and also the first to put a man in space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. However, the United States put the first man on the moon in 1969.

Stalin led the Soviet Union through World War Two and the early part of the Cold War before he died in 1953. The leaders of the Soviet Union after Stalin were less brutal but they still wanted to create a communist society. However, over time it became clear that communism would not be able to give people a better standard of living than capitalism could as people in the Soviet Union were poorer than those in the United States. While the Soviet government was no longer killing and sending large numbers of people to the Gulag, it was not a free society.

The combination of a lack of freedom and poorer quality of life resulted in many Soviet people becoming cynical and not working very hard. Part of the problem was that over time the communist party leadership developed into a ruling class of bureaucrats that oversaw and managed the Soviet government and centrally planned economy. Because of their positions of power, they enjoyed a lifestyle not available to the average Soviet citizen. They could buy luxury items and travel outside the Soviet Union. As the Soviet economy stagnated, these communist party bureaucrats focused on preserving their benefits rather than trying to build a communist society. As time went on, the government became more corrupt and the Soviet population became more resentful of the privileges of the Soviet leadership.

The people who felt the economic stagnation were the average Soviet citizens whose quality of life declined. A major reason for this was that people were paid about the same regardless of the difficultly or the quality of their work. This meant there was little reason to work hard or do a good job. Stores typically had empty shelves and people had to wait in long lines to buy the most basic goods (like shoes and toilet paper) and wait years to buy cars or apartments. Everyone had money, but there was little to buy – this led to the saying in the Soviet Union, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”.

In the 1980’s, Mikhail Gorbachev, a young Soviet leader, came to power and tried to reform the Soviet Union by giving people freedom to criticize the government and to start their own businesses. When he took power, Gorbachev believed that he needed to carry out massive reforms in the country to revitalize both the Soviet economy and society so it could compete in the Cold War with the United States. Unlike previous Soviet leaders who ruled over people, Gorbachev showed himself to be friendly and event took to talking to ordinary citizens in the streets and personally touring factories. He shocked many Soviet citizens when he announced his policies of Glasnost, which gave the people of the Soviet Union free speech. Gorbachev hoped that people would share their ideas about how to improve the economy, which would support his policy of Perestroika, or reforming the economy.