The Rise and Demise of World Communism

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of communist states, with the Soviet Union and China being the largest. George Breslauer's book explores the common features of these regimes and why they began to differ, leading to the collapse of European communism. The future of the remaining communist regimes is uncertain.

Format: Hardback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 13 January 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Sixteen states came to be ruled by communist parties during the 20th century, with the Soviet Union being the largest nation and a superpower, while China had the world's largest population. At communism's high point, its adherents envisioned global triumph. However, only five communist regimes remain in power today. In his book, 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 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 democratic-capitalist 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 Marx's vision of apocalyptic revolution and Lenin's 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 anti-imperialist struggle as members of a world communist movement. However, 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, their influence and power have significantly diminished compared to their peak during the 20th century.

Weight: 714g
Dimension: 166 x 243 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197579671