JANNA'S COMMUNISM PAGE

Hi! I am Janna Koltz. I am a 15 years old junior and I am a communist!!

Communism is a type of government that is based partly on the ideas of Karl Marx, but was mostly made up by the ideas of Joseph Stalin. Communism has been one of the most poweful forces in the world. It has shaped much of history since the early 1900's. According to Communists long-range goals were to provide society with equality and economic security for all. Communist methods of gaining and holding power have ranged from war and violent revolution to propaganda and education. Communist leaders were dictators who permitted little or no public or organized criticism. Russia was a communist country from 1921 to 1989. The leaders were Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. Stalin ruled the country with an iron fist. He killed millions and millions of people, he killed all of the old Bolsheviks after the revolution and thousands of soldiers and officers. He forced people to work factory jobs and starved millions of peasants. He wanted to industralize the country in a very short time, and he did. He tripled the export of iron, coal, and steel in only ten years, which is almost unheard of. But this came at the price of efficiency. All the factories were made poorly so therefore deteriorated very quickly. Stalin died in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev became the new head of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev denounced Stalin for his rule of terror and slowly introduced reforms designed to improve the productivity and efficiency. In 1964, the Communist party forced Khrushchev to retire, and he was replaced by Brezhnev. Brezhnev reestablished many of Stalin's rigid cultural and economic policies, but it did not return to the rule of terror. In 1989 the Soviet Union officially collapsed and that was the end of the iron curtain. Democracy is slowly taking hold in Russia right now, but it has a long way to go still.