{"title":"Consolidating Bolshevik Power","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780197579671.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780197579671.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"After the Bolsheviks came to power in November 1917, a combination of internal and external military forces launched a civil war to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. The Bolsheviks prevailed after almost four years of violence that killed many more Russians than had died in World War I. The civil war shaped Bolshevik conceptions of the need to monopolize power, to eliminate the social classes that had been pillars of the old regime, and to use virtuous “revolutionary violence” toward these ends.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129947216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stalinism in North Korea","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780197579671.003.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780197579671.003.0041","url":null,"abstract":"North Korea never went through a process of de-Stalinization. It remained until 1994 under the control of a despot who arranged for the despotism to continue after his death. Thus, North Korean politics became a family dynasty that continues to this day, with Stalinist political controls and a confrontational posture toward South Korea and the United States.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127869035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consolidating Power and “Building Socialism” in China","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0019","url":null,"abstract":"After victory in the civil war in October 1949, the Chinese communist regime followed the Soviet template, by now ideologically obvious, of dispossessing or killing the pillars of the old regime: landlords, large-scale capitalists, officials of the Nationalist government, and clergy. The new regime simultaneously started to “build socialism,” but were challenged to get the devastated economy and society back on their feet. The Communist Party of China’s early policies on this score mirrored the Soviets’ New Economic Policy of 1921–1928.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121070878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Varieties of Opposition to Bureaucratic Leninism in Eastern Europe, 1968–1985","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Brezhnev’s Bureaucratic Leninism was broadly emulated (or imposed) in East European communist regimes. But it was controversial and led to many rejections. The Prague Spring of 1968 was an effort to democratize the communist party from within. It was crushed by Warsaw Pact troops. Poland experienced a repeated wave of worker rebellions, as well as a cross-class alliance that resulted in Solidarity almost coming to power, until it was crushed in 1981 by Polish special-service troops. Hungary experimented with narrow-scope marketization of its economy, insufficient to create prosperity, but enough to avoid the extent of economic stagnation plaguing the Soviet Union. All these set the stage for Gorbachev’s reforms.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125471638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gorbachev’s Peaceful Revolution from Above","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0034","url":null,"abstract":"Gorbachev did not anticipate how far he would have to go to lead the communist party and his country out of the “era of stagnation” he inherited from Brezhnev. But as he started to implement policies, the obstacles became clearer and he responded with radicalization. This led to democratization of political authority relationships through increasingly free elections. Ultimately, the system collapsed as social polarization intensified and Boris Yeltsin outflanked Gorbachev to discredit the latter’s effort to create a “democratic socialism.”","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"39 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132707963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Great Terror and Stalinist Despotism","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"From 1936 to 1939, the Soviet Union underwent a whirlwind of violence, geared toward creating a “patrimonial” state, under the rule of a despot. The principal targets for this violence were officials of the party and state and the critical intelligentsia. These were to be replaced by obedient recruits who would labor continuously under fear for their jobs and lives. The Great Terror was justified as a national-security imperative to root out subversives.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"92 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133204677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Bolshevik Seizure of Power","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The Bolsheviks were able to seize power in Russia in November 1917 because World War I decimated Russian society and created conditions for revolution. But after the resignation of Tsar Nicholas in February 1917, the liberal-parliamentary regime that followed resisted withdrawal from the war, which deepened the polarizations within society and created the conditions for the Bolshevik coup.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115347034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stalinism and World Communism in the 1930s","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Stalin attempted, during the 1930s, to use diplomacy to avert war while he built the industrial and military capacity of the country. This diplomacy entailed multiple shifts in doctrine, especially the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939—a nonaggression pact with Hitler. Nonruling parties within the world communist movement had to adjust to these shifts repeatedly. But they kept the faith.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123898003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Follows Stalinism in the USSR?","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0021","url":null,"abstract":"After Stalin’s death in March 1953, his successors did not have the unity or the confidence to try to continue a regime of mass terror, consumer austerity, strict monolithism within the world communist movement, and nuclear confrontation with the outside world. They stepped back from each of these, but then found that they faced contradictions as to how much criticism, and of what kind, to allow their society to engage in; how much pluralism within the world communist movement; and how much concession to make to the West to reduce tensions. A similar dilemma concerning the role and scope of societal criticism was revealed in the same time period in China, where the Hundred Flowers campaign was launched and then revoked.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133349615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alternatives to Utopia in China, 1960–1965","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0027","url":null,"abstract":"After the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, which led to the death of some thirty million Chinese, Mao’s associates in the leadership were charged with getting the economy back on its feet. They did so employing methods that were similar to what Brezhnev would later employ in the USSR: deference to cadres, rationalization of economic planning, and tolerance of intensified social inequality.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"109 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124674743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}