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A Level Paper 3 M. Nichols SCIE 2011
THE CRISIS OF COMMUNISM
THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Theme 3: The Collapse of Communism
The Sino-Soviet Conflict
Discussion
l Looking at the map what strikes you about the position and size of China and the USSR?
l Why might they be likely to come into conflict?
l Which possible areas might they clash over?
l Which Chinese enemies might the Soviets be likely to support?
l Which Soviet enemies might the Chinese be likely to support?
l Which major Asian power did they have a shared hatred of?
Long Term Reasons
The history of Sino-Soviet relations had seen a mixture of co-operation and conflict. When it had been the Russian Empire, Tsarist troops had been part of the occupying forces who had carved up a weak imperial China. Between 1858-1881, China had ceded 1.5m square km’s to Russia. But even in the post-Tsarist world, relations between the two great Asian powers had remained tense.
Good Relations/ Bad Relations
The CCP had been helped by Moscow throughout the Chinese Civil War with some military aid (mostly dis-garded Japanese equipment), advisers and economic help / Moscow never really gave that much support to Mao’s forces. Lundestad comments that: “if US support to Chiang was limited, Soviet support to Mao Tse-Tung was even more limited”
The American uncertainty over the USSR’s possible reaction had kept the US from interfering too much in the KMT’s favour, and so had indirectly helped with Chiang’s defeat / Stalin had co-operated with the KMT when it was in Soviet interests, even though they had massacred Chinese Communists in 1927, for example
Mao was a great admirer of Stalin’s methods and his ruthless policies of modernization and industrialization, especially his Five Year Plans; he also admired Stalin’s personality cult - and labour camps (but despised Stalin himself) / The USSR had never given any help to the Chinese against the vicious Japanese occupiers (in fact they had signed a Non Aggression pact with them in 1941), and had only entered WWII in its final days to grab territory and resources ($2 billion worth of plant and machinery)
Mao never initially questioned the USSR’s claim to be the world’s premier Communist power - and its right to global leadership / The 1945 Sino-Soviet Pact had even seen Moscow recognise Chiang as China’s legitimate ruler. Not until October 1949 were the Chinese Communists praised on the front page of Pravda
China and the USSR had always had a shared hatred of Japan; they were then to develop a shared mistrust of the USA / Europe was always more of a Soviet priority than China and Asia; and Moscow was worried about straining its relations with the USA if it interfered too much in China
Khruschev had pulled all Soviet troops out of China by 1955, restoring full sovereignty to the Chinese government (though Macau and Hong Kong remained in the control of the old imperialists) / A weak China was to the USSR’s benefit, as Moscow still had Tsarist-era territorial ambitions in Manchuria and Outer Mongolia; Russia would also retain Port Arthur (Lushun) as a naval base for a number of years, and have other territorial claims
/ Stalin was suspicious of Mao’s independence of mind and feared the rise of another Tito (the independently-minded Yugoslav leader)
Stalin & Mao – together at last / Pro-Soviet Chinese Communist leaders, like Kao Kang in Manchuria, were dismissed by Mao
Short-Term Reasons for the Sino-Soviet Split
(Use Painter pages 38-39 and Lundestad pages 195-201 to help you find the key words)
Sino-Sovi
Sino-Soviet Clashes
It is perhaps telling that the PRC and the USSR ultimately came into conflict over border disputes. For all the ideological rhetoric and posturing, it was essentially geo-political, strategic interests that mattered most to both sides. Despite being huge nations (the USSR was the largest in the world, with China the fourth biggest) they both wanted more land, more resources, more prestige.
In March, 1969 at the Amur-Ussuri River border open conflict occurred with hundreds killed. In 1967 the USSR had 15 divisions along the 4, 500 mile Chinese border; by 1973 this had risen to 45 or a massive 25% of its total forces. The Chinese began digging fallout shelters and hoarding grain. The US must have been rubbing its hands in glee.
However, was there any real danger of war? Diplomatic relations were never fully severed; and as Lundestad implies, it was only natural that they would fall out: “two countries seldom or never have identical interests”.
The results of the crisis though were important in a number of ways:
l The restraining influence of the USSR on the PRC was gone; China would attack (and defeat) India in 1962; the USSR had been wooing Third World nations like India, and China put this policy in danger; the USSR sold MiG jets to India to try and undermine China’s advantages;
l The Americans exploited the breach to their own ends; the US tried to drive a wedge between the two Communist powers by courting one or the other; Nixon famously favoured an agreement with China and visited the nation; the US only made mild protests at China taking up Taiwan’s seat on the Security-Council; at one stage, the PRC and the USA were even supporting the same (right-wing, anti-Soviet) dictators in Iran and Chile (the Shah and Pinochet)! In 1979, full diplomatic relations were established;
l China began pursuing its own global agenda, distinct from that of the USSR; it developed relations with European Marxist states like Albania, which had left the Warsaw Pact in 1968; it criticized Soviet actions in Afghanistan and elsewhere; it attacked Soviet allies like Vietnam;
Relations though did improve in the 1980s because:
l Mao was dead and the far more pragmatic Deng was in charge;
l Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982 and would eventually be replaced by the moderate Mikhail Gorbachev; he even visited China in May, 1989; between 1985-89 trade between the two doubled to over $4billion; and Gorbachev removed all SS-20s from Asia and restrained Vietnam, etc.
l New tensions arose between China and the USA, and between the USSR and the USA; Reagan was in office, there were arguments over Taiwan, but relations never deteriorated too much (Reagan sold China weapons in 1984-5); even US condemnation of the Tiananmen massacres was muted;
The USSR – Challenges to Communism
The imposition of Soviet control over Eastern Europe (the ‘iron curtain’) was bound to eventually cause a backlash. The Soviets had rigged elections, murdered and executed opponents, and permanently stationed the Red Army in those unfortunate nations.
Match up the nation with its anti-Soviet and/or anti-Communist action
Date / Nation / Action1956 / Poland / a. Serious riots saw dozens dead and hundreds wounded
1956 / Czechoslovakia / b. The riots were largely socio-economically motivated; the installation of the relative moderate, Gomulka, helped to bring the situation under control
1953 / Hungary / c. Its revolt was aimed at instigating reforms, of wanting ‘socialism with a human face’
1968 / GDR / d. The most bloody revolts took place in a nation that had been a close ally of the Germans in WWII & had seen a particularly harsh Communist regime
Date / Nation / Action
Wladyslaw Gomulka –hardliner or moderate?
The Reasons For The Hungarian Uprising - And Its Effects
The Reasons For The Czech Spring - And Its Effects
Comparisons and Contrasts Between the Hungarian & Czech Uprisings
Similarities
1. Both the Hungarian revolt of _____ and the Czech uprising of _____ were popular responses to ordinary peoples’ discontent with Soviet-style imposed ______. In both, a hardline ______Party leadership was deposed in favour of a more ______approach. In Hungary ______came to power, in Czechoslovakia ______replacing ______
2. In both nations, living-standards had been _____; the _____ police everywhere and the Soviets in the form of the ___ Army had been seen as unwanted foreign occupiers imposing their own culture and language on a proud people.
3. Both countries had seen leadership emanate initially from the ranks of ______and ______as they were the best educated and the most articulate critics of the regimes.
4. Both countries were unsupported by the West, which was occupied at the time. During the Hungarian revolt, there was the ______Crisis and during the Prague Spring, the USA was more concerned with events going on in ______. Besides, eastern Europe was regarded as the Soviet’s ‘______of______‘, and the West feared starting a major war if it interfered there.
5. Both uprisings were ruthlessly crushed by the Soviets, because both nations were regarded as ______important to the security of the ______Pact and the USSR. Both were also full of exploitable ______.
6. The Hungarians and the Czechs both saw ______reforms introduced as a result of their revolts (though much more so in Hungary under ______than in Czechoslovakia under the less moderate ______), and so benefited more than countries like the GDR, which had never revolted on such a scale and maintained a consistent hard-line leadership in place: first Walther ______and later the slightly more moderate Erich ______.
The GDR Leader
Differences
1. The Hungarian revolt was certainly a much bloodier affair than the Czech uprising. In the former, probably around ______Hungarians were killed, ______arrested and _____executed, as well as ______Russians being killed. In contrast, the Czech disturbances saw perhaps a handful of deaths.
2. Both revolts had different aims. The Hungarians were more radical and nationalistic and wanted to leave the ______Pact. The Czechs in contrast wanted to reform communism and never threatened to leave the ______Pact or COMECON.
3. During the Hungarian revolt, Nikita ______was leader of the USSR and took a harder line than his successor Leonid ______who was Soviet leader during the ‘Prague Spring’.
4. In Czechoslovakia, the leadership of the protests actually came from the head of the Communist Party, ______, whereas in Hungary the new leader of the Communist Party, ______was not a popular figure.
5. In ______the army had joined in on the side of the rebels, whereas in ______the army had stayed out of matters.
6. In Czechoslovakia, the forces of a number of countries besides the USSR including: Poland, East______, Hungary and ______(but not ______) had been involved in an invasion; whereas in Hungary the country was already occupied and only attacked by _____ Army forces.
7. Both countries moderate communist leaders (in Hungary____ and in Czechoslovakia,______) were victimised; in Hungary he was _____; whereas in Czechoslovakia he was merely ______.
8. As a direct result of the Czech uprising, the Soviet leadership introduced a new policy called the ‘______’ which was designed to keep members of its military alliance ______Communist states.
Other eastern European nations had varying degrees of closeness to Moscow
l Romania, a former German ally and fascist nation, pursued an independent foreign policy, and, under Nikolae Ceausescu, Lundestad claims was the most independent of all Warsaw Pact members (Soviet troops were withdrawn from Romanian soil in 1958); though it maintained a rigid domestic policy enforced by its infamous Securitate secret police;
l Bulgaria was the most loyal of all the Warsaw Pact nations, maintaining a slavish loyalty to Moscow; it had the most in common with the USSR;
The Reasons For The Berlin Wall, 1961
The Effects Of The Berlin Wall, 1961
The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
The Soviet Union, between 1989-1991, lost control of its Eastern European satellites and effectively imploded, dissolving itself on Christmas Day, 1991.
Why did it lose control? Why did it collapse? We need to look at individual nations, personalities and events. The historiography on the reasons for the collapse is also pretty extensive.
Complete the details. I have started you off.
(Use Lundestad to help you)
Long Term Reasons
24
A Level Paper 3 M. Nichols SCIE 2011
Poland and Solidarity
Poland had always had a strained relationship with its powerful neighbour. These tensions came to a head in the 1980s.
Initially, as in other Eastern European nations, concerns were mundane: better working and living conditions. Later these developed into more profound demands for political reform.
In 1980 striking Polish workers had a number of demands. They had formed their own trade union, Solidarity, to co-ordinate their efforts.
Find these initial demands and place them in the relevant box
Timeline of Polish Discontent
During the 1980s Solidarity grew more and more radical and bolder in its opposition to the regime of General Jaruzelski.
(Use Lundestad pages 211-212, etc. to establish a narrative of events)
Date / EventJuly 1980 / a. Solidarity wins the elections and forms Poland’s first democratic government since before WWII, with a Solidarity official becoming Prime Minister
August 1980 / b. Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a Catholic priest and opponent of the regime, is beaten to death by the secret police. He becomes a martyr for the cause of free speech.
September 1980 / c. Strikes take place in the important Gdansk shipyards of Northern Poland. Ship-building is one of Poland’s most important industries. The government gives in to most of Solidarity’s initial 21 demands.
October 1980 / d. More than a third of all workers are now in Solidarity. It has more than 9m members, many of whom (30%) are also Communist Party members
Jan. 1981 / e. Solidarity organises a boycott of the Polish elections in protest at their unfairness
October 1981 / f. Polish Communist Party expresses its support for Gorbachev’s reforms, indicative that serious change is planned
Dec. 1981 / g. Jaruzelski calls for elections, sure of his grip on the country and that the result will be favourable. He was wrong. The government was defeated in a referendum on economic reforms.
October 1982 / h. Solidarity is set up and Lech Walesa, a shipyard electrician with history of radicalism, becomes its courageous and charismatic leader
1983 / i. Lech Walesa becomes first non-Communist President of Poland in over 50 years
1984 / j. Solidarity’s membership reaches 3.5m
1985 / k. General Jaruzelski becomes leader of the Polish Communist Party after effectively a military coup. He will later justify it by claiming the Soviets had threatened military intervention. The police and army never side with Solidarity.
1986 / l. Government announces price rises, including of food
1988 / m. Martial law is imposed and a clampdown on Solidarity activists sees many imprisoned including its leader, Lech Walesa
June 1989 / n. Solidarity is formally abolished by the state – but will make a quick comeback
1990 / o. Solidarity’s membership reaches 7m and is officially recognized by the weak and confused government
Lech Walesa and strikers