{"title":"The Creation of East European Communist States","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Soviet occupation of much of Eastern Europe at the conclusion of World War II facilitated Moscow’s imposition of communist regimes in five countries. In Yugoslavia and Albania, by contrast, communist regimes came to power largely on their own, and remained autonomous of Red Army control. In Czechoslovakia, an urban coup brought the communist party to power largely indigenously, but in the shadow of Soviet power. And in Austria and Greece, communist parties did not succeed in coming to power, and Stalin largely conceded that they would not.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"5 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":"133791965","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":"World War II and the Creation of Asian Communist States","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0018","url":null,"abstract":"Mao’s formula for coming to power differed from the Bolshevik pathway. It entailed a peasant-based guerrilla war that helped to defeat Japanese occupation and that went on to defeat the Nationalist forces, led by Chiang Kai-shek, in conventional warfare after World War II was over. There were many differences between the Maoist and Soviet models of revolution, but there were also many similarities in the willingness to attempt a “socialist” revolution in a peasant society, in the glorification of revolutionary violence, in the determination to ensure that the communist party monopolizes power and politics after winning the civil war, in the determination to build socialism thereafter, and in the commitment to anti-imperialist struggle within a world communist movement led by Moscow.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"30 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":"115709112","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 and the Abandonment of Anti-Imperialist Struggle","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0035","url":null,"abstract":"Gorbachev knew that reform at home could not be accomplished while the US-Soviet relationship remained confrontational and marked by arms races. His interactions and negotiations with President Reagan led Gorbachev continuously to augment Soviet concessions, even unilaterally, in hopes of ending the Cold War. He succeeded in doing so. Moreover, Gorbachev’s long-standing unwillingness to use military force to prevent democratization in Eastern Europe led directly to the collapse of these communist regimes in 1989.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"152 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":"114618003","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 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, December 1979","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0032","url":null,"abstract":"The year 1979 was a fateful one. Relations between the United States and the PRC warmed considerably, while almost everything went wrong in the US-Soviet relationship. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was driven by a determination to show the Americans that Moscow did not have feet of clay and to rescue an allied regime from collapse. The timing was dictated by the failure of US-Soviet arms control talks.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"43 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":"121350308","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":"Why the Drive to Difference?","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0042","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter inquires as to the factors that drove the drive to difference within the communist world. Factors discussed include limited guidance from the ideological heritage (Marxism and Leninism) as to how to proceed after “building socialism,” the clash between the ideals of Marxism and the realities of governing an elite-dominated system, the shortage economy, the reality of bureaucratism, varieties of nationalism among the communist states, diverse pathways to power among those states, differences in the timing of the many communist revolutions, nuclearism, the realities of affluence and liberty in the capitalist world, and the idiosyncrasies of certain leaders within the communist world.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"2 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":"129901057","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":"Assessing the Communist Experience: Tragedy or Achievement?","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0043","url":null,"abstract":"Beyond matters of causal explanation, this chapter turns to an assessment of the communist experience: was it, on balance, an achievement or a tragedy? The answer depends in part on one’s values. Weighing the price paid in human life, suffering, and oppression against achievements in state-building, industrialization, military capability, public health, education, and social policies can lead an analyst in one or the other direction.","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":"124382339","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":"How Did Communist Regimes Differ from Each Other?","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and his successors’ decision to eliminate the use of mass terror and to improve the population’s standard of living, led to a variety of responses over time to the “de-Stalinization” of Soviet governance and of relations within the world communist movement. The responses included worker rebellions, full-scale revolution, democratization from below, democratization from within the communist party, retention of Stalinist despotism, and transformation of the economic system (to “market Leninism”) and integration into the capitalist international economy.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"16 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":"127539213","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":"“Building Communism”","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0023","url":null,"abstract":"In 1958–1959, Khrushchev launched his program for the “full-scale construction of communism.” Not coincidentally, in the same time period, China’s Mao launched his disastrous “Great Leap Forward,” Yugoslavia generalized its program of “workers’ self-management” as a blueprint for the communist world moving forward, while North Korea presented the late-Stalinist policy of monolithic, terroristic control as the only true path to communism.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"16 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":"128030373","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":"Building Socialism","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctt5vkh97.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vkh97.10","url":null,"abstract":"After Stalin won the power struggle, he adopted a strategy for building socialism that entailed a frenzied pace of industrialization, city-building, collectivization of agriculture, state-building, and social transformation, accompanied by the vast use of revolutionary violence against the peasantry in particular, causing the deaths of over six million people. The rhetorical basis for both the scope and the pace of change was the claim that the national security of the Soviet state required the earliest possible construction of a communist state with the capacity to mobilize its population for war and defend itself militarily.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"55 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":"133867998","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":"Origins and Entrenchment of the Cold War, 1945–1953","authors":"George W. Breslauer","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197579671.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"Several theories are considered to explain the determinants of Cold War between the United States and the USSR, countries that had been allies until 1945. If Stalin, not FDR, had died in 1945, there might have been a greater prospect of continued cooperation between the two great powers.","PeriodicalId":266942,"journal":{"name":"The Rise and Demise of World Communism","volume":"21 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":"128769046","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}