WHAP UNIT 8.4 Spread of Communism

Land Reform

1. Feudalism + Capitalism + Colonialism = inequality

2. Socialism + Communism policies = wanted equality (land)

South Asia

Land Reforms: PKS + IND redistribute + abolish overwhelming power of rent collectors + cooperative farming = mixed results

• Kerala: Some success = tenants fully own land + fixed paid hours + min. wage → Slowed progress = direct gov. control

Africa

Ethiopia

• Haise Selassie: WWII exiled leader returns influenced by west

  • successful coffee trade

  • bad land reforms

• Mengistu Haile Mariam: Overthrows & assassinates opps + socialism

  • famine + bad economy

Southeast Asia

Vietnam: Independence from FRN under Ho Chi Minh

• Ho Chi Minh: Communist party redistributes land = popular

• South: Unpopular b/c slow reforms

East Asia

Mao Zedong: CCP wins Chinese Civil War → land redistributions + schools + hospitals + punished corrupt soldiers

• People’s Republic of China: Peaceful nationalization & collectivist agriculture

• Great Leap Forward: Communes + Grains exported to Africa & Cuba

  • Failing harvests → 20M die from famine

  • Small-scale backyard steel furnaces: bad

• Cultural Revolution: reinvigoration of communism

  • Red Guards: Revolutionary students seize opp. officials to reeducation camps in countryside (hard labor) + interrogation/torture forced admittance to not being revolutionary enough

• USSR: Fought for influence along border

Latin America

Land Reforms

• Mexico

• Venezuela: 5M acres redistributed from seized landowner’s land (upset b/c some were already under cultivation) → squatters on non-reformed lands

• Guatemala: elected Jacob Arbenz’s land reform → US Fruit Co. lobbies US to overthrow

SWANA

Iran: UK & USSR fight for control of oil

• Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi: UK & USSR place after last leader considered supporting Hitler

  • Mohammad Mosaddegh: Temporarily pop. elected = nationalized oil + violent secret police in response to foreign powers

  • White Revolution: Bloodless reforms = women’s suffrage + social welfare + village literacy + land reforms =/= majority

• Iranian Revolution: Overthrew Shah

  • Theocracy: Religion = supreme political authority + headed by cleric + Guardian Council (courts) approved parties + Opposed West + Israel