The Destructive and Bloody History of Communism

A Disturbing and Shocking History

Topic-Mill
7 min readDec 5, 2022

Throughout this article, we will be discussing the history of Communism. We will be looking at some of the major people and events that contributed to the development of this system, such as Mao Zedong, Stalin, and the Khmer Rouge. We will also be looking at how this system changed the face of the world.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Mao Zedong

During the last decade of Mao’s rule, he launched a massive campaign called the Cultural Revolution. This was a bloody class struggle that destroyed cultural artifacts and forced millions to work in the countryside. The campaign began in 1966.

During this era, the population of China rose from around 550 million to over 900 million. This was due to the economic boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, Mao claimed leadership of the Communist Party, and a split in the international communist movement occurred. He also stamped his personality on the new state.

The ‘Red Emperor’ imposed will on almost every aspect of Chinese society. He also made grievous mistakes that he could not ignore. He also tried to eliminate his opponents from office. In the end, tens of millions died on his watch.

The ‘Red Emperor’ was an indefatigable leader, who sincerely tried to remake the way of life for millions of people. But, in the end, his ambitions turned into a nightmare.

Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. This campaign lasted 10 years. During this time, people in China fought with fists and posters, and used slogans and loudspeakers to defend the regime.

Mao was known as the Great Helmsman of the Chinese Communist Party. He also played an important role in the implementation of a planned economy in China. He believed that China had enough people to carry revolutionary banners forward. But, he also believed that China could afford to lose.

During the Cultural Revolution, people were sent to work in the countryside, and schools were closed. They were also terrorized by ad hoc tribunals. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the 1970–72 campaigns.

Mao also purged rivals and threw the author of the Chinese national anthem in prison. He also refused to be bound by the laws of nature, or man. He wanted to make China into a socialist utopia. The “Red Emperor” also refused to pay taxes. This led to mass riots.

Mao Zedong was the founder of the People’s Republic of China. He launched a massive campaign called the Great Leap Forward, and solidified his control through a campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries.

Stalin

During Joseph Stalin’s rule, millions of innocent people died. According to Roy Medvedev, twenty million died in forced collectivization, labor camps, or in exile.

Stalin was a ruthless dictator who terrorized the Soviet Union. He ordered thousands of political enemies to be executed, and millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent to labor camps.

Stalin’s policies of forced collectivization and industrialization created socialism in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union transformed into an industrial superpower. It also became a military power. He annexed parts of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bessarabia from Romania.

He used a combination of police terror, political repression, and economic incentives to maintain his rule. He also rewrote history books and censored photographs to create a favorable impression. He was a strong opponent of political dissidents, writers, and artists.

He was also the architect of the Great Purge, a massive wave of arrests and executions that began in 1934. The Great Purge targeted political enemies, and killed millions of people. It was designed to ensure Stalin’s dominance.

Stalin’s rule ended in 1953 when he died of a stroke. After his death, Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders denounced Stalinism. However, the KGB, which was the successor to the Stalinist secret police, remained the dominant institution during the Stalinist period.

Stalin’s successors used police terror sparingly and sought to gain popular support through relaxation of political controls. During this period, tens of thousands of political dissidents, writers, artists, and political enemies were jailed and sent to labor camps.

Stalin also initiated a massive famine in the Kazakh region in 1930–1933. This famine, which combined starvation and death, was called Holodomor. He also requisitioned grain from Soviet Ukraine.

In the late 1920s, Stalin launched a rapid industrial development program. He imported workers from the United States and Western Europe. He also began joint-venture contracts with major American private enterprises.

He was also responsible for political executions, requisitioned grain, and destroyed the infrastructure of enemy countries. In addition, he was responsible for millions of indirect deaths.

Joseph Stalin died of a stroke on March 5, 1953. His body was kept in Lenin’s mausoleum in the Red Square until 1961.

Soviet Union

During the era of the Soviet Communist regime, dissent was considered a threat to the state. Writers and other intellectuals were persecuted for their writings. They were considered “enemies of the people” by the state. The party considered dissent a violation of Marxism-Leninism.

Joseph Stalin’s “revolution from above” (1927–1953) was a period of tremendous human suffering. The Soviet Union committed mass murders and systematically repressed political dissent. Joseph Stalin executed nearly a million of his own citizens. Most deaths were caused by the gulag system. These camps, located in the remote regions of Siberia, were run by the NKVD (People’s Comissariat for Internal Affairs), the successor of the Stalinist secret police.

The Soviet Communist regime also regarded dissent as a violation of Marxism-Leninism. Stalin’s successors were particularly hard on writers, artists, and other intellectuals. The party’s leadership believed that individual interests should be sacrificed to the state.

By the late 1930s, the gulag system had grown to include millions of Soviet citizens. Some of the victims were political dissidents, while others were murderers or thieves. Insufficient food rations and physical abuse by camp guards caused many deaths.

The Soviet Union’s economy suffered a major decline. The First Five-Year Plan (1928–1933) set unrealistic production targets. The plan called for large state collective farms. It was also expected that many peasants would be freed to work in the city. The surplus from collectivization would be used to finance industrialization.

In the early 1930s, a large number of kulaks were deported to Siberia. This triggered a Ukrainian famine. During the famine, three million to five million peasants died. During the Stalin era, the death rate from exhaustion was high. Gulags continued to exist on a small scale into the Gorbachev era.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Volga Germans were partially rehabilitated. They were not allowed to return to their homelands until 1991. The Crimean Tatars were not allowed to return until 1991.

In 1989, Ukraine and Latvia demanded freedom. Estonia and Lithuania followed in 1989. The Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 under the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Khmer Rouge in Cambodia

During Cambodia’s long history of communist rule, two events stand out as seemingly contrasting. The first was the Khmer Republic (1955–1963), when the US and Vietnam provided aid to the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The other was the rise of the Khmer Rouge, which came to power in 1975 and ruled Cambodia until 1979.

The Khmer Rouge became known for its brutality and the mass killings that took place. It was a dictatorship based in remote jungle areas in the northeast of the country. The regime was led by a former Marxist, Pol Pot. Its ideology entailed absolute power, which it believed could bring a utopian society to the people.

The communists used quota systems, much like in communist China, to kill a specified number of “rightists” in each region. They also tortured and killed anyone they considered to be an intellectual or a member of the educated middle classes.

The communists had a total of over 200,000 dead, including a number of foreign nationals. Hundreds of thousands of people died of disease, starvation, and exhaustion. Survivors were systematically killed. The communists planned to remove the capital city, Phnom Penh, from the city as part of a total communist revolution. The Khmer Rouge planned to create a society with no classes, religion, or family ties.

The communists based their regime on the belief that their Marxist party would bring the nation to a utopian state. The communists believed that they were above all traditions.

The Cambodian communists grew close to communist movements in Vietnam. They relied on them to fight French colonialism. In the 1940s, the communists were part of the Vietnamese-controlled Indochinese Communist Party.

In the 1960s, Sihanouk repressed the left, which pushed the Cambodian communists into the jungle. During the civil war, the Khmer Rouge gained increasing support. They planned to retake the territory that was lost to Vietnamese centuries ago. They thought that Vietnamese troops disguised in Cambodia were a threat to the country. They also believed that the United States would bomb Phnom Penh.

The Khmer Rouge was responsible for the worst mass killings of the twentieth century. Most of the deaths were attributable to disease, starvation, and exhaustion.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

In conclusion, the bloody history of communism is one of the most tragic and barbaric stories of modern times. It has resulted in the death of countless innocent people, and terrorized millions more through a ruthless campaign of oppression and violence.

It stands as a stark reminder that unchecked power can lead to immense destruction and suffering for those caught in its path. We must never forget this history, nor should we ever be complacent about the potential for similar atrocities to occur in the future.

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Topic-Mill
Topic-Mill

Written by Topic-Mill

Topic-Mill articles are about enriching your daily life with valuable, and eye opening facts.

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