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I am tired of watching people insult Communism or mispopulize it. This is the full facts about Communism. Think you can prove me wrong? Try it- but I want more infromation than I gace to you about Communism. If not, your spreeding propoganda.
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Communism -
Deffinition (Dictionary.com):
Com·mu·nism [kom-yuh-niz-uhm]
Noun
1.
a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribedto the community as a whole or to the state.
2.
(often initial capital letter) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominatedby a single and self-perpetuating political party.
3.
(initial capital letter) the principles and practices of the Communist party.
4.
communalism.
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Communism is not a dictatorship. It was only thought this way because of the brutality of Josef Stalin, Dictator of the Soviet Union 1925 - 1953. He was a power-hungrey warloving idiot from the start. He killed betwen 30,000 - 100,000 Russians alone, not even counting the war losses. Adding that you'd add millions more. He could kill his own comrades if it ment more power. He could never have enough power. He infact was not even suposed to become the leader of the Soviet Union after Vladimir Lenin died! It was ment to go to Leon Trotski, one of the most imprortant leaders of the Russian Revolution (1903-1917) and the Russian Civil War (1917-1918). He was the leader of the Soviet Red Army, and founded it. Comrade Lenin ment it to go to him, but due to his three strokes from 1922 as his first, 1923, his second, and 1924 his 3rd, he painfuly wrote his journal to infulense Soviet politics. When he died, on January 21st, 1924 Russia was shoked. When his journal was read aloud in Mosow to the Soviet government it was edited, by Josef Stalin and his followers, who he later killed so that he was sure there was litterly NO ONE to stand in his way. Stalin then took power, and killed almost all of his comrades.
Communism is a system based on Social Justice. But after the Stalinist Era of the Soviet Union and the start of the Cold War, all hope for a nice return of Communism. Before Stalin was the unquestioned leader of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Repubics, or Soviet Union) many modern 'Anti-Communist' nations where well open and freindly to Russia. Ex: America. America even re-opened diplomatic relations, closed for many decades with Russia. Stalin's dictatoral ideals provoked Pro-Stalism and Stalinism, in which some nations like Cuba, Vieutnam, North Korea, and Laos run under today, and in the past. I like to call these people and nations 'False-Communists'. People like Comrade Lenin, Marx, Engels, Trotski, and myself I like to call 'True-Communists'.
Here is a part of Britanica's Artical on Communism's Ideals:
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The political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of socialism—a higher and more advanced form, according to its advocates. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists’ adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx.
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Now- Another Deffinition of Communism
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Com·mu·nism
Pronunciation: \ˈkäm-yə-ˌni-zəm, -yü-\
Function: noun
Etymology: French communisme, from commun common
Date: 1840
1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively
~ Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary-Main Article 'Communism'.
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This next section is an article that I wrote. It will show most of the history of Communism.
Article:
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In a perfect world, everyone would have food and shelter, and a true utopian society would be devoid of racism and other forms of oppression. But for most of the world's population, this perfect society just isn't possible. Communism is one proposed solution to these problems.
Most people know what communism is at its most basic level. Simply put, communism is the idea that everyone in a given society receives equal shares of the benefits derived from labor. Communism is designed to allow the poor to rise up and attain financial and social status equal to that of the middle-class landowners. In order for everyone to achieve equality, wealth is redistributed so that the members of the upper class are brought down to the same financial and social level as the middle class. Communism also requires that all means of production be controlled by the state. In other words, no one can own his or her own business or produce his or her own goods because the state owns everything.
Lessons from Communism
According to the philosopher Frederick Engels' "Principles of Communism," the plan for ultimate financial and social equality is built on the principle that the system should spread around the world until all countries are on board [source: Engels]. This central goal has caused capitalist nations to keep their guards up, fearing that communist economic practices might spread to their countries.
Who are communists, and why do non-communist cultures consider them radical? Does communism work in practice? Next, we'll take a look at the father of communism.
The political theory of socialism, which gave rise to communism, had been around for hundreds of years by the time a German philosopher named Karl Marx put pen to paper. Marx, also known as the father of communism, spent most of his life in exile in Great Britain and France. He wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, which later served as the inspiration for the formation of the Communist Party. Communism is also known as "Marxism."
Marx believed that a truly utopian society must be classless and stateless. (It should be noted that Marx died well before any of his theories were put to the test.) Marx's main idea was simple: Free the lower class from poverty and give the poor a fighting chance. How he believed it should be accomplished, however, was another story. In order to liberate the lower class, Marx believed that the government would have to control all means of production so that no one could outdo anyone else by making more money. Unfortunately, that proves to this day to be more difficult than he might have realized.
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Here is several vocablary words that will explain some things here.
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Socialism: A system that advocates the state's ownership of land, industry and capital. Communism is a branch of socialism.
Capitalism: Economic system in which individuals or corporations own land and means of production
Bourgeois: The middle-class/upper-class, or the owners of land and means of production
Proletariat: The working-class
Kulak: Wealthy peasants
Bolsheviks/Bolshevists: Russian word for "majority." Also, the political party that spawned the Bolshevik Revolution, effectively introducing communism in Russia
Mensheviks: By definition, "minority," although this Russian party had many more supporters than the Bolsheviks when Lenin returned to Russia in 1917.
Reds: Communist/Bolshevik supporters. Also, "red" is a derogatory term to describe communists.
Whites: Those opposed to the Bolshevik regime's takeover
Utopia: A perfect place, in reference to social, moral and political issues.
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Shall we now learn about the start of the first Communist nation?
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Russia was a czarist nation when the philosophies of communism started to take hold. For centuries, Russia was ruled by a monarchy that wielded absolute power over the people: the Romanov Dynasty. Czar Nicholas II and his wife resisted the shift toward democracy that much of the world was making. The members of Russia's lower classes had long suffered in poverty. These two factors, combined with the huge losses suffered during World War I, made the czar very unpopular. In addition, he and his family were living in luxury while their subjects struggled for basic necessities [source: First World War].
By February 1917, the war had taken a massive toll on Russia -- both in the loss of human lives and in the form of a severe nationwide famine. When a metalworking plant closed, resulting in the loss of many jobs, strikes and protests broke out. Russia was in a state of chaos. The army was sent in to control the situation, but many of the soldiers sympathized with the workers and defected, choosing to support them instead. As many as 150,000 soldiers joined the massive protest -- which is now known as the February Revolution.
The situation went downhill so fast that the military lost control completely. With virtually no support from the military, Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate his throne. The Russian Provisional Government was set up to take his place, effectively ending the Romanov Dynasty. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks assassinated the czar and his family.
In the next section, we'll learn how Vladimir Lenin orchestrated the Communist Party's uprising.
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Now let us learn about the Russian (Bulshevik) Revolution.
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When Czar Nicholas was dethroned in 1917, Vladimir Lenin was in exile in Switzerland for playing a part in some previous anti-czar plots. When he heard of the uprising, Lenin cut a deal with Germany. If the Germans could transport him home, he would get Russia to back out of World War I. The Germans agreed and snuck him back in to Petrograd through a railway car.
The Communist Party was about to gather more steam. Leon Trotsky, a Russian revolutionary who had escaped from prison and fled to America, returned to Russia to serve as Lenin's right-hand man. Trotsky is largely credited for engineering the Bolshevik Revolution.
Because the Russian Provisional Government supported the war effort, it didn't last very long. Many people shifted loyalties to the Bolsheviks, Lenin's pro-Communism party, which opposed the war. When the revolution struck, the Bolsheviks used this momentum to overthrow the Provisional Government. Lenin's Red Guard took control of the Winter Palace (former home of the czar and later the Provisional Government's headquarters), effectively overturning the Provisional Government. And true to his word, Lenin pulled Russia out of the war.
But some Russians still weren't too sure about the Bolsheviks. Lenin endeavored to gain support by broadcasting slogans such as "Bread, Land, Peace and All Power to the Soviets." To people suffering from famine, this promise hit the spot. Yet in elections for the Russian Constituent Assembly in late November 1917, only a quarter of voters cast ballots for the Bolsheviks. Lenin overturned the results and sent armed guards to prevent meetings of the democratic assembly. This made it virtually impossible for the Russian people to voice their concerns in a democratic way.
The years from 1917 to 1920 became known as "war communism" due to the methods the Bolsheviks used to push their political agenda. In 1918, the party was renamed the Russian Communist Party. Lenin and his communist cohorts endeavored to put Marx's tenets of belief into practice. This marked the beginning of the Russian Civil War, which lasted from 1918 until 1922. When the war ended, the Soviet Union formed -- also known as the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union included Russia and 15 bordering states.
Lenin was aware that the upper class wouldn't willingly give up land or wealth, so he created the New Economic Policy (NEP) to legislate redistributing land -- taking it from the nobility and giving it to the poor.
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Now I will go to Lenin's succesor, who's name was Josef Stalin. (Or Joseph Stalin). This is why Communism got it's bad name.
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When Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin came into power and managed to target one of the only groups that Lenin never did: fellow communists. In Stalin's eyes, anyone who didn't back him 100 percent was an enemy. He purged many members of the Communist Party for a range of crimes, including treason, political deviations and espionage. When all was said and done, Stalin ordered the deaths of nearly all of his Bolshevik comrades, including Trotsky.Stalin used famine to further his political goals. He took back the land that Lenin had turned over to the peasants through the New Economic Policy and forced collectivization of agriculture in the U.S.S.R. The peasants resisted and crop production diminished even more than during Lenin's reign. Widespread famine continue to kill millions of people, and during the Great Terror of 1936-1939, Stalin ordered the executions of millions more.
Stalin wanted to take communism worldwide. He knew that in order to do so, he would have to industrialize Russia. Stalin built factories in strategic places so they would not be vulnerable to outside enemies. He built so many so quickly that Russia soon surpassed many other major countries in industry. His legacy continued well after his death.
Several other dictators came into power after Stalin's death, including Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet people continued to perish at an alarming rate. From 1953 to 1991, people were put to death for political offenses, and as recently as the 1980s, slave labor camps were still inhabited by detractors.
While communist theory and practice was alive and well in some parts of the world, other nations strived to contain the movement. Read on to learn how the Soviet Union eventually crumbled.
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The Fall of the Soviet Union of next.
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The Cold War ultimately brought the Soviet Union down, but it took nearly half a century to accomplish this goal. In 1945, around the end of WWII, the Soviet Union and United States waged this war of threatening words and fear. The Cold War was a top concern on the international affairs front. From communism opponents' perspective, its purpose was to contain communism and avoid nuclear conflict. But the Soviet Union aimed to spread communism to the United States, if not the rest of the world.hese two powerhouses disagreed over political, cultural and economic differences. The United States began developing retaliatory weapons, should the need to use them arise. These weapons were called the Strategic Triad and included long-range bombers, submarines and land-based missiles. This led to the first nuclear arms race, during which the two governments stockpiled as many nuclear weapons as they could in order to keep the other government in line. Luckily, nuclear war was avoided, in large part due to the scare tactics of the Cold War.
In the 1950s, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in the space race. Both countries wanted to be the first in space for a myriad of reasons, particularly because their defense and military capabilities stood to benefit from a successful space program. The space race was fueled by the ever-intensifying rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union won that contest by launching the satellite Sputnik into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957. But the U.S. was the first country to successfully land on the moon. You can learn more about the race to the moon in How Lunar Landings Work.The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union wasn't just restricted to the nuclear arms race and space race. Many Cold War-related crises erupted over the years, including the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Soviet Union's arms race, space race and continued support of the communist regime (all of which cost a lot of money) resulted in a stagnant economy with virtually no growth. When Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed to the presidency of the Communist Party in 1985, he became an advocate of change. Gorbachev laid his goals out: rejuvenate the long-lagging economy and accelerate economic development.
He worked with President Ronald Reagan and the United States government to come to terms with the arms and policy disagreements that had escalated over the years. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union improved rapidly. In 1989, Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush declared an end to the Cold War. That same year marked the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, signifying the end of communism in East Germany. The communist governments in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria also fell in December 1989.
In 1990, Russia elected Boris Yeltsin to the presidency. The Soviet Union officially came to an end in 1991 and split into republics (a system of government in which an elected official leads): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. These republics are self-governed, rather than ruled by the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, it led to a domino effect of communist nations collapsing. Learn which ones were affected -- and which ones weren't -- in the next section.
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Next we will learn about the spreed of Communism.
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Communism wasn't contained inside the Soviet Union. As Marx's tenets had instructed, it had be to spread worldwide to achieve utopia. Some countries had adopted communism to help realize that goal, including:
Warsaw Pact Nations: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland and Hungary (communist from about 1945 to 1991). The Warsaw Pact was a military treaty signed by these countries and Russia. In short, it guaranteed that they would come to each other's aid if targeted by another country.
Yugoslavia (1945 - 1992)
North Vietnam (1954 - 1976, although still technically communist following the unification of Vietnam)
Yemen (1969 - 1990)
Somalia (1969 - 1991)
Cambodia (1975 -1989)
It's interesting to note that the communist governments in all of these countries (except North Vietnam) collapsed right around the same time as the Soviet Union, which was a huge support to the smaller countries.
If Stalin had his way, communism would have become much more widespread, especially in the West. In the 1930s, he enacted a plan to overtake this region with furious industrial development. His hope was that Russia would become such a military powerhouse that it would stand up to the other powerful nations, especially the United States. His efforts fell short, and as we've learned, the Soviet Union slowly fell apart due to these economic disadvantages.However, communism does have a presence in the United States today. The Communist Party USA supports political candidates in local elections. In fact, the group has even supported a presidential candidate as recently as 1984. The group advocates the end of the working class's exploitation and oppression. Ultimately, the party hopes to implement a socialist society where all people will benefit from the wealth present in the United States.
Communism also rose to power in the following nations, where it is still alive today:
China, since 1949
Cuba, since 1959
Vietnam, since 1976
North Korea, since 1948
Laos, since 1975
Home to more than 20 percent of the world's population (1.3 billion people), China is one of the world's most prominent communist governments. Mao Zedong, China's leader, launched and raised the communist government in China, employing many of Stalin's tactics.
In addition to the death camps Mao instituted to combat Chinese counter-revolutionaries, he also developed a plan called the Great Leap Forward, which forced collectivization of agriculture. Peasants were ushered into communes when Mao seized their property. They were forced into slave labor, and personal ties they had to their families and former lives were severed. Mao also forced mass industrialization, which, coupled with the extremes of forced agricultural collectivization, killed somewhere around 16.5 million to 40 million Chinese from 1957 to 1961. He also ordered the executions of Communist Party members during his tenure.
Today, China's government encourages capitalist ventures, which has resulted in a greatly improved economy. China boasts a huge manufacturing industry, churning out toys, furniture, electronics and other products. Despite these gains, the government remains extremely dictatorial in nature, exerting authority over censorship and other basic civil liberties. In fact, China is under pressure to improve human rights conditions before Beijing hosts the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. When China won the bid, the government promised to reform human rights violations. However, the country continues to execute more prisoners than any other country. Human rights activists are regularly harassed, prisoners are detained without a trial and censorship abounds.
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Although Communism was once one of the most hopeful systems, today as you can well see looks like that may never happen in many, many years. These Communists today are all 'False-Communists'. The end of the Lenin-Era and the start of the Stalin-Era was the fall of True-Communism. Today, few 'True-Communists' exist. But if more people saw the truth in Communism, we'd all be a much better place.
NOTE: ALMOST ALL OF THIS WAS WRITEN BY ME:
VLADIMIR VASILYEVICH ULYANOV.
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Notices:
Again, This was almost all writen by me. It took me a very long time to make this. I thank you a lot for your understanding and reading this thread, if you are reading this- you most likely read the whole thread. If you want to prove me wrong, I would like to see A LOT OF SUPPORTING INFORMATION. PM me and post it on this thread please if you do. Again I'd like to thank you all for reading this. And If some of my information is off, please tell me. Thanks.
~ Vladimir Vasilyevich Ulyanov
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