The Rise of Communism
How are communist countries and democracies different?
In a communist country, the government controls much of the industry, economy, and even the daily lives of its citizens. In a democracy, citizens have far more freedom to choose how the country operates.
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What kind of government does your country have? Today, most countries practice some form of democracy, where citizens have rights such as the right to free speech and the ability to freely elect their own leaders. But in the early twentieth century, a new form of government appeared, one that would change the course of history.
What led to that new form of government? The Industrial Revolution, which began during the 1700s in England. As people went to work manufacturing new products, large cities and factories began to replace small towns and farming.
By the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution had brought change to nearly every country on Earth. People from the countryside left their farms and villages to work in factories in bustling, growing cities. To take advantage of the growing demand for goods, most countries practiced an economic system called capitalism. In capitalism, individuals own businesses and factories. Owners are free to keep the money they earn.
In the nineteenth century, governments did little to control how people did business. This meant that many people worked in dangerous conditions for long hours with little pay. As a result, the wealthiest members of society kept most of the money while the laborers did most of the work. To many people, this was an unfair and immoral system.
The Communist Manifesto described a classless, utopian society in which all people shared power instead of just the wealthy few.
In 1848, the German philosophers Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) published The Communist Manifesto. In it, they argued that a revolution by the working class would eventually overthrow the industrial-capitalists. There would be no money and no property—everyone would get what they needed if they worked as much as they could. This collective form of government and economics was called communism.
Calling themselves Marxists, people wanted to help start the revolution Marx and Engels had described and change the world. Seventy years after The Communist Manifesto was published, a Marxist revolution in the Russian Empire would do just that.
THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
In the early twentieth century, the Russian Empire was the largest country in the world. Stretching from present-day Poland to the Pacific coast of Siberia, it was a diverse nation of mostly rural farmers and villagers. The unpopular Tsar Nicholas II had been in power since 1894. He often exiled or executed those who opposed him and his regime.
From 1547 to 1917, the Russian rulers were called tsars.
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During World War I (1914–1918), the huge loss of Russian lives on the battlefield plus the shortages of food and fuel at home resulted in an uprising among the Russian people. Factories and farms, already hurting from the tsar’s policies, shut down in protest. People took to the streets, often clashing with tsarist supports. Faced with a violent revolution, Nicholas II abdicated his throne in 1917 and stepped down as the ruler of the Russian Empire.
In the chaos that followed, a group of Marxist revolutionaries called the Bolsheviks took over the government. The revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), a Marxist who’d been imprisoned by the tsar for his political beliefs. With Lenin in control, Russia quickly withdrew from World War I, leaving its European allies to fight Germany and the Central powers alone. Angered, many of Russia’s former allies supported the tsarist White Army against the Bolshevik Red Army in the brutal Russian Civil War.
Between 1917 and 1922, the Russian Civil War resulted in an estimated 1 million lives lost through fighting and 8 million more through starvation and disease. It was the deadliest civil war in history.
A NEW NATION IS BORN
When the Russian Civil War ended in 1922, the Bolshevik Red Army had won. The Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and began to transform the former Russian Empire. Communism was the goal, but the new system couldn’t be put in place overnight. The old economic structure was too much a part of life, and would need to be taken apart gradually. Instead, socialism was implemented to help bridge the gap between capitalism and the communist ideal. A new nation calling itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) emerged from the old Russian Empire, with Vladimir Lenin as its leader.
In the first years under Lenin, most factories and businesses were nationalized. They were seized from their owners and put under the control of the Soviet state.
Today, socialism has many different meanings. In most countries, socialism is viewed as an effort to ensure that all citizens have the same opportunities regardless of social status. The method of providing those opportunities differs greatly among countries. Check out this video to learn more about the differences between capitalism, socialism, and communism.
capitalism, socialism, one minute
Millions of people lost their businesses, property, and jobs. Protests were common. The Soviets often dealt with uprisings by using deadly force, punishing and even executing those who stood in the way of change. Despite his ruthless tactics, Lenin didn’t compare to his successor, who became one of the most feared and brutal dictators in history.
THE MAN OF STEEL
When Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) took over the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. Stalin was aware that the capitalist nations of the West produced far more food and goods than the old Russian Empire. In response, he began a massive campaign to turn the Soviet Union into a modern industrial nation—by force.
Millions of farmers and villagers were made to work in factories and on huge collective farms, all for the good of the nation. In just 10 years, Stalin’s plans transformed the Soviet Union into an industrial giant. Anyone opposed to his policies and methods was sent to labor camps or executed without a trial.
Touting his success, Stalin built a cult of personality around himself, using state-run newspapers and radio stations to praise his leadership and denounce his opponents. To keep his iron grip on the nation, he sent the secret police to round up his rivals. Without a trial, anyone suspected of the slightest resistance to Stalin and his methods was often tortured, sent to one of the labor camps known as the gulag, or executed. People were afraid to speak out for fear of vanishing. Historians estimate that more than 20 million people lost their lives under Stalin’s regime.
As word of Stalin’s brutal socialist system spread, some people in the United States began to be afraid. Could a communist revolution happen in America?
THE RED SCARE
After the Russian Revolution, many in the United States were suspicious of the Soviets and their socialist government. Out of fear of a communist uprising at home, a government committee was created to look into what were called un-American activities inside the United States. Fear of communism spread across the nation, with the FBI going so far as to illegally break into homes and businesses of suspected communist party members and sympathizers.
Protests and rallies sometimes turned violent. The Red Scare stirred up feelings of nationalism, and immigrants often became targets of violence. Some Russian immigrants were even deported and sent back to a country that was very different from the one they’d left.
The Soviets had their own issues of trust with the United States. The capitalist Americans had supported the tsarist forces during the Russian Civil War, a fact the Communist Party couldn’t forget. But once both nations entered World War II, they found themselves uneasy allies against a common enemy intent on ending the ways of life in both nations.
Although World War II started on September 1, 1939, with Germany’s invasion of Poland, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union immediately joined the fight against Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). The United States was still reeling from World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was reluctant to get involved in another war an ocean away.
Stalin had seen the rise of Hitler and knew that Soviet forces were not ready for the coming war. In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, agreeing to not attack each other. This gave Stalin time to rebuild the Soviet military and allowed Hitler to invade Poland unchallenged.
In a 1939 poll conducted by Roper, nearly 90 percent of Americans surveyed said that the United States should not get involved in the growing war.
Japan joined Italy and Germany a year later. Then, in June 1941, Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union. Caught off guard, the “Man of Steel” was furious. With the nonaggression pact broken, Stalin had no choice but to join Britain and France against Nazi Germany.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This devastating assault shocked the United States and gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) no choice but to declare war on the Axis powers.
Despite the mistrust between the Western nations and the Soviets, they needed to trust each other if they were going to win. In Hitler, they faced a maniacal dictator who enslaved and slaughtered his own people and who had at his disposal the expertise to devise weapons the world had never seen before.
THE V-2
On September 8, 1944, a new kind of weapon appeared in battle. Unlike the German bombers, it outran its own roar and struck without warning. It fell on quiet neighborhoods and busy city streets alike, reducing homes and businesses to piles of rubble. There was no way to defend against the new weapon—it terrorized all of those who lived within its range.
The V-2 was the world’s first ballistic missile. Standing 46 feet tall and carrying a 2,200-pound explosive warhead, the missile’s powerful, liquid-fueled rocket motor took the rocket to heights of 50 miles. It could hit targets hundreds of miles away. At its top speed of 3,500 miles per hour, it was twice as fast as a bullet and could reach its target in less than five minutes. It was an incredible feat of engineering. Its creator, Wernher von Braun, had dreams of using his rocket as something other than a weapon.1
credit: U.S. Army
As a child growing up in Germany, Wernher von Braun loved science fiction. He read books by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and was fascinated by the idea of exploring space. After studying Hermann Oberth’s The Rocket into Planetary Space, he was convinced rockets were the key to exploring space.
Von Braun wanted to explore space, but Hitler’s rise to power meant that von Braun had to build a weapon, not a spaceship.
He joined the German Society for Space Travel, a local rocket club where he could put his skills to use alongside other rocket enthusiasts while he studied math and physics. In the early 1930s, the German military took notice of the club’s work and von Braun was soon using their resources to build powerful rockets.
While he worked on rockets, von Braun joined the Nazi party and later became a member of the SS, the feared paramilitary organization that committed some of the worst atrocities of the war. Although he wasn’t interested in politics, von Braun believed his career depended on his obedience to the regime. However, he kept his dream of exploration, telling several people that he’d only ever wanted to use his rockets to explore space. For his comments, he was arrested for treason. But Hitler was desperate for any advantage, and von Braun was released to finish work on his revolutionary weapon.
As the Allies approached the German capital of Berlin at the end of the war, they were eager to capture any German rocket technology they could find—including the engineers and scientists behind it. Knowing the war was lost, von Braun assembled his team. Europe was in ruins, and the brutal Soviet army was getting close. If the team wanted to follow its dreams of spaceflight, there was only one choice—surrender to the Americans.
After Germany’s defeat in May 1945, von Braun and his group of rocket scientists found themselves swept up in Operation Paperclip, a secret effort to bring German engineers and scientists to the United States. Rocket parts and plans were quickly and quietly packed and sent to New Mexico, followed by their German designers. They would now be building missiles for the U.S. military.
Although the Americans took most of the rockets and engineers, the Soviets recovered some V-2s with the help of a small group of German defectors. Despite their knowledge, the German rocket scientists were not von Braun. Without him, Stalin needed to look among his own people to find someone to lead the Soviet missile program.
The use of nuclear weapons by the United States remains one of the most controversial moments in history. Some argue that the use of nuclear weapons ultimately saved lives, while others believe that such destructive power should never have been used at all. You can learn more about the aftermath of the atomic bombs here.
U.S. history Manhattan Project
SERGEI KOROLEV
The lives of the German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Korolev (1906–1966), began in similar ways. Like von Braun, Korolev was interested in rockets at a young age. Both were influenced by the work of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian physicist and teacher who wrote about the potential of rockets to explore the solar system.
During the 1930s, Korolev’s experiments with rocket engines caught the attention of the Soviet military. With support from the army, he studied how rockets could be used to carry weapons or even people.
In 1938, his work was interrupted by the “Great Terror,” a period of state-sponsored executions and imprisonment of some people in the Communist Party. Along with millions of others, Korolev was tortured and sent to Siberia as a prisoner in the Soviet gulag.
At the end of the war, it was clear to the Soviet experts examining the German rockets that someone was needed to decipher the complex V-2, and that someone needed a history of rocketry. Suddenly, Korolev was released from his prison sentence and given the task of learning everything he could from the V-2 in order to build a more powerful rocket for the Soviet Union.
Atomic cloud over Hiroshima, taken from Enola Gay, the bomber from which the first atomic bomb was dropped
credit: 509th Operations Group
The war in Europe was over, but the fight against Japan continued. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The effects were devastating, consuming the city in a massive fireball underneath a mushroom-shaped cloud.
An estimated 70,000 people were incinerated instantly. At least 100,000 would die over time from cancer and other effects of radiation exposure. Three days later, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Japan, with similar deadly results. In less than a week, Japan surrendered, ending the most destructive war in human history.2
With the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world had entered the atomic age. Nations were awed by the power and violence of the atomic weapons and feared the devastating effects of their use.
As the war was coming to its conclusion, Stalin saw the United States and the Soviet Union as equals, separated by ideologies and oceans. But nuclear weapons suddenly tipped the balance to the Americans. Without a nuclear weapon of its own, the Soviet Union was at a disadvantage.
Stalin was determined that it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
•How did the Russian Revolution lead to the state of communism in the Soviet Union?
•Was it morally right for the Americans to drop the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War?
COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, AND CAPITALISM TODAY
Capitalism, socialism, and communism have different meanings for different countries. While the Soviet Union no longer exists, there are other nations that practice different kinds of socialism, and a few that still seek to reach the communist ideal. Many more nations practice capitalism and socialism together.
VOCAB LAB 
Write down what you think each word means. What root words can you find to help you? What does the context of the word tell you?
abdicate, ballistic missile, capitalism, communism, cult of personality, gulag, immigrant, nationalize, propaganda, Red Scare, socialism, uprising, and utopian.
Compare your definitions with those of your friends or classmates. Did you all come up with the same meanings? Turn to the text and glossary if you need help.
•Research a communist nation, a socialist nation, and a nation that practices capitalism.
•How does each country define its economic and social systems?
•Do they consider themselves more of one than the others?
•Have any of the nations you chose changed from one type of social or economic system to another? If so, what was the result? And if not, why?
•What are the benefits and challenges each of the counties faces? How do these countries compare?
To investigate more, research a nation that was considered part of the former Soviet Union. What is it like today? What form of government, social, and economic system does it use? How does it compare to the country you live in?
Wernher von Braun was considered a hero for his work on the space program. However, after his death in 1977, his participation in wartime atrocities as a member of the Nazi Party came under closer scrutiny.
When von Braun was first interviewed after World War II, he claimed he’d not participated in the decision to use slave laborers from concentration camps to produce the V-2.
•Research his life. What do you think? Is there evidence that von Braun was not truthful about his work during the war?
•Many people claimed that von Braun and his associates were excluded from prosecution in exchange for their knowledge of rocketry. What do you think were the considerations behind the U.S. government’s decision to bring the German scientists to America during Operation Paperclip?
•Should America’s victory in the Space Race be viewed differently considering von Braun’s history?
To investigate more, consider that Wernher von Braun wasn’t the only foreign scientist to come to the United States. Research other scientists who have made the United States their home. Why did they choose to come to this country? What were their contributions to science? Did they have questionable backgrounds like von Braun?
