Communism in crisis 1976-89(Russia): Russia and China before the twentieth century were ruled by emperors who were undemocratic. Most of the people and were peasants. They were not looked after well and they were very poor. There was no progress at all in these two countries and they were at the mercy of more powerful countries like Britain, Japan and US. There were frequent famines by which many lost their lives. This resulted in groups of would-be political reformers emerging in both countries. These reformers found there in Communism which was a social and economic system in which nearly all resources and property was collectively owned by the society and not by individuals. The society was a classless society. The theory of communism formulated by the political philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles of Germany was taken up completely by Russia and China. Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin of Russia and Mao Tse-Tung of China were the most popular communist leaders.
Communism is a political and economic structure where property is owned by the working goals and everyone works to the communal goal. After a few decades there were some cracks in Russia as it resulted in low production, limited advancement and mass poverty. Poverty spread so much in the 1980’s that citizens began to revolt. Russia under Brezhnev saw some changes in Communism. State began to control the production, all people worked and earned the wages and could spend the wages as they wanted. There was equality amongst the people. But it was definitely a shift from communism to socialism in Russia.
“Soviet and East European ideologists put forth the notion in the 1970s that the Communist states had completed a definite stage along the Marxist road to the future, and now enjoyed the system of “developed socialism” or “real existing socialism” that distinguished them from the capitalist world, even though the transition to ideal communism lay much further ahead. Brezhnev affirmed this theme in 1977” was the view of Brezhnev. Gorbachev termed this period as “Era of Stagnation”. Gorbachev. Gorbachev is widely associated with Perestroika which was a political movement that brought reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980’s. He brought in openness in his reforms and this termed as ‘glasnost’ is believed to be the cause for the dissolution of Soviet Union, the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989 and even the end of Cold War between USSR and USA.
