THE RISE AND DEPaper BackE OF WORLD COMMUNISM

A concise readable and novel interpretation of the history of communist states. Sixteen states came to be ruled by communist parties during the 20th century. One the Soviet Union was geographically the largest nation in the world and a superpower. Another China had the worlds largest population. At communisms high point its adherents envisioned global triumph. Today however only five communist regimes remain in power. Why In The Rise and Demise of World Communism George Breslauer a specialist who has spent decades observing the evolution of communist states provides a sweeping history of the world communist movement focusing in particular on what communist states shared in common and why they began to differ from each other over time. Throughout Breslauer explores the relations among communist states as well as the relations between those states and the world of increasingly affluent and militarily formidable democraticcapitalist powers. He finds that these regimes all came to power in the context of warfare or its aftermath followed by the consolidation of power by a revolutionary elite that valued revolutionary violence as the preferred means to an end based upon Marxs vision of apocalyptic revolution and Lenins conception of party organization. As Breslauer shows all these regimes went on to build socialism according to a Stalinist template and were initially dedicated to antiimperialist struggle as members of a world communist movement. But their common features gave way to diversity difference and defiance after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. For many reasons and in many ways those differences soon blew apart the world communist movement and eventually led to the collapse of European communism. Even though a few communist regimes still remain in power the dream of world communism is dead. But the future of the remaining communist regimes is uncertain. An accessible history of one of the most important political phenomena of the past 150 years The Rise and Demise of World Communism provides readers with a crisp account of the entire movementfrom the theories of Marx and Lenin to the ontheground policies of Stalin Mao Gorbachev Deng and other communist leadersthat culminates in our own era.