Why, in the annals of history, have societies elected Socialism? I decided to look into this oddity in four momentous occasions. Russia, China, Cuba, and of course, America.

To begin, I'll delve deep into our own archives here in America. Socialism's inception was during a time period which Mark Twain dubbed 'The Gilded Age' . This represents the years from when General Lee surrendered his sword to General Grant at Appomattox, until the turn of the century.

A few years before the Gilded Age began, a German philosopher named Karl Marx, with the support of his comrade Frederick Engles, penned the Communist Manifesto. They did this as a platform for the Communist League, a workingmen's association which was established in Germany but promptly grew though out Europe. Marx rejected poverty and the group in society we call the upper-middle class which he termed Bourgeois. He endeavored to get the poor, or as he labeled them the Proletarians, to revolt. He theorized that the foremost and most significant task of society is to provide food and shelter for it's members. He believed no one should own private property and resources should be equally shared and distributed.

Marx, Karl (1818-83). Known during his lifetime only to a small group of socialists and revolutionaries, Karl Marx wrote books now considered by Communists all over the world to be the source of absolute truth on matters of economics, philosophy, and politics.
Most modern socialists also base their doctrines to a lesser or greater degree on Marx's theories.
Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier in the German Rhineland. His grandfather was a rabbi. His father, a successful lawyer, had his entire family baptized for business and social reasons. Marx studied law at Bonn and philosophy at the University of Berlin. While in Berlin he became acquainted with the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

At 24 he became editor of a paper in Cologne, Germany. His radical ideas soon got him into censorship trouble, and he went to Paris, partly to escape arrest. With him went his wife, Jenny von Westphalen, whom he had married in spite of both families' misgivings.

Expelled from Paris in 1845, Marx lived for a time in Brussels, Belgium. He later returned to Paris but was expelled again in 1849. Marx then went to England where he made his home in London for the remaining 34 years of his life. He lived in wretched poverty and spent day after day studying in the British Museum library. He was devoted to his wife and children, but because of his uncompromising nature, had few friends.

One friend, however, remained faithful to him and paid his bills.(As any good socialist would.) He was Friedrich Engels, a textile manufacturer whose ideas were in complete accord with Marx's and who collaborated with him in his writing.

Marx died in London on March 14, 1883. He had outlived his wife and all but two of his six children. Only eight people(eight too many) were present to hear Engels' funeral oration in Highgate Cemetery.

While in Brussels Marx and Engels had written the pamphlet 'Manifesto of the Communist Party', published in 1848. It contains the simplest expression of Marx's beliefs. The ideas in it were later developed at length in the three volumes of Marx's major work, 'Das Kapital' (Capital). This also was written in collaboration with Engels, who published the last two volumes after Marx's death. The first volume appeared in 1867.

Marx based his theories on what he believed to be the scientific evidence of history. He searched the past for proof of the continual class struggle between the middle-class exploiters (the bourgeoisie) and the oppressed working people (the proletariat). The final struggle, he predicted, would lead to the overthrow of capitalism and its supporters.(He should have read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" and learned from it.)

He claimed a classless society would then emerge and there would be no more revolutions. Everyone would be guided by the maxim "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs."(Classic liberal nonsense still today) The state, or organized government, would no longer be needed and would "wither away." As with most socialists, Marx did not concern himself much with practical problems but concentrated only on the revolution itself. They think emotionally and not logically.

Back to America, this Gilded Age also encompassed the Industrial Revolution. This was a time when Capitalism was tumultuous to say the least. Wages were low and the work was laborious and hazardous. America was still an immature nation, Capitalism was juvenile and inexperienced, and the legal system had not yet established the essential checks and balances to keep it flowing smoothly. People were forced to work in dangerous conditions for long hours and for very little wages to survive. Even children were allowed to work and were even valued because their small size permitted them to work on and around the immense, bulky steam-operated machinery. Besides, they would work cheaper than an adult.

With this appalling environment is where the story of socialism was conceived, just as in the other four circumstances. Socialism always rears it's ugly head when people are in despair. Several socialists from Europe came to America in hopes of welding it's workers with those of Europe. They did this by attempting to organize the workers.(Sound familiar?)

The very first was a group called 'The Utopian Knights of Labor' formed in 1869. The second was started in 1881 and named '
The American Federation of Labor'(AFL who later joined the CIO to form today's largest socialist organization.)
In 1886, Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor Marx Aveling and her husband Edward came to America and gave many speeches striving to persuade Americans to accept her father's dogma and cast away our government and join the European socialists countries.

As drastic as this sounds to us today, remember that at that time there were two significant differences. First, they couldn't look back on history to prove the failures of socialism. Secondly, they were in a very unfortunate time and were looking to try anything for a alteration. Looking for a shift from our Constitution has always proved dangerous to us as Americans. Not only here but again during the Great Depression, the Sixties, and again in 92 when we craved change from Bush to Clinton. As with the Depression, it is hard for someone my age to chastise the people of that time because I can't even begin to conceive the suffering they endured, but I do thank God we didn't fall down that path.

Over the following years, the Unions or the Socialists didn't grow too immense. Several problems could be the answer for this, the lack of education, the lack of communication, the fear of people loosing their jobs, or the measures put in place by the Capitalists to fight the organization. It could also be the result of the fact that Americans were so diverse that a single notion didn't gain the majority, but I like to think it was just good old fashion American beliefs and convictions that kept Socialism in check.

Then, during the 1870s, political parties emerged taking on the ideas of the unions. They called themselves the Populist Movement and were parties of the farmers and workingmen and women. They in sense, were simply powerful Unions under the guise of a movement.
Since the Civil War, the Democratic party had be almost demised. They were considered the party of slavery. The Populists succeeded in splitting the Democratic party and although gained many seats in congress, were never able to gain the Whitehouse. In the late parts of the 19th century, the Democrats changed their party again.

Since the founding, they had always been Federalist and for a large government and at this time they adopted the Populist, socialist, doctrine. When they nominated William Jennings Bryant for president. This caused the majority of the Populist movement to become Democrats and the collapse of the Populists, although it's influences were felt again in the 30s with Huey Long and in the 60s with George Wallace.
This definition would remain with the Democrats until today.

Over then next few years, the government realized the people wanted something done and they responded by passing laws requiring business to modify it's practices to accommodate the working class including wage and hours rules, safety regulations, and restrictions on child labor. Ironically, it was the Republican party majority who made these changes and not the socialists who had been doing all the bitching.
After it got it's house in order, and Capitalism matured and flourished, most people forgot about socialism. We had a stretch of several decades of prosperity and things were admirable. But then, Capitalism slipped and fell again. In 1929 the stock market crashed and we fell into a decade long depression. Again, Socialism reared it's ugly head. People were in desperation and they again wanted change. They were willing to sell their souls to the devil and they did when they elected Franklin Roosevelt and he enacted his 'New Deal'. I find this name a contradiction because his ideas were not a 'New' idea, they came straight from the Communist Manifesto.
FDR's policies did not pull the United States out of depression, World War II did. The only thing these policies did for us was created a plethora of socialist laws which are still enslaving us and restricting our prosperity and freedom today.

During Eishenhower's term, he committed a horrendous err which would reign devastation on freedom for years to come, and what he said was "The biggest damned fool mistake I ever made." It was the appointment of Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. Earl Warren who would go on to be known for his debauchery of the Kennedy assassination, also gave socialist politicians in both the Executive and Legislative branch a blank check to write against the Constitution.

America's final threat to freedom and last bastion of pure socialism was during the Johnson administration and what he called 'The Great Society'. With the help of the Warren Court, LBJ and his cohorts thrust America nearer a 'Police State' than ever before. The conception of the so-called 'Alphabet Agencies' such as HUD, EPA, OSHA and many others gave the federal government the right to enforce laws with out trial. Another one of the Great Societies' great blunders was the creation of the welfare state. Since then, the federal government has successfully transferred over 13 trillion dollars from the producers of this country to the non-producers to no avail. Nothing has been achieved except the birth of a dependent class in society without dignity or motivation.

Cuba's problems.
Columbus came to Cuba in 1492. Spain conquered it under Diego Velasquez in 1511. Frequent insurrections failed to end Spain's harsh rule. From 1868 to 1878 occurred the armed rebellion known as the Ten Year's War, led by plantation owner Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a co-author of Cuba's declaration of independence. After the loss of more than 200,000 lives, the revolt ended in failure.

"Cuba libre" (Free Cuba) became the rallying cry for another revolt in 1895. One of its leaders was the poet and Cuban hero Jose Julian Marti, who died in battle early in the struggle. The cruelties of the Spaniards led to protests by the United States. The final blow was when the United States battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbor with 260 American sailors killed. With the war-cry "Remember the Maine...To Hell with Spain!" the Spanish/American war was on. After Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders charge up San Juan hill and just a few months of fighting, Spain turned over control of Cuba to the United States. In 1902 the Republic of Cuba was established. The Platt Amendment to the Cuban constitution gave the United States the right to intervene in the interests of a stable government. The United States intervened several times to help settle revolts, reform corrupt administrations, and supervise elections. In 1934 the United States canceled the Platt Amendment.

It had asked for several "coaling or naval stations" at first, but finally retained, in a 99-year lease, only the strategic naval base on Guantanamo Bay, guarding the Windward Passage route to the Panama Canal.
Fulgencio Batista led a "sergeants' revolt" in 1933 that toppled the despotic rule of Gen. Gerardo Machado y Morales. Batista thus became the most powerful man in Cuba. Batista was elected president in 1940 and retired from office in 1944. In 1952 he overthrew the civilian government a second time. Suspending the constitution, he made himself chief of state with dictatorial powers. Years of corrupt government, embezzlement, and terrorism generally condoned by the United States led to a revolt in the fall of 1958 under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Batista fled to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 1, 1959. A week later the Fidelistas were in control of Havana. Castro, at age 32, became premier.

At first many Cubans applauded Batista's downfall and hoped that Castro's promised reforms would benefit their country. Before long, however, it became evident that the new regime had embraced Communism. A visit from the Soviet Union's First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan in 1960 brought Cuba a credit of 100 million dollars and a promise that the Soviets would buy 5 million tons of sugar. Offers of loans, trade, and technicians from mainland China and the Soviet satellite countries followed. Many critics of the new regime were put to death by firing squads or were imprisoned. Thousands of
anti-Communist Cubans went underground or fled the country. The vast majority of the refugees sought exile in the United States.

Castro, Fidel (born 1926). For many years the bearded, green
fatigue-clad figure of Fidel Castro was a symbol of political revolution in the Western Hemisphere. Castro has become known as one of the last outspoken advocates of Communism. While Eastern European nations embraced Democratic political systems in the early 1990s, Castro's policies remained firmly grounded in Communist theory.

Fidel Castro was born on Aug. 13, 1926, on his family's sugar plantation at Mayari in Oriente Province. As a boy he worked in the sugar fields. He attended Jesuit schools and Belen College in Havana.

Castro entered the University of Havana in 1945. In 1947 he played a minor role in an attempted overthrow of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. He escaped capture and returned to the university to study law, receiving his degree in 1950. In 1948 Castro married Mirta Diaz Balart. They had one son, Fidel. Castro's wife divorced him in 1955.

As a Havana lawyer, Castro defended the poor, the oppressed, and people who were in political difficulties. In 1952 he was a candidate for the Cuban Congress, but Batista canceled the elections.

Convinced that the time had come to act against the regime, Castro and his brother Raul used their own money to buy guns for about 150 cohorts. On July 26, 1953, they made a vain assault on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The Castros were sent to prison. Out of this revolt came the name of Castro's organization, The 26th of July Movement. An edited version of his self-defense at his trial was to become Castro's major statement during the 1950s. Known by its concluding words, "History Will Absolve Me," the document called for greater political and civil liberties.

The Castros were released in 1955. As exiles in New York City and in Mexico, they reorganized their forces. In 1956, with about 80 rebels, they landed in Oriente Province. They were attacked, and most of them were killed. The survivors, including the Castros, escaped into the mountains where for the next two years they waged guerrilla warfare. Batista fled from Cuba in January 1959, and Castro and his army entered Havana.

As premier, Castro declared that Cuba would never again be ruled by a dictator, but it soon became clear that his government was a Communist dictatorship.
He had his enemies executed and filled the jails with those suspected of disloyalty to him. He took over property owned by United States nationals. The United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba on Jan. 3, 1961. In April 1961 anti-Castro Cuban exiles backed by the United States government invaded Cuba in an attempt to overthrow the regime. Castro led the forces that defeated them at the Bay of Pigs.

In the fall of 1962 an international crisis arose over the presence of Soviet long-range missiles and bombers in Cuba and Castro was not directly consulted during the negotiations between United States president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. After Khrushchev agreed to remove the armaments, Castro refused to allow any inspection team to enter Cuba. In December Castro released 1,113 prisoners taken at the Bay of Pigs in return for American food and drugs. Castro allowed thousands of Cubans to migrate to the United States in the mid-1960s, late 1970s, and early 1980s. In other actions he sent troops to Angola in its war of independence and in the 1980s supported guerrillas in El Salvador and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

China.
Early in March 1912, Sun Yat-sen resigned from the presidency and, as promised, Yuan Shih-kai was elected his successor at Nanjing. Inaugurated in March 1912 in Beijing, the base of his power, Yuan established a republican system of government with a premier, a cabinet, a draft constitution, and a plan for parliamentary elections early in 1913. The Kuomintang (KMT, National People's party), the successor to Sun Yat-sen's organization, was formed in order to prepare for the election.

Despite his earlier pledges to support the republic, Yuan schemed to assassinate his opponents and weaken the constitution and the parliament. By the end of 1914 he had made himself president for life and even planned to establish an imperial dynasty with himself as the first emperor.

His dream was thwarted by the serious crisis of the Twenty-one Demands for special privileges presented by the Japanese in January 1915 and by vociferous opposition from many sectors of Chinese society. He died in June 1916 a broken man. After Yuan's death, a number of his protégés took positions of power in the Beijing government or ruled as warlords in outlying regions. In August 1917 the Beijing government joined the Allies and declared war on Germany. At the peace conference in Versailles, France, the Chinese demand to end foreign concessions in China was ignored.

The Chinese felt betrayed. Anger and frustration erupted in demonstrations on May 4, 1919, in Beijing. Joined by workers and merchants, the movement spread to major cities. The Chinese representative at Versailles refused to endorse the peace treaty, but its provisions remained unchanged. Disillusioned with the West, many Chinese looked elsewhere for help.

The May Fourth Movement, which grew out of the student uprising, attacked Confucianism, initiated a vernacular style of writing, and promoted science. Scholars of international stature, such as John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, were invited to lecture. Numerous magazines were published to stimulate new thoughts. Toward the end of the movement's existence, a split occurred among its leaders. Some, like Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Li Ta-chao, were beginning to be influenced by the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which contrasted sharply with the failure of the 1911 Revolution in China to change the social order and improve conditions. By 1920, people associated with the Comintern (Communist International) were disseminating literature in China and helping to start Communist groups, including one led by Mao Zedong. A meeting at Shanghai in 1921 was actually the first party congress of the Communist Party of China. The CCP was so small that the Soviet Union looked elsewhere for a viable political ally. A Comintern agent, Adolph Joffe, was sent to China to approach Sun Yat-sen, who had failed to obtain assistance from Great Britain or the United States. The period of Sino-Soviet collaboration began with the Sun-Joffe Declaration of Jan. 26, 1923. The KMT was recognized by the Soviet Union, and the Communists were admitted as members. With Soviet aid, the KMT army was built up. A young officer, Chiang Kai-shek, was sent to Moscow for training. Upon returning, he was put in charge of the Whampoa Military Academy, established to train soldiers to fight the warlords, who controlled much of China. Zhou Enlai of the CCP was deputy director of the academy's political department.

Sun Yat-sen, whose power base was in the south, had planned to send an expedition against the northern warlords, but he died before it could get under way. Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded him in the KMT leadership, began the northern expedition in July 1926. The Nationalist army met little resistance and by April 1927 had reached the lower Yangtze. Meanwhile, Chiang, claiming to be a sincere follower of Sun Yat-sen, had broken with the left-wing elements of the KMT. After the Nationalist forces had taken Shanghai, a Communist-led general strike was suppressed with bloodshed. Following suppressions in other cities, Chiang set up his own government at Nanjing on April 18, 1927. He professed friendship with the Soviet Union, but by July 1927 he was expelling Communists from the KMT. Some left-wingers left for the Soviet Union. The northern expedition was resumed, and in 1928 Chiang took Peking and China was formally unified. Nationalist China was recognized by the Western powers and supported by loans from foreign banks.

The Nationalist period began with high hopes and much promise. More could have been accomplished had it not been for the problems of Comintern corruption and Japanese aggression. In his efforts to combat them both, Chiang neglected the land reform needed to improve the lives of the peasants. Driven from the cities, the Communists concentrated on organizing the peasants in the countryside. On Nov. 1, 1931, they proclaimed the establishment of the Chinese Soviet Republic in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, with Mao Zedong as chairman. Here the first units of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army were formed. While conducting guerrilla warfare in these regions, the soldiers carried out an agrarian revolution that was based on Mao's premise that the best way to win the conflict was to isolate the cities by gaining control of the countryside and the food supply.

A military man by temperament and training, Chiang sought to eliminate the Communists by force. He defined his anti-Communist drive as "internal pacification before resistance to external attack," and he gave it more importance than opposition to the increasingly aggressive Japanese. With arms and military advisers from Nazi Germany, Chiang carried out a series of "extermination campaigns" that killed about a million Communists between 1930 to 1934. Chiang's fifth campaign, involving over half a million troops, almost annihilated the Communists. Faced with the dilemma of being totally destroyed in Jiangxi or attempting an almost impossible escape, the Communists decided to risk the escape. On Oct. 15, 1934, they broke through the tight KMT siege. Over 100,000 men and women set out on the Long March of about 6,000 miles through China's most rugged terrain to find a new base in the northwest.

In the meantime, the Japanese had made steady inroads into China. The Mukden Incident of 1931, through which Mukden was occupied by the Japanese, was initiated by Japanese officers stationed along the South Manchurian Railway. This was followed by the occupation of Manchuria and the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. By the mid-1930s the Japanese had seized Inner Mongolia and parts of northeastern China and had created the North China Autonomous Region with no resistance from the Nationalists. Anti-Japanese sentiment mounted in China, but Chiang ignored it and in 1936 launched yet another extermination campaign against the Communists in Shaanxi. Chiang was forced to give up the anti-Communist drive when his troops mutinied and arrested him as he arrived in Xi'an in December 1936 to plan strategy. He was released after he agreed to form a united front with the CCP against the Japanese, who were making steady inroads into China.

In China, World War II broke out on July 7, 1937, with a seemingly insignificant little battle between Chinese and Japanese troops near Peking, called the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Within a few days, the Japanese had occupied Peking, and the fighting spread rapidly. The war in China fell into three stages. The first was characterized by the phenomenally rapid Japanese occupation of most of China's east coast, including such major cities as Shanghai, Nanjing, and Canton.

The Nationalist government moved to the interior, ultimately to Chongqing in Sichuan, and the Japanese established puppet governments in Peking in 1937 and in Nanjing in 1940. The second stage was a period of waiting, as Chiang blockaded the Communists in the northwest and waited for help from the United States, which had declared war on Japan in 1941. In the final stage, the United States provided massive assistance to Nationalist China, but the Chongqing government, weakened by inflation, impoverishment of the middle class, and low troop morale was unable to take full advantage of it. Feuds among the KMT generals and between Chiang and his United States military adviser, General Joseph Stilwell, further hampered the KMT.

When Japanese defeat became a certainty in the spring of 1945, the Communists seemed in a better position to take over from the Japanese garrisons than the KMT, which was far away in the rear of the formation. A United States airlift of KMT troops enabled them to occupy many cities, but the countryside stayed with the Communists.
After the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945, the Allied war effort moved to the east. The Soviet Union joined the war against Japan at the end of July. On August 6 and 9 the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On Aug. 14, 1945, the Japanese surrendered. In China, however, civil war raged over who should take charge of the Japanese arms and equipment. At the end of August an agreement was reached in Chongqing between a CCP delegation and the KMT, but the truce was brief.

In January 1946 a cease-fire was negotiated by United States General George C. Marshall. The Nationalist government returned to Nanjing, and China was recognized by the new United Nations as one of the five great powers. The United States supplied the Chiang government with an additional $2 billion. Although the KMT's dominance in weapons and supplies was enormous, it was kept under guard in the cities, while the Communists held the surrounding countryside. As inflation soared, both civilians and the military became demoralized. The CCP, sensing the national mood, proposed a coalition government. The KMT refused, and fighting erupted again.

The short and decisive civil war that followed was resolved in two main places: Manchuria and the Huai River area.
Despite a massive airlift of KMT forces by the United States, Manchuria was lost in October 1948 after 300,000 KMT forces surrendered to the CCP. By the end of 1948 the KMT had lost over half a million men, more than two thirds of whom had defected. In April 1949 the Communists moved south of the Yangtze.

After the fall of Nanjing and Shanghai, KMT resistance evaporated. By the autumn, the Communists had taken all mainland territories except Tibet. Chiang Kai-shek and a number of his associates fled to the island of Taiwan, where they set up what they claimed was the rightful government of China.

On Oct. 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The CCP hailed its takeover of China as a people's victory over and liberation from imperial domination, especially that of the United States, and the oppressive KMT regime. The Red Army was renamed the People's Liberation Army. During the early days of the People's Republic, the troops were restrained, foreign-educated Chinese returned to help the country, and most local administrators remained in office.
The first Communist government, the People's Consultative Council, included non-Communists among its members. However, in the top committee, 31 out of 56 seats were occupied by Communists, and the constitution of 1954 drastically curtailed the role of non-Communists. After 1954, more authority was concentrated in the central government under the State Council. Real power, however, lay with the Communist party, especially the Central Committee, then composed of 94 members. This committee held together the triad of power army, government, and party. The inner circle of the Central Committee was the 19-member Political Bureau and its seven-member Standing Committee.

One of the first tasks of the Communist government was land reform, redistributing land from landlords to the peasants. The Agrarian Law of 1950 began the nationwide land reform, which was almost completed by the beginning of 1953.

Land reform erased the social distinction between landlord and peasant. The new marriage law of 1950 and the campaigns of the early 1950s removed distinctions within the family.
Women were given full equality with men in matters of marriage, divorce, and property ownership. Children were encouraged to denounce parents if they failed to support the Communist line.

Believing that the revolution could not be carried on without reform of people, the CCP launched a massive campaign to change China's entire psychology. The Four Olds campaign was launched to eradicate old ideas, habits, customs, and culture. The Three Anti's movement was directed at officials, with the aim of eliminating corruption, waste, and "bureaucratism." The Five Anti's campaign, directed at the remaining businessmen and bourgeoisie, opposed bribery, tax fraud, cheating, and stealing state property and economic information. For Chinese Christians, The Three Selfs movement stressed self-government, self-support, and self-propagation, the object being to separate the churches in China from their parent denominations abroad. Leading churchmen were forced into denouncing religion as cultural imperialism. The idea of cultural imperialism was extended to art and literature, which henceforth were to serve the people, the class struggle, and the revolution.

Along with the reforms of land tenure, society, family, and even thought, the CCP announced the first five-year plan in 1953 to speed up the socialization of China through a planned economy. The plan's aim was to produce maximum returns from agriculture in order to pay for industrialization and Soviet aid. The means chosen was the collectivization of agriculture. Land and farm implements were pooled into cooperatives and later into collective farms, which controlled the production, price, and distribution of products. By May 1956, 90 percent of the farmers were members of cooperatives. Similarly, 80 percent of heavy industry and 40 percent of light industry were in government hands by October 1952. The government also controlled all the railways and most steamship operations. To speed China's development even more, Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and others, after overcoming some opposition within the leadership, launched the Great Leap Forward in 1958.

The Communist Party is the primary political force in China. Unlike parties in Western democracies, it is a tightly organized movement that controls and leads society at all levels. The party sets policy and controls its execution through government officials who are also party members. The effect is to make the government an organ of the party.

At the time of its founding in 1921, the Chinese Communist party focused on organizing urban workers, but it achieved only limited success in this effort. Orthodox Marxism expected the Communist Revolution to begin among industrial workers. However, Karl Marx had developed his theories based upon highly industrialized economies, and the industrial sector in China was small and relatively primitive. It was Mao Zedong who adapted Marxist theory to the conditions of an underdeveloped, primarily agricultural society. Although Mao's successors downgraded some of his more radical ideas, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought Marxism as it was interpreted by Mao is still officially designated as the guiding philosophy that is behind both the party and the government.

The Chinese Communist party is organized as a hierarchy, with power concentrated at the top. Above the local units, or cells, is a pyramid-like structure of party congresses and committees at various levels, culminating in the National Party Congress. The national congress is supposed to meet every five years, though this has not always been the case. When it is not in session, direction of the party is in the hands of a Central Committee of about 200 members, which is elected by the congress. The Central Committee, in turn, elects the Political Bureau, which in 1982 consisted of 25 full members and three alternates. It is within the Political Bureau and its elite Standing Committee that power is concentrated and the highest level decisions of state are made. There is also a secretariat that carries on the day-to-day business of the party.

Prior to 1982, the highest party office was that of chairman, held for more than 25 years, through most of the People's Republic's history to that time, by Mao Zedong.

In an effort to ensure that the power Mao had enjoyed was never again concentrated in one person, a new party constitution adopted in 1982 abolished the chairmanship and replaced it with the administrative position of general secretary to the Secretariat. The constitution also established a body called the Central Advisory Commission to assist and advise the Central Committee. Members must have had at least 40 years of party service. One of the objects of the commission was to encourage elderly party leaders to continue to be active in various functions of the Communist party.

Mao Zedong, (1893-1976). In China Mao Zedong is remembered and revered as the greatest of revolutionaries. His achievements as ruler, however, have been deservedly downgraded because he was among the worst of politicians. He knew well how to make a revolution, but once in power he could not put his love of revolution aside for the sake of governing.

Mao was born on Dec. 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province. His father was a peasant who had become successful as a grain dealer. Mao's schooling was intermittent. During the Revolution of 1911-12 he served in the army for six months. After that he drifted for a while without goals, but he managed to graduate from the First Provincial Normal School in Changsha in 1918. He then went to Peking University, where he became embroiled in the revolutionary May Fourth Movement.

In 1921 Mao helped found the Chinese Communist party. He was at that time a school principal in Hunan. Two years later, when the Communists forged an alliance with Sun Yat-sen's Nationalist party, he left work to become a full-time revolutionary. It was at this time that Mao discovered the great potential of the peasant class for making revolution. This realization led him to the brilliant strategy he used to win control of China: gain control of the countryside and encircle the cities.
The Communists and the Nationalists coexisted in an uneasy relationship until the end of World War II. The Nationalist leader after 1925 was Chiang Kai-shek, who was determined to rule China. He never trusted the Communists, and at times he persecuted them. Mao's first wife was executed by the Nationalists in 1930.

The Chinese Soviet Republic was founded in November 1931 in Jiangxi Province. In 1934 Mao and his forces were driven out, and they went northward in what is known as the Long March. By 1935, however, the Communists and Nationalists forged a united front against the Japanese. Rivalry persisted, but the front held until 1945. The revolution that then began ended in 1949 with the Communists victorious. In addition to his problems with the Nationalists, Mao's dealings with the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin were always uneasy. Stalin grew wary of a competing Communist power of China's size on the Soviet borders. Mao eventually came to regard the Soviets as revisionists and felt they were traitors to the cause of world revolution.

Mao's title as ruler of China was chairman of the People's Republic. For the first five years he rarely appeared in public and seemed to be only a ceremonial figure. He never achieved the total control in China that Stalin did in the Soviet Union. Many of his comrades were influential in directing policy, often in ways with which Mao disagreed. In 1955 he emerged from isolation determined to play the decisive role in economic policy and political restructuring.

Failing to gain the allegiance of the intellectuals, he turned to the masses with a program called the Great Leap Forward. While not a complete economic disaster, it had severe consequences. After it disrupted both city and countryside, he was forced to retreat from his policies in favor of his opponents. To counter opposition he launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, urged on by his radical wife, Jiang Qing. This vast upheaval wrecked the Communist party bureaucracy, paralyzed education and research, and left the economy almost a shambles.

Only slowly did China begin to recover. By then Mao was old and ill. Other, more moderate hands guided policy.
Zhou Enlai seemed to emerge as the nation's real leader when relations were reestablished with the United States.

Mao's personality cult remained strong until his death on Sept. 9, 1976. Shortly afterward, however, a power struggle was under way. Members of the party who had been purged by the Cultural Revolution returned to govern China. Chief among them was Deng Xiaoping.

Russia. The roots of the Russian Revolution of 1917 were deep. Russia had suffered under an extremely oppressive form of government for centuries under the rule of the czars. During the 19th century the nation was filled with movements for political liberalization.

In the long run there were several revolutions, not one. The first rebellion, known as the Decembrist uprising, took place in December 1825. Members of the upper classes, including many former soldiers, staged a revolt after the death of Alexander I. The revolt failed, but it provided an inspiration to succeeding generations of dissidents.

The next revolution took place in 1905, after the Russo-Japanese War, which Russia lost. It appeared briefly that public discontent would force Czar Nicholas II to establish a constitutional monarchy but such a change would not have satisfied either the czar or his opponents. Radical revolutionaries continued to fight for a democratic republic, and the czar wanted to retain his control of the peasants.

The next two revolutions were successful. They occurred during World War I, when Russian military forces were hard pressed by the Germans. The March Revolution of 1917 led to the abdication of Nicholas and the installation of a provisional government. The leader of this government was Alexander Kerensky, who was eventually forced from power and later immigrated to the United States.

Czar Nicholas had taken command of armies in the field in the fall of 1915. This left a power vacuum in St. Petersburg, the capital.
The collapse of the government suddenly came in March 1917. Food riots, strikes, and war protests turned into mass demonstrations. The army refused to fire on the demonstrators. A Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was elected, and it formed the provisional government on March 14. The next day Nicholas abdicated.

The last revolution took place in November of the same year. Because the date was in October on the old Russian calendar, it is usually called the October, or Octobrist, Revolution. It brought to power the Bolshevik wing of the Communist party, led by Lenin. The Bolsheviks established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the dictatorship of the Communist party. In the end Lenin and his followers established a regime that was more rigidly tyrannical than that of any czar.

The provisional government was a coalition of factions representing divergent points of view. Some wanted withdrawal from the war and immediate economic reforms, with guarantees of political liberty. Others, including Kerensky, wanted to continue the war and postpone all reforms until the conflict was finished. No compromise seemed workable. Meanwhile, Lenin the revolutionary genius arrived by train from Switzerland. He had been put on a sealed train by the Germans, who hoped that he would influence Russia to leave the war.

Lenin's slogan was "All power to the soviets!" and he used it to undermine the provisional government. He demanded peace at once, immediate land reform, workers' control of factories, and self-determination for the non-Russian peoples. Once in power he turned his back on all programs of reform, but he kept his promise to take Russia out of World War I.

It was Kerensky's persistence in fighting the war that undid the provisional government, though other factors contributed. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, undermined the war effort with propaganda among the soldiers. The government attempted to take action against Lenin, but he went into hiding in Finland. Kerensky tried to reinforce his authority by calling a state conference in Moscow.
The Bolsheviks were not represented, but the conference was so divided that it could achieve nothing. A conservative revolt led by Gen. Lavr G. Kornilov was put down.

This failed revolt was a turning point in the revolution. It became clear that there were not two, but three, opposing forces in the government: the conservatives, the social democrats, and Lenin's followers. To Kornilov, the enemy was socialism, personified by Kerensky. To Kerensky, the conservatives represented counterrevolution. Both factions despised and underrated Lenin. To Lenin, Kerensky was as much of an enemy as Nicholas II. The defeat of Kornilov and the exhaustion of the provisional government gave Lenin the chance he had been waiting for.

The leading characters of the next phase of revolution were Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Trotsky would be murdered years later on Joseph Stalin's orders. Kerensky seemed unable to take action against the military preparations of the Bolsheviks, who were distributing arms, subverting the army, and appointing supporters as commissars of military units. On the night of November 6-7 the Bolsheviks acted. By the next evening the capital was in their hands, though fighting in Moscow went on for several days. Soon the Bolsheviks had installed their own general as commander in chief of the armed forces.

When the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in the capital, most members of other socialist parties walked out, leaving the impression that Lenin's party best represented the interests of workers, farmers, and soldiers. The congress called upon all parties in the war to negotiate immediate peace. It also abolished all private ownership of land and took all property of the imperial family and the church. The eight-hour workday was made compulsory, and factory workers were given the right to supervise their enterprises.

Kerensky had earlier planned an election for the end of the month and Lenin let it go ahead. The results gave the Bolsheviks a distinct minority in the Constituent Assembly. Lenin then appealed over the head of the assembly to the people, claiming the workers' councils represented "a higher form of democratic principle." By January 1918 the assembly was completely demoralized, and it ceased to function.
Meanwhile, Lenin had to deal with the war. Calls for a negotiated peace failed so Lenin then bargained directly with the Germans. Faced with a crippling loss of territory or the collapse of his government, he chose the former. Trotsky headed the Soviet delegation that signed a peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk, in what is now Belarus, on March 3, 1918. Under its terms Russia lost Ukraine, its Polish and Baltic provinces, and Finland. The treaty was effectively annulled by Germany's defeat in November 1918, and the Soviet Union eventually regained all of the territory except Finland and Poland.

At the time that the Congress of Soviets met to approve the treaty, the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Russian Communist party. The treaty had negative effects for Lenin. Opponents from different Russian factions were united by their opposition to it. Patriotic indignation at the betrayal of Russia to Germany quickly surfaced, even in the army. This division between the Communists and their opponents led to a civil war that lasted until late 1920. Trotsky was appointed commissar for war.

Lenin's government, which had relocated to the Kremlin in Moscow, was determined to get rid of all opposition. All non-Bolshevik socialist factions were driven out of the workers' councils, and they were forbidden to engage in political activity. In retaliation Lenin was shot and seriously wounded, and another leading Communist was assassinated.

The government responded by proclaiming a campaign of "Red terror," which included shooting hostages and giving the secret police, the Cheka, the power to arrest, try, and execute suspects. Because the Communists feared that Nicholas might be liberated, he and his family were murdered at Ekaterinburg on the night of July 16-17, 1918.

Although surrounded on all sides by enemies, the Communists had the advantage of controlling the heartland of Russia. Trotsky's Red Army was able to plan operations and move men more easily than its enemies, whose bases were on the fringes and who were cut off from each other. Although all the enemies wanted to destroy the Moscow government, they were not united in other objectives.

For example, if the Ukrainians, who simply wanted independence, had won it, they probably would not have continued to fight on behalf of those opposed to the government.

Trotsky managed to take an army that had once been demoralized by Bolshevik propaganda and turn it into an effective fighting force. He used former czarist officers whose training and experience were too valuable to be ignored. The rigid discipline of the Communist party helped to raise morale. By 1919 the Red Army had become a much better fighting force than its opponents, who were collectively referred to as the Whites. A large part of the peasantry disliked the Communists, but they saw no point in supporting the Whites, who they feared would restore the monarchy. The industrial workers entertained no hope from the Whites, who had shown no understanding of city workers.

After the civil war ended, the only threat to the government came from the Kronshtadt Rebellion of 1921. Strikes in St. Petersburg led to demonstrations demanding the release of socialists from prison. In March a mutiny broke out at the nearby naval base of Kronshtadt. The sailors demanded political freedom and the end of the dictatorship of the Communist party. Lenin, whose chief goal had always been political power, refused any concessions. Trotsky led a force that crushed the mutineers.

Lenin went far to allay economic discontent by advocating such policies as affirming the rights of the peasants to own land, by reducing taxes, and by permitting a certain amount of private enterprise in his New Economic Policy. But in politics he was rigid, no opinions other than those sanctioned by the Communist party were allowed. The party itself was controlled by its Central Committee and increasingly by smaller units. Effective control passed finally to the Secretariat of the party.

When Lenin died in 1924 power passed to the first secretary of the party, Joseph Stalin. Under him still one more revolution took place: the centralization of all political and economic power in his hands and the transformation of the Soviet Union into a completely totalitarian state.

Stalin, Joseph (1879-1953). One of the most ruthless dictators of modern times was Stalin, the despot who transformed the Soviet Union into a major world power. The victims of his campaigns of political terror included some of his followers. His real name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. In 1912 he took the alias of "Stalin," from the Russian word stal, meaning "steel."

Joseph Stalin was born in Gori, a village in Transcaucasian Georgia, on Dec. 21, 1879. His father was Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a poor shoemaker who drank heavily and beat the boy savagely. His mother, a peasant's daughter, took in sewing and washing to help support the family. When Stalin was about 7, he caught smallpox, which left him pockmarked for life.

Stalin entered a church school at the age of 9. When he was 14 his father died, and Stalin was sent to the Orthodox Russian seminary at Tiflis to be educated for the priesthood. He was more interested in Communism, however, than in theology, and the seminary expelled him in 1899 as an agitator.

He remained in Tiflis, working briefly at one job after another. He soon joined the Tiflis branch of the Russian Social Democrat party.

Stalin then became a paid agitator, trying to incite revolt against the czar. He edited illegal pamphlets and helped distribute them secretly. He organized strikes among the factory workers in Tiflis. His ability won the attention of party leaders, and they sent him to form a Communist organization in Batumi, a large port on the Black Sea.

His revolutionist activities brought his first arrest, in 1902. He was exiled to Siberia in 1903 but soon escaped. From 1902 to 1913 Stalin was arrested and exiled six times. He escaped five times and was released once. Like his fellow revolutionaries, he adopted one alias after another in order to evade arrest. He first called himself Koba, after a legendary Georgian hero. Later he changed his name to David, Soso, Chiijikov, Nijeradze, and, finally, Stalin.
In 1903 the Social Democratic party split into two factions. One faction, headed by Nikolai Lenin, called itself the Bolsheviks. The other faction, opposed to Lenin's creed of violence, was the Mensheviks. Stalin believed in Lenin's policy, and so he joined the Bolsheviks. He became a party leader in his native Transcaucasia. In 1905 he attended a secret Bolshevik meeting in Finland; in 1906, in Stockholm; and the following year, in London.

At these meetings Stalin's iron zeal and organizing ability won Lenin's high regard. Shrewd Lenin worked with Stalin closely and in 1912 Lenin made him a member of the Central Committee. Meanwhile Stalin wrote for the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, which he is said to have founded. Arrested again, in 1912, he again escaped within a few months. Going to St. Petersburg, Stalin organized a Bolshevik group in the Duma, the parliament of czarist Russia.

In 1913 Stalin was arrested for the sixth time and was exiled to the grim Turukhansk region of Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. For the first time he failed to escape. In March 1917, however, the revolution led by Alexander Kerensky freed all political prisoners, and Stalin returned to St. Petersburg.

There he helped Lenin prepare the final plans for the history-making Bolshevik revolution. Stalin's name seldom appears in records of the revolution, for he remained in the background as an administrator. His work was largely responsible for the success of the bloody October Revolution, in 1917.

During the civil war that followed the revolution Stalin served as political commissar with Bolshevik armies on several fronts. At that time political commissars were entrusted with military duties, and Stalin showed exceptional ability as a strategist and tactician. In 1918 he directed the successful defense of vital Tsaritsyn against the White Army. The city was renamed Stalingrad in his honor in 1925, though the name was later changed to Volgograd as part of an effort in the 1950s and 1960s to downgrade Stalin's importance. In 1921 Stalin led the invasion that won his homeland, Georgia, for the Communists, as the Bolsheviks now called themselves.
The next year Stalin became general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist party. As Lenin's trusted aide, Stalin methodically assumed increasing power.

Some of Stalin's unscrupulous methods worried even Lenin, who wrote, "Stalin is too rough." Stalin, however, was undisturbed by criticism. Grimly he undermined his rival Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Union's war minister and Lenin's former close associate. In 1925, a year after Lenin's death, Stalin forced Trotsky to resign as war minister and in 1927 expelled him from the party. Determined to eliminate the minority Trotskyite influence, Stalin exiled Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929 and had him assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Having dealt with the opposition Stalin was then supreme ruler, in a drive to industrialize and modernize the Soviet Union, he launched the first in a series of five-year plans in 1928. He declared, "We are 50 to 100 years behind advanced countries. We must cover this distance in 10 years."

Stalin ordered the collectivization of farms. When peasants resisted, he ordered the state to seize their land and possessions. Well-to-do farmers, called kulaks, especially resented collectivization. Determined to root out all opposition, Stalin showed no mercy to the rebellious kulaks. In 1932-33 he created a famine in the Ukraine and liquidated some 3 million kulaks through death by starvation.

In 1936 Stalin's ruthless methods again drew world attention. To consolidate his place as supreme dictator, he conducted a series of purges. Claiming that a number of Red Army officers and scores of old Bolsheviks were "plotting against the state," Stalin had them executed. Many of them were men who had helped Stalin in his drive to power.

In August 1939 Stalin startled the world again when he brought the Soviet Union into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. One month later Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. The non-aggression pact permitted the Soviets to seize eastern Poland, attack Finland, and absorb the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and Bukovina without German opposition. Stalin extended Soviet borders into outlying buffer areas.
In May 1941 Stalin made himself premier, replacing Vyacheslav Molotov. In June the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany. Stalin took command of the army and reorganized industry.

In 1943 at Tehran and early in 1945 at Yalta, he issued inflexible terms to his allies Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain and President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States. Later in 1945, at Potsdam, he made a pact with President Harry Truman on the reconstruction of defeated Germany. He then defiantly broke the terms of the accord.

After the war's end, Stalin seemed to be determined to make the Soviet Union dominant in Europe and to impose Communism on the world. Through purges and other relentless measures he forced Communist governments on Eastern Europe and sought to gain control of Italy and France. In the United Nations and in Allied councils, his obstructionist policy blocked efforts to establish a lasting peace. His blockade of Berlin in 1948-49 threatened a third global war.
Many of the dates and facts of Stalin's personal life remain uncertain. He was married in 1903, at the age of 24, to Ekaterina Svanidze, a native of Georgia who died in 1907 of tuberculosis. Their son, Yasha, died in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. In 1919 Stalin married Nadya Alliluyeva, who died under unexplained circumstances in 1932. They had a daughter, Svetlana, and a son, Vassili, a Soviet air force officer. Vassili died in 1962. In 1967 Svetlana, who used her mother's maiden name, defected to the United States.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953. Four days after his death, his embalmed body was entombed alongside that of Lenin in Moscow's Red Square.

In February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, then first secretary of the Soviet Communist party, addressed the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress in secret session. He devoted three hours to the systematic destruction of Joseph Stalin's image as a public hero.

Among other charges, Stalin was now accused of wanton slaughter during the prewar purge trials; of being abnormally suspicious of associates; of causing thousands of unnecessary casualties during World War II by incompetently interfering with Red Army campaigns; and of failing to keep in personal touch with provincial areas. Above all he was denounced for having paraded himself as a savior.

Efforts to destroy the Stalin image were suspended for a time in 1957 while Stalin's own strong-arm methods were used ruthlessly to suppress the Hungarian revolt. At the 22nd Soviet Communist Party Congress in 1961, the denunciation of Stalin was resumed. Before the session was adjourned, Stalin's body had been removed from Red Square and reburied within the Kremlin walls among the graves of lesser Soviet heroes. His name was removed from public buildings, streets, and factories. Stalingrad itself was renamed Volgograd.

I have just shown three examples of societies in peril and their resulting experiments in socialism. Something I have found extraordinary over my years of concern in such matters is why America didn't fall in the same fashion. I can't find any reason other than just good-old American stubbornness which has been handed down generation to generation since the Revolutionary war.

In conclusion, it is very curious to me why after all these visible illustrations, after all these years of experience, many people still don't see Socialism as a threat. I am only 28 but I remember the Civil Defense drills in elementary school. I remember being taught the difference from a tornado and a Soviet attack by the sound of the bells. I remember playing outside as a kid and stopping in my tracks to watch military planes flying overhead and genuinely agonizing until I recognized them as American. I was in the military during the Cold War and I was taught how to kill Soviets.
I talk to people much younger than me who don't think Socialism was ever a menace. What's worst, is older people who should know better, but were persuaded by 100 years of socialism in the form of unions, academia, and media/Hollywood influence. People don't seem to realize that the only thing between today's liberals and unadulterated socialism is the Republican party. If the liberals in Washington had their way, we would be a socialist state. More so than we already are.
It behooves our generation to bestow vigilance and not progress further down that gauntlet of socialism. We will face crisis and disasters, just as our grandparents and their grandparents did. We must learn from the past. Our past and the past of other nations and remember that socialism has never worked and will never work. It only enslaves the weak and empowers the leaders. It really is evil.

People should wise up and remember the old cliché: "if it walks like a socialist and quacks like a socialist, it's a liberal."

--Stacy Foster

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