YES Post-Stalinism, Third World Revolutions, and the Collapse of Communism

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers the evolution of communism following the death of Stalin, including de-Stalinization, Third World adaptations, dissident movements, and the eventual collapse and transition of communist states.

Khrushchev’s 1956 Secret Speech

A speech that attacked Stalin’s terror, cult of personality, purges, and one-man rule from inside communism while defending Leninism.

De-Stalinization

A process involving the reduction of terror, rehabilitation of victims, loosening of censorship, and allowing of limited criticism.

Hungary 1956

A movement crushed by the Soviets because Imre Nagy moved too far toward pluralism, neutrality, and national independence.

Prague Spring 1968

An attempt led by Alexander Dubček to create "socialism with a human face" through reform, loosening censorship, and political openness.

Yugoslav self-management

A system that attempted to make socialism more democratic through workers’ councils, which eventually failed because power remained with party elites.

Mao’s Hundred Flowers campaign

A brief period in China that encouraged criticism, which was followed by the Anti-Rightist Campaign that punished those who spoke out.

Mao’s Great Leap Forward

A campaign in China that led to catastrophic famine.

Mao’s Cultural Revolution

A movement that attacked intellectuals, "bourgeois" elements, and old culture.

Lenin’s theory of imperialism

The argument that capitalism depended on colonies, framing anti-colonial revolt as anti-capitalist revolt.

Fidel Castro

Initially an anti-Batista nationalist leader whose revolution became Marxist-Leninist through U.S. confrontation and Soviet alliance.

Frantz Fanon

A theorist who treated anti-colonial struggle as a form of cultural and psychological liberation.

Kwame Nkrumah

A leader who advocated for African socialism to be scientific and developmental rather than based on nostalgia.

Salvador Allende

A representative of democratic socialism and anti-imperial nationalization in Chile.

Khmer Rouge

A movement in Cambodia that demonstrated the extreme danger of radical agrarian communism.

Dissidents

Individuals who opposed official communist ideology, repression, and state control from within authoritarian socialist systems.

Post-totalitarianism

Václav Havel's term for a system where control depends on ritualized ideological conformity in everyday life.

Havel’s greengrocer example

An illustration of how ordinary people reproduce the system through public conformity by displaying slogans they do not necessarily believe.

Living within a lie

The act of outwardly conforming to ideological rituals despite private disbelief.

Living within the truth

The refusal to participate in ideological performances and the creation of an independent moral life.

Samizdat

A form of dissident activity involving the underground publishing and distribution of banned literature.

Solidarity

A mass civil society movement in Poland that united workers, intellectuals, and the Catholic Church.

Andrei Sakharov

A dissident who emphasized intellectual freedom, scientific openness, and human rights as cures for social stagnation.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

An author who argued communism morally and spiritually corrupted society by destroying authentic Russian traditions.

Glasnost

Gorbachev’s policy of "openness" which expanded debate, publication, and legalized criticism.

Perestroika

Gorbachev’s attempt at economic restructuring within the Soviet Union.

Brezhnev Doctrine

The Soviet policy stating that the USSR would militarily intervene to preserve communist rule in any Eastern European state.

Sinatra Doctrine

Gorbachev's policy allowing Eastern Bloc states to pursue their own paths, replacing the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Helsinki Declaration

An international agreement that provided dissidents with human-rights language to use against the Soviet system.

1991 Hardliner Coup

A failed attempt to seize power that strengthened Boris Yeltsin and accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Belovezha Accords

The agreement that formally ended the Soviet Union.

Shock therapy

A method of rapid economic reform involving immediate stabilization, liberalization, and privatization.

Ostalgia

Nostalgia for aspects of communist life, such as job security and social guarantees, rather than the dictatorship itself.

Refolution

Timothy Garton Ash’s term for the 1989 fusion of reform from above and revolution from below.

János Kornai

A theorist who argued that relaxing repression made communism’s inner contradictions sharper and system-destroying.

Deng Xiaoping

A Chinese leader who introduced pragmatic market reforms starting in 1979 while maintaining Communist Party rule.