Communism Biographies

Joseph Stalin was born in 1879 in Georgia (a country on the southern border of Russia) to a peasant family. His father was an abusive drunk who died when Stalin was young. His mother paid close attention to Stalin, who was the only one of her children to survived infancy. As a teenager, Stalin studied to be a priest and learned to speak Russian (he would always speak Russian with a thick accent). However, in 1898 he was expelled from his religious school because of his interest in communist ideas. After this, Stalin became a revolutionary. He joined Lenin’s Bolshevik party and would spend several years exiled in Siberia after being arrested by the secret police for revolutionary activities.

Stalin participated in the October Revolution and became a member of the communist government. In 1922, he became General Secretary of the Soviet Union, which was one of the highest positions of power. This allowed Stalin to take over the government when Lenin died. Soon after taking power, Stalin used the secret police force to have the other Bolshevik leaders arrested and either killed or exiled so that they could never challenge him for power. After this, Stalin used the secret police and control of all the media to make himself a totalitarian dictator, which means he controlled all parts the lives of the people in the Soviet Union. Stalin used this control to turn the Soviet Union into a command economy that would make the country communist. Stalin would order millions of people killed to make this happen. In the 1930’s, Stalin ordered the Great Purge, in which many of the communist and army leaders were arrested and killed. He even had all of the leaders of the secret police arrested and shot by other members of the secret police. Nobody was safe.

Stalin’s brutality even extended to his own family. In the 1930’s, Stalin’s son attempted suicide after being treated badly by this father. However, he only wounded himself. Afterward, Stalin made fun of him by saying, "Ha! He couldn’t even shoot straight!" Soon after that, Stalin’s wife died mysteriously. It is unclear if he had her murdered, or if she committed suicide, but the official cause of her death released by the government was appendicitis.

The largest challenge Stalin faced in the 1930’s was Nazi Germany. Hitler spoke of a hatred of communism and he had plans to take over Russia in a future war. In 1939, Stalin signed a treaty with Hitler. He knew it would not prevent the war forever, but it did give him time to rebuild the Soviet Army from the Great Purge [when he had killed all of the army leaders]. However, in 1941 Hitler broke the treaty when he invaded the Soviet Union. The war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was a horrifically violent war that killed 20 million Soviet citizens. Stalin was ruthless in this war, issuing the order “Not one step back” to his soldiers – to enforce this rule, secret police men would stand behind the soldiers and kill any soldier who tried to retreat.

During World War Two, Stalin and the Soviet Union was allied with the United States and Great Britain. The leaders of all three countries worked closely together to defeat Nazi Germany. However, Stalin distrusted the United States, which he believed was an enemy. As the war against Nazi Germany ended, Stalin used the Soviet Army to take over and set up communist governments in the countries of Eastern Europe. In addition, Stalin supported the expansion of communism into China and North Korea. The growth of communism after World War Two resulted in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Stalin died in 1953 from a brain hemorrhage (bleeding).

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev was born in 1931 to a peasant family in southern Russia. His father was a tractor driver on a Soviet collective farm. Gorbachev was an excellent student in school and worked on the collective farm. When he was 14, Gorbachev joined the Komsomol (a communist youth group) which allowed him to attend Moscow State University to study law. As a college student, Gorbachev joined the Communist Party.

Gorbachev graduated from Moscow State University and began working for the government of the Soviet Union shortly after the death of Joseph Stalin. This was a period of big changes in the Soviet Union as the country tried to keep up with the United States in the Cold War. As a young communist leader, Gorbachev became friends with Yuri Andropov, the head of the secret police and a top Soviet leader. With Andropov’s support, Gorbachev worked his way up from working in a regional government, to becoming a city mayor and then the governor of his home region. In 1970, he became a member of the Central Committee that ran the Soviet Union.

In 1978, the leader of the Soviet Union put Gorbachev in charge of running the agricultural [farming] administration for the Soviet Union. This was a time when the Soviet economy was having trouble and its farms could not produce enough food to feed the whole Soviet population – it was so bad that the Soviet Union even had to import food from the United States. Because of his experience growing up on a collective farm, Gorbachev could see that the problem was that there was no reason for people to work hard to produce food because they didn't get rewarded based on how hard they worked. Gorbachev recognized that the Soviet Union would have to change to be able to feed its population. However, many of the leaders of the Soviet Union were old and did not want to change anything in the country.

In 1980, Gorbachev’s friend and mentor, Andropov, became the leader of the Soviet Union. Because he had been a leader of the secret police, Andropov knew that the Soviet economy was doing very badly. However, Andropov was old and sick and knew he did not have the time to reform the Soviet Union. Instead, he made Gorbachev a member of the group that ran the Soviet Union. Being in this position allowed Gorbachev to take control of the Soviet Union in 1985, a year after Andropov died.

When Gorbachev came to power, he tried to reform the Soviet Union. He tried to improve the economy by giving people freedom to criticize the government (Glasnost) and to start their own businesses for profit (Perestroika). Gorbachev thought that a stronger economy would make the Soviet Union stronger and better able to compete against the United States. However, when given freedom, the people of the Soviet Union made it clear that they were against communism and did not want to live in the Soviet Union. The result was the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Soviet Union broke into 15 independent countries, with Russia Russia is the largest.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev has remained an international figure. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending the Cold War conflict with the United States. He has been very active in working for charitable foundations and speaking about Russian politics. He attempted to run for president of Russia in the 1990's but got very little support. Most Russians blame Gorbachev for the economic problems that the country has faced since the end of the Soviet Union. Curiously, Gorbachev is more popular outside of the former Soviet Union than in the areas he use to rule. He spends a great deal of his time in Western Europe and the United States.

Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-Sen was born in southern China in 1866 to a peasant family. He started school in China, but moved to live with his brother in Hawaii in 1876, where he finished high school and developed an interest in Christianity. When he was 17, he returned to China, but he rebelled against the traditional ways in rural China and went to Hong Kong to study medicine and became a Christian. Sun was interested in Christianity because it represented Western ideas and was a way of rebelling against the government of the Emperor of China.

In 1891, Sun began to organize the Chinese people to rebel against the Emperor of China. After China was defeated by Japan in 1895, Sun returned to China to lead a rebellion against the Emperor with the goal of making China a democratic republic. The rebellion was defeated and Sun had to flee to Japan. Working from Japan, Sun organized eight more rebellions against the Emperor – they all failed.

In 1907, Sun declared the Three People’s Principles in which he outlined the goal of a new government for China. These goals were: 1. nationalism, meaning an end of foreign control of China, 2. rights for the people of China to live in a democracy and 3. economic security for the people of China to not live in poverty. Sun used his experiences living in the United States to develop these goals.

Then, in 1911, a revolution swept through China and brought down the child-emperor of China. Sun was in the United States at the time of the rebellion, but as soon as he heard about it, he returned to China. He was elected the president of the new Republic of China. However, Yuan Shi-kai, one of the Emperor’s generals, forced Sun to give up power. Yuan Shi-kai was not interested in turning China into a democratic country and instead had plans to make himself the new emperor of China. After this, Sun began to organize his supporters into the Kuomintang (or KMT) to fight against Yuan Shi-kai.

Sun asked the Soviet Union for help in building a military academy to train the KMT army. However, many of Sun’s supporters did not like the idea of communism, so they did not like the partnership with the Soviet Union. Sun and the KMT were able to build an army of 250,000 soldiers with the help of the Soviet Union. Sun planned to use this army to defeat the warlords that controlled central and northern China so that he could unify the country. However, Sun died in 1925 before the KMT could attack the warlords. At this point, the leaders of the KMT who took over carried out the attack on the warlords and defeated them. After the KMT had captured most of China, the KMT leaders turned on the communists and killed them.

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong was born in 1893 to a family of wealthy farmers in China. Mao went to school for five years before he began to work full-time on the farm. Mao rebelled against his parents’ authority and he left home to continue his education in the local city. In 1911, he served as a soldier supporting Sun Yat-sen as leader of China. After this, he began to study to become a teacher. In 1918, Mao graduated and went to the Beijing to work in a university library. It was here that he was introduced to the ideas of communism and became interested in the Russian Revolution. In 1920, Mao joined the communist party.

In 1926, the KMT, having defeated the warlords, began to attack the Chinese communists. Mao survived the KMT massacre of the communists and found shelter in the rural China. Mao developed a strategy of building a communist movement in the countryside where it would be hard for the KMT to attack them. He described this by saying that the communists would be "swimming in a peasant sea," which means it would be difficult to find them.

Mao began to organize the peasants of southern China into a communist movement. As Mao's organization became more powerful, the KMT moved in to surround and crush the communists. In 1934, Mao lead his communist army in a desperate escape from the KMT army. However, the KMT pursued Mao's retreating communists. As a result, Mao led his army on a 5,000 mile trek across western China to northern China in an event called the Long March. Only 10,000 or 10% of Mao's communist army survived the Long March. This means that 90% of the communist forces died.

After the Long March, it looked like Mao's army had been destroyed. However, Mao began to rebuild his army in northern China. But in 1937, the Japanese invaded China and pushed the KMT out of the major cites of China. At this point, Mao's communists and the KMT actually worked together to fight against the Japanese in World War II. However, it was an uneasy alliance. After the United States defeated Japan in World War II, Mao's communists and the KMT went back to war with each other. This time, however, Mao's communists were in the stronger position and they defeated the KMT in 1949.

In 1949, Mao established the People's Republic of China as a communist country. Mao began a process of turning China into a communist society. Landlords were killed and their lands were given to peasants. Anyone who opposed Mao's plans were punished, and often killed. Mao also followed Stalin's plans on how to turn a peasant society into an industrial nation. However, this process was not fast enough for Mao. In 1958, he announced The Great Leap Forward in which he said China would catch up to the United States in 10 years. He ordered peasants to start making steel in backyard furnaces - the peasants did this by melting down their farming tools. The result was a famine that killed 40 million people. As a result, many leaders in the communist party lost faith in Mao and he lost much of his power to run China - however, he remained a powerful figure.

In 1966, Mao decided to take power back by launching The Cultural Revolution. He told young communists, who he called the "Red Guard," to attack the older communist leadership and destroy the old traditional Chinese ways. Young Chinese students rampaged across China destroying ancient artwork and texts, burning temples and beating intellectuals to death. At the same time, Mao took back power and punished many of the communist party leaders who had taken power after his decline.

By the early 1970's, Mao was a old man with failing health. He died in 1976 leaving behind a complicated legacy for China. He is known as the "Founding Father of Modern China". However, his rule also caused the senseless deaths of millions of Chinese people and destruction of a lot of Chinese culture.

Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping was born in 1904 to a family of landlords in China. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1924 while studying in France. Before returning to China in 1926, he went to Moscow, where he studied for several months. After returning to China he joined with Mao in organizing peasants into a communist force in southern China and was a leader in the Long March. Deng was described as very talented and intelligent - he was nicknamed, "a living encyclopedia". During the civil war against the KMT, Deng proved to be a very good leader. After Mao established the People's Republic of China, Deng became part of the Politburo, or group of leaders of China. Mao used Deng to work with the government of the Soviet Union in getting Soviet aid for China.

Mao and Deng's close relationship broke down during the failed Great Leap Forward. Deng was one of the more moderate Chinese leaders who pushed Mao out of power in order to save the country from the terrible famine. The reforms that Deng made stopped the famine and helped China recover. However, Mao was furious over losing power and plotted how to get back at Deng. In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. Deng and his family were forced to move to rural China. Deng was forced to work in a factory cafeteria. His son was attacked by the Red Guard, who threw him out of a fourth story window and left him paralyzed.

The Cultural Revolution resulted in chaos across China and the communist leaders realized they needed Deng's talents in ruling China. In 1973, Deng returned to power. When Mao died in 1976, Deng emerged as the leader of China. His first action was to punish the communist leaders who had punished him during the Cultural Revolution by having them arrested and jailed - this included Mao's widow.

Deng opened China to trade with the rest of the world and allowed foreign countries to build factories in China to take advantage of cheap Chinese workers. Basically, Deng turned China away from a Communist system to a Capitalist system and the result was the economy of China began to grow at a rapid rate and quality of life for the average Chinese person began to improve, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Deng’s willingness to change his policies based on their effectiveness, instead of being based only on communist ideals, is best described in Deng’s saying, “What does it matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”

However, while Deng did give the Chinese people more economic freedom, he did not give them political freedom. In 1989, when a large group of students began to protest for democracy in Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing (the capital city) , Deng ordered the army to crush the

protests - hundreds of people were killed by the army. The Tiananmen Square Massacre showed that Deng thought that the communist party should not give up power the way it had in the Soviet Union, where they allowed communism to eventually end. After this, Deng slowly gave power to younger leaders who would continue his capitalist reforms without changing the political structure of the communist dictatorship. In his last years, Deng started debate within the Communist Party on the need to balance economic reform with political stability. Deng died in 1997 at age ninety-two.