Economic Disaster and Recovery
In 1956 Mao ignored the advice of key party members and initiated a campaign of “letting a hundred flowers bloom.” Intellectuals were encouraged to speak out against abuses within the party.
To Mao’s dismay, they did. For five weeks, from May 1 to June 7, people spoke out in closed party meetings and public rallies, in the official press and posters on city walls. They complained about harsh campaigns against counterrevolutionaries, the low standard of living, Soviet development models, censorship of foreign literature, and special privileges for CCP members. Students at the university in Beijing created a “Democratic Wall” covered with posters criticizing the CCP. Students began protest riots in cities across the country.
The backlash against the educated elite began in June. By the end of the year more than 300,000 intellectuals were branded “anti-communist, counterrevolutionary rightists.” Many were sent to labor camps, imprisoned, or exiled to the countryside to experience life on the land. However, the campaign had significantly lowered Mao’s prestige within the party. He now sought to recoup it.
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD
In 1958 Mao introduced a three-year program, known as the Great Leap Forward, which was designed to increase production using labor rather than machines and capital expenditures. The capitalist model of industrialization was unacceptable for ideological reasons. The Soviet model of converting capital gained by the sale of agricultural products into heavy machinery was not viable: China’s already large population meant there was no agricultural surplus to sell. Instead of slowly accumulating capital, Mao decided to leap forward by combining industrialization with collectivization.
The peasants were organized into large communes. Communal kitchens were established so women could be freed for agricultural work. Small “backyard furnaces” were set up in every village and urban neighborhood. Communes were given unreasonable goals for production and little guidance on how to achieve them. Productive agriculture ended almost overnight, as farm labor was diverted into small-scale industry.
Errors in implementing the program were made worse by a series of natural disasters, creating a large-scale famine. An estimated twenty million people died of starvation between 1959 and 1961, when the program was abandoned.
THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Following the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao began to denounce the development of “new bourgeois elements” among the party and technical elites in both the Soviet Union and China. Rather than a time of peacefully building the socialist state, he proclaimed that “protracted, complex, and sometimes even violent class struggle” would be constant elements of the revolution until the final stage of socialism was achieved.
In 1966 Mao announced a program that was officially intended to reaffirm the core values of Chinese communism and attack creeping bourgeois tendencies in the party bureaucracy: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Its unofficial purpose was to purge the party leadership of anyone who opposed him.
Mao closed schools and invited student groups to join paramilitary Red Guard units. Working under the slogan “fight selfishness, criticize revisionism,” the Red Guard burned books, destroyed Confucian and Buddhist temples, and hunted down “counterrevolutionaries.” Revisionists, intellectuals, and anyone suspected of “ideological weakness” (code for disagreeing with Mao) were all fair targets. Some were punished with nothing worse than wearing a dunce cap and publicly confessing their errors. Others were beaten, tortured, killed, or driven to commit suicide. Urban residents, intellectuals, and government officials were relocated to the country to “learn from the peasants.” The worst of the Cultural Revolution ended with Mao’s death in 1976.
The Legacy of the Cultural Revolution
* * *
China continues to grapple with the impact of the Cultural Revolution on its society. Much of the worst artistic destruction took place in and around Beijing, but many people were caught up in vicious “criticism and self-criticism” campaigns. Those who were not killed or permanently injured were psychologically scarred, in most cases for life.
* * *
WORLD WAR II
The USSR Fights for Its Life
In the early 1930s many people viewed with alarm the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) embodied the spirit of militarism and intolerance that swept across Europe. Among the first victims of his government were members of the German Socialist Party and the German Communist Party, who were summarily committed to concentration camps, along with union leaders and other dissenters.
Hitler made no secret of his overall aims: the expansion of living space for the German people, especially to the east, and the destruction of the Jews, whom Hitler viewed as responsible for all the troubles that had befallen Germany.
The Soviet government had a more ambiguous position toward Germany, with whom it shared a border. As German demands on neighboring states increased, Stalin sought a temporary alliance with Britain and France. Neither state was interested, however, and in August 1939, in a move that shocked his followers around the world, Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Nazi regime.
Despite the non-aggression pact, Hitler’s long-range plans in no way changed. In the spring of 1941, with France conquered and Britain seemingly helpless, he began plans for an invasion of the Soviet Union.
On June 22, 1941, German forces struck across the border, deep into the USSR. Although Stalin had been warned of the impending invasion by many sources, including the British government and the Soviet intelligence services, he refused to believe them. As a result, the Soviet forces were woefully underprepared, and the Nazi armies advanced rapidly toward Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), and elsewhere. Fortunately for the USSR, Hitler was overconfident, predicting such a quick end to the war that he would not permit generals to order soldiers to bring along winter clothing. Therefore, when the German armies became stuck outside Moscow and Leningrad and the Russian winter advanced, the German troops suffered and fell back in the face of Soviet counteroffensives.
About-Face Overnight
* * *
Since the negotiations between Germany and the Soviet Union had been kept largely secret, the news of the pact caught communist parties outside the USSR almost entirely by surprise. Prior to the pact they had denounced German fascism vigorously. Overnight, that changed with no explanation. George Orwell satirized this in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: Oceania is at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia when, in the middle of a political rally, everything changes and Oceania is suddenly at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Any inconsistencies are set down to unnamed “saboteurs.”
* * *
The turning point of the war came in 1942 in the city of Stalingrad. Hitler regarded the city as key to his military plans, since if Germany took it, the Nazis would have access to the extensive oil wells of the Caucasus. However, the Germans were unable to take the city by siege. Once again, the Russian winter came to the aid of the country’s defenders, and in 1943 the Germans were themselves surrounded by a Soviet army. In January the German commander surrendered, and the Soviets began pushing back the German armies.
By April 1945 Soviet armies had penetrated all the way to Berlin. On April 30 Hitler committed suicide, and Germany surrendered a week later.
AFTERMATH
Despite its victory in the war, the Soviet Union had suffered horribly. About twenty-seven million Soviet citizens died, of whom nineteen million were civilians. Industry and agriculture were wrecked and took decades to rebuild. Occupants of Moscow and Leningrad had starved during the long siege of their cities, some resorting to cannibalism.
Returning POWs
* * *
Tragically, Stalin’s paranoia, which had by then reached epic proportions, left him convinced that the Soviets who had surrendered to German forces during the war were traitors. When the POWs were liberated from the horrendous camps in which they ha
d been held, they were arbitrarily sent to other camps in Siberia, where many of them perished.
* * *
Despite the horrors of the war, the highly controlled economy of the Soviet Union enabled the country to make a relatively rapid recovery. Stalin used the war as an opportunity to extend Soviet influence to a number of Eastern European nations, which nationalized large parts of their economies and became part of the newly formed Soviet bloc. The stage was set for the opening of a new war—one that would be fought less with bombs and bullets and more with propaganda and espionage: the Cold War.
THE COLD WAR
The Iron Curtain Comes Down
In March 1946 former British prime minister Winston Churchill gave a speech in Fulton, Missouri. In it, he said:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
Many historians view Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech as the beginning of the Cold War, a period that lasted from the end of World War II until 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
BERLIN
The curtain divided many countries from one another, but nowhere was its impact felt more dramatically than in the city of Berlin.
After the end of the war, with much of the city in ruins, the Allies agreed to divide it into four sectors: Soviet, American, British, and French. Stalin’s plans were to make the entire city of Berlin, and eventually all of Germany, into a socialist state. However, by 1947 the US, Britain, and France had begun to consolidate their zones of influence in Germany into an entity that would eventually be called West Germany. Stalin and the German communists responded by stepping up pressure on Berlin, which lay well within the Soviet zone. The Western powers responded by airlifting supplies to the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin. The airlift continued for almost a year, from the middle of 1948 to September 1949 (the Soviets lifted their blockade in May), at which point other supply routes into the city were established. As the airlift made clear, though, for the foreseeable future Berlin would remain a divided city.
The Berlin Wall
Throughout the 1950s East Germany made various attempts to control the movement of its population, particularly to restrict emigration to West Germany. These proved ineffective, and in 1961 the East German government began construction of a wall, closing off East Berlin from the West. It ran for more than 96 miles, and over the course of its existence it was expanded and remodeled several times.
“Ich bin ein Berliner!”
* * *
In one of the most famous speeches of his presidency, John F. Kennedy, visiting Berlin in June 1963, declared:
Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum [“I am a Roman citizen”]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner! [“I am a citizen of Berlin!”]
* * *
The wall became a visible symbol of the Cold War. There were various attempts by East Germans to cross it, despite the presence of heavily armed guards and watchtowers. There were official crossing points, and it was possible for West Berliners to visit the eastern part of the city, although this was highly restricted.
It is estimated that about five thousand people crossed the wall successful and illegally. How many died trying isn’t clear; the number may have been as high as two hundred.
The Wall Comes Down
As the power of the Soviet state and its bloc began to crumble in 1989, pressure increased on the East German government to allow greater travel to the West. Many people left East Germany and traveled to West Berlin or other parts of West Germany. People gathered at the wall and demanded that the government let them through. Finally, on the evening of November 9, 1989, people began hacking at the wall with pickaxes, shovels, and anything else that came to hand. Soldiers declined to fire on the crowds as the demolition continued.
The destruction of the hated wall symbolized the beginning of the end of the Cold War between the socialist East and the capitalist West.
The Wall Today
* * *
Although much of the wall was demolished and the two halves of Germany were reunited in a single nation, sections of the wall remain today as monuments to the memory of the Cold War. Many of the segments still standing are covered with the graffiti that adorned the wall when it stood as a barrier to free travel.
* * *
ALTERNATIVES TO STALINISM
The Third Way
Despite Stalin and Stalinism’s iron grip on much of the communist world, there were some significant dissensions from his views. The most prominent of these was the course held by the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980). His approach to domestic and international affairs, generally more liberal than that of his Soviet counterpart, was often characterized as the “third way”—that is, a socialism that was different from the anti-communism of many socialist leaders but at the same time was not the repressive force that governed the Soviet Union.
TITO
Josip Broz Tito was born in 1892 in what is now Croatia. He became interested in socialism when quite young and became active in the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia. Yugoslavia fought on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary in the First World War, and Tito enlisted in the army and fought in several battles. He was wounded and captured by the Russians and eventually transferred to labor duty in St. Petersburg in 1917.
Comrades and Lovers
* * *
While fighting in Siberia, Tito met a fourteen-year-old girl who hid him from the Whites and nursed him back to health. The following year he married her, and together they traveled to Yugoslavia.
* * *
It was a life-changing event. He arrived in July, when demonstrations and meetings led by the Bolsheviks were everyday events. After taking part in several of these, Tito was arrested by the provisional government. On his way to exile, he escaped, then traveled to Siberia to evade the authorities.
There he was recruited by elements of the Red Guard to help fight in the nascent civil war against the White armies. He did so and eventually, in 1920, returned to Yugoslavia, a fully committed communist.
Although Tito worked various jobs, by the 1930s he was a full-time professional revolutionary. He served time in prison for his activities, but this did not deter him. In 1939 he became acting secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Despite rumors of Trotskyist sympathies that swirled around him, he managed to avoid arrest even while living in Moscow.
TITO IN WORLD WAR II
In 1941 German armies invaded Yugoslavia, and the government fled. Tito returned to his country on orders from the USSR and formed a group of partisan fighters. They were officially recognized by the Allies, and in 1944 the exiled king, Peter, called on all Yugoslavs to support them. In 1945, with the fall of the Axis, Tito organized a new government with himself as its head.
Why Was Yugoslavia Different?
* * *
Unlike other USSR satellite states, Yugoslavia liberated itself from Nazi rule through its own military efforts. This gave Tito a degree of independence from Stalin and created the basis for a split.
* * *
From the beginning it was clear that Yugoslavia would follow a different socialist path than the USSR. Tito wrote, “We study and take as an example the Soviet system, but we are developing socialism in our country in somewhat different forms.” Thus provoked, Stalin began plotting a full-scale invasion of Yugoslavia, which was expelled from the Cominform. “I will shake my little finger and there will be no more Tito,” Stalin declared. However, the planned invasion never occurred.
Ins
tead, having been pushed out of the Cominform, Tito’s government began receiving aid from the United States. Tito was careful to make no conditions for receiving the aid, but he was able to differentiate himself from the Stalinist regime. Matters were helped by Stalin’s death in 1953, after which the Yugoslav government also started receiving aid again from the Cominform.
Tito, in this way, was able to occupy a position in the Cold War between the Soviet bloc and the West. In 1950 his government eased the management of state-run businesses and allowed a limited measure of workplace democracy and profit sharing.
The Non-Aligned Movement
* * *
In 1961 Tito, along with leaders of Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Ghana, formed the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of countries that attempted to maneuver between the two superpowers while strengthening their ties to the underdeveloped world. One result was that Yugoslavia had a far more liberal travel policy than Soviet bloc countries, something that allowed significant exchanges of scientific, cultural, and economic information. Thus, Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s was an important international example of a “third way,” one lying between the rigid socialist dogma of Stalinism and the capitalist West.
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