Mao Zedong Day 2

Today, we continued learning about Mao Zedong. After the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Mao moved on to the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was a period of time when Mao attempted to control the Chinese economy with force. Mao issued an order that made many peasants attempt to produce steel. Because the peasants were not educated in the production of steel, the steel turned out so unrefined that it could not be used. After steel production, Mao ordered his nation to kill of any sparrows, so that they would not eat seeds and crops. With most of the sparrows gone, insects thrived. The insects ended up eating and damaging more crops than the previous sparrows had. This resulted in a three year famine of the Chinese people, killing about 48 million. After seeing the mistakes of their leader, some Chinese citizens began to criticize Mao. These people were severely punished by Mao; some were killed, many were hurt and imprisoned. At this point, Mao was around the age of 72. Many of his followers began to see him as old and frail. Mao began to feel like he was losing power over his people, so, in order to show his godliness, Mao swam ten miles in one hour in the Yangtze river. At the same time, Mao also had a parade, march in clothes, through the Yangtze river as a way to show the power of his nation. Some time passed, and Mao started the Great Cultural Revolution, a revolution that influenced the youth and punished authoritative figures. From the Great Cultural Revolution, a group of mostly youths, called the Red Guards was created. These Red Guards attacked and harassed any authoritative figures, such as teachers. Mao was able to greatly influence the youth which created the Red Guards because the youths, around the age of 20, had learned much about the greatness of Mao as part of their curriculum. The Red Guards reminded me much of the Hitler Youth. They both wore red sashes on their arms, consisted of youths, and attacked those deemed enemies of the people by their leaders. So far, compared dictators such as Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, Mao Zedong seems like the leader who aimed most towards improving the lives of the majority of his people.

Mao Zedong

Today in class, we learned about a new communist leader, who established his regime in China. Mao Zedong grew up as a lower class peasant; he saw that the minority of his people lived in poverty, while a meager fire percent lived in great wealth. Mao began to gain supporters from the lower class. After being influenced by the hardships of inequality in his youth, Mao aimed for a China where everyone was equal. At this time, the corrupt nationalists held power in China. The Japanese invaded China, seeing that it had internal conflicts and was unstable. Mao began fighting the Japanese in simple strategic methods including gorilla warfare. After Mao had gotten rid of the Japanese, many more peasants began to follow him, after seeing that Mao defeated a strong nation. With the nationalists weakened by the Japanese, Mao took over. Mao continued to accumulate followers by giving all peasants two square meals a day, and land. The people were happier than they were under national leaders. In order to give land to the people and to bolster his reputation, Mao publicly humiliated and killed rich landlords. In the 1950, while Mao was still the leader of China, Stalin had passed away. Mao had viewed Stalin as a great teacher of the Chinese people and as a role model for communism. After his death, Khrushchev took over the USSR. Mao did not like Khrushchev because Khrushchev had offended Mao by speaking against Stalin. Khrushchev withdrew the minimal support that had earlier been given to China by the USSR. Soon after the dispute with the USSR, Mao wanted to purge China of anti-communists and intellectuals, similar to what Stalin did. Through the Hundred Flowers Campaign, a campaign that allowed people openly say what they disliked about communism. The people who spoke against communism were punished and sent to be re-educated in bad conditions such as cattle farms. For now, Mao seems to be a harsh leader, but not as harsh as Stalin. Because he grew up among the poor, I believe Mao will be a better leader for the people than Stalin.

Soviet Union Collapse

I agree with David that it is true that democratization played a huge role in allowing regions of the Soviet union to break away. But I also believe the buildup towards Democratization in the soviet Government through its Satellite nations is worth noting. The Soviet Union could not afford on supporting Its satellite nations due to the military cost of it, and it needed the money to support its own citizens. When Gorbachev stated that he would not impede nations under Soviet Control who wanted to be independent, he set off an avalanche that ended in the breakup of the Soviet Union. They were allowed the choice to choose their leaders, and soon, all of the countries wanted to have self rule, and they broke away from the Soviet Union's communist Rule. Of course, nations within the soviet Union could not deny the same freedoms to the people of their own nation, who had already decided that they were living was below par of what they wanted, and slowly they moved away from communism and towards democracy. Gorbachev tried only allow them a little taste of it with his reforms, but they soon craved more. They had been given freedom of speech, travel, and a market economy, but It wasn't enough for them. The August Coup tried to save communism at this time by eliminating Gorbachev, but this only weakened the support for the communist party and people were enraged democratic ideals were being taken away from them. The Soviet union started to break apart, and soon, it was no more.

If democratization had not taken place, would the USSR remained a whole rather than breaking apart?

During the past few days, we have been discussing the fall of the USSR. The USSR had many internal problems such as starvation, low quality products, and the shortages of supplies. In the past, the USSR had tightened the belts of its people and simply carried on through the hardship. The biggest difference between the USSR in the past, and the USSR in the 1987, was democratization. In previous time, the people of the USSR feared the party and would do everything that they obeyed due to the communists keeping the people under strict control. With Gorbachev as the current leader of the Soviet Union, many satellite countries declared freedom from communism and the USSR. These actions showed the people of the Soviet Union that liberation from communism was achievable. With these inspirational examples, the people of the Soviet Union amassed and together over-through communism. In the Russian part of the USSR, almost all the people were against the communist party. When the tanks of the August Coup came rolling in to put down the protests of the people, the tank operators would not attack the people, and instead just participated in the rebellion. Democratization had created a weakness in the communist dictatorship of the USSR which made it possible for the satellite countries to rebel, which in turn allowed Russia and other parts of the USSR to disassociate themselves from the USSR. I believe that if Gorbachev had not weakened the communist regime with democratization, the USSR, as a whole would have continued its reign. collapse

What if the Soviet Union and US had both started a Nuclear Defense Race Rather than an Arms race?

In class we talked about anti-ballistic missiles. We learned that they cost five times more to make and are often inaccurate. This deterred both countries form concentrating on defending themselves from nuclear weapons rather than building more for deterrence because the economics favored the aggressor. However, I have wondered if both countries started with a buildup of ABMs, would they have been able to make them more accurate and maybe even reduced the cost of them. Maybe if all energy on both sides was used to make an impenetrable defense, then nuclear weapons would cease to be a threat. Also, the Flaw in MAD of having an insane person who doesn't believe in MAD get a hold of nuclear weapons and starting a nuclear war would cease to exist. This was president Reagan's argument for the Strategic defense initiative(Star Wars). Maybe we would have laser's in space protecting us from all nuclear threat. It seems absurd and unreachable but If it could be done, wouldn't the problem of a country destroying the world with nuclear war be solved?

Hungarian Revolt

In 1956, after the Polish succeeded in gaining freedoms, Hungary tried to follow in their footsteps. They felt that their current leader was too much like Stalin, so the Soviet Union forced him to resign and Imre Nagy was put into power. However, the Hungarians didn't only want more freedoms as the Polish did, they wanted absolute independence. The Soviets would not allow this, which resulted in fighting in Budapest, and Imre Nagy started to support the revolutionaries. The Hungarians asked for help from the United States, but as the U.S. policy was one of containment, not freeing countries already under communist rule, they did not provide assistance. Furthermore, the entire world's eyes were turned to the Middle east where was fighting between British and French and Egypt, which drew attention away from the Hungarian Revolt, so no help could be found. The Soviet Union sent troops to Budapest and crushed the revolution, and Imre Nagy was executed. Khrushchev acted like Stalin, a Man he condemned to be a ruler of terror.

De- Stalinization

When Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, he was succeeded by communist party member Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was a strong believer in communism, but condemned Stalin in a speech for his purges, arrest of innocents, and sending them to gulags. His speech made people who heard it feel safe because they believed that the truth was finally coming out and would never be repeated. Israeli spies in Soviet Russia gave the speech to the CIA who broadcasted it throughout Europe. When the Polish People heard the speech, they started standing up for more rights because they believed that Khrushchev would not punish them for it as Stalin would. Poland did not denounce communism however, so Khrushchev allowed them more freedoms as long as they remained Russia's ally and a member of the Warsaw Pact.

MAD, ABMs, MIRVS, and the SALT talks

Today in class we finished the documentary on MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction. The concept of Mutual assured destruction is that if each side of the Cold war had enough nuclear weapons to destroy 25-50 percent of the population of the other side, no one would attack each other in fear that they would be destroyed as a result. If each country could make other countries believe this, there would be peace. When Soviets designed ABMs, or Anti-Ballistic Missiles, they endangered this concept of MAD because ABMs were a defense against nuclear strikes. This eliminated Assured destruction, which could have caused one side to dare to attack the other. These ABMs cost five times as much to produce as a nuclear bomb, which gave an economic advantage to aggression. In response to ABMs, the United States developed MIRVs, or Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles, which allowed for multiple warheads inside a single nuclear missile. This caused, for each nuclear missile, 10 ABMs would have to be sent to defend against it. Eventually both countries grew tired of the amount of money they were spending to uphold their side of the nuclear Arms race and develop new technologies, so they met and engaged in the SALT talks, or Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The result of these talks was a limitation of ABMs and a temporary freeze on nuclear launcher production, but it did not control MIRVs or arms production, so it did not end the arms race.

MAD

Today in CWI, we watched a documentary on about MAD, mutually assured destruction. The Soviets and Americans had a MAD relationship were each side was basically scared into thinking that the other side would attack them and kill most of them eventually if they attacked the other side first and no one would win. This put the US and USSR in order to not do a first strike anytime soon. Through MAD, submarines were made that could carry many tons of nuclear weapons so that if one side did attack the other, MAD could work and then the submarines would surface and attack the other side with the many nuclear weapons the submarines could hold.

Nuclear Bomb Simulation

Today in class we did a simulation based on what happened during the Cold War and nuclear weapons. The simulation was in our groups to build a flashlight which represented the bomb, but each group only had one part of the flashlight and so we had to acquire the items from other groups by trading. To make things more complicated, there were several spies whose job was to sneak items from the group that they were "in" to their own actual group. In the end of the simulation, 4 out of 6 groups had "bombs" and they all kept on bombing each other setting the CWI record for 2 seconds to bomb each other. Most people in the class blamed this happening on the one man nation. The simulation showed the tensions between US and USSR. It also showed us which way was safer, if more countries or groups had bombs or one country or two country. In our simulation, I think that of only one country had the bomb it would have been more safe because that one country would know that the other countries wouldn't be able to attack them and they wouldn't need to attack the other weaker countries that don't have t bombs.

The Berlin Wall

Today in CWI we watched a documentary about the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was made to separate West and East Berlin since people from East Berlin which was controlled by the Soviet Union were escaping to West Berlin and then escaping to Germany because they wanted their freedom. And in order to keep East Berliners in, the Soviets issued the wall to be build. Even while the wall was being built and the wall was built, people kept on trying to escape to West Berlin, but many died trying. There were struggles with going to West Berlin too like in the video when the woman was trying to get to West Berlin through the window while communism guards tried pulling her back into the window and everyone else was trying to pull her to freedom.