Taught by Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Communism in Power: From Stalin to Mao analyzes communism at the zenith of its influence in the half century from the 1920s to the 1970s, dealing with the regimes of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong in China, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and other communist leaders, who together ruled as much as a third of the world’s population.
The period covered includes the Cold War, which saw the height of ideological conflict between communist and capitalist states. At the time, the true extent of internal repression imposed by communist governments was not widely known, notably the vast Gulag system organized under Stalin, Mao’s catastrophic Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and the “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. These organized campaigns against mostly innocent citizens led to many tens of millions of deaths.
A specialist in modern European history, Vejas masterfully untangles the rivalries, contradictions, and doctrinal heresies that plagued communism in different countries, undermining the dream of worldwide communist comradeship. The course also covers attempts by communists to get a foothold in the United States; the widespread admiration for Soviet achievements, fueled by official propaganda; the growing disillusionment with life under Marxism-Leninism; and the day-to-day adaptations of ordinary people, including the dark jokes they made about their plight.
