A LaserPhoto of ANDRE GROMKYO SOVIET RUSSIA MINISTER

Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet Belarusian communist politician during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. 

---

I first met Andrei Gromyko in London in 1945, where he was representing the Soviet Union on the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations. Gromyko had been a very young wartime Soviet ambassador in Washington and was generally regarded as something of a whiz kid. Most of Gromyko’s colleagues on the Preparatory Commission had worked with him on the drafting of the United Nations Charter. The international climate was now rapidly changing, the smiles and bonhomie of San Francisco giving way to the grim realities that were soon to become the Cold War.

15 May 1947 – Starting with his involvement in the creation of the United Nations, and with his subsequent appointment as the USSR’s Permanent Representative to the UN and then as the USSR’s Foreign Minister, Ambassador Gromyko became a regular fixture at the world body. Shown here, in May 1947, ahead of a General Assembly meeting, he meets with Secretary-General Trygve Lie (left) and Alfred Fiderkiewicz of Poland, the Assembly’s alternate Vice-President. UN Photo/MB

Although some of the spirit of wartime cooperation remained, mutual suspicion and hostility between Stalin’s Soviet Union and the west were growing fast. Gromyko handled his difficult assignment with great skill. The Soviet line had become increasingly unwelcome to the other delegates, though Gromyko himself was still liked and respected. The United States was at that time not only the richest country in the world, but also the only nuclear power. The Soviet Union had been devastated by the war, and while a permanent member of the new UN Security Council, it was physically weak and in a minority. It was Gromyko’s task to reduce the appearance of this inequality as much as possible.

Despite the first ominous symptoms of the Cold War, the proceedings of the UN Preparatory Commission were relatively harmonious and achieved a great deal of organizational work in an extraordinarily short time. Some of the credit for this was certainly due to Gromyko. Dour and gruff in demeanor, his wry humor defused many difficult debates. He liked rather formulaic jokes like saying, after a long debate on a resolution, “I have just one small amendment. It is to add the word ‘not’ in the operative paragraph.” These sallies amused and relieved Gromyko’s colleagues.

One of Gromyko’s most important interventions concerned the permanent location of the headquarters of the future UN. The Europeans and the United States favoured Geneva, from which the Soviet Union had been expelled in 1939 for invading Finland. Gromyko argued that the United States was the best place for the UN’s headquarters. “The United States is located conveniently between Asia and Europe” he said. “The old world had it once and it is time for the new world to have it.” The Soviet Union, remembering that in 1919 the United States had invented the League of Nations and then refused to join it, wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the US to withdraw from the new world organization. Gromyko’s pointof view prevailed, and New York became the UN’s hometown.

Some highlights from the career of Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's top diplomat who served as Permanent Representative to the United Nations before becoming Foreign Minister, a post in which he served from 1957 to 1985 and which had him return to UN Headquarters many times over the decades.

 

By the time the UN moved to New York City in 1952, the political atmosphere was already much bleaker, and there was notably less diplomatic banter in the daily business at the UN. The debates in the Security Council, which initially met in the converted gymnasium of Hunter College (now Lehman College) in the Bronx, were grim affairs, often involving prolonged verbal battles between East and West. Gromyko, being in a voting minority in the Council, often had to resort to the veto, which led to much outrage in the American press. Lady Theodosia Cadogan, the imperious wife of the British ambassador, was heard, at a public dinner, to ask in high Edwardian tones, “Mr. Gromyko, why don’t you stop that stupid veto?”!!

25 September 1961 – President John F. Kennedy of the United States addressed the 16th session of the UN General Assembly. Here, at a reception given by the US Mission to the UN for heads of delegations, President Kennedy greetings Foreign Minister Gromyko of the USSR. UN Photo/Yutaka Nagata

Gromyko created a sensation by walking out of the Security Council in protest at the debate on the presence of Soviet groups in Iran in 1946. His absence set a precedent which had unintended and far-reaching consequences. At the start of the Korean crisis in 1950, the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council in protest against Taiwan’s representing China in the UN and was therefore unable to veto the decision to launch a UN force to counter the North Korean invasion of South Korea. After that mistake no Soviet ambassador was allowed to leave his seat at the table while the Security Council was in session, even to go to the bathroom.

Gromyko remained the dominant spokesman for Soviet foreign policy until shortly before his death. This must have required enormous discipline and self-restraint. Unlike other Soviet cold warriors – Yakov Malik, Andrei Vishinsky, Valerian Zorin – Gromyko, however adversarial, was always dignified and never descended to the gutter level of abuse and name-calling often reached by the others. Soviet leaders, taking Gromyko for granted, delighted in attempting to humiliate him. The buffoon Khrushchev told a visiting foreign dignitary, “That is Gromyko, my foreign minister. If I tell him to pull down his pants and sit on a block of ice, he will do it.”

I had my last direct contact with Gromyko in 1973. We were in Geneva for the Middle East Peace Conference after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim had been charged with organizing this highly publicized meeting and, as so often in such affairs, the seating arrangements presented major symbolic difficulties. We had finally come up with a plan in which the Unites States and the USSR, as the co-chairmen of the conference, would be seated as buffers between the most mutually hostile members. This meant, among other things, that the USSR would be seated next to Israel. Henry Kissinger agreed to persuade Israel to accept this arrangement if Waldheim could get Gromyko to accept it. I was dispatched on this errand and found Gromyko in his fun-loving mood. This, he said, was a challenge he had been awaiting for twenty years. When I said that time was very short and urged him to accept, he replied, “On one condition. Henry Kissinger must ask me on his knees.” I brought Kissinger over, and after much badinage Gromyko finally accepted graciously. The conference opened only forty minutes late.

26 June 1945 – Andrei Gromyko’s involvement in foreign affairs began early. He joined the diplomatic service of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) at the age of 30 in 1939. He was appointed the Soviet Union’s Permanent Representative to the United States in 1943, and took part in many of the international gatherings which led to the creation of the United Nations. Here, he signs the UN Charter at the UN Conference on International Organization (also known as the San Francisco Conference given its location), which reviewed previous steps to forming the world body and the creation of the UN Charter. UN Photo

‹ PreviousNext ›

In meeting with style and dignity the formidable challenge of representing the Soviet Union to a largely hostile world, Gromyko became an international institution. Despite the bitter political climate, those who dealt with him from the other side of the East-West divide never lost their respect, even affection for him.

Almost everyone in Old Gromyki in Belorussia in 1909 took their surname from the village’s name and were called Gromyko. So were more than 250 families in New Gromyki not far away. For practical purposes everyone needed a nickname or pseudonym, and the young Andrei Andreyevich’s was Burmakov. Born into a poor peasant household he managed to get an education which took him to the Lenin Institute in Moscow. His field was economics and in his twenties he held a senior post at the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

Stalin’s 1930s purges, however, created promising job opportunities in the Soviet foreign service, to which Andrei Gromyko would prove ideally suited. Rising rapidly up the system, he specialized in American affairs and in 1939 was made head of the United States section of the foreign affairs commissariat. He was a protégé of Vyacheslav Molotov, whom he would virtually succeed as foreign minister.

Meanwhile, Gromyko was appointed ambassador to Washington DC in 1943 when he was only thirty-four, and from 1946 he was the Soviet representative on the UN Security Council, in which capacity he cast his country’s veto twenty-six times. In the 1950s he did a short spell as ambassador in London, where he could not bring himself to wear a top hat to Buckingham Palace to present his credentials. He was forty-five when he was made Soviet foreign minister in succession to Dmitri Shepilov, who had held the post after Molotov for only a few months. Gromyko kept his hold on it for almost thirty years.

 

Gromyko was a diplomat’s diplomat. Whether by temperament or design, or both, he was never linked with any particular set of policies or associated with any particular faction in Soviet politics. He appeared to have no principles beyond, in the old definition of an ambassador’s job, ‘lying abroad for his country’, which he was good at. He was an unfailingly reliable spokesman for whatever it was his masters wanted said.

 

Appointed foreign minister under Malenkov, Gromyko served through the de-Stalinization period after the dictator’s death and was involved in the Cuban missile crisis and the other events of the Khrushchev years until the coming of the Gorbachev regime in 1985. By then he was well into his seventies and he was replaced as foreign minister and given the ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. He retired in 1988 and died the following year at seventy-nine.

Andrei Gromyko was born on July 18, 1909, in a village in Belorussia, then a province in the western region of the Russian Empire. His parents were peasant farmers. After the Revolution of 1917 the Communist state helped young people from working families to obtain a higher education and encouraged them to join the Communist Party. Gromyko took advantage of these opportunities.

Despite the hardships which the collectivization of agriculture imposed on the peasant population, he became a loyal supporter of Stalin's regime. He joined the Communist Party in 1931 and attended an agricultural technical school in his province, graduating in 1936. He then went to Moscow to work in the Institute of Economics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, where he completed his doctoral thesis on the mechanization of agriculture in the United States. For several years he occupied the position of senior researcher in the institute, where he specialized in the American economy.

A Career In Diplomacy

He began a new career in 1939 in the Soviet Diplomatic Service. Many older diplomats had disappeared during the late 1930s in Stalin's police terror. The new recruits who took their place received quick promotion to important diplomatic positions. Gromyko had the necessary qualifications for advancement. Son of working peasants, well educated, and a member of the party since the beginning of the Stalin take-over, he belonged to the new generation of Stalinists. He had no experience or previous training in international relations. He learned his leadership skills on the job. Until 1985 his entire career was devoted to Soviet foreign affairs.

Gromyko began his work at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., one of the Soviet Union's most important diplomatic posts. In 1943 at age 34 he was made Soviet ambassador to the United States. While serving in Washington he learned to speak fluent English. In World War II the Soviet Union and the United States were allies against Nazi Germany and Japan. Gromyko attended the major Allied conferences at Yalta and Potsdam in 1945, assisting Stalin in his negotiations with US leaders. The Soviet Union that year joined in the founding of the United Nations. Gromyko participated in the writing of the U.N. Charter, which made the Soviet Union a member of the Security Council with the right to veto any U.N. policy. In 1946 he became the permanent representative from the USSR to the Security Council.

In the two years that followed, the beginning of the Cold War produced serious diplomatic conflicts in the United Nations between the Soviet Union and the West. Gromyko faithfully carried out the new Soviet policy, casting 26 vetoes to prevent the United Nations from adopting resolutions of which Stalin disapproved. His unsmiling public appearances earned him the title among Western diplomats of "Old Stone Face." His work satisfied Stalin and Molotov, minister of foreign affairs, and in 1949 he was promoted to first deputy minister, becoming Molotov's direct assistant. In ten years he had risen from the position of research scholar in agriculture to one of the most important posts in Soviet foreign relations.

After Stalin's death in 1953 Gromyko continued to serve the new leaders competently and loyally. When Khrushchev came to power in 1955 he introduced a policy of "peaceful coexistence" to improve relations with the West. New conferences were held between East and West. Gromyko collaborated in these meetings. His influence grew when in 1956 he was appointed a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His career advanced again in 1957 when the minister of foreign affairs joined a group of other leading Communists opposing Khrushchev's policies in an attempt to remove him from power. They failed and were themselves removed from their leadership positions (Molotov left Moscow to become Soviet ambassador to the Mongolian People's Republic). Gromyko's reward for loyal service and for taking no part in the plot to depose Khrushchev was promotion to minister of foreign affairs.

Minister Of Foreign Affairs

In his years as minister he distinguished himself by his ability to implement effectively the policies of the Soviet leadership. He was adept at accommodating every Soviet leader from Stalin to Gorbachev, and in dealing with nine US presidents during his career. He participated actively in all international meetings and negotiated with leaders of important countries. In 1962 Khrushchev secretly ordered the installation of Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Gromyko went to Washington at that time to talk with President Kennedy, who warned him of the danger of a US-Soviet war if the Soviet missiles were actually placed in Cuba. Gromyko never admitted that his country was involved in this dangerous action; later he claimed that he had not concealed the move since the US president had never put the question of the missiles directly to him.

In the mid-1960s the Soviet Union began major industrial projects with the aid of Western corporations, including the Fiat automobile company in Italy. In 1966 Gromyko led the Soviet delegation to Rome to conclude the Fiat agreement. There he asked for and received an audience with the Pope. He was the first Soviet statesman publicly to recognize the importance of the Papacy. He appeared to have felt a deep satisfaction at the growing power and influence of his country in world affairs, asserting in 1971 that "today there is no question of any significance (in international relations) which can be resolved without the Soviet Union or in opposition to her."

Gromyko belonged to the Soviet political elite who enjoyed special comforts and privileges. He took personal pleasure in fine clothes, having his business suits specially made by Western tailors. He was probably instrumental in the successful career of his son, who became director of the Institute of African Affairs and wrote many authoritative articles on Soviet foreign policy (one consisting of a rare interview with his father discussing the Cuban missile crisis).

A Power In The Politburo

In the early 1970s the Soviet Union concluded with the United States an important treaty for the limitation of nuclear armaments, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). Gromyko helped to negotiate the final agreement. He acquired extensive knowledge of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. When negotiating, noted one observer, Gromyko "never took a note, never looked at a folder or turned to his assistants for advice." His service in these negotiations and support for the Soviet leader, Brezhnev, earned him in 1973 a position in the Communist Party's ruling committee, the Politburo. In addition, he received during his years as foreign minister many honors, including the Order of Lenin and Hero of Socialist Labor.

Relations with the United States gradually worsened during the 1970s. Gromyko sought in international meetings to strengthen the global influence of the Soviet Union. He promoted close ties with African states regardless of their type of government or economic system, declaring that "we do not consider ideological differences in social systems." When in the early 1980s Brezhnev became ill and could not make major foreign policy statements, Gromyko took his place. In the campaign to prevent the United States from placing new nuclear missiles in Europe, he declared in 1982 in the United Nations that the Soviet Union, "the world's foremost peace loving nation, " promised never to be the first state in any international conflict to use nuclear weapons. This "no first use" pledge did not represent a new policy, for the Soviet Union had built its nuclear weapons arsenal to match that of the United States and to prevent a nuclear attack. In making the speech Gromyko established that he had begun to play a major part in decisions on Soviet foreign policy. His decades of experience in international relations had by then earned him a new title—"Dean of World Diplomacy."

The Rise Of Gorbachev And The Demise Of

Gromyko

After Brezhnev's death in late 1982 Gromyko became one of the small circle of Soviet Communists in the Politburo to choose the new Soviet leader. Two successors died soon after their appointments. In 1985 the Politburo picked their youngest member, Mikhail Gorbachev, to be general secretary. Gromyko made the formal announcement of this choice. He occupied by then the informal position among his colleagues as senior member of the Politburo. Gorbachev elevated Gromyko's position to that of President, (the official title being Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, thus replacing Chernenko, who had died in March, 1985. This position, though prestigious, lacked an effective degree of power, and essentially brought Gromyko's political career to an end after 28 years. Gromyko was replaced as Minister of Foreign Affairs by Eduard Shevardnadze, former party boss of the Soviet Republic of Georgia. In 1989, the Politburo voted Gromyko out as president. He was hospitalized for vascular problems shortly thereafter, and died in July 1989, at the age of 80. Only one Politburo member attended his funeral.

Gromyko's autobiography Memoirs was begun in 1979, published in the Moscow in 1988 and in the US in 1990. There are countless discrepancies between events, not only in the nine years it took Gromyko to write the book, but also in the later English translation. In his autobiography, Gromyko recounts meetings with everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Yasar Arafat to Pope John Paul II. Although he reveals little, Gromyko remained a loyal Stalinist to the end. Despite recent reassessment of Stalin's career and methodologies, Gromyko stubbornly defends him. With regard to the Cold War, Gromyko blames the US and holds Stalin himself blameless.

Further Reading

Summary biographies are included in Who's Who in the Soviet Union (1984) and in The International Who's Who 1984-85 (1984); brief biographical accounts of his life are provided in "A Diplomat for All Seasons, " TIME (June 25, 1984); "Winds of Kremlin Change, " TIME (July 15, 1985); in various book reviews of Memories:see New Republic (May 14, 1990); and National Review (April 30, 1990); and in "An Enduring Russian Face, " New York Times (July 3, 1985); scattered references to his activity as minister of foreign affairs are found in Robin Edmunds, Soviet Foreign Policy:The Brezhnev Years (1983); Gromyko's memoirs, titled Memories, were published in 1990. □

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Gromyko, Andrei Andreyevich

Views 1,368,014

Updated May 30 2020

GROMYKO, ANDREI ANDREYEVICH

(1909–1989), Soviet foreign minister and president.

Andrei Gromyko was born into a peasant family in the village of Starye Gromyki in Belorussia. He joined the Communist Party in 1931. He completed study at the Minsk Agricultural Institute in 1932 and gained a Candidate of Economics degree from the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Agronomy in 1936. From 1936 to 1939 he was a senior researcher in the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences and the executive editorial secretary of the journal Problemy ekonomiki; he later gained a doctorate of Economics in 1956. In 1939 Gromyko switched to diplomatic work and became section head for the Americas in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. Later that year he became counselor in the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Between 1943 and 1946 he was Soviet ambassador to the United States and Cuba. During this time, he was involved in the Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944) called to produce the UN Charter and the 1945 San Francisco conference establishing the United Nations. He also played an organizational role in the Big Three wartime conferences. From 1946 to 1948 he was the permanent representative in the UN Security Council as well as deputy (from 1949 First Deputy) minister of foreign affairs. Except for the period 1952–1953 when he was ambassador to Great Britain, he held the First Deputy post until he was promoted to foreign minister following the anti-party group affair of 1957. Gromyko remained foreign minister until July 1985, when he became chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, effectively Soviet president.

Throughout his career, Gromyko was neither highly ambitious nor a major political actor on the domestic scene. Although a full member of the Central Committee from 1956, he did not become a full member of the Politburo until 1973. He developed his diplomatic skills and became the public face of Soviet foreign policy, gaining a reputation as a tough negotiator who never showed his hand. He was influential in the shaping of foreign policy, in particular détente, but he was never unchallenged as the source of that policy; successive leaders

Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev both sought to place their personal stamp upon foreign policy, while there was always competition from the International Department of the Party Central Committee and the KGB. Gromyko formally nominated Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary in March 1985, and three months later was moved from the Foreign Ministry to the presidency. The foreign policy for which he was spokesperson during the Brezhnev period now came under attack as Gorbachev and his Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze embarked on a new course. Gromyko's most important task while he was president was to chair a commission that recommended the removal of restrictions on the ability of Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea. Gromyko was forced to step down from the Politburo in September 1988, and from the presidency in October 1988, and was retired from the Central Committee in April 1989. He was the author of many speeches and articles on foreign affairs.

See also: brezhnev, leonid ilich; gorbachev, mikhail sergeyevich

Bibliography

Edmonds, Robin. (1983). Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gromyko, Andrei. (1989). Memories, tr. Harold Shukman. London: Arrow Books.

The Tauris Soviet Directory. The Elite of the USSR Today. (1989). London: I. B. Tauris.

Graeme Gill

Encyclopedia of Russian History GILL, GRAEME

Gromyko, Andrei

Views 3,755,100

Updated May 30 2020

Gromyko, Andrei (1909–89) Soviet statesman, foreign minister (1957–85), president (1985–88). As Soviet ambassador to the USA (1943–46), Gromyko took part in the Yalta and Potsdam peace conferences (1945). He acted as the permanent Soviet delegate to the United Nations (1946–48). As foreign minister, Gromyko represented the Soviet Union throughout most of the Cold War and helped to arrange the summits between Brezhnev and Nixon. He was given the largely honorary role of president by Mikhail Gorbachev.

Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (Russian: Андре́й Андре́евич Громы́ко; Belarusian: Андрэ́й Андрэ́евіч Грамы́ка; 18 July [O.S. 5 July] 1909 – 2 July 1989)[2] was a Soviet Belarusian communist politician during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1957–1985) and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1985–1988). Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s Western pundits called him Mr. Nyet ("Mr. No") or "Grim Grom", because of his frequent use of the Soviet veto in the United Nations Security Council.

Gromyko's political career started in 1939 with his employment at the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (renamed Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1946). He became the Soviet ambassador to the United States in 1943, leaving that position in 1946 to become the Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Upon his return to the Soviet Union he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952.

During his tenure as Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, Gromyko was directly involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and helped broker a peace treaty ending the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War. Under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership, he played a central role in the establishment of detente with the United States through his negotiation of the ABM Treaty, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and SALT I & II, among others. After Brezhnev suffered a stroke in 1975 impairing his ability to govern, Gromyko formed a troika with KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov that dominated Soviet policymaking during the final years of Brezhnev's regime. Henceforth, Gromyko's conservatism and pessimistic view of the West dictated Soviet diplomacy until the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.

Following Gorbachev's election as General Secretary, Gromyko lost his office as foreign minister and was appointed to the largely ceremonial office of head of state. Subsequently, he retired from political life in 1988, and died the following year in Moscow.

Contents

1 Early life

1.1 Background and youth

1.2 Education and party membership

1.3 Ambassador and World War II

2 At the helm of Soviet foreign policy

2.1 The United Nations

2.2 Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom

2.3 Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union

3 Head of state, retirement and death

4 Legacy

5 Decorations and awards

6 References

7 Further reading

7.1 Primary sources

8 External links

Early life

Background and youth

Gromyko was born to a poor "semi-peasant, semi-worker" Belarusian family[3] in the Belarusian village of Staryya Gramyki, near Gomel on 18 July 1909. Gromyko's father, Andrei Matveyevich, worked as a seasonal worker in a local factory. Andrei Matveyevich was not a very educated man, having only attended four years of school, but knew how to read and write. He had fought in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.[4] Gromyko's mother, Olga Yevgenyevna, came from a poor peasant family in the neighbouring city of Zhelezniki. She attended school only for a short period of time as, when her father died, she left to help her mother with the harvest.[5]

Gromyko grew up near the district town of Vetka where most of the inhabitants were devoted Old Believers in the Russian Orthodox Church.[6] Gromyko's own village was also predominantly religious, but Gromyko started doubting the supernatural at a very early age. His first dialog on the subject was with his grandmother Marfa, who answered his inquiry about God with "Wait until you get older. Then you will understand all this much better". According to Gromyko, "Other adults said basically the same thing" when talking about religion. Gromyko's neighbour at the time, Mikhail Sjeljutov, was a freethinker and introduced Gromyko to new non-religious ideas[7] and told Gromyko that scientists were beginning to doubt the existence of God. From the age of nine, after the Bolshevik revolution, Gromyko started reading atheist propaganda in flyers and pamphlets.[8] At the age of thirteen Gromyko became a member of the Komsomol and held anti-religious speeches in the village with his friends as well as promoting Communist values.[9]

The news that Germany had attacked the Russian Empire in August 1914 came without warning to the local population. This was the first time, as Gromyko notes, that he felt "love for his country". His father, Andrei Matveyevich, was again conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army and would serve for three years on the southwestern front, under the leadership of General Aleksei Brusilov. Andrei Matveyevich returned home on the eve of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia.[10]

Gromyko was elected First Secretary of the local Komsomol chapter at the beginning of 1923.[11] Following Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924, the villagers asked Gromyko what would happen in the leader's absence. Gromyko remembered a communist slogan from the heyday of the October Revolution: "The revolution was carried through by Lenin and his helpers." He then told the villagers that Lenin was dead but "his aides, the Party, still lived on."[12]

Education and party membership

When he was young Gromyko's mother Olga told him that he should leave his home town to become an educated man.[13] Gromyko followed his mother's advice and, after finishing seven years of primary school and vocational education in Gomel, he moved to Borisov to attend technical school. Gromyko became a member of the All-Union Communist Party Bolsheviks in 1931, something he had dreamed of since he learned about the "difference between a poor farmer and a landowner, a worker and a capitalist". Gromyko was voted in as secretary of his party cell at his first party conference and would use most of his weekends doing volunteer work.[12] Gromyko received a very small stipend to live on, but still had a strong nostalgia for the days when he worked as a volunteer. It was about this time that Gromyko met his future wife, Lydia Dmitrievna Grinevich. Grinevich was the daughter of a Belarusian peasant family and came from Kamenki, a small village to the west of Minsk.[14] She and Gromyko would have two children, Anatoly and Emiliya.[15]

After studying in Borisov for two years Gromyko was appointed principal of a secondary school in Dzerzhinsk, where he taught, supervised the school and continued his studies. One day a representative from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia offered him an opportunity to do post-graduate work in Minsk.[16] Gromyko traveled to Minsk for an interview with the head of the university, I.M. Borisevich, who explained that a new post-graduate program had been formed for training in economics; Gromyko's record in education and social work made him a desirable candidate. Gromyko advised Borisevich that he would have difficulty living on a meager student stipend. Borisevich assured him that on finishing the program, his salary would be at the party's top pay grade – "a decent living wage". Gromyko accepted the offer, moving his family to Minsk in 1933. Gromyko and the other post-graduates were invited to an anniversary reception [17] at which, as recounted in Gromyko's Memoirs:

We were amazed to find ourselves treated as equals and placed at their table to enjoy what for us was a sumptuous feast. We realised then that not for nothing did the Soviet state treat its scientists well: evidently science and those who worked in it were highly regarded by the state.[18]

After that day of pleasantry, Gromyko for the first time in his life wanted to enter higher education, but without warning, Gromyko and his family were moved in 1934 to Moscow, settling in the northeastern Alexeyevsky District.[18] In 1936, after another three years of studying economics, Gromyko became a researcher and lecturer at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. His area of expertise was the US economy, and he published several books on the subject. Gromyko assumed his new job would be a permanent one, but in 1939 he was called upon by a Central Committee Commission which selected new personnel to work in diplomacy. (The Great Purge of 1938 opened many positions in the diplomatic corps.) Gromyko recognised such familiar faces as Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov. A couple of days later he was transferred from the Academy of Sciences to the diplomatic service.[19]

Ambassador and World War II

Andrei Gromyko (second from left) at Yalta in February 1945

In early 1939, Gromyko started working for the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs in Moscow. Gromyko became the Head of the Department of Americas and because of his position Gromyko met with United States ambassador to the Soviet Union Lawrence Steinhardt. Gromyko believed Steinhardt to be "totally uninterested in creating good relations between the US and the USSR"[20] and that Steinhardt's predecessor Joseph Davies was more "colourful" and seemed "genuinely interested" in improving the relations between the two countries.[21] Davies received the Order of Lenin for his work in trying to improve diplomatic relations between the US and the USSR. After heading the Americas department for 6 months, Gromyko was called upon by Joseph Stalin. Stalin started the conversation by telling Gromyko that he would be sent to the Soviet embassy in the United States to become second-in-command. "The Soviet Union," Stalin said, "should maintain reasonable relations with such a powerful country like the United States, especially in light of the growing fascist threat". Vyacheslav Molotov contributed with some minor modifications but mostly agreed with what Stalin had said.[22] "How are your English skills improving?," Stalin asked, "Comrade Gromyko you should pay a visit or two to an American church and listen to their sermons. Priests usually speak correct English with good accents. Do you know that the Russian revolutionaries when they were abroad, always followed this practice to improve their skills in foreign languages?" Gromyko was quite amazed about what Stalin had just told him but he never visited an American church.[23]

Gromyko had never been abroad before and, to get to the United States, he had to travel via airplane through Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to Genoa, Italy, where they boarded a ship to the United States.[24] He later wrote in his Memoirs that New York City was a good example on how humans, by the "means of wealth and technology are able to create something that is totally alien to our nature". He further noticed the New York working districts which, in his own opinion, were proof of the inhumanity of capitalism and of the system's greed.[25] Gromyko met and consulted with most of the senior officers of the United States government during his first days[26] and succeeded Maxim Litvinov as ambassador to the United States in 1943. In his Memoirs Gromyko wrote fondly of President Franklin D. Roosevelt[27] even though he believed him to be a representative of the bourgeoisie class.[28] During his time as ambassador, Gromyko met prominent personalities such as British actor Charlie Chaplin,[29] American actress Marilyn Monroe[30] and British economist John Maynard Keynes.[31]

Gromyko was a Soviet delegate to the Tehran, Dumbarton Oaks, Yalta and Potsdam conferences.[32] In 1943, the same year as the Tehran Conference, the USSR established diplomatic relations with Cuba and Gromyko was appointed the Soviet ambassador to Havana.[33] Gromyko claimed that the accusations brought against Roosevelt by American right-wingers, that he was a socialist sympathizer, were absurd.[34] While he started out as a member delegate Gromyko later became the head of the Soviet delegation to the San Francisco conference after Molotov's departure. When he later returned to Moscow to celebrate the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War, Stalin commended him saying a good diplomat was "worth two or three armies at the front".[35]

At the helm of Soviet foreign policy

The United Nations

Gromyko was appointed Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations (UN) in April 1946.[36] The USSR supported the election of the first Secretary-General of the United Nations, Trygve Lie, a former Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, in the opinion of Gromyko, Lie became an active supporter of the "expansionist behaviour" of the United States and its "American aggressionist" policy. Because of this political stance, Gromyko believed Lie to be a poor Secretary-General.[37] Trygve's successor, Swede Dag Hammarskjöld also promoted what Gromyko saw as "anti-Soviet policies".[38] U Thant, the third Secretary-General, once told Gromyko that it was close to impossible to have an objective opinion of the USSR in the Secretariat of the United Nations because the majority of secretariat members were of American ethnicity or supporters of the United States.[39] Gromyko often used the Soviet veto power in the early days of the United Nations. So familiar was a Soviet veto in the early days of the UN that Gromyko became known as Mr Nyet, literally meaning "Mr No". During the first 10 years of the UN, the Soviet Union used its veto 79 times. In the same period, the Republic of China used the veto once, France twice and the others not at all.[40] On May 14, 1947, Gromyko advocated the one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the two-state solution as the second best option in the case that "relations between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine... proved to be so bad that it would be impossible to reconcile them".[41]

Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom

Gromyko was appointed Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom at a June 1952 meeting with Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin. Stalin paced back and forth as normal, telling Gromyko about the importance of his new office, and saying "The United Kingdom now has the opportunity to play a greater role in international politics. But it is not clear in which direction the British government with their great diplomatic experience will steer their efforts [...] This is why we need people who understand their way of thinking". Gromyko met with Winston Churchill in 1952 not to talk about current politics but nostalgically about World War II. Gromyko met Churchill again in 1953 to talk about their experiences during World War II before returning to Russia when he was appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.[42]

Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union

L-R: Batsanov, Llewellyn Thompson, Gromyko and Dean Rusk in 1967 during the Glassboro Summit Conference

Andrei Gromyko spent his initial days as Minister of Foreign Affairs solving problems between his ministry and the International Department (ID) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) headed by Boris Ponomarev. Ponomarev advocated an expanded role for the ID in Soviet foreign relations; Gromyko flatly refused it. Valentin Falin, a top Soviet official, said the ID "interfered in the activities" of Gromyko and his ministry countless times. Gromyko disliked both Ponomarev and the power sharing between the ID and the foreign ministry.[43] In 1958 Mao Zedong tried to look for supporters within the Soviet leadership for his planned war with the Republic of China (Taiwan). He flabbergasted Gromyko by telling him that he was willing to sacrifice the lives of "300 million people" just for the sake of annexing the Republic of China into the People's Republic of China. Gromyko assured Mao that the proposal would never get the approval of the Soviet leadership. When the Soviet leadership learnt of this discussion they responded by terminating the Soviet-Chinese nuclear program and various industrialization projects in the People's Republic of China.[44] Years later during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Gromyko met John F. Kennedy, then President of the United States, while acting on the instruction of the Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev. In his Memoirs, Gromyko wrote that Kennedy seemed out of touch when he first met him, and was more ideologically driven than practical. In a 1988 interview, he further described Kennedy as nervous and prone to making contradictory statements involving American intentions towards Cuba. During his twenty-eight years as Minister of Foreign Affairs Gromyko supported the policy of disarmament, stating in his Memoirs that "Disarmament is the ideal of Socialism".[45]

Gromyko meeting with Jimmy Carter, the President of the United States, in 1978

Throughout his career as Soviet Foreign Minister, Gromyko explicitly promoted the idea that no important international agreement could be reached without the Soviet Union's involvement.[46] One accomplishment he took particular pride in was the signing of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty whose negotiation could be traced back to 1958. Additionally, in 1966, Gromyko and Alexei Kosygin persuaded both Pakistan and India to sign the Tashkent Declaration, a peace treaty in the aftermath of the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. Later in the same year, he engaged in a dialog with Pope Paul VI, as part of the pontiff's ostpolitik that resulted in greater openness for the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Europe[47] although there was still heavy persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union.[48] Gromyko also prided himself on the signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons on 1 July 1968, the 1972 ABM and SALT I treaties, and the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1973.

After joining the Politburo in 1973 during Leonid Brezhnev's rule, Gromyko steadily consolidated his position in the party hierarchy to become the Soviet Union's chief foreign policy strategist.[49] Upon reaching the peak of his power and influence, Gromyko's approach to diplomacy began to suffer from the same qualities that underpinned his early career. His exceptional memory and confidence in his experience now made him inflexible, unimaginative and devoid of a long-term vision for his country.[50] By the time Andropov and Chernenko rose to the Soviet leadership, Gromyko frequently found himself advocating a harder line than his superiors.[50]

Andrei Gromyko speaking at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, in 1984

As Brezhnev grew increasingly incapable of governing following a stroke in 1975, Gromyko formed a de facto troika with KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov that became the driving force behind Soviet policymaking.[51] After Brezhnev's death in 1982, Andropov was voted in as General Secretary by the Politburo. Immediately after his appointment Andropov asked Gromyko if he wanted to take over Brezhnev's old office of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Gromyko turned down Andropov's offer, believing that Andropov would eventually take the office for himself.[52]

After Chernenko's death in 1985, Gromyko nominated Mikhail Gorbachev for the General Secretary on 11 March 1985. In supporting Gorbachev, Gromyko knew that the influence he carried would be strong.[53] After being voted in Gorbachev relieved Gromyko of his duty as foreign minister and replaced him with Eduard Shevardnadze and Gromyko was appointed to the largely honorary position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.[54]

Head of state, retirement and death

A Belarusian stamp from 2009 depicting Gromyko

Gromyko held the office of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, literally head of state, which was largely ceremonial, and his influence in ruling circles diminished. A number of First World journalists believed Gromyko was uncomfortable with many of Gorbachev's reforms,[55] however, in his Memoirs Gromyko wrote fondly of Gorbachev and the policy of perestroika. Gromyko believed that perestroika was about working for the construction of a socialist society[56] and saw glasnost and perestroika as an attempt at making the USSR more democratic.[57]

During a party conference in July 1988 Vladimir Melnikov called for Gromyko's resignation. Melnikov blamed Brezhnev for the economic and political stagnation that had hit the Soviet Union and, seeing that Gromyko, as a prominent member of the Brezhnev leadership, was one of the men which had led the USSR into the crisis.[58] Gromyko was promptly defended as "a man respected by the people" in a note by an anonymous delegate.[59] After discussing it with his wife Gromyko decided to leave Soviet politics for good. Gromyko recounts in his Memoirs that he told Gorbachev that he wished to resign before he made it official. The following day, 1 October 1988, Gromyko sat beside Gorbachev, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov in the Supreme Soviet to make his resignation official:[60]

Such moments in life are just as memorable as when one is appointed to prominent positions. When my comrades took farewell to me, I was equally moved as I had ever been when I was given an important office. What I thought most about was that I had finished my duties towards the people, the Party and the state. This memory is very precious to me.

Gorbachev succeeded Gromyko in office as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.[61] After his resignation Gorbachev praised Gromyko for his half-century of service to USSR. Critics, such as Alexander Belonogov, the Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations, claimed Gromyko's foreign policy was permeated with "a spirit of intolerance and confrontation".[62]

After retiring from active politics in 1989 Gromyko started working on his memoirs.[63] Gromyko died on 2 July 1989, days before what would have been his 80th birthday, after being hospitalised for a vascular problem that was not further identified. His death was followed by a minute of silence at the Congress of People's Deputies to commemorate him. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), the central news organ in the USSR, called him one of the country's most "prominent leaders". President of the United States George H. W. Bush sent his condolences to Gromyko's son, Anatoly.[64] Gromyko was offered a grave in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, but at the request of his family he was not buried near the Kremlin wall but instead at the Novodevichy cemetery.[63][65]

Legacy

Having been a person of considerable stature during his life Gromyko held an unusual combination of personal characteristics. Some were impressed by his diplomatic skills, while others called Gromyko mundane and boring.[66] An article written in 1981 in The Times said, "He is one of the most active and efficient members of the Soviet leadership. A man with an excellent memory, a keen intellect and extraordinary endurance [...] Maybe Andrey is the most informed Minister for Foreign affairs in the world".[63] Gromyko's dour demeanour was shown clearly during his first term in Washington and echoed throughout his tenure as Soviet foreign minister. Ambassador Charles W. Yost, who worked with Gromyko at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, the UN founding conference, and at the United Nations, recalled that the "humorless" Soviet ambassador "looked as though he was sucking a lemon."[67] There is a story that Gromyko was leaving a Washington hotel one morning and was asked by a reporter; "Minister Gromyko, did you enjoy your breakfast today?" His response was "Perhaps."[68]

During his twenty-eight years as minister of foreign affairs Gromyko became the "number-one" on international diplomacy at home,[69] renowned by his peers to be consumed by his work. Henry Kissinger once said "If you can face Gromyko for one hour and survive, then you can begin to call yourself a diplomat". Gromyko's work influenced Soviet and Russian ambassadors such as Anatoly Dobrynin. Mash Lewis and Gregory Elliott described Gromyko's main characteristic as his "complete identification with the interest of the state and his faithful service to it". According to historians Gregory Elliot and Moshe Lewin this could help explain his so-called "boring" personality and the mastery of his own ego.[70] West German politician Egon Bahr, when commenting on Gromyko's memoirs, said;[70]

He has concealed a veritable treasure-trove from future generations and taken to the grave with him an inestimable knowledge of international connection between the historical events and major figures of his time, which only he could offer. What a pity that this very man proved incapable to the very end of evoking his experience. As a faithful servant of the state, he believed that he should restrict himself to a sober, concise presentation of the bare essentials.[71]

On 18 July 2009, Belarus marked the 100th anniversary of Gromyko's birth with nationwide celebrations. In the city of his birth many people laid flowers in front of his bust. A ceremony was held attended by his son and daughter, Anatoly and Emiliya. Several exhibitions were opened and dedicated to his honour and a school and a street in Gomel were renamed in honour of him.[72][73]

Decorations and awards

Twice Hero of Socialist Labour (1969, 1979)

Seven Orders of Lenin (incl 1945)

Order of the Red Banner (9 November 1948)

Order of the Badge of Honour

Lenin Prize (1982)

State Prize of the USSR (1984) – for the monograph "The external expansion capital: Past and Present" (1982)

Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary since the Birth of Vladimir Il'ich Lenin"

Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun (Peru)

Order of the Sun of Freedom (Afghanistan)

Andrei Gromyko, the son of peasants, was born near Minsk in Russia in 1909. After studying agriculture and economics he became a research scientist at the Soviet Academy of Science. He later joined the diplomatic service and went to Washington during the Second World War.

In 1943 Gromyko was appointed as the Soviet ambassador in the United States. In this post he attended the conferences in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. After the war he was made the Soviet permanent delegate to the United Nations. He also served as ambassador to Britain (1952-53).

Gromyko became Foreign Minister in 1957. He held the post for 28 years and during this period was the main Soviet negotiator with the United States government.

George Brown met Gromyko when he was serving as the British foreign secretary (1966-68): "Gromyko was no politician and I always thought really just another exceedingly able party official. He, of course, did know the outside world and did not mind letting his sense of humour show or letting his hair down on occasion. His capacity to discuss and argue was to me very impressive, but, again, getting much out of him was a very tough business indeed and in my time certainly never happened again without the interval and the obvious line-clearing elsewhere. While I was at the Foreign Office it seemed to me that Gromyko was growing in importance. His influence seemed to be becoming stronger and he probably was playing a much bigger role than before in the apparatus by which decisions were made, and was becoming much less simply the machine for carrying them out."

Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Gromyko President of the Soviet Union in 1987. Andrei Gromyko died two years later, at the age of 80.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION 

Presidential Libraries Withdrawal Sheet 

WITHDRAWAL ID 013449

REASON FOR WITHDRAWAL

TYPE OF MATERIAL . . .

TITLE

DESCRIPTION

CREATION DATE

VOLUME .

COLLECTION/SERIES/FOLDER ID

COLLECTION TITLE

BOX NUMBER

FOLDER TITLE

DATE WITHDRAWN

WITHDRAWING ARCHIVIST

National security restriction

Biography

Andrey Andreyevich Gromyko

Member, Politburo, CPSU Central

Committee; Minister of Foreign Affairs

05/31/1974

5 pages

032500292

NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER. PRESIDENTIAL

COUNTRY FILES FOR EUROPE AND CANADA

16

USSR (2)

08/06/2001

GG

Lfln/o5

~L 3/15108'

Scanned from the NSA Presidential Country Files for Europe and Canada (Box 16 - USSR (2)) at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library 

a

• Andrey Andreyevich GROMYKO

(phonetic: gruhMIKuh)

Member, politburo,

CPSU central Committee; Minister

of Foreign Affairs

Addressed as:

Mr. Minister .\ '

'"

",;;'

USSR

. "

'- ::-,' - :'\ , . .. . • ' \r

Andrey Gromyko,

manager of one of th~'

world's largest Foreign service bureaucracies, is the most

senior diplomatic leader among the major

powers. Appointed in 1957, he is the first

Soviet Foreign Minister to have receive'd all of

his,dip19matic training under the communist

regime. During his rise to the top of his profession, he has held some of his government's

roost demanding foreign posts: Ambassador to the

united States, Ambassador to Great 'Britain and Pe~anent Representative to tlie united Nations.

To the politburo

IBis ability and diligence were rewarded

L1-n-~--lP-r~il~l~9~73, when he became ,the 'fifth soviet . Foreign Minister--and the first career diplomat-­

to be elected to the ruling Politburo of the Communist party of the soviet union (CPSU) .. The

earlier Foreign Ministers on that body (Leon Trotskiy, .Vyacheslav Molotov, Audrey vyshinskiy and Dmitriy Shepilov) were either old Bolsheviks

or party bureaucrats.

The full significance of Gromyko·s appointment

as it relates to a political realignment in the

Kremlin.is still not apparent. The most immediate

OICLASS!flED· E,Q. 12958 SEC. 3.1 .

wmt POi1TV'[':: C'f"v",,,::r ..' fI---------'-------~~----.:..:---~

E.O. '! Z5~: S~~ 

--------

.' 

reason for the promotion, however, probably was 

an increased recognition among Politburo members 

of the importance of foreign policy and the ex­

tent to which it impinges on domestic affairs. 

Groroyko's new position gives him greater poli­

tical weight and prestige in the conduct of 

soviet affairs abroad. 

A Peasant Becomas 

an Economist 

Born on 18 July 1909 in a rural district

near Gomel', Belorussian SSR, Andrey Andreyevich

Gromyko rose from obscurity because of his. ability

to· absorb the education that was available under

the new Soviet regime. The son of semiliterate

peasants, he began his studies at an agricultural sc.iool in Gomel l , went on to the Borisov Pedagogical Institute, and then attended the Minsk

Institute of Agricultu.ral Science.

. Gromyko then went to Moscow to con:tinue his

education." He studied at the Institute of Economics and was awarded a candidate of economic

sciences degree in 1936; by which time he was also secre~ary of ~he editorial board of the USSR's

national economic journal, Voprosy Ekonomiki . (Problems of Economics). He served as a senior

'instructor at the Institute of Economics from

1936 to 1939. Gromyko apparently never lost his

interest in economics. Two decades later, between

the Foreign Service assignments of his new career,

he earned a doctorate of economic sciences.

The Economist Becomes 

an Instant Diplomat 

In 1939 Gromyko joined the Foreign Service,

became chief of the American Countries Division

of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs,

and was assigned to ~'1ashingtonas Counselor of . .the Soviet Embassy_ He had never been abroad

before and spoke no English/ but 4 years later,

at the age of 34, he succeeded 11aksim Litvinov as

Ambassador to the United States•

. - 2 ­

...--. { , . ~ .'

""'..;.' 

.. 

 •

•   In 1946 Gromyko was appointed a Deputy Foreign

Minister and the Permanent Representative to the

United Nations, where he gained international notoriety through his frequent vetoes and IIwa~kouts"

in support of the USSR's policies. During the

1946-49 period he attended most of the important

conferences of the time, including those held at

Yalta, Dumbarton Oaks, San Francisco, London,

Berlin and Geneva.

In 1949 Grornyko was recalled to Moscow and

appointed First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

He held that position until 1957, with the excep­ tion of a period from 1952 to 1953, when he served

as Ambassador to the: United Kingdom. I I {   IGromyko I s assignment to

London was not a setback for him personally but

was part of an effort by the USSR to strengthen

relations with the United Kingdom while weakening

British ties with the Uni ted States. At any rate,

Moscow did not name a replacement for Gromyko as . First Deputy Foreign Minister in. 1952, and he

resumed ·that post when he returned in 1953.

As Foreign Minister

As a major spokesman on Soviet foreign policy·

since becoming Foreign Minister in 1957 1 Gromyko

has led an extremely a9tive professional life. He

has participated in numerous international conferences and bilateral negotiations, and he has headed

the.Soviet delegation to the UN General Assembly

every year since 1962. He accompanied Khrushchev.

and later Kosygin and Brezhnev on almost all of

their. visits abroad. Grornyko headed the Soviet·

delegation during the tripartite talks leading to

the signing in August 1963 of a nuclear test ban

agreement. In Aprii i965 he. visited Paris, paving the way for closer Franco-Soviet relations.

In 1969, in a speech given before .the USSR Supreme

soviet, he was the first high-level soviet official to call for closer US-USSR relations. He

took part in negotiating the Indo-soviet Friendship Treaty in 1971, and in 1972 he came to the

united States to sign the ABM Treaty.

3 ­

, '. .. ',-------I___I·

#_ Gromyko participated in President'Nixon's talks

,with Brezhnev in Moscow in May 1972 and in th'e

United States in July 1973. He met with President

Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in

Washington in February 1974 and had subsequent meetings with the Secretary in Moscow (March), Washington

(March), Geneva (April), and Nicosia and Damascus (M~y).

Personal Life

~~~~,,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~e 1S a skilled negot1ator an a master 0 par

tary tactics. He has a prodigious capacity for

work, puttin in strenu~us 6-day weeks for long , periods.

n

~~~UIT~",~um~~Tcfl~~urrffi~xmru.rJ~dguns

and rifles. He speaks fluent French and English

arid uses American idiomatic expressions w.ith ease.

Family,

Gromyko is married. His wife,Lidi

Oroitriyevn

One of the est trave e

W1ves 1n e soviet leadership group, Mrs. Gromyko is,at ease among foreigners. She speaks excellent

English. ' Formerly a teacher, she now is primarily

occupied with her grandchildren. She is well-read

in politics and literature and is parti~larly

interest'ed in painting.

The Gromykos have 'a son and a daugblber. Their

son, Anatol!y, studied in the United States and

served at one time as a section chief at the

Institute of the USA in Moscow. He cuzxently is

- 4 -

" 

, ...

11...----___' 

0 ·'

 .. '   ,I

- ....   a iviinister Counselor of the Soviet Embapsy in

Washington. Anatoliy has been married brice and

has t~o sons--one, born in about 1959, by his

first ~ife, and another, born· in about 1967, by

his present wife. The Gromykos' daughter, Mi1ya,

is married to Aleksandr S. Piradov, a Foreign . Ministry legal expert who is t~e Soviet Permanent

Representative to UNESCO.

.   31 May 1974 . ~

..

-  5 ­

Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a far-left[3] philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common or social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership, and can involve the absence of social classes, money,[4][5][6] and the state.[7][8][9] Communism is a specific, yet distinct, form of socialism. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end, reflecting a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or Communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state followed by Friedrich Engels' withering away of the state.[10] The difference between communism and socialism remains a matter of debate, although one main difference between the two ideologies is communists' adherence to Karl Marx's revolutionary socialism.[1]

Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarcho-communism and Marxist schools of thought. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism as well as the political ideologies grouped around both, all of which share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system and mode of production, namely that in this system there are two major social classes, the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution.[11][nb 1] The two classes are the proletariat (the working class), who make up the majority of the population within society and must work to survive, and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), a small minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, revolution would put the working class in power and in turn, establish common ownership of property which is the primary element in the transformation of society towards a communist mode of production.[13]

In the 20th century, Communist governments espousing Marxism–Leninism and its variants came into power in parts of the world,[14] first in the Soviet Union with the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then in portions of Eastern Europe, Asia, and a few other regions after World War II.[15][nb 2] During most of the 20th century, around one-third of the world's population lived under communist governments.[1] These governments were characterized by one-party rule and suppression of opposition and dissent.[1] Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the 1920s.[21] Several academics and economists, among other scholars,[22][23] posit that the Soviet model under which these nominally Communist states in practice operated was not an actual communist economic model in accordance with most accepted definitions of communism as an economic theory, but in fact a form of state capitalism,[24][25][26][needs update] or non-planned administrative-command system.[27][28][29][needs update]

Criticism of communism can be divided into two broad categories, namely that which concerns itself with the practical aspects of 20th-century Communist states[30] and that which concerns itself with communist principles and theory.[31]

Contents

1 Etymology and terminology

1.1 Communism and socialism

1.2 Associated usage and communist states

2 History

2.1 Early communism

2.2 Revolutionary wave of 1917–1923

2.3 Soviet Union

2.4 China

2.5 Cold War

2.6 Dissolution of the Soviet Union

2.7 Post-Soviet communism

3 Theory

3.1 Marxist communism

3.2 Leninist communism

3.3 Libertarian Marxist communism

3.4 Other types of communism

4 Analysis

4.1 Reception

4.2 Excess deaths under communist states

4.3 Memory and legacy

5 See also

6 References

6.1 Notes

6.2 Quotes

6.3 Sources

7 Bibliography

7.1 Further reading

8 External links

Etymology and terminology

Communism derives from the French communisme, which developed out of the Latin roots communis and the suffix isme.[32] Semantically, ccommunis can be translated to "of or for the community", while isme is a suffix that indicates the abstraction into a state, condition, action, or doctrine. Communism may be interpreted as "the state of being of or for the community"; this semantic constitution has led to numerous usages of the word in its evolution. Prior to becoming associated with its more modern conception of an economic and political organization, it was initially used in designating various social situations. Communism came to be primarily associated with Marxism, most specifically embodied in The Communist Manifesto, which proposed a particular type of communism.[1][33]

One of the first uses of the word in its modern sense is in a letter sent by Victor d'Hupay to Restif de la Bretonne around 1785, in which d'Hupay describes himself as an auteur communiste ("communist author").[34] In 1793, Restif first used communisme to describe a social order based on egalitarianism and the common ownership of property.[35] Restif would go on to use the term frequently in his writing and was the first to describe communism as a form of government.[36] John Goodwyn Barmby is credited with the first use of communism in English, around 1840.[32]

Communism and socialism

Since the 1840s, communism has usually been distinguished from socialism. The modern definition and usage of the latter would be settled by the 1860s, becoming predominant over alternative terms associationist (Fourierism), co-operative, and mutualist, which had previously been used as synonyms; instead, communism fell out of use during this period.[37]

An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialize production, whereas the former aimed to socialize both production and consumption (in the form of free access to final goods).[5] By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of communism which had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for the former. It was not until 1917, with the Bolshevik Revolution, that socialism came to refer to a distinct stage between capitalism and communism, introduced by Vladimir Lenin as a means to defend the Bolshevik seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for socialist revolution.[38] A distinction between communist and socialist as descriptors of political ideologies arose in 1918 after the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, where Communist came to specifically refer to socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism, and later in the 1920s those of Marxism–Leninism,[39] although Communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism.[37]

Both communism and socialism eventually accorded with the cultural attitude of adherents and opponents towards religion. In European Christendom, communism was believed to be the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, communism was too phonetically similar to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.[40] Friedrich Engels stated that in 1848, at the time when The Communist Manifesto was first published,[41] socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not; the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists. This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany.[42] While liberal democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat.[43]

According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death."[44]

Associated usage and communist states

In the United States, communism is widely used as a pejorative term, much like socialism, mainly in reference to authoritarian socialism and Communist states. The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally Communist state led to the term's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet-type economic planning model.[1][45][46] Marxism–Leninism is an empty term that depends on the approach and basis of ruling Communist parties, and is dynamic and open to re-definitions, being both fixed and not fixed in meaning.[47] In his essay "Judging Nazism and Communism",[48] Martin Malia defines a "generic Communism" category as any Communist political party movement led by intellectuals; this umbrella term allows grouping together such different regimes as radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's anti-urbanism.[49] The idea to group together different countries such as Afghanistan and Hungary has no adequate explanation.[50]

While the term Communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, and news media to refer to countries ruled by Communist parties, these states themselves did not describe themselves as communist or claim to have achieved communism: they referred to themselves as socialist states that are in the process of constructing communism.[51][52][53][54] Terms used by Communist states include national-democratic, people's democratic, socialist-oriented, and workers and peasants' states.[55]

History

Main article: History of communism

Early communism

Further information: Pre-Marxist communism, Primitive communism, Religious communism, Scientific socialism, and Utopian socialism

According to Richard Pipes,[56] the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece; since the 20th century, Ancient Rome has also been discussed, among them thinkers such as Aristotle, Cicero, Demosthenes, Plato, and Tacitus, with Plato in particular being discussed as a possible communist or socialist theorist,[57] or as the first author to give communism a serious consideration.[58] The 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia (modern-day Iran) has been described as communistic for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, criticizing the institution of private property, and striving to create an egalitarian society.[59][60] At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture.[61] In the Medieval Christian Church, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. As summarized by Janzen Rod and Max Stanton, the Hutterites believed in strict adherence to biblical principles, church discipline, and practiced a form of communism. The Hutterites "established in their communities a rigorous system of Ordnungen, which were codes of rules and regulations that governed all aspects of life and ensured a unified perspective. As an economic system, communism was attractive to many of the peasants who supported social revolution in sixteenth century central Europe."[62] This link was highlighted in one of Karl Marx's early writings; Marx stated that "[a]s Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty."[63] Thomas Müntzer led a large Anabaptist communist movement during the German Peasants' War, which Friedrich Engels analyzed in his 1850 work The Peasant War in Germany. The Marxist communist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people.[64]

Thomas More, whose Utopia portrayed a society based on common ownership of property

Communist thought has also been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More.[65] In his 1516 treatise titled Utopia, More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason and virtue.[66] Marxist communist theoretician Karl Kautsky, who popularized Marxist communism in Western Europe more than any other thinker apart from Engels, published Thomas More and His Utopia, a work about More, whose ideas could be regarded as "the foregleam of Modern Socialism" according to Kautsky. During the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin suggested that a monument be dedicated to More, alongside other important Western thinkers.[67] In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the Diggers advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism,[68] Eduard Bernstein stated that several groups during the English Civil War (especially the Diggers) espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[69][70] Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Abbé de Mably, Jean Meslier, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France.[71] During the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine under the auspices of Gracchus Babeuf, Restif de la Bretonne, and Sylvain Maréchal, all of whom can be considered the progenitors of modern communism according to James H. Billington.[72]

In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. Unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis.[73] Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, and Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States, such as Brook Farm in 1841.[1] In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.[1]

Revolutionary wave of 1917–1923

Further information: Revolutions of 1917–1923

In 1917, the October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets in which the Bolsheviks had a majority.[74][75][76] The event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement, as Marx stated that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development; however, Imperial Russia was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry, and a minority of industrial workers. Marx warned against attempts "to transform my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophy theory of the marche générale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself",[77] and stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule through the Obshchina.[78][nb 3] The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks (majority) plan for socialist revolution before the capitalist mode of production was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, Bread, and Land", which tapped into the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in World War I, the peasants' demand for land reform, and popular support for the soviets.[82]

By November 1917, the Russian Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform, or convene the Russian Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, leaving the soviets in de facto control of the country. The Bolsheviks moved to hand power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in the October Revolution; after a few weeks of deliberation, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks from November 1917 to July 1918, while the right-wing faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party boycotted the soviets and denounced the October Revolution as an illegal coup. In the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, socialist parties totalled well over 70% of the vote. The Bolsheviks were clear winners in the urban centres, and took around two-thirds of the votes of soldiers on the Western Front, obtaining 23.3% of the vote; the Socialist Revolutionaries finished first on the strength of support from the country's rural peasantry, who were for the most part single issue voters, that issue being land reform, obtaining 37.6%, while the Ukrainian Socialist Bloc finished a distant third at 12.7%, and the Mensheviks obtained a disappointing fourth place at 3.0%.[83] Most of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's seats went to the right-wing faction. Citing outdated voter-rolls, which did not acknowledge the party split, and the assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik–Left Socialist-Revolutionaries government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. The Draft Decree on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets, a committee dominated by Lenin, who had previously supported multi-party free elections. After the Bolshevik defeat, Lenin started referring to the assembly as a "deceptive form of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism."[83] This would lead to the development of vanguardism in which an hierarchical party–elite controlled society,[84] resulting in a split between anarchism and Marxism, and Leninist communism assuming the dominant position for most of the 20th century, excluding rival socialist currents.[85]

Other communists and Marxists, especially social democrats who favored the development of liberal democracy as a prerequisite to socialism, were critical of the Bolsheviks from the beginning due to Russia being seen as too backward for a socialist revolution.[38] Council communism and left-communism, inspired by the November Revolution in Germany and the proletarian revolutionary wave, arose in response to developments in Russia and are critical of self-declared constitutionally socialist states. Some left-wing parties, such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain, boasted of having called the Bolsheviks, and by extension those Communist states which either followed or were inspired by the Soviet Bolshevik model of development, establishing state capitalism in late 1917, as would be described during the 20th century by several academics, economists, and other scholars,[24][25][26] or a command economy.[27][28][29] Before the Soviet path of development became known as socialism, reminiscenting the two-stage theory, communists made no major distinction between the socialist mode of production and communism;[44] it is consistent with, and helped to inform, early concepts of socialism in which the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Monetary relations in the form of exchange-value, profit, interest, and wage labor would not operate and apply to Marxist socialism.[86]

While Joseph Stalin stated that the law of value would still apply to socialism and that the Soviet Union was socialist under this new definition, which was followed by other Communist leaders, many other communists maintain the original definition and state that Communist states never established socialism in this sense. Lenin described his policies as state capitalism but saw them as necessary for the development of socialism, which left-wing critics say was never established, while some Marxist–Leninists state that it was established only during the Stalin era and Mao era, and then became capitalist states ruled by revisionists; others state that Maoist China was always state capitalist, and uphold Communist Albania as the only socialist state after the Soviet Union under Stalin,[87][88] who first stated to have achieved socialism with the 1936 Soviet Constitution.[89]

Soviet Union

Further information: Communist state and Soviet Union

War communism was the first system adopted by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War as result of the many challenges.[90] Despite communism in the name, it had nothing to do with communism, with strict discipline for workers, strike actions forbidden, obligatory labor duty, and military-style control, and has been described as simple authoritarian control by the Bolsheviks to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology.[91] The Soviet Union was established in 1922. Before the broad ban in 1921, there were several factions in the Communist party, more prominently among them the Left Opposition, the Right Opposition, and the Workers' Opposition, which debated on the path of development to follow. The Left and Workers' oppositions were more critical of the state-capitalist development and the Workers' in particular was critical of bureaucratization and development from above, while the Right Opposition was more supporting of state-capitalist development and advocated the New Economic Policy.[90] Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline.[92] Trotskyism overtook the left communists as the main dissident communist current, while more libertarian communisms, dating back to the libertarian Marxist current of council communism, remained important dissident communisms outside the Soviet Union. Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base. They were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline. The Great Purge of 1936–1938 was Joseph Stalin's attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party. In the Moscow Trials, many old Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, including Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Alexei Rykov, and Nikolai Bukharin, were accused, pleaded guilty of conspiracy against the Soviet Union, and were executed.[93][94]

The devastation of World War II resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing and transportation as well as the demobilization and migration of millions of soldiers and civilians. In the midst of this turmoil during the winter of 1946–1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century.[95] There was no serious opposition to Stalin as the secret police continued to send possible suspects to the gulag.

Relations with the United States and Britain went from friendly to hostile, as they denounced Stalin's political controls over eastern Europe and his blockade of Berlin. By 1947, the Cold War had begun. Stalin himself believed that capitalism was a hollow shell and would crumble under increased non-military pressure exerted through proxies in countries like Italy. However, he greatly underestimated the economic strength of the West and instead of triumph saw the West build up alliances that were designed to permanently stop or contain Soviet expansion. In early 1950, Stalin gave the go-ahead for North Korea's invasion of South Korea, expecting a short war. He was stunned when the Americans entered and defeated the North Koreans, putting them almost on the Soviet border. Stalin supported China's entry into the Korean War which drove the Americans back to the prewar boundaries, but which escalated tensions. The United States decided to mobilize its economy for a long contest with the Soviets, built the hydrogen bomb and strengthened the NATO alliance that covered Western Europe.[96]

According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk (2004), Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate the nation's superpower status and in the face of his growing physical decrepitude to maintain his own hold on total power. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression, yet was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. However, Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists and began major institutional innovations. In the teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death.[95]

China

Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949 as the Nationalists headed by the Kuomintang fled to the island of Taiwan. In 1950–1953, China engaged in a large-scale, undeclared war with the United States, South Korea and United Nations forces in the Korean War. While ended in a military stalemate, it gave Mao the opportunity to identify and purge elements in China that seemed supportive of capitalism. At first, there was close cooperation with Stalin, who sent in technical experts to aid the industrialization process along the line of the Soviet model of the 1930s.[97] After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with Moscow soured—Mao thought Stalin's successors had betrayed the Communist ideal. Mao charged that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of a "revisionist clique" which had turned against Marxism and Leninism was now setting the stage for the restoration of capitalism.[98] The two nations were at sword's point by 1960. Both began forging alliances with communist supporters around the globe, thereby splitting the worldwide movement into two hostile camps.[99]

Rejecting the Soviet model of rapid urbanization, Mao Zedong and his top aide Deng Xiaoping launched the Great Leap Forward in 1957–1961 with the goal of industrializing China overnight, using the peasant villages as the base rather than large cities.[100] Private ownership of land ended and the peasants worked in large collective farms that were now ordered to start up heavy industry operations, such as steel mills. Plants were built in remote locations, despite the lack of technical experts, managers, transportation or needed facilities. Industrialization failed, but the main result was a sharp unexpected decline in agricultural output, which led to mass famine and millions of deaths. The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues, "Enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. [...] In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster".[101] Put in charge of rescuing the economy, Deng adopted pragmatic policies that the idealistic Mao disliked. For a while, Mao was in the shadows, but he returned to center stage and purged Deng and his allies in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).[102]

The Cultural Revolution was an upheaval that targeted intellectuals and party leaders from 1966 through 1976. Mao's goal was to purify communism by removing pro-capitalists and traditionalists by imposing Maoist orthodoxy within the Chinese Communist Party. The movement paralyzed China politically and weakened the country economically, culturally and intellectually for years. Millions of people were accused, humiliated, stripped of power and either imprisoned, killed or most often sent to work as farm laborers. Mao insisted that these he labelled revisionists be removed through violent class struggle. The two most prominent militants were Marshall Lin Biao of the army and Mao's wife Jiang Qing. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a "capitalist road", most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period, Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions. After Mao's death in 1976, the survivors were rehabilitated and many returned to power.[103][page needed]

Cold War

Further information: Eastern Bloc and Cold War

Countries of the world now (red) or previously (orange) having nominally Communist governments

Following its leading role in World War II saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as an industrialized superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and communist parties played a leading role in many independence movements. Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. A Marxist–Leninist government was also created under Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism was branded deviationist. Albania also became an independent Marxist–Leninist state after World War II.[104] The Communist Party of China (CPC), led by Mao Zedong, established the People's Republic of China, which would follow its own ideological path of development following the Sino-Soviet split.[citation needed] Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to Western capitalism for most of the 20th century.[105]

In Western Europe, Communist parties were part of several post-war governments, and even when the Cold War forced many of those countries to remove them from government, such as in Italy, they remained part of the liberal-democratic process. There were also many developments in libertarian Marxism, especially during the 1960s with the New Left. By the 1960s and 1970s, many Western Communist parties had criticized many of the actions of Communist states, distanced from them, and developed a democratic road to socialism, which became known as Eurocommunism.[106] This development was criticized by more orthodox supporters of the Soviet Union as amounting to social democracy.[107]

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Further information: Dissolution of the Soviet Union

With the fall of the Warsaw Pact after the Revolutions of 1989, which led to the fall of most of the former Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.[108] The declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories ratified it much later or did not do it at all. On the previous day, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev (the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union) resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers, including control of the Cheget, to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. That evening at 7:32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously from August to December 1991, all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had seceded from the union. The week before the union's formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, formally establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.[109][110]

Post-Soviet communism

See also: List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation

The Vietnamese Communist Party's poster in Hanoi

As of 2022, states controlled by Marxist–Leninist parties under a single-party system include the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.[nb 4] Communist parties, or their descendant parties, remain politically important in several other countries. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Fall of Communism, there was a split between those hardline Communists, sometimes referred to in the media as neo-Stalinists, who remained committed to orthodox Marxism–Leninism, and those, such as The Left in Germany, who work within the liberal-democratic process for a democratic road to socialism,[116] while other ruling Communist parties became closer to democratic socialist and social-democratic parties.[117] Outside Communist states, reformed Communist parties have led or been part of left-leaning government or regional coalitions, including in the former Eastern Bloc. In Nepal, Communists (CPN UML and Nepal Communist Party) were part of the 1st Nepalese Constituent Assembly, which abolished the monarchy in 2008 and turned the country into a federal liberal-democratic republic, and have democratically shared power with other communists, Marxist–Leninists, and Maoists (CPN Maoist), social democrats (Nepali Congress), and others as part of their People's Multiparty Democracy.[118][119]

China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy, and along with Laos, Vietnam, and to a lesser degree Cuba, has decentralized state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. These reforms are described by scholars as progress, and by some left-wing critics as a regression to capitalism, or as state capitalism, but the ruling parties describe it as a necessary adjustment to existing realities in the post-Soviet world in order to maximize industrial productive capacity.[citation needed] In these countries, the land is a universal public monopoly administered by the state, and so are natural resources and vital industries and services. The public sector is the dominant sector in these economies and the state plays a central role in coordinating economic development.[citation needed] Chinese economic reforms were started in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and since then China has managed to bring down the poverty rate from 53% in the Mao era to just 6% in 2001.[120]

Theory

Communist political thought and theory are diverse but share several core elements. The dominant forms of communism are based on Marxism or Leninism but non-Marxist versions of communism, such as anarcho-communism and Christian communism, which remain partly influenced by Marxist theories and libertarian and humanist Marxism in particular, also exist. Common elements include being theoretical rather than ideological, identifying political parties not by ideology but by class and economic interest, and share an identify with the proletariat. According to communists, the proletariat can avoid mass unemployment only if capitalism is overthrown; in the short run, state-oriented communists favor state ownership of the commanding heights of the economy as a means to defend the proletariat from capitalist pressure. Some communists are distinguished by other Marxists in seeing peasants and smallholders of property as possible allies in their goal of shortening the abolition of capitalism.[121]

For Leninist communism, such goal, including short-term proletarian interests to improve their political and material conditions, can only be achieved through vanguardism, an elitist form of socialism from above which relies on theoretical analysis to identify proletarian interests rather than consulting the proletarians themselves,[121] as is advocated by libertarian communists.[10] When they engage in elections, Leninist communists' main task is that of educating voters in what are deemed their true interests rather than in response to the expression of interest by voters themselves. When they have gained control of the state, Leninist communists' main task was preventing other political parties from deceiving the proletariat, such as by running their own independent candidates. This vanguardist approach comes from their commitments to democratic centralism in which communists can only be cadres, i.e. members of the party who are full-time professional revolutionaries, as was conceived by Vladimir Lenin.[121]

Marxist communism

Main article: Marxism

See also: List of communist ideologies and Marxist schools of thought

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

A monument dedicated to Karl Marx (left) and Friedrich Engels (right) in Shanghai

Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation, analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development and takes a dialectical view of social transformation. Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and now better known as historical materialism, to analyze and critique the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic economic, social and political change. First developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century, it has been the foremost ideology of the communist movement. Marxism does not lay out a blueprint of a communist society per se and it merely presents an analysis that concludes the means by which its implementation will be triggered, distinguishing its fundamental characteristics as based on the derivation of real-life conditions. Marxism considers itself to be the embodiment of scientific socialism but does not model an ideal society based on the design of intellectuals, whereby communism is seen as a state of affairs to be established based on any intelligent design; rather, it is a non-idealist attempt at the understanding of material history and society, whereby communism is the expression of a real movement, with parameters that are derived from actual life.[122]

According to Marxist theory, class conflict arises in capitalist societies due to contradictions between the material interests of the oppressed and exploited proletariat—a class of wage laborers employed to produce goods and services—and the bourgeoisie—the ruling class that owns the means of production and extracts its wealth through appropriation of the surplus product produced by the proletariat in the form of profit. This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production, results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness. In periods of deep crisis, the resistance of the oppressed can culminate in a proletarian revolution which, if victorious, leads to the establishment of the socialist mode of production based on social ownership of the means of production, "To each according to his contribution", and production for use. As the productive forces continued to advance, the communist society, i.e. a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership, follows the maxim "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."[44]

While it originates from the works of Marx and Engels, Marxism has developed into many different branches and schools of thought, with the result that there is now no single definitive Marxist theory.[123] Different Marxian schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Many schools of thought have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts, which has then led to contradictory conclusions.[124] There is a movement toward the recognition that historical materialism and dialectical materialism remains the fundamental aspect of all Marxist schools of thought.[60] Marxism–Leninism and its offshoots are the most well-known of these and have been a driving force in international relations during most of the 20th century.[125]

Classical Marxism is the economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Marx and Engels as contrasted with later developments in Marxism, especially Leninism and Marxism–Leninism.[126] Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxism thought that emerged after the death of Marx and which became the official philosophy of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until World War I in 1914. Orthodox Marxism aims to simplify, codify, and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying the perceived ambiguities and contradictions of classical Marxism. The philosophy of orthodox Marxism includes the understanding that material development (advances in technology in the productive forces) is the primary agent of change in the structure of society and of human social relations and that social systems and their relations (e.g. feudalism, capitalism and so on) become contradictory and inefficient as the productive forces develop, which results in some form of social revolution arising in response to the mounting contradictions. This revolutionary change is the vehicle for fundamental society-wide changes and ultimately leads to the emergence of new economic systems.[127] As a term, orthodox Marxism represents the methods of historical materialism and of dialectical materialism, and not the normative aspects inherent to classical Marxism, without implying dogmatic adherence to the results of Marx's investigations.[128]

Marxist concepts

Class conflict and historical materialism

Main articles: Class conflict and Historical materialism

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

At the root of Marxism is historical materialism, the materialist conception of history which holds that the key characteristic of economic systems through history has been the mode of production and that the change between modes of production has been triggered by class struggle. According to this analysis, the Industrial Revolution ushered the world into capitalism as a new mode of production. Before capitalism, certain working classes had ownership of instruments utilized in production; however, because machinery was much more efficient, this property became worthless and the mass majority of workers could only survive by selling their labor to make use of someone else's machinery, and making someone else profit. Accordingly, capitalism divided the world between two major classes, namely that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. These classes are directly antagonistic as the latter possesses private ownership of the means of production, earning profit via the surplus value generated by the proletariat, who have no ownership of the means of production and therefore no option but to sell its labor to the bourgeoisie.[129]

According to the materialist conception of history, it is through the furtherance of its own material interests that the rising bourgeoisie within feudalism captured power and abolished, of all relations of private property, only the feudal privilege, thereby taking the feudal ruling class out of existence. This was another key element behind the consolidation of capitalism as the new mode of production, the final expression of class and property relations that has led to a massive expansion of production. It is only in capitalism that private property in itself can be abolished.[130] Similarly, the proletariat would capture political power, abolish bourgeois property through the common ownership of the means of production, therefore abolishing the bourgeoisie, ultimately abolishing the proletariat itself and ushering the world into communism as a new mode of production. In between capitalism and communism, there is the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is the defeat of the bourgeois state but not yet of the capitalist mode of production, and at the same time the only element which places into the realm of possibility moving on from this mode of production. This dictatorship, based on the Paris Commune's model,[131] is to be the most democratic state where the whole of the public authority is elected and recallable under the basis of universal suffrage.[132]

Marxian economics

Main article: Marxian economics

Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by cutting employee's wages, social benefits and pursuing military aggression. The communist system would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through workers' revolution. According to Marxian crisis theory, communism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity.[133]

Socialization versus nationalization

Main articles: Socialization (economics) and Socialization (Marxism)

An important concept in Marxism is socialization versus nationalization. Nationalization is state ownership of property whereas socialization is control and management of property by society. Marxism considers the latter as its goal and considers nationalization a tactical issue, as state ownership is still in the realm of the capitalist mode of production. In the words of Friedrich Engels, "the transformation ... into State-ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. ... State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."[a][134] This has led some Marxist groups and tendencies to label states based on nationalization such as the Soviet Union as state capitalist.[24][25][26][27][29]

Leninist communism

Main article: Leninism

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

"We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called 'socialism'."

Vladimir Lenin, To the Rural Poor (1903)[135]

Vladimir Lenin statue in Kolkata, West Bengal

Leninism is the body of political theory, developed by and named after the Russian revolutionary and later-Soviet premier Vladimir Lenin, for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party and the achievement of a dictatorship of the proletariat as political prelude to the establishment of the socialist mode of production. Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories developed from orthodox Marxism as well as Lenin's interpretations of Marxist theory for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the early-20th-century agrarian society in the Russian Empire. Leninism was composed for revolutionary praxis and originally was neither a rigorously proper philosophy nor a discrete political theory. After the Russian Revolution and in History and Class Consciousness (1923), György Lukács developed and organized Lenin's pragmatic revolutionary practices and ideology into the formal philosophy of vanguard-party revolution. As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922 after infirmity ended Lenin's participation in governing the Russian Communist Party. At the Fifth Congress of the Communist International in July 1924, Grigory Zinoviev popularized the term Leninism to denote vanguard-party revolution.

Within Leninism, democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the communist party. The party's political vanguard is composed of professional revolutionaries that elect leaders and officers as well as to determine policy through free discussion, then this is decisively realized through united action. In the context of the theory of Leninist revolutionary struggle, vanguardism is a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically advanced sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations in order to draw larger sections of the working class towards revolutionary politics and serve as manifestations of proletarian political power against its class enemies. From 1917 to 1922, Leninism was the Russian application of Marxian economics and political philosophy as effected and realized by the Bolsheviks, the vanguard party who led the fight for the political independence of the working class. In the 1925–1929 period, Joseph Stalin established his interpretation of Leninism as the official and only legitimate form of Marxism in Russia by amalgamating the political philosophies as Marxism–Leninism which then became the state ideology of the Soviet Union.

Marxism–Leninism

Main article: Marxism–Leninism

Marxism–Leninism is a political ideology developed by Joseph Stalin.[136] According to its proponents, it is based in Marxism and Leninism. It describes the specific political ideology which Stalin implemented in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in a global scale in the Comintern. There is no definite agreement between historians of about whether Stalin actually followed the principles of Marx and Lenin.[137] It also contains aspects which according to some are deviations from Marxism such as socialism in one country.[138][139] Marxism–Leninism was the official ideology of 20th-century Communist parties (including Trotskyist), and was developed after the death of Lenin; its three principles were dialectical materialism, the leading role of the Communist party through democratic centralism, and a planned economy with industrialization and agricultural collectivization. As a term, Marxism–Leninism is misleading because Marx and Lenin never sanctioned or supported the creation of an -ism after them, and is reveling because, being popularized after Lenin's death by Stalin, it contained those three doctrinal and institutionalized principles that became a model for later Soviet-type regimes; its global influence, having at its height covered at least one-third of the world's population, has made Marxist–Leninist a convenient label for the Communist bloc as a dynamic ideological order.[140][b]

During the Cold War, Marxism–Leninism was the ideology of the most clearly visible communist movement and is the most prominent ideology associated with communism.[125][nb 5] Social fascism was a theory supported by the Comintern and affiliated communist parties during the early 1930s which held that social democracy was a variant of fascism because it stood in the way of a dictatorship of the proletariat, in addition to a shared corporatist economic model.[142] At the time, leaders of the Comintern such as Stalin and Rajani Palme Dutt stated that capitalist society had entered the Third Period in which a proletariat revolution was imminent but could be prevented by social democrats and other fascist forces.[142][143] The term social fascist was used pejoratively to describe social-democratic parties, anti-Comintern and progressive socialist parties and dissenters within Comintern affiliates throughout the interwar period. The social fascism theory was advocated vociferously by the Communist Party of Germany which was largely controlled and funded by the Soviet leadership from 1928.[143] Within Marxism–Leninism, anti-revisionism is a position which emerged in the 1950s in opposition to the reforms and Khrushchev Thaw of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Where Khrushchev pursued an interpretation that differed from Stalin, the anti-revisionists within the international communist movement remained dedicated to Stalin's ideological legacy and criticized the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and his successors as state capitalist and social imperialist due to its hopes of achieving peace with the United States. The term Stalinism is also used to describe these positions but is often not used by its supporters who opine that Stalin simply synthesized and practiced orthodox Marxism and Leninism. Because different political trends trace the historical roots of revisionism to different eras and leaders, there is significant disagreement today as to what constitutes anti-revisionism. Modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories. Some uphold the works of Stalin and Mao Zedong and some the works of Stalin while rejecting Mao and universally tend to oppose Trotskyism. Others reject both Stalin and Mao, tracing their ideological roots back to Marx and Lenin. In addition, other groups uphold various less-well-known historical leaders such as Enver Hoxha, who also broke with Mao during the Sino-Albanian split. Social imperialism was a term used by Mao to criticize the Soviet Union post-Stalin. Mao stated that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade.[144] Hoxha agreed with Mao in this analysis, before later using the expression to also condemn Mao's Three Worlds Theory.[145]

Stalinism

Main article: Stalinism

1942 portrait of Joseph Stalin, the longest-serving leader of the Soviet Union

Stalinism represents Stalin's style of governance as opposed to Marxism–Leninism, the socioeconomic system and political ideology implemented by Stalin in the Soviet Union and later adapted by other states based on the ideological Soviet model, such as central planning, nationalization, and one-party state, along with public ownership of the means of production, accelerated industrialization, pro-active development of society's productive forces (research and development), and nationalized natural resources. Marxism–Leninism remained after de-Stalinization whereas Stalinism did not. In the last letters before his death, Lenin warned against the danger of Stalin's personality and urged the Soviet government to replace him.[60] Until the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Communist party referred to its own ideology as Marxism–Leninism–Stalinism.[121]

Marxism–Leninism has been criticized by other communist and Marxist tendencies, which state that Marxist–Leninist states did not establish socialism but rather state capitalism.[24][25][26][27][29] According to Marxism, the dictatorship of the proletariat represents the rule of the majority (democracy) rather than of one party, to the extent that co-founder of Marxism Friedrich Engels described its "specific form" as the democratic republic.[146] According to Engels, state property by itself is private property of capitalist nature[a] unless the proletariat has control of political power, in which case it forms public property.[d][134] Whether the proletariat was actually in control of the Marxist–Leninist states is a matter of debate between Marxism–Leninism and other communist tendencies. To these tendencies, Marxism–Leninism is neither Marxism nor Leninism nor the union of both but rather an artificial term created to justify Stalin's ideological distortion,[147] forced into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Comintern. In the Soviet Union, this struggle against Marxism–Leninism was represented by Trotskyism, which describes itself as a Marxist and Leninist tendency.[148]

Trotskyism

Main article: Trotskyism

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Detail of Man, Controller of the Universe, fresco at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City showing Leon Trotsky, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx

Trotskyism, developed by Leon Trotsky in opposition to Stalinism,[149] is a Marxist and Leninist tendency that supports the theory of permanent revolution and world revolution rather than the two-stage theory and Stalin's socialism in one country. It supported proletarian internationalism[150] and another communist revolution in the Soviet Union. Rather than representing the dictatorship of the proletariat, Trotsky claimed that the Soviet Union had become a degenerated workers' state under the leadership of Stalin in which class relations had re-emerged in a new form. Trotsky's politics differed sharply from those of Stalin and Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international proletarian revolution—rather than socialism in one country—and support for a true dictatorship of the proletariat based on democratic principles. Struggling against Stalin for power in the Soviet Union, Trotsky and his supporters organized into the Left Opposition, the platform of which became known as Trotskyism. Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining control of the Soviet regime and Trotskyist attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. While in exile, Trotsky continued his campaign against Stalin, founding in 1938 the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern. In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City on Stalin's orders. Trotskyist currents include orthodox Trotskyism, third camp, Posadism, Pabloism, and neo-Trotskyism.[151][152]

In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class's democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed and in other works. Deformed workers' states are states where the capitalist class has been overthrown, the economy is largely state-owned and planned, but there is no internal democracy or workers' control of industry. In a deformed workers' state, the working class has never held political power like it did in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. These states are considered deformed because their political and economic structures have been imposed from the top (or from outside) and because revolutionary working class organizations are crushed. Like a degenerated workers' state, a deformed workers' state cannot be said to be a state that is transitioning to socialism. Most Trotskyists cite examples of deformed workers' states today as including Cuba, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and Vietnam. The Committee for a Workers' International has also included at times states such as Burma and Syria when they have had a nationalized economy.

Maoism

Main articles: Maoism and Marxism–Leninism–Maoism

Long Live the Victory of Mao Zedong Thought monument in Shenyang

Maoism is the theory derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong. Developed from the 1950s until the Deng Xiaoping Chinese economic reform in the 1970s, it was widely applied as the guiding political and military ideology of the Communist Party of China and as the theory guiding revolutionary movements around the world. A key difference between Maoism and other forms of Marxism–Leninism is that peasants should be the bulwark of the revolutionary energy which is led by the working class.[153] Three common Maoist values are revolutionary populism, being practical, and dialectics.[154]

The synthesis of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism,[e] which builds upon the two individual theories as the Chinese adaption of Marxism–Leninism, did not occur during the life of Mao. After de-Stalinization, Marxism–Leninism was kept in the Soviet Union, while certain anti-revisionist tendencies such as Hoxhaism and Maoism stated that such had deviated from its original concept. Different policies were applied in Albania and China which became more distanced from the Soviet Union. From the 1960s, groups who called themselves Maoists, or those who upheld Maoism, were not unified around a common understanding of Maoism, instead having their own particular interpretations of the political, philosophical, economical and military works of Mao. Its adherents claim that as a unified, coherent higher stage of Marxism, it was not consolidated until the 1980s, first being formalized by the Peruvian communist party Shining Path in 1982.[155] Through the experience of the people's war waged by the party, the Shining Path were able to posit Maoism as the newest development of Marxism.[155]

Proponents of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism refer to the theory as Maoism itself, whereas Maoism is referred to as either Mao Zedong Thought or Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought. Maoism–Third Worldism is concerned with the infusion and synthesis of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism with concepts of non-Marxist Third-Worldism such dependency theory and world-systems theory.

Enrico Berlinguer, the secretary of the Italian Communist Party and main proponent of Eurocommunism

Eurocommunism

Main article: Eurocommunism

Eurocommunism was a revisionist trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties, claiming to develop a theory and practice of social transformation more relevant to their region. Especially prominent in France, Italy, and Spain, communists of this nature sought to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union and its Communist party during the Cold War.[106] Enrico Berlinguer, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, was widely considered the father of Eurocommunism.[156]

Libertarian Marxist communism

Main article: Libertarian Marxism

Libertarian Marxism is a broad range of economic and political philosophies that emphasize the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, known as left communism,[157] emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism[158] and its derivatives such as Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism.[159] Libertarian Marxism is also critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats.[160] Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Marx and Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France,[161] emphasizing the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its own destiny without the need for a revolutionary party or state to mediate or aid its liberation.[162] Along with anarchism, libertarian Marxism is one of the main derivatives of libertarian socialism.[163]

Aside from left communism, libertarian Marxism includes such currents as autonomism, communization, council communism, De Leonism, the Johnson–Forest Tendency, Lettrism, Luxemburgism Situationism, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Solidarity, the World Socialist Movement, workerism as well as parts of Freudo-Marxism and the New Left.[164] Moreover, libertarian Marxism has often had a strong influence on both post-left and social anarchists. Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Antonie Pannekoek, Raya Dunayevskaya, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton, Daniel Guérin, and Yanis Varoufakis,[165] the latter of whom claims that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist.[166]

Council communism

Main article: Council communism

Rosa Luxemburg

Council communism is a movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s,[167] whose primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany. It continues today as a theoretical and activist position within both libertarian Marxism and libertarian socialism.[168] The core principle of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils, which are composed of delegates elected at workplaces and recallable at any moment. Council communists oppose the perceived authoritarian and undemocratic nature of central planning and of state socialism, labelled state capitalism, and the idea of a revolutionary party,[169][170] since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party would necessarily produce a party dictatorship. Council communists support a workers' democracy, produced through a federation of workers' councils.

In contrast to those of social democracy and Leninist communism, the central argument of council communism is that democratic workers' councils arising in the factories and municipalities are the natural form of working-class organization and governmental power.[171][172] This view is opposed to both the reformist[173] and the Leninist communist ideologies,[169] which respectively stress parliamentary and institutional government by applying social reforms on the one hand, and vanguard parties and participative democratic centralism on the other.[173][169]

Left communism

Main article: Left communism

Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas and practices espoused, particularly following the series of revolutions that brought World War to an end by Bolsheviks and social democrats.[174] Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its first congress (March 1919) and during its second congress (July–August 1920).[158][175][176]

Left communists represent a range of political movements distinct from Marxist–Leninists, whom they largely view as merely the left-wing of capital, from anarcho-communists, some of whom they consider to be internationalist socialists, and from various other revolutionary socialist tendencies, such as De Leonists, whom they tend to see as being internationalist socialists only in limited instances.[177] Bordigism is a Leninist left-communist current named after Amadeo Bordiga, who has been described as being "more Leninist than Lenin", and considered himself to be a Leninist.[178]

Other types of communism

Anarcho-communism

Main article: Anarcho-communism

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Peter Kropotkin, main theorist of anarcho-communism

Anarcho-communism is a libertarian theory of anarchism and communism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production;[179][180] direct democracy; and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need";[181][182] anarcho-communism differs from Marxism in that it rejects its view about the need for a state socialism phase prior to establishing communism. Peter Kropotkin, the main theorist of anarcho-communism, stated that a revolutionary society should "transform itself immediately into a communist society", that it should go immediately into what Marx had regarded as the "more advanced, completed, phase of communism".[183] In this way, it tries to avoid the reappearance of class divisions and the need for a state to be in control.[183]

Some forms of anarcho-communism such as insurrectionary anarchism are egoist and strongly influenced by radical individualism,[184][185][186] believing that anarchist communism does not require a communitarian nature at all. Most anarcho-communists view anarchist communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.[f][187][188] In human history to date, the best-known examples of an anarcho-communist society, i.e. established around the ideas as they exist today and that received worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon, are the anarchist territories during the Free Territory during the Russian Revolution, the Korean People's Association in Manchuria and the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

During the Russian Civil War, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine to create and defend anarcho-communism in the Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919 before being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921. In 1929, anarcho-communism was achieved in Korea by the Korean Anarchist Federation in Manchuria (KAFM) and the Korean Anarcho-Communist Federation (KACF), with help from anarchist general and independence activist Kim Chwa-chin, lasting until 1931, when Imperial Japan assassinated Kim and invaded from the south while the Chinese Nationalists invaded from the north, resulting in the creation of Manchukuo, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan. Through the efforts and influence of the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in 1936 anarcho-communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the Levante, and Andalusia, and in the stronghold of Revolutionary Catalonia, before being brutally crushed.

Christian communism

Main article: Christian communism

Christian communism is a theological and political theory based upon the view that the teachings of Jesus Christ compel Christians to support religious communism as the ideal social system.[61] Although there is no universal agreement on the exact dates when communistic ideas and practices in Christianity began, many Christian communists state that evidence from the Bible suggests that the first Christians, including the apostles, established their own small communist society in the years following Jesus' death and resurrection.[189] Many advocates of Christian communism state that it was taught by Jesus and practiced by the apostles themselves,[190] an argument that some historians agree with.[61][191][192][193][194]

Christian communism enjoys some support in Russia. Russian musician Yegor Letov was an outspoken Christian communist and in a 1995 interview was quoted as saying: "Communism is the Kingdom of God on Earth."[195]

Analysis

Reception

Emily Morris from University College London wrote that because Karl Marx's writings have inspired many movements, including the Russian Revolution of 1917, communism is "commonly confused with the political and economic system that developed in the Soviet Union" after the revolution.[33][g] Historian Andrzej Paczkowski summarized communism as "an ideology that seemed clearly the opposite, that was based on the secular desire of humanity to achieve equality and social justice, and that promised a great leap forward into freedom."[196]

Anti-communism developed as soon as communism became a conscious political movement in the 19th century, and anti-communist mass killings have been reported against alleged communists, or their alleged supporters which were committed by anti-communists and political organizations or governments which opposed communism. The communist movement has faced opposition since it was founded and the opposition to it has often been organized and violent. Many of these anti-communist mass killing campaigns, primarily during the Cold War,[197][198] were supported by the United States and its Western Bloc allies,[199][200] including those who were formally part of the Non-Alligned Movement, such as the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 and Operation Condor in South America.[201][202]

Excess deaths under communist states

Main article: Mass killings under communist regimes

Many authors[nb 6] have written about excess deaths under Communist states and mortality rates, such as excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.[nb 7] Some authors posit that there is a Communist death toll, whose death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them, ranging from lows of 10–20 million to highs over 100 million. The higher estimates have been criticized by several scholars as ideologically motivated and inflated; they are also criticized for being inaccurate due to incomplete data, inflated by counting any excess death, making an unwarranted link to communism, and the grouping and body-counting itself. Higher estimates account for actions that Communist governments committed against civilians, including executions, man-made famines, and deaths that occurred during, or resulted from, imprisonment, and forced deportations and labor. Higher estimates are criticized for being based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable, skewed to higher possible values, and victims of civil wars, the Holodomor and other famines, and war-related events should not be included.[210][211][212][213][214][215]

There is no consensus among genocide scholars[nb 8] and scholars of Communism about whether some or all the events constituted a mass killing. There is also no consensus on a common terminology,[229] and the events have been variously referred to as excess mortality or mass deaths; other terms used to define some of such killings include classicide, crimes against humanity, democide, genocide, politicide, holocaust, and repression.[209][nb 9] Scholars state that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings;[231][nb 10] some in particular, such as Benjamin Valentino,[236] propose the category of Communist mass killing, alongside colonial, counter-guerrilla, and ethnic mass killing, as a subtype of dispossessive mass killing to distinguish it from coercive mass killing. Scholars do not consider ideology[230] or regime-type as an important factor that explains mass killings.[237]

Some authors have connected killings in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao Zedong's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia on the basis that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot; in all cases, killings were carried out as part of a policy of an unbalanced modernization process of rapid industrialization.[209][nb 11] Other authors allege that genocide was dictated in otherwise forgotten works of Karl Marx.[239][240]

According to Dovid Katz and other historians, a historical revisionist view of the double genocide theory,[241][242] equating mass deaths under Communist states with the Holocaust, is popular in Eastern European countries and the Baltic states, and their approaches of history have been incorporated in the European Union agenda,[243] among them the Prague Declaration in June 2008 and the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, which was proclaimed by the European Parliament in August 2008 and endorsed by the OSCE in Europe in July 2009. Among many scholars in Western Europe, the comparison of the two regimes and equivalence of their crimes has been and still is widely rejected.[243]

Many commentators on the political right point to the mass killings under communist regimes, claiming them as an indictment of communism.[244][245][246] Opponents of this view, including those on the political left, state that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by communism itself, and point to mass deaths in wars that they claim were caused by capitalism and anti-communism as a counterpoint to those killings.[198][247][245]

Memory and legacy

Memory studies have been done on how the events are memorized.[248] According to Kristen R. Ghodsee and Scott Sehon, "The public memory of 20th-century communism is a battleground." between "Two ideological armies". On the political left, there are "those with some sympathy for socialist ideals and the popular opinion of hundreds of millions of Russian and east European citizens nostalgic for their state socialist pasts." On the political right, there are "the committed anti-totalitarians, both east and west, insisting that all experiments with Marxism will always and inevitably end with the gulag."[247] The "victims of Communism" concept,[249] has become accepted scholarship, as part of the double genocide theory, in Eastern Europe and among anti-communists in general;[250] it is rejected by some Western European[243] and other scholars, especially when it is used to equate Communism and Nazism, which is seen by scholars as a long-discredited perspective.[251] The narrative posits that famines and mass deaths by Communist states can be attributed to a single cause and that communism, as "the deadliest ideology in history", or in the words of Jonathan Rauch as "the deadliest fantasy in human history",[252] represents the greatest threat to humanity.[245] Proponents posit an alleged link between communism, left-wing politics, and socialism with genocide, mass killing, and totalitarianism,[253] with authors such as George Watson advocating a common history stretching from Marx to Adolf Hitler.[239] Some right-wing authors allege that Marx was responsible for Nazism and the Holocaust.[254]

Authors such as Stéphane Courtois propose a theory of equivalence between class and racial genocide.[255] It is supported by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, with 100 million being the most common estimate used from The Black Book of Communism despite some of the authors of the book distancing themselves from the estimates made by Stephen Courtois.[247] Various museums and monuments have been constructed in remembrance of the victims of Communism, with support of the European Union and various governments in Canada, Eastern Europe, and the United States.[256][257] Works such as The Black Book of Communism and Bloodlands legitimized debates on the comparison of Nazism and Stalinism,[255][258] and by extension communism, and the former work in particular was important in the criminalization of communism.[256][257]

Conservatives, liberals, and social democrats all view 20th-century Communist states as unqualified failures, which according to Jodi Dean, limits the scope of discussion around political alternatives to capitalism and neoliberalism. According to Dean, when people think of capitalism, they do not consider what are its worst results (climate change, economic inequality, hyperinflation, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, the robber barons, and unemployment) because the history of capitalism is viewed as dynamic and nuanced; the history of communism is not considered dynamic or nuanced, and there is a fixed historical narrative of communism that emphasizes authoritarianism, the gulag, starvation, and violence.[259][260]

See also

Communism portal

American Communist History

Anti anti-communism

Commons-based peer production

Communism by country

Communist bandit

Crimes against humanity under communist regimes

Criticism of communist party rule

Criticism of Marxism

Crypto-communism

List of communist parties

Outline of Marxism

Post-scarcity economy

Sociocultural evolution

Twentieth Century Communism

References

Notes

 Earlier forms of communism (utopian socialism and some earlier forms of religious communism), shared support for a classless society and common ownership but did not necessarily advocate revolutionary politics or engage in scientific analysis; that was done by Marxist communism, which has defined mainstream, modern communism, and has influenced all modern forms of communism. Such communisms, especially new religious or utopian forms of communism, may share the Marxist analysis, while favoring evolutionary politics, localism, or reformism. By the 20th century, communism has been associated with revolutionary socialism.[12]

 Communism is capitalized by scholars of communism when referring to Communist party-ruling states and governments, which are considered to be proper nouns as a result.[16] Following scholar Joel Kovel, sociologist Sara Diamond wrote: "I use uppercase 'C' Communism to refer to actually existing governments and movements and lowercase 'c' communism to refer to the varied movements and political currents organized around the ideal of a classless society."[17] The Black Book of Communism also adopted such distinction, stating that communism exists since millennia, while Communism (used in reference to Leninist and Marxist–Leninist communism as applied by Communist states in the 20th century) only began in 1917.[18] Alan M. Wald wrote: "In order to tackle complex and often misunderstood political-literary relationships, I have adopted methods of capitalization in this book that may deviate from editorial norms practiced at certain journals and publishing houses. In particular, I capitalize 'Communist' and 'Communism' when referring to official parties of the Third International, but not when pertaining to other adherents of Bolshevism or revolutionary Marxism (which encompasses small-'c' communists such as Trotskyists, Bukharinists, council communists, and so forth)."[19] In 1994, CPUSA activist Irwin Silber wrote: "When capitalized, the International Communist Movement refers to the formal organizational structure of the pro-Soviet Communist Parties. In lower case, the international communist movement is a more generic term referring to the general movement for communism."[20]

 While the Bolsheviks rested on hope of success of the 1917–1923 wave of proletarian revolutions in Western Europe before resulting in the socialism in one country policy after their failure, Marx's view on the mir was shared not by self-professed Russian Marxists, who were mechanistic determinists, but by the Narodniks[79] and the Socialist Revolutionary Party,[80] one of the successors to the Narodniks, alongside the Popular Socialists and the Trudoviks.[81]

 The Democratic People's Republic of Korea refers to its leading ideology as Juche, which is portrayed as a development of Marxism–Leninism. In North Korea, Marxism–Leninism was superseded by Juche in the 1970s and was made official in 1992 and 2009, when constitutional references to Marxism–Leninism were dropped and replaced with Juche.[111] In 2009, the constitution was quietly amended so that not only did it remove all Marxist–Leninist references present in the first draft but also dropped all references to communism.[112] Juche has been described by some observers as a version of "Korean ultranationalism",[113] which eventually developed after losing its original Marxist–Leninist elements.[114] Marxism–Leninism was largely abandoned after the start of de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union and has been totally replaced by Juche since at least 1974.[115]

 According to their proponents, Marxist–Leninist ideologies have been adapted to the material conditions of their respective countries and include Castroism (Cuba), Ceaușism (Romania), Gonzalo Thought (Peru), Guevarism (Cuba), Ho Chi Minh Thought (Vietnam), Hoxhaism (anti-revisionist Albania), Husakism (Czechoslovakia), Juche (North Korea), Kadarism (Hungary), Khmer Rouge (Cambodia), Khrushchevism (Soviet Union), Prachanda Path (Nepal), Shining Path (Peru), and Titoism (anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia).[141][c]

 Most scholars write about individual events, and make estimates of any deaths like any other historical event; some events are categorized by a Communist state's particular era, such as Stalinist repression, [203][204] rather than a connection to all Communist states, which came to cover one-third the world's population by 1985.[61]

Historians such as Robert Conquest and J. Arch Getty mainly wrote and focused on the Stalin era; they wrote about people who died in the Gulag or as a result of Stalinist repression, and discussed estimates about those specific events, as part of the excess mortality debate in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, without connecting them to communism as a whole. They have vigorously debated, including on the Holodomor genocide question,[205][206] but the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Fall of Communism, and the release of state archives put some of the heat out of the debate.[207] Some historians, among them Michael Ellman, have questioned "the very category 'victims of Stalinism'" as "a matter of political judgement" because mass deaths from famines are not a "uniquely Stalinist evil" and were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.[208] There exists very little literature that compares excess deaths under "the Big Three" of Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao Zedong's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, and that which does exist mainly enumerates the events rather than explain their ideological reasons. One such example is Crimes Against Humanity Under Communist Regimes – Research Review by Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals, a review study summarizing what others have stated about it, mentioning some authors who saw the origins of the killings in Karl Marx's writings; the geographical scope is "the Big Three", and the authors state that killings were carried out as part of an unbalanced modernizing policy of rapid industrialization, asking "what marked the beginning of the unbalanced Russian modernisation process that was to have such terrible consequences?"[209]

Notable scholarly exceptions are historian Stéphane Courtois and political scientist Rudolph Rummel, who have attempted a connection between all Communist states; however, Rummel's analysis was done within the framework of his proposed concept of democide, which includes any direct and indirect deaths by government, and did not limit himself to Communist states, which were categorized within the framework of totalitarianism alongside other regime-types. Rummel's estimates are on the high-end of the spectrum, have been criticized and scrutinized, and are rejected by most scholars. Courtois' attempts, as in the introduction to The Black Book of Communism, which have been described by some critical observers as a crudely anti-communist and antisemitic work, are controversial; many reviewers of the book, including scholars, criticized such attempts of lumping all Communist states and different sociological movements together as part of a Communist death toll totalling more than 94 million.[210][211][212][213][214][215] Reviewers also distinguished the introduction from the book proper, which was better received and only presented a number of chapters on single-country studies, with no cross-cultural comparison, or discussion of mass killings; historian Andrzej Paczkowski wrote that only Courtois made the comparison between communism and Nazism, while the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations", and stated that the book is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon."[196] More positive reviews found most of the criticism to be fair or warranted, with political scientist Stanley Hoffmann stating that "Courtois would have been far more effective if he had shown more restraint",[216] and Paczkowski stating that it has had two positive effects, among them stirring a debate about the implementation of totalitarian ideologies and "an exhaustive balance sheet about one aspect of the worldwide phenomenon of communism."[212]

A Soviet and Communist studies example is Steven Rosefielde's Red Holocaust, which is controversial due to Holocaust trivialization; nonetheless, Rosefielde's work mainly focused on "the Big Three" (Stalin era, Mao era, and the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia), plus Kim Il-sung's North Korea and Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam. Rosefielde's main point is that Communism in general, although he focuses mostly on Stalinism, is less genocidal and that is a key distinction from Nazism, and did not make a connection between all Communist states or communism as an ideology. Rosefielde wrote that "the conditions for the Red Holocaust were rooted in Stalin's, Kim's, Mao's, Ho's and Pol Pot's siege-mobilized terror-command economic systems, not in Marx's utopian vision or other pragmatic communist transition mechanisms. Terror-command was chosen among other reasons because of legitimate fears about the long-term viability of terror-free command, and the ideological risks of market communism."[217]

 Some authors, such as Stéphane Courtois in The Black Book of Communism, stated that Communism killed more than Nazism and thus was worse; several scholars have criticized this view.[218] After assessing twenty years of historical research in Eastern European archives, lower estimates by the "revisionist school" of historians have been vindicated,[219] despite the popular press continuing to use higher estimates and containing serious errors.[220] Historians such as Timothy D. Snyder stated it is taken for granted that Stalin killed more civilians than Hitler; for most scholars, excess mortality under Stalin was about 6 million, which rise to 9 million if foreseeable deaths arising from policies are taken into account. This estimate is less than those killed by Nazis, who killed more noncombatants than the Soviets did.[221]

 Most genocide scholars do not lump Communist states together, and do not treat genocidical events as a separate subjects, or by regime-type, and compare them to genocidical events which happened under vastly different regimes. Examples include Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts,[222] The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing,[223] Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide,[224] Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue,[225] and Final Solutions.[226] Several of them are limited to the geographical locations of "the Big Three", or mainly the Cambodian genocide, whose culprit, the Khmer Rouge regime, was described by genocide scholar Helen Fein as following a xenophobic ideology bearing a stronger resemblance to "an almost forgotten phenomenon of national socialism", or fascism, rather than communism,[227] while historian Ben Kiernan described it as "more racist and generically totalitarian than Marxist or specifically Communist",[228] or do not discuss Communist states, other than passing mentions. Such work is mainly done in an attempt to prevent genocides but has been described by scholars as a failure.[229]

 Genocide scholar Barbara Harff maintains a global database on mass killings, which is intended mostly for statistical analysis of mass killings in attempt to identify the best predictors for their onset and data is not necessarily the most accurate for a given country, since some sources are general genocide scholars and not experts on local history;[215] it includes anticommunist mass killings, such as the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 (genocide and politicide), and some events which happened under Communist states, such as the 1959 Tibetan uprising (genocide and politicide), the Cambodian genocide (genocide and politicide), and the Cultural Revolution (politicide), but no comparative analysis or communist link is drawn, other than the events just happened to take place in some Communist states in Eastern Asia. The Harff database is the most frequently used by genocide scholars.[230] Rudolph Rummel operated a similar database, but it was not limited to Communist states, it is mainly for statistical analysis, and in a comparative analysis has been criticized by other scholars, over that of Harff,[215] for his estimates and statistical methodology, which showed some flaws.[214]

 In their criticism of The Black Book of Communism, which popularized the topic, several scholars have questioned, in the words of Alexander Dallin, "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss."[50] In particular, historians Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann stated that a connection between the events in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and Pol Pot's Cambodia are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category.[232] Historian Michael David-Fox criticized the figures as well as the idea to combine loosely connected events under a single category of Communist death toll, blaming Stéphane Courtois for their manipulation and deliberate inflation which are presented to advocate the idea that communism was a greater evil than Nazism. David-Fox criticized the idea to connect the deaths with some "generic Communism" concept, defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals.[49] A similar criticism was made by Le Monde.[233] Allegation of a communist or red Holocaust is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally,[234] and is considered a form of softcore antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization.[235]

Statement by A. A. Gromyko (4 July 1950) The events now taking place in Korea broke out on June 25 as the result of a provocative attack by the troops of the South Korean authorities on the frontier areas of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic. This attack was the outcome of a premeditated plan. From time to time Syngman Rhee himself and other representatives of the South Korean authorities had blurted out the fact that the South Korean Syngman Rhee clique had such a plan. As long ago as October 7, 1949, Syngman Rhee, boasting of success in training his army, stated outright, in an interview given to an American United Press correspondent, that the South Korean Army could capture Pyongyang in the course of three days. On October 31, 1949, Sin Sen Mo, Defence Minister of the Syngman Rhee Government, also told newspaper correspondents that the South Korean troops were strong enough to act and take Pyongyang within a few days. Only one week before the provocative attack of the South Korean troops on the frontier areas of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, Syngman Rhee said, in a speech on June 19 in the so-called “National Assembly” where Mr. Dulles, adviser to the U.S. State Department, was present: “If we cannot protect democracy in the cold war, we shall win in a hot war.” It is not difficult to understand that representatives of the South Korean authorities could only make such statements because they felt that they had American support behind them. One month before the present developments in Korea, on May 19, 1950, Mr. Johnson, chief American administrator of aid to Korea, told the American Congress House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee that 100,000 officers and men of the South Korean Army, equipped with American weapons and trained by the American Military Mission, had completed their preparations and could begin war at any time. It is known that only a few days before the Korean events, the United States Defence Secretary, Mr. Johnson, the Chief of the General Staff of the United States Armed Forces, General Bradley, and the State Department adviser, Mr. Dulles, arrived in Japan and had special conferences with General MacArthur, and that afterwards Mr. Dulles visited South Korea and went to frontier areas on the 38th parallel. Only one week before the events — on June 19 — Mr. Dulles, adviser to the State Department, declared in the above-mentioned “National Assembly” of South Korea that the United States was ready to give all necessary moral and material support to South Korea which was fighting against Communism. These facts speak for themselves and need no comment. The very first days showed, however, that events were not developing in favour of the South Korean authorities. The Korean People’s Democratic Republic gained a number of successes in the struggle against the South Korean troops, which are directed by American military advisers. When it became clear that the terrorist regime of the Syngman Rhee clique, which had never enjoyed the support of the Korean people, was collapsing, the United States Government resorted to open intervention in Korea, ordering its air, naval and subsequently its ground forces to side with the South Korean authorities against the Korean people. Thereby the United States Government went over from a policy of preparing aggression to outright acts of aggression and embarked on a course of open intervention in Korea’s domestic affairs, on a course of armed intervention in Korea. Having taken this course, the United States Government violated peace, demonstrating thereby that far from seeking to consolidate peace, it is on the contrary an enemy of peace. The facts show that the United States Government is only disclosing its aggressive plans in Korea step by step. First it declared that the United States intervention in Korean affairs would be confined to the shipment of war and other materials only. Then it was announced that air and naval forces, but without ground troops, 2 / 6 03/07/2015 would also be sent. Following this, it was stated also that United States ground forces would be sent to Korea. It is also known that at first the United States Government declared that American armed forces would take part in operations in South Korean territory only. Hardly had a few days passed, however, when the American air force transferred its operations to North Korean territory and attacked Pyongyang and other cities. All this goes to show that the United States Government is drawing the United States more and more into war, but, compelled to reckon with the unwillingness of the American people to be involved in a new military adventure, it is gradually impelling the country step by step towards open war. The United States Government tries to justify armed intervention against Korea by alleging that it was undertaken on the authorisation of the Security Council. The falsity of such an allegation strikes the eye. What really happened? It is known that the United States Government had started armed intervention in Korea before the Security Council was summoned to meet on June 27, without taking into consideration what decision the Security Council might take. Thus the United States Government confronted the United Nations Organisation with a fait accompli, with a violation of peace. The Security Council merely rubber-stamped and back-dated the resolution proposed by the United States Government, approving the aggressive actions which this Government had undertaken. Furthermore, the American resolution was adopted by the Security Council with a gross violation of the Charter of the United Nations Organisation. In accordance with Article 27 of the United Nations Charter all Security Council decisions on major issues must be adopted by an affirmative vote of not less than seven members, including the votes of all the five permanent members of the Security Council, i.e., of the Soviet Union, China, the United States, Great Britain and France. However, the American resolution approving the United States armed intervention in Korea was adopted by only six votes — those of the United States, Britain, France, Norway, Cuba and Ecuador. The vote of the kuomintangite Tsiang Ting-fu, who unlawfully occupies China’s seat on the Security Council, was counted as the seventh vote for this resolution. Furthermore, of the five permanent members of the Council only three — the United States, Britain and France — were present at the Security Council’s meeting on June 27. Two other permanent members of the Security Council — the U.S.S.R. and China — were not present at the Council meeting, since the hostile attitude of the United States Government towards the Chinese people deprives China of the opportunity of having her legitimate representative on the Security Council, and this made impossible the Soviet Union’s participation in the meetings of the Security Council. Thus neither of these two requirements of the United Nations Charter with regard to the Security Council’s procedure for taking decisions were fulfilled at the Council’s session on June 27, which deprives the resolution adopted at that session of any legal force. It is also known that the United Nations Charter envisages the intervention of the Security Council only in those cases where the matter concerns events of an international order and not of an internal character. Moreover, the Charter directly forbids the intervention of the United Nations Organisation in the internal affairs of any state when it is a matter of an internal conflict between two groups of one state. Thus the Security Council by its decision of June 27 violated also this most important principle of the United Nations Organisation. 3 / 6 03/07/2015 It follows from the aforesaid that this resolution, which the U.S. Government is using as a cover for its armed intervention in Korea, was illegally put through the Security Council with a gross violation of the Charter of the United Nations Organisation. This only became possible because the gross pressure of the United States Government on the members of the Security Council converted the United Nations Organisation into a kind of branch of the U.S. State Department, into an obedient tool of the policy of American ruling circles who acted as violators of peace. The illegal resolution of June 27, adopted by the Security Council under pressure from the United States Government, shows that the Security Council is acting, not as a body which is charged with the main responsibility for the maintenance of peace, but as a tool utilised by the ruling circles of the United States for unleashing war. This resolution of the Security Council constitutes a hostile act against peace. If the Security Council valued the cause of peace, it should have attempted to reconcile the fighting sides in Korea before it adopted such a scandalous resolution. Only the Security Council and the United Nations Secretary-General could have done this. However, they did not make such an attempt, evidently knowing that such peaceful action contradicts the aggressor’s plans. It is impossible not to note the unseemly role played in that whole affair by the United Nations SecretaryGeneral, Mr. Trygve Lie. Being under the obligation, by virtue of his position, to observe the exact fulfilment of the United Nations Charter, the Secretary-General, during discussion of the Korean problem in the Security Council, far from fulfilling his direct duties, on the contrary obsequiously helped a gross violation of the Charter to be committed by the Government of the United States and other Security Council members. Thereby the Secretary-General showed that he is concerned not so much with strengthening the United Nations Organisation and with promoting peace, as with how to help the United States’ ruling circles to carry out their aggressive plans with regard to Korea. At a press conference on June 29, President Truman denied that the United States, having launched hostilities in Korea, was in a state of war. He announced that this was only “police action” in support of the United Nations Organisation and alleged that this action was aimed against a “group of bandits” from North Korea. It is not difficult to understand the untenability of such an allegation. It has long been known that, in undertaking aggressive actions, an aggressor usually resorts to this or that method of camouflaging his actions. Everyone remembers that when, in the summer of 1937, militarist Japan started armed intervention in North China with the campaign on Peking, it announced that this was solely a local “incident” for the sake of maintaining peace in the East, although no one believed this. The military operations which General MacArthur has now undertaken in Korea upon the instructions of the United States Government can be regarded as “police action” in support of the United Nations Organisation to just the same extent as the war started by the Japanese militarists against China in 1937 could be regarded as a local “incident” for maintaining peace in the East. As is known, the operations of the United States armed forces in Korea are commanded, not by some police officer, but by General MacArthur. However, it would be absurd to admit that the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces in Japan, General MacArthur, is directing, not military operations, but some sort of “police action” in Korea. Who will believe that MacArthur’s armed forces, including military aviation, down to “Flying Fortresses” and jet planes, which attack the civilian population and the peaceful cities of Korea, the navy, including cruisers and aircraft carriers, as well as ground forces, were needed for a “police action” against a “group of bandits.” This is something that even quite naïve persons will hardly believe. 4 / 6 03/07/2015 It will not be superfluous to recall in this connection that when the People’s Liberation Army of China was fighting against Chiang Kai-shek’s armies, which were equipped with American military technique, certain people also called it “groups of bandits”. What the reality turned out to be, however, is something wellknown to all. It turned out that those who were called “groups of bandits” not only expressed the fundamental national interests of China, but also constituted the Chinese people. Those whom the ruling circles of the United States thrust upon China as a Government turned out to be in reality a handful of bankrupt adventurers and bandits who traded the national honour and independence of China right and left. What are the real aims of American armed intervention in Korea? Evidently, the point is that the aggressive circles of the United States violated peace in order to lay hands, not only on the South, but also on North Korea. The invasion of Korea by American armed forces constitutes open war against the Korean people. Its goal is to deprive Korea of her national independence, to prevent the formation of a united democratic Korean State and forcibly to establish in Korea an anti-popular regime which would allow the ruling circles of the United States to convert the country into their colony and use Korean territory as a military and strategic springboard in the Far East. In ordering the United States armed forces to attack Korea, President Truman at the same time stated that he had ordered the American Navy “to prevent any attack on Formosa”, which means the occupation by American armed forces of this part of China’s territory. This move of the United States Government constitutes outright aggression against China. This move of the United States Government furthermore constitutes a gross violation of the Cairo and Potsdam International Agreements concerning Formosa being Chinese territory, agreements which bear the signature of the United States Government too, and is also a violation of the statement made by President Truman on January 5 of this year to the effect that the Americans would not intervene in the affairs of Formosa. President Truman also stated that he had instructed American armed forces to be increased in the Philippines, which aims at intervention in the domestic affairs of the Philippine state and at kindling an internal struggle. This act of the American Government shows that it continues to regard the Philippines as its colony and not as an independent state, which, furthermore, is a member of the United Nations Organisation. President Truman stated in addition that he had issued an instruction that so-called “military assistance” to France in Indo-China be accelerated. This statement of President Truman shows that the United States Government has embarked on a course of kindling war against the people of Viet Nam for the sake of supporting the colonial regime in Indo-China, thereby demonstrating that it is assuming the role of gendarme of the peoples of Asia. Thus President Truman’s statement of June 27 means that the United States Government has violated peace and has gone over from a policy of preparing aggression to direct acts of aggression simultaneously in a whole number of countries in Asia. Thereby the United States Government has trampled underfoot its obligations to the United Nations in promoting peace the world over and has acted as a violator of peace. There is a small number of historical examples of cases where, by means of intervention from without, the attempt was made to throttle the struggle waged by the peoples for national unity and for democratic rights. In this connection one could recall the war between the Northern and Southern States of North America in the sixties of the last century. At that time the Northern States, headed by Abraham Lincoln, waged an armed struggle against the slave-owners of the South for the abolition of slavery and for the preservation of the national unity of the country. When attacked by the South, the armed forces of the Northern States did not, as is known, limit themselves to defence of their own territory, but transferred military operations to the 5 / 6 03/07/2015 territory of the Southern States, routed the troops of the planters and slave-owners, who did not enjoy the support of the people, smashed the slave-owning system existing in the South and created the conditions for establishing national unity. It is known that at that time certain governments, as for instance the British Government, also intervened in the internal affairs of North America in favour of the South against the North and against national unity. Despite this, victory was won by the American people as personified by those progressive forces which headed the struggle of the North against the South. It will not be amiss to recall also another lesson of history. In the period after the October Revolution in Russia, when the reactionary tsarist generals, having dug themselves in on the outskirts of Russia, rent Russia asunder, the Government of the United states, together with the Governments of Britain, France and certain other States, intervened in the domestic affairs of the Soviet country and came out on the side of the reactionary tsarist generals in order to prevent the unification of our Motherland under the aegis of the Soviet Government. The United States Government also did not shrink from armed intervention, sending its troops to the Soviet Far East and to the Archangel area. Together with the troops of certain other countries, the American troops actively helped the Russian tsarist generals — Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich and others — in their struggle against the Soviet power, shot Russian workers and peasants and plundered the population. As we see, in this case too, the ruling circles of certain foreign states, violating peace, tried by armed intervention to turn back the wheel of history, tried forcibly to impose on the people the much-hated regime they had overthrown and tried to prevent the unification of our country into a single state. It is universally known how this interventionist adventure ended. It is useful to recall these historical examples because the events now taking place in Korea and certain other countries of Asia, and the aggressive policy of the United States as regards these countries, are in many respects reminiscent of the above-mentioned events from the history of the United States and Russia. The Soviet Government has already expressed its attitude towards the policy which is being pursued by the United States Government, a policy of gross intervention in the domestic affairs of Korea, in its reply of June 29 to the statement of the United States Government, dated June 27. The Soviet Government invariably adheres to a policy of strengthening peace the world over and to its traditional principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states. The Soviet Government holds that the Koreans have the same right to arrange at their own discretion their internal national affairs in the sphere of uniting South and North Korea into a single national state as the North Americans had in the sixties of the last century when they united the South and the North of America into a single national state. From the aforesaid it follows that the Government of the United States of America has committed a hostile act against peace and that it bears the responsibility for the consequences of the armed aggressions it has undertaken. The United Nations Organisation will fulfil its duties of maintaining peace only in the event that the Security Council demands the unconditional cessation of American military intervention and the immediate withdrawal of American armed forces from Korea.