Course Description

The extraordinary proliferation of communist states in the twentieth century has few historical parallels, and few people anywhere remained indifferent to communism’s utopian idea. What was communism? How did it move untold millions worldwide? Crucially, what relationship does the communist utopia bear to the horrendous violence done in its name?

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Athena Title

Global History of Communism

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Grading System

A - F (Traditional)

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Course Objectives

This history of communism approaches the topic from two directions: Students will leave conversant in communist ideology, its origins, its evolution, and its criticisms, and they will learn the histories of the many countries that attempted to realize communism “on the ground,” both in their common features and crucial differences. To these ends, they will interpret primary sources in writing and in-class discussion, and consider and debate major moral and political questions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Topical Outline

• Utopian thought • Pre-modern socialism and collectivism • Marx and Marxism • Nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism • Late Russian Empire • Lenin and Marxism-Leninism • The Russian Revolution • Bolshevism in power • Communism in America • Stalin and Stalinism • European Social Democracy • Origins of the Cold War • Eastern Europe and the Communist Bloc • Yugoslav communism • Decolonization and independence movements • Chinese Revolution and Maoism • Sino-Soviet Split • Soviet foreign policy • North Korea and Korean War • Cuban Revolution • Communism in Africa • Communism in Southeast Asia • Vietnam War • China after Mao and capitalist transitions • Dissent and the Eastern Bloc • Collapse of the Soviet Union • Communist afterlives (Cuba; DPRK) • Anti-capitalism after 1989

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