It became a global revolution after starting in Russia in 1917, though it's roots flung in countries as far as China and Korea to Kenya and Sudan to Cuba and Nicaragua.
Lenin’s October Revolution launched communism which spread to China with Mao Zedong’s rise to power and to with Fidel Castro’s takeover it reached Cuba. One side of the Cold War's ideology was this as with the fall of the Berlin Wall it saw a symbolic decline.
Today there's only a handful of countries which still remain under communist rule. Timeline of notable events that shaped Communism’s arc in history is listed below.
Soviet Union Emerges From October Revolution:
February 21, 1848: Karl Marx, the German economist and philosopher and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, which called out for a working-class revolt against capitalism. “Workers of the world, unite!” was their motto which quickly became a rallying cry.
November 7, 1917: The Bolsheviks with Vladimir Lenin at the helm, seized the power during Russia’s October Revolution while ascribing to Marxism, and became the first communist government.
The Bolsheviks were defeated by the leftist Socialist Revolutionaries in an election later that month, but, Lenin used military force to take power despite his promises of “bread, land and peace."
The Red Terror (executions of the Czar’s officials), prisoner-of-war labor camps and other police state tactics were established during this period.
Communism Takes Hold in China and Beyond:
July 1, 1921: The Communist Party of China was formed, inspired by the Russian Revolution.
January 21, 1924: Joseph Stalin, who had served as Lenin’s general secretary, took over official rule of the Soviet Union after Lenin died of a stroke at the age of 54, until his death in 1953 from a brain hemorrhage.
Through a state-controlled economy he industrialized the country, but it led to famine. Detractors were deported or imprisoned in labor camps under his regime, which served as a part of the Great Purge where 1 million people were executed under Stalin’s orders.
1940 to 1979: Countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Poland, North Korea, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, China, Cuba, Yemen, Kenya, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua and others saw establishment of Communism by force or otherwise during this time.
Cold War Begins:
May 9, 1945: Nazi Germany lost in World War II as the U.S.S.R. declared victory over them. Korea got divided with Japan’s defeat, into the communist North (which the Soviets occupied) and the South (which had been occupied by the United States).
March 12, 1947: President Harry S. Truman addresses Congress in what would come back to be called the Truman doctrine, occupation for the containment of communism, and later, resulting in U.S. entry into wars in Vietnam and Korea to supply defense from communist takeovers.
The doctrine becomes the premise for America’s conflict policy.
March 5, 1946: Winston Churchill the Prime Minister of Great Britain made his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri, in which he alerted Americans to the division between the Soviet Union and the Western allies.
October 1, 1949: Mao Zedong China’s Communist Party leader, following a civil war, declares his creation of the People’s Republic of China, which lead to end diplomatic ties of the United States with the PRC for decades.
July 5, 1950: As the communist North Korea invaded South Korea with the intent of creating a unified communist state led to the Korean War where the United Nations forces led by the first U.S troops to engage in the war.
The war lasted until July 27, 1953, with North Korea, China and the United Nations signing an armistice agreement.
Communists Win in Cuba, Vietnam:
January 1, 1959: The corrupt Fulgencio Batista regime gets overthrown by Fidel Castro, and Cuba becomes a Communist state.
April 25, 1976: South Vietnam’s capital is seized by communist forces following the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. The nation got reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under communist rule, a few months later, in July.
October 25, 1983: Grenada got invaded by the United States under orders of President Ronald Reagan in order to secure the safety of American nationals under the country’s communist regime which was led by Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. In about a week this pro-Marxist government was overthrown.
June 4, 1989: The Communist Chinese government sent in its military to fire on demonstrators calling for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square after weeks of protests. Hundreds to thousands of deaths (no official death toll was ever released) happened during this bloody violence.
Berlin Wall Falls, Soviet Union Dissolves:
November 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall which separated communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin for nearly 30 years finally falls. The collapse of communist regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Benin, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Yemen were seen during the years 1989-90.
December 25, 1991: The Soviet Union got dissolved with the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev. Boris Yeltsin the New Russian President banned the Communist Party.
Countries like Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Congo, Kenya, Yugoslavia and other nations soon saw the end of communism in their country.
China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam were countries which still remain under communist rule. Although the North Korean government doesn't call itself communist but North Korea remains nominally communist.
Written by: Gourav Chowdhury
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