Name_________________________________________________________

_______
Per.______

Robert W. Strayer
Ways of the World: A Brief Global History
Ways of the World: A Brief Global History with Sources
Chapter 22, The Rise and Fall of World Communism, 1917-Present, Study Guide
(Original: pp. 659-688; With Sources: pp. 1029-1058)
Global Communism: Comparing Revolutions as a Path to Communism
1. Where did communist governments exercise state power and various degrees of
influence besides the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe during the 20 th
century?

2. Identify the major differences between the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.

3. Why were the Bolsheviks able to ride the Russian Revolution to power?

4. How did the Chinese Communist Party adapt its ideology and strategy during its
long struggle to power?

Building Socialism in Two Countries

5. In undertaking the push for modernization, how were China and Russia able to

construct a socialist societies? In economic terms?

6. What changes did communist regimes bring to the lives of women?

7. How did the collectivization of agriculture differ between the USSR and China?

8. What were the achievements of communist efforts at industrialization? What

problems did these achievements generate? (Results of The Great Leap Forward
and The Cultural Revolution)

9. Explain the Great Purges.

East versus West: A Global Divide and a Cold War

10. In what different ways was the Cold War expressed?

11. How did the United States and the Soviet Union court third world countries?

12. In what ways did the United States play a global role after World War II?

13. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of the communist world by the 1970s.

Comparing Paths to the End of Communism

14. Explain the economic and moral failures of the communist experiment. (Could
the USSR match the West in quality and availability of consumer goods?)

15. What was the result of the reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping?

Socially:

Politically:

Economically:

16. Describe China after communism.

17. How did the end of communism in the Soviet Union differ from communisms
demise in China?

18. Impact of glasnost on the Soviet allies in Eastern Europe ?

Reflections: To Judge or Not to Judge: The Ambiguous Legacy of Communism

19. (On the one handOn the other handp. 688)

Explain the significance of each of the following:

Berlin Wall

Comintern
Warsaw Pac
McCarthyism
Guomindang
Collectivization of agriculture
Great Leap Forward
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Deng Xiaoping
Perestroika
Glasnost

Chapter 22 Study Guide Answer Key

Global Communism
1. Where did communist governments exercise state power and various degrees of
influence besides the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe during the 20 th
century?
Korea, Vietnam, Greece, France, Italy, the United States, Philippines, Malaya,
Indonesia, Bolivia and Peru. (Original: p. 660-661; With Sources: pp. 1030-1031)
Comparing Revolutions as a Path to Communism
2. Identify the major differences between the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.
The revolution in China was a struggle of decades rather than a single year. Unlike
Russia, where intellectuals had been discussing socialism for more than 50 years
before the revolution, the ideas of Karl Marx were barely known in China. The
Chinese communists faced a more formidable political foe than the weak Provisional
Government over which the Bolsheviks had triumphed in Russia. The Bolsheviks
found their primary audience among workers in Russias major cities and the
Chinese communists looked to the rural peasant villages for support. The Chinese
peasants did not rise up spontaneously against their landlords as Russian peasants
did. The Bolsheviks gained support by urging Russian withdrawal from WWI,
whereas the Chinese communists won support by aggressively pursuing the struggle
against Japanese invaders during WWII. (Original: pp. 662-667; With Sources: pp.
1032-1037)
3. Why were the Bolsheviks able to ride the Russian Revolution to power?
Impatience and outrage against the Provisional Government provided them with an
opening. The Bolsheviks message to end the war, more land for peasants, workers
control of factories, and self-determination for non-Russian nationalities,
resonated with an increasingly rebellious public mood. They were able to seize
power during an overnight coup in the capital city of St. Petersburg by claiming to
act on the behalf of the highly popular soviets, in which they had a major presence.
(Original: p. 663-664; With Sources: pp. 1033-1034)
4. How did the Chinese Communist Party adapt its ideology and strategy during its
long struggle to power?
The Chinese Communist Party aimed its efforts at organizing the countrys small
urban working class. European Marxism was adapted to fit the situation in a mostly
peasant China. The CCP found a charismatic leader in Mao Zedong who addressed
Chinas major problemsforeign imperialism and peasant exploitation. To gain

peasant support, Mao experimented with land reform in areas under communist
control, increased efforts to empower women, and created a communist military
force to protect liberated areas form Guomindang attack and landlord reprisals.
Furthermore, in the areas that the Guomindang controlled, the CCP reduced rents,
taxes, and interest payments for peasants; taught literacy to adults; and mobilized
women for the struggle. The struggle expressed Chinese nationalism as well as a
demand for radical social change. (Original: pp. 665-667; With Sources: pp. 10351037)
5. In undertaking the push for modernization, how were China and Russia able to
construct a socialist societies? In economic terms?
In the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Russians embraced
many material values of Western capitalist societies and were similar to the new
nations of the 20th century, all of which were seeking development. This involved a
frontal attack on long-standing inequalities of class and gender, an effort to
prevent the making of new inequalities as the process of modern development
unfolded, and the promotion of cultural values of selflessness and collectivism that
could support a socialist society. This political state, dominated by the Communist
Party, also controlled almost the entire economy and various professional groups
operated under party control. The Chinese had substantial administrative and
governing experience, unlike the Bolsheviks. The Chinese communists came to
power as the champions of the rural masses, whereas the Bolsheviks lacked
experience in the countryside. In economic terms, China faced even more daunting
prospects than did the Soviet Union. Its population was far greater, its industrial
base far smaller, and the availability of new agricultural land was far more limited
than in the Soviet Union. Chinas literacy and modern education, and its
transportation network, were likewise much less developed. Thus, Chinese
communists had to build a modern society from the ground up. (Original: p. 668;
With Sources: p. 1038)
6. What changes did communist regimes bring to the lives of women?
In the Soviet Union: Women had full legal and political equality; marriage became a
civil procedure among freely consenting adults; divorce and abortion were made
easier and legalized; married women could keep their own names; pregnancy leave
for women was mandated; and women could now work in factories in the countrys
drive to industrialize. The Communist Party set up a special organization, whose
radical women leaders pushed a feminist agenda in the 1920s by organizing
conferences for women, training women to run day-care centers and medical clinics,

publishing newspapers and magazines aimed at a female audience, providing literacy

and prenatal classes, and encouraging Muslim women to remove their veils. In
China, the Marriage Law of 1950 was a direct attack on patriarchal and Confucian
traditions. This decreed free choice in marriage; relatively easy divorce; the end
of concubinage and child marriage; permission for widows to marry; and equal
property rights for women. The Chinese Communist Party also launched a Womens
Federation, although its leadership was less radical than the Womens Department
(Zhenotdel). (Original: p. 669; With Sources: p. 1039)
7. How did the collectivization of agriculture differ between the USSR and China?
In Russia, the peasants had spontaneously redistributed the land among
themselves, an the Bolsheviks ratified their actions. In 1949 China, after a long
and difficult process, peasants were encouraged to confront and humiliate
landlords, which resulted in over one million deaths of landlords. A second and
more distinctively socialist stage of rural reform sought to end private property in
land by collectivizing agriculture. In China, despite brief resistance from richer
peasants, collectivization during the 1950s was generally a peaceful process. In
the Soviet Union, peasant resistance to collectivization led to extensive violence in
1928-1933. China pushed the collectivization process further, though, particularly
in large peoples communes during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s.
(Original: p. 670-671; With Sources: pp. 1040-1041)
8. What were the achievements of communist efforts at industrialization? What
problems did these achievements generate? (Results of The Great Leap Forward
and The Cultural Revolution)
One significant achievement for both was that they experienced major economic
growth. Living standards improved; literacy rates and educational opportunities
greatly improved, allowing for greater social mobility than ever before. Problems
were: industrialization brought rapid urbanization, the countryside was exploited
to provide modern industry in the cities; and a privileged bureaucratic and
technological elite developed, intent on pursuing their own careers and passing on
their new status to their children. (Original: pp. 671-673; With Sources: pp. 10411043)
9. Explain the Great Purges.
In the late 1930s, Lenins top associates and millions of more people felt Stalins
Great Purges. This process was based on suspicious associations in the past;
denunciations by colleagues; connections to foreign countries; or simply bad luck.

Such people would be arrested, usually in the dead of night, and tried and
sentenced either to death or to long years in harsh and remote labor camps known
as the gulag. Many were falsely accused, but in the Soviet Union, the search for
enemies occurred under the clear control of the state. The Terror consumed the
energies of a huge corps of officials, investigators, informers, guards, and
executioners, many of whom themselves, were arrested, exiled, or executed in the
course of the purges. (Original: p. 674; With Sources: p. 1044)
10. In what different ways was the Cold War expressed?
It was expressed through rivalry militarist satellite countries of Eastern Europe;
and a series of regional wars, especially in Korea, Vietnam, and later in Afghanistan.
Tense standoffs occurred, like the Cuban Missile Crisis. The nuclear arms race
escalated into the stockpiling of nuclear warheads. There was competition for
influencing undeveloped countries worldwide, and fomenting revolutionary groups
around the world. (Original: pp. 675-677; With Sources: pp. 1045-1047)
11. How did the United States and the Soviet Union court third world countries?
Cold War fears of communism penetration prompted U.S. intervention, sometimes
openly, and often secretly, in Iran, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile,
the Congo, and elsewhere, and in the process the U.S. supported anti-communist
but corrupt and authoritarian regimes. Indonesia received large amounts of Soviet
and Eastern European aid, but that didnt prevent it from destroying the
Indonesian Communist Party in 1965, butchering half a million suspected
communists in the process. When the Americans refused to assist Egypt in
building the Aswan Dam in the mid-1950s, Egypt developed a close relationship with
the Soviet Union. However, neither superpower was able to completely dominate
its supposed third world allies, many of whom resisted the role of pawns in
superpower rivalries. (Original: p. 678; With Sources: p. 1048)
12. In what ways did the United States play a global role after World War II?
The United States lead the Western world in an effort to contain the spread of
the communist movement. It deployed military might around the world; it became
the worlds largest creditor and its chief economic power; and it became an
exporter of popular culture. (Original: p. 678-679; With Sources: pp. 1048-1049)
13. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of the communist world by the 1970s.
By the 70s, communism had reached the greatest extent of expansion. The Soviet
Union had matched its military might with the U.S. However, divisions within the

communist world increased, especially between Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union, China and the Soviet Union, and China and Vietnam. The horrors of Stalins
Terror and the gulag, of Maos Cultural Revolution, and of something approaching
genocide in communist Cambodia all wore away at communist claims to moral
superiority over capitalism. (Original: p. 680-681; With Sources: pp. 1050-1051)
14. Explain the economic and moral failures of the communist experiment. (Could
the USSR match the West in quality and availability of consumer goods?)
Despite early success, communist economies by the late 1970s showed no signs of
catching up to the more advanced capitalist countries. The highly regimented and
state controlled Soviet economy was largely stagnant; its citizens had to stand in
long lines for consumer goods and complained endlessly about their poor quality and
declining availability. The eroding away of communist claims of moral superiority
over capitalism was undermined by Stalins purges, Maos Cultural Revolution in
which millions died of starvation, and Cambodias attempt at genocide. This erosion
occurred as global political culture more widely embraced democracy and human
rights as the universal legacy of humankind. After all the boasting, Communism was
increasingly being seen as the road to nowhere. (Original: p. 682; With Sources: p.
1052)
15. What was the result of the reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping?
Socially: Banned plays, operas, films, and translations of Western classics
reappeared, and a literature of the wounded exposed the sufferings of the
Cultural Revolution; a problem of urban over-crowding; terrible pollution in major
cities; street crime, prostitution, gambling, drug addiction, and a criminal
underworld, which had been eliminated after 1949, surfaced again in Chinas
booming cities.
Politically: Some 100,000 political prisoners, many of them high-ranking
communists, were released and restored to important positions. Local governments
and private enterprises joined forces in thousands of flourishing township and
village enterprises that produced food, clothing, building materials, and much more.
Economically: More dramatic was the rapid dismantling of the countrys system of
collectivized farming and a return to something close to small scale private
agriculture. Managers of state enterprises were given greater authority and
encouraged to act like private owners, making many of their own decisions and
seeking profits. China welcomed foreign investment in special enterprise zones
along the coast, where foreign capitalists received tax breaks and other
inducements. On the other hand, the states growing economy also generated

massive corruptions among Chinese officials, but an essentially capitalist economy

had been restored under Dengs reforms. (Original: pp. 682-684; With Sources: pp.
1052-1054)
16. Describe China after communism.
Although the Communist Party still governed China in the early 21 st century,
communist values of selflessness, community, and simplicity had been substantially
replaced for many by Western-style consumerism. People can now eat at a
Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, drink Pepsi Cola, use cell phones, and wear
clothing common to modern youth everywhere. (Original: p. 683; With Sources: p.
1053)
17. How did the end of communism in the Soviet Union differ from communisms
demise in China?
The Soviet reform program was far more broadly based than that of China,
embracing dramatic cultural and political changes that China refused to consider.
Unlike what happened in China, the reforms of the Soviet Union spun into a sharp
decline. Unlike Chinese peasants, few Soviet farmers were willing to risk the jump
into private farming, and few foreign investors found the Soviet Union a tempting
place to do business. The Soviet Unions reform program led to the political
collapse of the state unlike China. (Original: pp. 684-687; With Sources: pp. 10541057)
18. Impact of glasnost on the Soviet allies in Eastern Europe?
Gorbachev moved to end the cold war by making unilateral cuts in Soviet Military
forces, engaging in arms control negotiations with the United States, and most
important, refusing to intervene as communist governments in Eastern Europe were
overthrown. (Original: p. 686; With Sources: p. 1056)
19. (On the one handOn the other hand)
On the one hand, communism brought hope to millions by addressing the manifest
injustices of the past; by providing new opportunities for women, workers, and
peasants; by promoting rapid industrial development; and by ending Western
domination. On the other hand, communism was responsible for mountains of
crimesmillions killed and wrongly imprisoned; massive famines partly caused by
radical policies; human rights violated on an enormous scale; lives uprooted and
distorted by efforts to achieve the impossible. (Original: p. 688; With Sources: p.
1058)

Explain the significance of each of the following:

Berlin Wall-- The Berlin Wall was built in Germany in 1961 to prevent the residents
of communist East Berlin from escaping to the West. It had become a strong
symbol of communist tyranny. (Original: p. 659; With Sources: p. 1029)
CominternThis was a communist organization that provided aid and advice to
aspiring revolutionaries everywhere. Through Comintern, Soviet authorities sought
to control their policies and actions. (Original: p. 661; With Sources: p. 1031)
Warsaw PactMilitary alliance of the USSR and the communist states of Eastern
Europe during the Cold War. (Original: p. 661; With Sources: p. 1031)
McCarthyismWave of anti-communist fear and persecution that took place in the
U.S. in the 1950s. (Original: p. 661; With Sources: p. 1031)
GuomindangThe Chinese nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek from 1928 until
its overthrow by the communists in 1949. (Original: p. 666; With Sources: p. 1036)
Great Leap ForwardMajor Chinese initiative from 1958-1960 led by Mao Zedong
that was intended to promote small-scale industrialization and increase knowledge
of technology; in reality, it caused a major crisis and exacerbated the impact of a
devastating famine. (Original: p. 673; With Sources: p. 1043)
Great Proletarian Cultural RevolutionMao Zedongs great effort in the mid-1960s
to weed out capitalist tendencies that he believed had developed in China.
(Original: p. 673; With Sources:)
Deng XiaopingLeader of China from 1976-1997 whose reforms essentially
dismantled the communist elements of the Chinese economy. (Original: p. 682;
With Sources: p. 1052)
Perestroikabold economic program launched in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev with
the intention of freeing up Soviet industry and businesses. (Original: p. 684; With
Sources: p. 1054)
GlasnostMikhail Gorbachevs policy of openness, which allowed greater freedom
and ended most censorship of the media; the result was a burst of awareness of

the problems and corruption of the Soviet system. (Original: p. 684; With Sources:
p. 1054)