Communism's Impact On The Future Of Russia

It’s not every day when a few radical ideas blossom and expand into the largest threat to the free world that humanity has ever seen. That is what happened with the radical ideas of Karl Marx. His thoughts created a revolution in Russia, commonly known as the Russian Revolution (Whiting). The Russian Revolution happened when the Tsar, or dictator resigned because of national unrest and the provisional government took over. Then the Bolshevik party, a group with Marxist ideas and led by a man named Vladimir Lenin overthrew the provisional government and installed a government driven by Marx’s ideas. This form of government is called communism. For several reasons, this communist government impacted the future of the world, and the future of
Communism from the Soviet Union spread like a disease throughout Eurasia. After the Second World War, the Communist party of China takes over and in 1949, Mao Zedong is put in place as the first communist leader of China (Caplan). The communist party created many changes in the continent of Asia, such as communism spreading to other parts of Asia such as Vietnam and Cambodia. After Stalin’s death, Mao Zedong starts to become more like Stalin. In 1958, Mao starts a program called the Great Leap Forward, which was an aggressive plan to move poor farmers into factories (Caplan). This was just a repeat of Stalin’s collectivization, and like collectivization, it fails, and another major famine starts. During this famine, 30 million people die of starvation (Caplan). Thirty million lives is not a small number, and the effect of these lives lost will linger for a long time. Not only did communism spread to China, but it also spread to Europe. After the Second World War, many European countries were in ruins and needed help. Joseph Stalin used his influence to install communist governments into these countries. These countries were called satellite nations because they appeared free, but the Soviet Union was secretly controlling them (Knudtzon). Soviet control changed the countries in more ways than just providing them temporary aid. Freedom was taken away from the citizens and the government. The spread of communism was also the threat to free countries. Also, these countries were only used for the benefits of the Soviet Union. The countries that didn’t do what Stalin wanted were expelled and didn’t receive any aid and the countries that did receive aid were forbidden to receive aid from any other country (Knudtzon). This could have hurt the countries reputation from the rest of the world, and hurt the citizen’s pride in their country. Some examples of