Table Of ContentThe Rise and Fall of
Communism
archie brown
To
Susan and Alex,
Douglas and Tamara
and
to my grandchildren
Isobel and Martha,
Nikolas and Alina
Contents
vii
Maps
A Note on Names viii
Glossary and Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
part one:
Origins and Development
1. The Idea of Communism 9
2. Communism and Socialism –
the Early Years 26
3. The Russian Revolutions and Civil War 40
4. ‘Building Socialism’: Russia and the Soviet
Union, 1917–40 56
5. International Communism between the
Two World Wars 78
6. What Do We Mean by a Communist
System? 101
part two:
Communism Ascendant
7. The Appeals of Communism 117
8. Communism and the Second World War 135
9. The Communist Takeovers in Europe –
Indigenous Paths 148
10. The Communist Takeovers in Europe –
Soviet Impositions 161
11. The Communists Take Power in China 179
12. Post-War Stalinism and the Break with
Yugoslavia 194
part three:
Surviving without Stalin
13. Khrushchev and the Twentieth Party
Congress 227
14. Zig-zags on the Road to ‘communism’ 244
15. Revisionism and Revolution in Eastern
Europe 267
16. Cuba: A Caribbean Communist State 293
17. China: From the ‘Hundred Flowers’ to
‘Cultural Revolution’ 313
18. Communism in Asia and Africa 332
19. The ‘Prague Spring’ 368
20. ‘The Era of Stagnation’: The Soviet
Union under Brezhnev 398
part four:
Pluralizing Pressures
21. The Challenge from Poland: John Paul II,
Lech Wałesa, and the Rise of Solidarity 421
22. Reform in China: Deng Xiaoping and
After 438
23. The Challenge of the West 459
part five:
Interpreting the Fall of Communism
24. Gorbachev, Perestroika, and the Attempt
to Reform Communism, 1985–87 481
25. The Dismantling of Soviet
Communism, 1988–89 503
26. The End of Communism in Europe 522
27. The Break-up of the Soviet State 549
28. Why Did Communism Last so Long? 574
29. What Caused the Collapse of
Communism? 587
30. What’s Left of Communism? 603
Acknowledgements 619
Notes and Sources 623
Index 690
About the Author
Other Books by Archie Brown
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Maps
A Note on Names
There is no completely consistent way of rendering people’s names in a book
such as this. In languages with a different alphabet from that used in English,
there is more than one transliteration system – for example, from Russian
and from Chinese. In the Russian case, I have used a simplified version of the
standard British system, adopted also by a number of North American jour-
nals. That means, for example, Trotsky, rather than Trotskiy (or the Library
of Congress variant, which would be Trotskii). I have also favoured familiarity
in the use of names. Thus, Trotsky’s first name in Russia was Lev, but he is
better known in the outside world as Leon, and that is the form I adopt. I do
not use the Russian soft sign in the text. What in strict transliteration would
be Zinov’ev I render, as is more usual in English, Zinoviev. But when citing
books or articles (and their authors) in Russian in the endnotes, as distinct
from the main body of the book, I do aim to transliterate precisely. When a
Russian author has published a book or article in English, I use the spelling of
his or her name adopted by that author.
In the case of Chinese names, I have generally used the pinyin system,
adopted by most China scholars now – to take the obvious example, Mao
Zedong rather than Mao Tse-tung. But here again I have made conces-
sions to familiarity. Since Chiang Kai-shek was dead long before the old
Wade-Giles system was abandoned by China specialists, his name appears
in that familiar form. For similar reasons I have used Kuomintang, rather
than Guomindang. (The former and older rendering of the name of the
movement established by Sun Yat-sen in 1919 is still used in Taiwan.)
Names which are written in the English alphabet, but with the addition of
diacritical marks, such as, for example, the Slovak Alexander Dubcˇek, or the
Hungarian János Kádár, are used in precisely that way in the book. There are,
however, people who have become better known in the anglicized version of
their names – especially monarchs such as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia or King
Paul of Yugoslavia – and those are the forms I have used. Similarly, there
are some Russians with the first name Aleksandr, such as Solzhenitsyn and
Yakovlev, whose first name is usually rendered in English as Alexander, and
ix the rise and fall of communism
for the sake of familiarity I have followed that practice. Stalin’s first name is the
equivalent of the English-language Joseph. Again, there is no one correct use.
Stalin was a Georgian, and a strict transliteration of his name from Georgian
would be Ioseb. In Russian it became Iosif. In English it is sometimes rendered
as Josif, and that is the form I prefer – making clear that it is the equivalent
of Joseph, but not anglicizing it so completely.
The naming of places can be no less problematical than what to call people.
The capital city of Ukraine is correctly transliterated from Ukrainian as Kyiv, but
in Russia it is called Kiev, and long ago that was the way in which it entered the
English language. I have not changed that familiar usage. To those who object,
I would point out that Russians are quite relaxed about the fact that we call
their capital city Moscow, not Moskva (which it is in Russian). Similarly, we call
the Czech capital Prague, rather than Praha which it is in the Czech Republic.
And the English, who have been at odds with the French over many matters
and many centuries, do not hold it against their near neighbours that they call
the English (and British) capital Londres. During most of the Soviet period the
pre-revolutionary Russian capital of St Petersburg, renamed Petrograd from
1914 to 1924, was called Leningrad, and it is now St Petersburg (though not the
capital) once again. I usually refer to it by its name at the time in question.
A bigger issue is raised by my use of ‘Eastern Europe’. Some of the countries
which were designated as being in Eastern Europe – a term in common use,
especially after they became Communist states – were located in central Europe.
Thus, Eastern Europe, as distinct from eastern Europe, is more of a political
than a geographical designation. That is why I use a capital letter in ‘Eastern’.
Given that this was a political description, the term became ambiguous and
misleading from the moment Communist regimes collapsed in Europe. Its
meaning was, however, clear enough under Communism, and it is with that
period I am concerned in this volume. The Communist era comes up to the
present day in several countries, but none of them are located in Europe.
Communist parties in Eastern Europe had different names at different times,
such as the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP). While sometimes using
their official designation, I also use the generic term of Communist party when
writing about them, employing a lower-case ‘p’ when that was not the official
title. The capital ‘C’ is used for Communist states and parties. Lower-case
‘communism’ refers to the stateless society of the future which was supposedly
to be the ultimate stage of social development.
Sources cited are listed in the endnotes. The first name as well as surname
of an author is given on his or her first mention in the notes to each chapter.
Other bibliographical details of a book, article, or archival document are
also provided in full on their first mention in the chapter endnotes and
abbreviated in the remainder of that chapter.
