As someone who has had a long (and rather morbid) interest in the horrific economical, political and social experiment that was communism (and who actually believed in it for a time, around the same time as those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere were rejecting it, in fact :smack: ), I am wondering if anyone can give me a list of all the countries which have ever attempted to implement a Marxist/communist form of government (including those that only managed to do so for a comparatively short period eg Chile, Grenada and (thankfully) Cambodia). I am particularly interested to know which African nations dabbled in communism (Afrocommunism as it was known in that part of the world). I have found this a confusing subject at times because there seem to have been quite a few countries with such “Red”-sounding words as “People’s”, “Democratic”, “Revolutionary” etc in their official titles at one time or another, but I’m not sure if this necessarily means they were communist. Also, what’s the difference between a communist country and one with a socialist government in power? A lot of countries in the “free” part of Europe seem to have had socialist governments at various times, but they were obviously never communist. Also, which countries still practice communism (if only nominally in some obvious cases)?
One country which I found reasonably suprising was Yugoslavia. It was one of the best working models of communism in the 60’s and 70’s according to some people.
African nations which I can think of off the top of my head:
Angola
Libya (sort of)
Ethiopia
Mozambique
Current communist states:
Cuba
N Korea
China
Vietnam
Laos (maybe)
That’s an interesting piece of trivia. IIRC, Yugoslavia was one of those Communist countries that was always pissing off the Soviet Union by showing far too much independence for Moscow’s liking. Two others that spring to mind were Romania (after Ceaucescu refused to commit troops to the crushing of the popular uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1968; apparently, he become something of a darling of the West for a time because of this), and China, which was apparently at loggerheads with the USSR as soon as Mao took power there. Interestingly enough, these three countries were the only Communist ones to send athletes to the 1984 Olympics (which I’m just old enough to remember in reasonable detail). (As an aside, I always found it ironic how South Africa was barred from competing in the Olympics while its apartheid regime was in place, yet equally repressive Communist and Islamic countries (as well as other dictatorships in general) suffered no such prohibition.)
To make one further trivial observation, two rather silly negative aspects of the fall of Communism were the absence of all those female athletes of rather dubious femininity in international sporting competitions, and the fact that many countries’ flags suddenly became a lot less interesting! I mean, whatever else you may have thought about the German Democratic (ho ho) Republic, they had a cool flag (with the hammer, compass and all the rest on it), as did the USSR with its hammer-and-sickle (something that would have to rank up there with the Nazi swastika as one of the most striking symbols a country has used on its flag). Now what does Russia have? A red, white and blue flag! Now there’s an original thing, not!
Yes, I’ve heard that Libya was a bit of an odd case. Its full title was (and maybe still is) Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (the last word apparently meaning “the masses”); it received a lot of military technology and aid from the USSR (including, presumably, those jets which ended up being shot down in various skirmishes between the Libyan Air Force and the USAF during the 1980s); and Gaddafi released a “Little Green Book” that was presumably intended to be his version of Mao’s Little Red Book. It also has a flag that’s so boring (plain green), it’s actually interesting! Does anyone know what was really going on there?
On the subject of Ethiopia, does anyone know what good old Colonel Mengistu’s up to these days? I developed a bit of an obsession with that guy for a time: mainly because of his name, I think! I just thought it was a cool name (for some reason, it always struck me as sounding like something from a science-fiction movie!), and I was always looking for an excuse to utter it!
Can anyone add to the above list? Was Zimbabwe ever Communist or vaguely Marxist? I’ve heard Robert Mugabe referred to as a Marxist, and the land redistribution program his government is currently carrying out does seem to have the whiff of Soviet-style collectivization about it (with the same dire consequences of the latter thing likely). Oh well, whatever else you may think about him, he’s certainly in good shape for a guy who’s 80!
On the subject of other African politicians, was Nelson Mandela ever a Commie? And what of those oft-made claims that he was a terrorist?
Considering it was the pre-revolutionary flag of the Tsars, it’s probably not all that surprising the Russian government decided to go back to it instead of trying to figure out some newfangled flag.
Here is my argument that the only country that has tried communism is Russia.