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17 - Communism and fascism

from Part III - Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Robert Strayer
Edited by
J. R. McNeill  and
Kenneth Pomeranz
J. R. McNeill
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Kenneth Pomeranz
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

Communism, born of the Russian Revolution of 1917, subsequently took root in Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and Cuba, providing the governing ideology for roughly one third of the world's population by the 1970s. In the Holocaust, the Soviet terror of the 1930s, the Chinese Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and Cambodia's 'killing fields', communism and fascism generated human tragedies on an immense scale. Ideologies consist of ideas and values about public life, understandings as to how society works or ought to work, and contain both views of history and visions of the future. Such ideologies provided the foundation for social movements, usually embodied in a political organization or a party. In places where movements became regimes, fascists and communists alike had the opportunity to put their ideologies into practice. The effective end of communism occurred very differently from fascism. Its economic and moral failures had eroded support among both elites and ordinary people while generating movements of reform.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 442 - 464
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

Brown, Archie. The Rise and Fall of Communism. New York: Ecco, 2009.Google Scholar
Corner, Paul, ed. Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism. Oxford University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furet, François, and Nolte, Ernst. Fascism and Communism. Lincoln, ne: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Geyer, Michael, and Fitzpatrick, Sheila, eds. Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Kershaw, Ian, and Lewin, Moshe, eds. Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison. Cambridge University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neiberg, Michael S., ed. Fascism. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.Google Scholar
Payne, Stanley. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Priestland, David. The Red Flag: A History of Communism. New York: Grove Press, 2009.Google Scholar

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