Chapter 22

The berlin wall was built in 1961 to separate East Berlin and West Berlin. During the time, Communism was a promise of liberation. Communist regimes had transformed their societies

The communism period provided a major political/ideological threat to the Western world like the cold war, scrambling for influence in the third world between the United States and the USSR then it collapsed. Communism was inspired by Karl Marx, who believed Communism was the final stage of historical development, with full development of social equality and collective living. The peak of the communism era was in the 1970's with 1/3 of the world's population governed by it. Communist revolutions drew on the mystique of the French Revolution by getting rid of landed aristocracies and the old ruling classes,  involving peasant upheavals in the countryside; educated leadership in the cities. The French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all looked to a modernizing future. Communist revolutions were made by highly organized parties guided by a Marxist ideology and the middle classes were among the victims of communist upheavals, where the middle classes were chief beneficiaries of French Revolution. The revolution of Russia occurred in 1917. In October of 1917, Bolsheviks seized power and began a three year civil war. During the war, the Bolsheviks strengthened their tendency toward authoritarianism and regulated the economy. In 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded and grew immensely and transformed its strategy under Mao Zedong. The Chinese Communist Party's People’s Liberation Army waged vigorous war against Japanese invaders using guerrilla warfare tactics. 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 by using modernization and industrialization and attacked gender and social inequalities. The USSR declared full legal and political equality for women where divorce, abortion, pregnancy leave, women’s work were all enabled or encouraged. In 1919, the USSR’s Communist Party set up Zhenotdel which pushed a feminist agenda, which of course male communist officials and ordinary people often opposed it and Stalin abolished it in 1930. In China, the Marriage Law of 1950 ordered free choice in marriage, easier divorce, the end of concubinage and child marriage, and equal property rights for women. The Great Purges in the USSR resulted in a million people were executed between 1936 and 1941. The Cultural Revolution occurred from 1966–1969 and escaped control of communist leadership. Western Europe was  considered the american sphere was voluntary and the Eastern Europe was imposed to the creation of rival military alliances of the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The spread of communism in China caused North Korea to invade South Korea in 1950. The communist era ended rapidly and peacefully between the late 1970s and 1991, In China when Mao died in 1979, in Europe when movements overthrew it in 1989. Both showed the economic and moral failure of communism. China grew into a “strange and troubled hybrid” that combines nationalism, consumerism, and new respect for ancient traditions while the Soviet Union broke up.