Communism: The Year That Changed The World By Michael Meyer

The era that preceded the formation of the Soviet Union was earmarked with social unrest, famine, and failed governments. After many struggles, many smaller soviet republics joined to form a large conglomerate nation, known as the Soviet Union in 1922. Vladimir Lenin, leader at the time, replaced the failing capitalist government with a communist government. . At the end of WWII, most of Eastern and Central Europe’s countries were being occupied by the soviet army. They came to be controlled by the Soviet government and pulled back behind an “iron Curtain”. Winston Churchill’s famed Iron curtain remark refers to the countries that fell under the spell of the Soviet Union and shut out the western world ways of capitalism. The countries of

Communist had a long history during the 20th century, and communism was very influential. Almost all of Asia and East Europe became Communist. From the start of the theory then many civil wars in Russia affected the whole world. Communist defined the idea of itself in many different ways, it helps many nations came together formed a party fought wars, but it also made many countries became really poor, and the economy in most of the countries got pushed back about 10 years. Communism is an economic and political system that sought to create an egalitarian society; it collapsed because of personal interest and government’s corruption.

The end of the Cold War can be credited to the actions of Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George Bush, as well as the breakup of communist satellite nations. Ronald Reagan with his increased spending in the defense sector instigated an arms race with the Soviet Union in an attempt to overwhelm the Soviet Union through military influence. However, the Soviet Union was unable to keep up with the arms race due to a weak and stagnating economy since building new weapons was costly. Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 also introduced two new policies, Glasnost and Perestroika which ended political censorship and restructured the economy respectively. Glasnost allowed for the actions of the Soviet Union’s government to be publicly displayed and further reduced the appeal of communism. George Bush and Gorbachev both signed the START I and START II treaties which further reduced the number of nuclear warheads on both sides. The breakup of satellite states also contributed to the end of the cold war as the Soviet Union stated that they would not provide military help to the various communist governments. This eventually lead to the falling out of Communist parties in several

Soviet rule  ended in  Eastern Europe.   Many of the  Soviet republics  passed laws  going against  Gorbachev’s  policies and  wanted to leave  the USSR.   In  1991, the Soviet  government  voted to end  itself.  Gorbachev  resigned and  resumed work in  Boris, Yeltsin.

Communism is a “Political theory advocating class war and leading to a society which all property is publicly owned and each person works and paid according to their abilities” After world war 2 communism took over Czechoslovakia and people flocked to join the party. Not everyone was convinced that the party was what the country needed for them to gain peace. The party had lots of propaganda and were in control of peoples live therefore convincing people to join the party even if reluctant. In Under a Cruel Star, Kovaly recounts her time after the war and joining the communist party and then being shunned when her husband was convicted of a crime. She talks about how people put blind faith in a party that didn't have much scientific evidence to back up their claims. Kovaly said the most people went to the communist party because when coming back from the concentration camp they wanted to be in control of property again and they stayed because they felt helpless without the party providing services. They went from one type of totalitarian government to another kind of government that controlled everything they did. People of the time didn't realize that communism didn't benefit people who weren't in an elite class.

Mikhail Gorbachev is a foreign leader who worked with Reagan and also wanted to eliminate communism. If the Soviet Union collapsed, then all influences of communism would stop, which is what Reagan and Gorbachev wanted (Marsico, 84). The nation as a whole agreed that they did not want communism to spread beyond the borders of East Germany and seep into their culture. During the span of 1985-1988 five meetings between the Americans and the Communists negotiated issues of diplomacy. By the early 1980’s the Soviets had built up weaponry which was almost comparable to America’s weaponry, but as the decade went on the Soviets were unable to keep up (Marsico, 84). This inferiority pleased the American people. By 1991 the cold war had concluded. on June 12, 1987, Reagan asked Gorbachev helped to eliminate the oppressive influence that communism had outside of the soviet union (Marsico 85-86). He wanted to stop the influences so that communism would not spread any further than it already had. Standing beside the berlin wall, which separated East and West Germany, Reagan gave a speech which reminded every one of the differences between the two sides. General Secretary Gorbachev” Reagan challenged him, “if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the soviet union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall!”

Communism is a system of social organisation which formerly consumed almost a third of countries in the entire world, having originated in Russia. The first official communist state was founded during the Russian revolutions in 1917, due to the inaugural communist political party ‘Bolsheviks’ gaining primal power. Afterwards, the influence of communism spread to other countries with the likes of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and East Germany to name a few. These countries that were governed on communist principles were known as the ‘Eastern Bloc’. Even countries in Asia were persuaded into the theoretically human equality system such as China, Laos and Vietnam. Communism was gathering strength to strength every year in the mid 20th century, but eventually its impact was wiped off in the late 20th century when the Berlin War was knocked down in 1989, ending the barrier between the Eastern and Western blocs. Communism arguably was the most influential social experiment in history, but also the most flawed and its failure to change the world permanently will always remain significant in history.

Russia and Germany's Non-Aggression Pact led to Russian control of half of Poland. When WWII ended, Russia was still in control of Poland, and communism spread throughout Europe.

Former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the disintegration of a country based on an uncompromising ideological dogma, the unlikely inheritor of Marxist/Leninist communist philosophy. The Soviet Union’s unwieldy economic superstructure left it vulnerable to Ronald Reagan’s aggressive economic/military policy, an approach based on the belief that a military build-up would force the Soviets to spend to keep pace, an effective strategy because it pushed the Soviet economy over the edge into ruin. The subsequent implosion ended communist domination in Eastern Europe and opened the way for democratic elements that radically altered the political landscape in Moscow. When the Soviet Union officially came to an end in 1993, it briefly recalled the end of tsarist rule in 1917, with the potential for the kind of chaos and violence that turned the Russian Revolution into a bloodbath. President Boris Yeltsin used the military to disband parliament but his call for new elections moved the country toward a more open, democratic form of government. Lacking any real background in representative government, Russia ultimately proved incapable of fulfilling the promise of democratic government and descended into a form of anarchy riddled by increasingly strong criminal elements. In recent years, the rise of Boris Putin, a new strongman in Moscow, helped restore a sense of order and allowed the resurgence of communist elements. The government that now holds power, and which

Throughout all of the valiant efforts of Hungarian Students and workers the Hungarian revolution had begun only to see hundreds die and thousands more leave with fatal casualties. The only way the Hungarians could fight back was to take up arms and fight back with as much force as possible and eventually they did succeed only to watch all of their hopes a dreams crushed when the soviets returned to decimate the Hungarian Freedom Fighters within a matter of a few short days. The Soviet Union’s Reign had only ended when the Berlin wall was demolished in 1989 when other countries finally realized that the Communist were also a very large threat to the rest of the world, which bring me to yet another point in history when the same efforts concluded to very fruitful rewards.

Communism is system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people. In some countries, the communist government functioned well while in other countries, the government slowly collapsed on itself. Criticism rose from the masses of the population of each country and caused the people to question if communism was the most favorable system of government. In the late 1950s, Eastern European states’ criticism over communism was harsh and condemnatory as the communists appeared to be doing nothing for the well-being of the countries; overtime, criticism shifted to a more melancholy tone, presenting a comfortable but non beneficial view of communism in the 1980s. Negative views spread throughout the European states and eventually developed on their own.

The Soviet Union was none the less held together by "…powerful central institutions, pressure for ideological conformity, and the threat of force." (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Therefore, these new reforms could not overpower the previous ‘seventy years' of soviet rule.

Communism in the USSR was doomed from the onset. Communism was condemned due to lack of support from other nations, condemned due to corruption within its leadership, condemned due to the moral weakness of humanity, making what is perfect on paper, ineffective in the real world. The end of this system was very violent. It left one of the two most powerful nations in the world fearful of what was to come. <br><br>Communism can either be called a concept or system of society. In a society that follows the communist beliefs groups own the major resources and means of production, rather than a certain individual. In theory, Communism is to provide equal work, and benefits to all in a specific society. Communism is derived from many ancient

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. It also can be defined as a conceptualized system of government in which resources and production facilities are the property of the entire society rather than individuals. In a communist society, labor is shared equally as well, and the benefits of labor are distributed according to need (Communism.4all 1). No one person shall be ranked higher than another and there is to be one person in charge of the society in a communism government. There are still to this day many countries that fall under the rule of communism and the ways they were transformed under communist rule is quite interesting.

The events that eventually led to the successful revolution in 1989 got their start in the “Prague Spring” in 1968. There was a brief period of political reform in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Alexander Dubcek was elected to be the First Secretary of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Many of Dubcek’s reforms were trying to give more rights to the citizens as well as relaxing government censorship.