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Proletariat

2021-01-05T16:02:01Z

CCPSHILL13:

The '''proletariat''' is the [[working class]] under [[capitalism]]. While unlike [[slavery|slaves]] and [[feudalism|serfs]] proletarians aren't bound to any particular master, they also do not have any significant [[property]] of their own, and can only subsist by selling their [[labour power|ability to labour]] as a [[commodity]] on the market. The resulting [[relation of production]] is called [[wage labour]].

== The pre-capitalist proletariat ==

Although the proletariat only became the dominant working class around the time of the [[industrial revolution]], free legal citizens without any significant property of their own have existed in various societies throughout history. In fact, the term "proletariat" isn't a modern invention, and goes back to the [[Roman Republic]], where the ''proletarii'' were the poorest among the [[plebeians]]. Because of their lack of wealth they were ineligible for military service, and only notable in census records for producing children. This offspring was significant because they could later become free citizens of newly conquered territory. The Latin word for "offspring" is ''prōlēs'', and hence the people who did nothing much but produce them were called ''proletarii'', meaning "those who produce offspring."

After the Marian military reforms of 107 BC, proletarians were allowed to serve as disposable skirmishers in the Roman army. This turned the Roman military from a militia composed of wealthy citizens with a stake in the Roman state, to a professional army loyal mainly to their military commanders, who were their main source of income. In this way, the rise of the Roman proletariat opened the way for the achievements of [[Julius Caesar]] and the [[Roman Empire]].

== The proletariat under capitalism ==

Because of the agrarian nature of feudalism, and the small-scale, [[petit bourgeois]] nature of most production at the time, the proletariat hardly existed as a class in feudal times. They developed during the land enclosures, which forced the smallest of peasants off of their land and forced them to find work in the cities; at the same time, technological advancement allowed industrial production to develop, which destroyed the livelihoods of small craftspeople. The new industrial [[bourgeoisie]] made use of dispossessed former peasants and former craftspeople to labor in their factories.

As production in countries becomes more and more industrialized and advanced, the various petit bourgeois classes are absorbed, mostly into the proletariat (although some lucky few will climb to the ranks of the bourgeoisie). The end result is that the central contradiction of capitalism, that between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, grows deeper and more significant.

== See also ==

{{NavClasses}}

Elon Musk

2021-01-05T16:01:04Z

CCPSHILL13:

'''Elon Reeve Musk''' is a South African-American billionaire who is a prime example of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_(critical_theory) spectacle] of capitalism. Particularly online, there is an intense cult of personality around him.

==Downplaying the COVID-19 pandemic==
Elon Musk has a vested interest in generating maximum profit, even if means seriously risking the health of his workers in particular and the populace in general. He has insistently tried to make the pandemic look less severe so that his employees will continue manufacturing products, for instance by promoting studies that suggest doctors are inflating case numbers for financial reasons,<ref>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1254541286335545345</ref> or that the vast majority of fatalities in Italy are due to other causes.<ref>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1241735253204406273</ref> He promoted a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine,<ref>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1239650597906898947</ref> and has further compared COVID-19 to the common cold.<ref>https://twitter.com/i/status/1223087177313091584</ref><ref>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1223173907081056256</ref> He also frequently characterizes the disease as a "panic": on March 6th, he said simply “The coronavirus panic is dumb”,<ref>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1236029449042198528</ref> and on the 14th he said the “danger of panic still far exceeds danger of corona”,<ref>http://archive.is/lUled</ref> as part of a larger thread promoting chloroquine as an effective treatment. On March 19th, he predicted that the US would see close to zero new cases by the end of April<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20200319233226/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960</ref> — a claim which was by evaluation dramatically wrong.

The intensity with which he downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic makes a lot more sense when considering that he gets massive multi-million dollar payouts if Tesla makes a certain amount of profit. In quarter 1 of 2020, this amount was $720 million that he received in stock options, which he barely achieved in time<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200810065527/https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-pay-salary-bonus-stock/ Tesla CEO Elon Musk is seriously close to a $720M payout]</ref> and which was likely due to him keeping factories open as the pandemic worsened, and which ultimately resulted in over 130 of his employees contracting the disease.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200830165410/https://media.thinknum.com/articles/at-least-130-tesla-employees-have-tested-positive-for-covid-19-musk-has-stayed-mute/ Elon Musk stays mute as 130+ Tesla employees test positive for COVID-19]</ref>

==Elon Musk is not that self-made==
Elon Musk's father bought half of an emerald mine in the mid-1980s which according to Business Insider, "would help to fund his family’s lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers."<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200523200038/https://moguldom.com/278102/fact-check-did-elon-musk-inherit-apartheid-money-from-his-south-african-father Fact Check: Did Elon Musk Inherit Apartheid Money From His South African Father?]</ref> Despite this, Elon denies this was the case and instead says that he was a hard worker throughout his youth, ending up with about $100,000 in student debt anyways.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20191231163459/https:/twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211071324518531072</ref> Such claims, though, are hard to believe coming from someone who allegedly once naively sold his parent's gems to a New York jewelry,<ref name="businessinsider_elon">[https://web.archive.org/web/20200530005141/https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2 A teenage Elon Musk once casually sold his father's emeralds to Tiffany & Co. while his dad was sleeping]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200727050531/https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths Everything to Know About Errol Musk, Elon's “Brilliant,” “Terrible” Father]</ref> while his father talked about how financially set they were: "We were very wealthy [...] We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe.".<ref name="businessinsider_elon" />

Elon further attributes much of his understanding and background in engineering to his father, who himself comes from a privileged background.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200730124656/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-the-architect-of-tomorrow-120850 Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow]</ref>

==The Boring Company==
Musk's plan to dig tunnels under cities to transport people's cars. A lot of these circuits are planned to run near existing subway infrastructure, so they are redundant, and on top of that this idea runs into problems like getting permits for all the land this would run through as well as having to avoid existing underground structures like utility lines, subway routes, pedestrian tunnels, building foundations, etc.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs Elon Musk's "Loop" - It's bad, folks]</ref>

The supposed cost-savings the tunnels make over existing subway tunnels are neglecting the costs of the other facilities provided by subways, like the installation and maintenance of utility lines, the continuous supply of power to these lines, the installation of stations, and so forth. Considering merely the cost of the tunnel, which is only what Elon Musk focuses on, his tunnels cost about the average for what ones of their diameter and length have already, so there are no real cost savings. Other problems with these tunnels is that getting emergency services to a car in a tunnel would be very difficult, as these tunnels have only one lane. There would also have to be a very large amount of elevators, which would have to be operating unreasonably fast, especially during rush hour traffic.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ezF7NmwQZs</ref>

==Connections to the Epstein family==
[https://i.imgur.com/UPwXMyS.jpg This picture] has been making the rounds on the Internet following the arrest of Ghislane Maxwell. People have been replying to his tweets with it, to which either his fans or Elon himself will get extremely defensive; it’s so big that Elon himself spoke on it a couple times, claiming it was a photobomb and that she “snuck up on him”, which is ridiculous because the photo is centered squarely on Musk and Maxwell. Epstein was in regular contact with Elon's brother Kimbal Musk and in 2011, Epstein set him up with a woman from his entourage who Kimbal ended up dating her for a year. The woman, who had previously dated Epstein, lived in an apartment building where he was known to house certain women. So even if she was legal, this woman who dated Musk’s brother for a year must have had some connection and knowledge of Epstein’s continuing activities. In 2012, just as Epstein had sought out in exchange for his earlier "favor" to Elon's brother, he and his entourage were arranged a private tour of Elon Musk's SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200114021147/https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfriend-dated-kimbal-musk-brother-of-tesla-founder-elon-musk-2020-1
Jeffrey Epstein set Elon Musk's brother up with a girlfriend in effort to get close to the Tesla founder, sources say]</ref> — four years after it was revealed that Epstein was convicted for raping a minor. At that time, federal officials had further identified 36 more girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Brown|first1=Julie K.|title=How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime|url=https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html|access-date=November 28, 2018|work=Miami Herald|date=November 28, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181128153832/https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html|archive-date=November 28, 2018|url-status=live|df = mdy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Andrew|last=Buncombe|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeffrey-epstein-a-study-of-the-man-linked-to-worlds-of-celebrity-politics--and-royalty-9954397.html|title=Jeffrey Epstein: the billionaire paedophile with links to Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Robert Maxwell – and Prince Andrew|work=The Independent|location=London, England|date=January 2, 2015|access-date=November 7, 2016|url-status=live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150925183442/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-jeffrey-epstein-a-study-of-the-man-linked-to-worlds-of-celebrity-politics--and-royalty-9954397.html|archive-date=September 25, 2015}}</ref> In 2011 Elon Musk attended an elite private dinner with Jeffrey Epstein, less than 2 years after he served a prison sentence for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190915111003/https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-dinner-bezos-elon-musk-bill-gates-report-2011-2019-9 Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, and Marissa Mayer reportedly attended an elite private dinner with Jeffrey Epstein just 2 years after he served a prison sentence for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl]</ref><ref>https://twitter.com/jcoviedo6/status/1279518040405823488</ref> Elon repeatedly denied he went to such a dinner party, and further claims that Epstein hasn't even toured SpaceX<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200704181906/https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-denies-that-jeffrey-epstein-toured-spacex-facilities-2020-7 Elon Musk denies Jeffrey Epstein toured SpaceX facilities]</ref> He claims that he refused to have anything to do with Epstein, and said that he was “obviously a creep” when he had first met him — although he would still go to a dinner party afterwards in 2011 with this "creep". After Epstein was murdered, The New York Times published a detailed account of a 90-minute-long meeting they had held with Epstein — and it had a lot to do with Elon Musk. Jeffrey Epstein claimed to be both a financial adviser and a crisis manager for Tesla and Elon.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190812220003/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-interview.html The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People]</ref>
<blockquote>Mr. Epstein avoided specifics about his work for Tesla. He told me that he had good reason to be cryptic: Once it became public that he was advising the company, he’d have to stop doing so, because he was “radioactive.” He predicted that everyone at Tesla would deny talking to him or being his friend.</blockquote>
Epstein told the reporter that he suspected Tesla and Musk would deny speaking to him<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20191114220927/https://futurism.com/the-byte/jeffrey-epstein-advised-tesla-elon-musk NYT Writer: Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Advised Tesla, Elon Musk]</ref>, and as he predicted, Musk spokesperson Keely Sulprizio told Stewart that “it is incorrect to say that Epstein ever advised Elon on anything”.
Yet another interesting bit from the interview:
<blockquote>Mr. Epstein then meandered into a discussion of other prominent names in technology circles. He said people in Silicon Valley had a reputation for being geeky workaholics, but that was far from the truth: They were hedonistic and regular users of recreational drugs. He said he’d witnessed prominent tech figures taking drugs and arranging for sex.”</blockquote>
The New York Times had exclusive access to a full interview with Jeffrey Epstein that was released directly after his death, and the overwhelming majority of this interview ended up being about his connections advising Tesla and Elon Musk.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Elon has all these connections to Epstein, given the Musk family history. After all, Elon Musk’s dad had a child with his stepdaughter, and it’s a well-known fact that pedophilia runs in families,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20170113140300/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469797/ Sexual offending runs in families: A 37-year nationwide study]</ref> and in fact correlates more strongly with one’s genes than one’s family environment.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20150421191405/https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/sex-offending-genes-more-important-than-family-environment Sex offending: genes more important than family environment]</ref>

All of the denials of Elon’s involvement with Epstein are extremely shaky. His ex-wife Talulah Riley, who “wanted to respond publicly with @elonmusk’s permission”,<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20200704200722/https://twitter.com/talulahriley/status/1279506448045805569</ref> came out with a statement denying Elon's relation to Ghislane Maxwell. Of course, all of the PR statements and Elon-approved accounts of those events are going to paint Elon as an angel, completely non-complicit and non-involved in Epstein’s dealings; in spite of the wealth of photos, written statements, and other records which point in the opposite direction.

At the end of the day, there’s no concrete evidence yet that 100% proves that Elon was directly complicit with Epstein’s activities. However, there’s an abundance of evidence that shows that at the very least, he was heavily involved with Epstein.

==Support for the 2019 Bolivian coup==
The largest lithium reserves are in Bolivia, although Musk says he gets his from Australia. Bolivia had a coup in 2019, whose primary motivations included opening up its lithium reserves to foreign capitalists, which Musk may have a role in. On Twitter, he had this to say about the coup:
<blockquote>We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20200726013734/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1286866843307737088</ref></blockquote>

==Cringe compilation==
<gallery>
File:Screenshot_2020-16-06_Elon_Musk_on_Twitter.png
File:Screenshot_2018-06-16_Elon_Musk_on_Twitter_2.png
File:Screenshot_2020-07-27_Elon_Musk_on_Twitter.png
File:Screenshot_2020-08-30_Elon_Musk_on_Twitter.png
</gallery>

==References==

Postmodernism

2021-01-05T16:00:34Z

CCPSHILL13:

'''Postmodernism''' is the period of [[bourgeois society]] from the late 60s/early 70s up to the present, and in particular the cultural aspects of this period, characterised by the marginalisation of traditional (religious, kinship, custom, etc.) practice and belief and a disappearance of the prospect of achieving social harmony.

Once [[capitalism]], in the words of the ''[[The Communist Manifesto|Communist Manifesto]]'' “has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’ [and] drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation [and] resolved personal worth into exchange value”<ref>Karl Marx, ''Communist Manifesto'', Chapter 1</ref>, then the basis for postmodern society has been laid. Postmodern society is characterised by [[scepticism]] in relation to science, all forms of authority and the possibility of an ethical life, by [[relativism]] and disbelief in any concept of value beyond 'what pays', while the very ideas of originality, progress and truth seem themselves to be derivative, out-dated and untrue.

== Historical context ==

The period of postmodernism began when the period of expansion of capitalism following the Second World War drew to a close. Belief in progress was bolstered after the devastation and barbarism of the Second World War, by the [[Marshall Plan]] and the [[Bretton Woods]] arrangements which allowed the dollar to be printed in unlimited amounts to finance the expansion of capitalism. This protracted [[Post-War Boom]] caused many former radicals to draw conclusions about the impossibility of rebellion and about capitalism having resolved its historic crisis. See for example [[Herbert Marcuse]]'s ''[[One-Dimensional Man]]''. [https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/64onedim/odmcontents.html]

At roughly the same time that the Bretton Woods arrangements collapsed in 1968, the failure of the student uprisings and the betrayal of the French General Strike, caused a number of formerly radical French intellectuals to begin elaborating sceptical and subjective views, which incorporated elements of Marxist theory, and which laid the foundations for postmodern social theory. (See biographies of [[Roland Barthes]], [[Michel Foucault]], [[Jacques Lacan]] and [[Jacques Derrida]]). The [[Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia]], and other phenomena world-wide around this time demonstrated a rupture in the alliance between the workers' movement and the intelligentsia, an alliance which dated back to the [[Russian Revolution]] and before.

Beginning already in the 1950s, but accelerating following the collapse of the Bretton Woods arrangements and the boom in commodity prices which followed, the dominant capitalist powers turned decisively from being net exporters of capital towards importing capital, and relocating their manufacturing industries to countries offering cheap labour, relying on military supremacy, financial power and knowledge and image industries to maintain their dominance. This led to a situation where the division of labour between mental and manual labour which had been around as long a civilisation and which forms the basis for the separation of theory and practice, was now articulated on an international scale, with whole countries securing their domination over other nations on the basis of military and financial power and the “symbolic industries”. Any wonder then, in those countries, that [[idealist]], sceptical and [[subjectivist]] outlooks became rampant, with writers theorising that “there is nothing outside of the text”. The same phenomena has been exhibited in the periods of decline of earlier civilisations. Especially as the limits on growth which were the root of the [[Environmental Movement]] became manifest, natural science lost the mystique it had held since the days of [[the Enlightenment]]. Social theory and [[Feminism|feminist]] and [[Marxism|Marxist]] ideas in particular were turned to demonstrate the limits of scientific knowledge. (See [[Jacques Monod]]'s ''[[Ethic of Knowledge]]'' [https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/monod.htm] and [[Jürgen Habermas]]'s ''[[Knowledge and Human Interest]]'' [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/habermas/1968/theory-knowledge.htm]).

== See also ==

* [[Post-truth]]
* [[Post-structuralism]]
* [[Cultural Marxism]]

== Further reading ==

*[[Frederic Jameson]]'s ''[[Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism]]'' [https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm]
*[[Jean-Francois Lyotard]]'s '' [[The Postmodern Condition]]'' [https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm]
*[[Michel Foucault]]'s ''[[Archaeology of Knowledge]]'' [https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/foucault.htm]
*[[Teresa Ebert]]'s ''[[Untimely Critiques for a Red Feminism]]'' [https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/ebert.htm]

== References ==
{{MIAE}}

China

2021-01-05T15:57:48Z

CCPSHILL13:

{{More citations needed}}

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is a country in East Asia. It is governed by the [[Communist Party of China]], and was established in 1949 following the [[Chinese Civil War]] in which the Communist Party won control over all of mainland China, with the losing [[Kuomintang]] retreating to Taiwan, which the People's Republic claims sovereignty over. China is the world's most populous country and the third-largest by land area. Among leftists it is a controversial topic, with strong support and opposition to China occurring on all sides, as well as further controversy as to the degree to which China truly is socialist.

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right"
|-
! People's Republic of China 
中华人民共和国
|-
| [[File:1024px-CHN orthographic.svg.png|frameless|300x300|center|The People's Republic of China]]
<div style="text-align:center">Land controlled by the People's Republic of China shown in dark green; land claimed but not controlled shown in light green.</div>
|-
|
Flag:[[File:1024px-Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg.png|125x83px|frameless|Flag of the PRC]]State Emblem [[File:800px-National Emblem of the People's Republic of China (2).svg.png|85x92px|frameless|Emblem of the PRC]]
|}

==History==
===Civil war===
====1910-1945====
After the fall of Qing Dynasty in 1911, China was ravaged by foreign influence by Japanese, British and French. On 1921, with patrons from Soviet Union, the communist party of China was founded. The Communist and Nationalist shared a front to restore China to it's past greatness. The united front which was founded in 1924 focused on the internal enemy which were the warlord. After the front proved successful, the nationalist slaughtered communist in 1927. Mao Zhedong differed from the founders in that he thought the true revolutionary force in China, wasn't the proletariat, but rather the peasantry. In 1934 communist in the encircled in their base in Jiangxi. To escape the nationalist they set out on the long march. During the long march of 1934, by criticizing Zhang Guato, Mao in large part rose to power. According to him, the communist were loosing because of bad organization. What was observed during the march was the different culture of Miao had compared to the Han. He promised that different nationalities could form their own nations, or willingly join the PRC. The Hui Muslims were promised to be able to choose their own religion and attend visits to mosques. Because of the war with Japan that started in 1930's, there were multiple attempts for nationalist and communist to cooperate, or at least stop fighting. In 1935 a CPC sent to Guomindang (nationalist) was sent to stop fighting in north east. During the december of 1936, Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped by his own generals who urged him to cooperate with CPC. In 1937, Marco Polo Bridge incident caused a full scale war with Japan and an united front was formed. During the war Mao showed ability for compromise if it helped the CPC. Various Warlords were convinced to become an ally or join the CPC. Yan Xishan, who was in charge of Shanxi, declared neutrally with CPC on 1939. There was cooperation with American forces, with intelligence sharing and neutrality. A land reform was pursued in 1934 which allowed private farms to peasants. After the bombs on Japan fell the war was declared to have been ended.
====1945-1948====
With the end of war talks between the nationalist and communist began in Chongqing, but the talks proved fruitless. In December of 1945, US arranged second talks with the opposing forces. The talks proved fruitless yet again with communist never trusting the Guomindang in keeping liberated areas for the CPC, and the Guomindang not trusting CPC in recognizing Chiang as the leader of China. Imminently after the war Chiang sent his troops toward north-east China, where the communist troops and bases were. During this time both the CPC and the nationalist prepared for war. In 1945 party congress in Yanan took place in preparation of the upcoming civil war. The central military committee was established with high ranking CPC members having being appointed to leading roles. While nationalist certainly had a larger piece of the land and army, they weren't approved by the general population. Desertions among the soldiers of the nationalist army was common, with men being roped together to not escape. From 1937 to 1949, fifteen million starved because troops used to sell their rations to the peasants. Since a great deal of the army had troops from the warlords, rape and plunder was common. On CPC side, Mao got 200,000 troops from Manchuguo. Those who didn't join the PLA were executed.{{cn}} The CPC also gained a great number of troops from the deserted ones from the nationalist army. Other failure of the nationalist was that they allowed landlords, which were unpopular with the peasantry, to return after the war to their property. The Communists, knowing well how unpopular landlords were among the peasantry, humiliated and executed them. The CPC control over Harbin, area which the Japanese occupation industrialized, proved to be important in their victory, and allowed CPC to build a modern army. With communist evacuated from the area, Yanan fell to the Guomindang in 1947. After this Mao declared the annihilation of the Chiang's regime. After that the Guomindang tried spreading their reach within the country. With most of it's units being sparse, a counter-attack by the communist proved easy. In 1947 the CPC in Ningxia and Gansu were winning against the Muslim warlords. By 1948, Mao was convinced an attack, rather than defense, on the Guangdong was possible. the CPC was winning against the nationalist in north east, and with it overtook Shenyang and moved south.

====1948-1950====
Chiang troops gathered around Xuzhou with the hope of having enough time to counter-act the movement of PLA into the heart of China. With CPC having enlisted POW from the Guomindang troops into PLA, the attack could start instantaneous. Within five days Xuzhou, with it's supplies cut off and heavy rain making it's tank useless, was under CPC's wing with it's general Baitao committing suicide. At this time Mao thought that Beijing, while useless in strategy, would give much prestige. On January of 1949, Fu Zuoyi, who guarded Beijing, was promised that if he allowed the CPC to take Beijing, his war-crimes would be absolved, his fortune kept, and would be allowed to live where he wishes. On January of 1949, he accepted the term and People's liberation army stormed Beijing in. In April of 1949, Zhang Zhizhong, the governor of Xinjiang, joined the CPC. The majority of nationalist forces were defeated, and with it Chiang fled on a plane from Chengdu to Taiwan, which he brutally took over. On first of October, 1949, Mao declared from the forbidden city than the civil war has been won and People's Republic of China was found.

===Sino-Soviet split===
When [[Nikita Khrushchev]] came to power upon [[Stalin]]'s death, [[Mao Zedong|Mao]] began to consider himself the head of the international communist movement as he was the most senior leader. Khrushchev saw otherwise, that he himself was because he led the world's most powerful communist country. The denunciation of Stalin by Khrushchev, as well as the process of [[de-Stalinization]], and on top of this the policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist world developed Chinese antagonisms with the USSR further. Mao's leadership also began pursuing [[Nuclear weapons|nuclear weapons]] in part to legitimize the claims that the PRC is the leader of the communist world, not the "[[Revisionism|revisionist]]" USSR. The Soviets considered Mao to be a rash and potentially destabilizing force, while Mao likewise thought the Soviets to be unreliable.

In 1959, the USSR offered moral support to the [[Tibet|Tibetan]] people in their uprising against the Chinese. The following year, at the Romanian Communist Party Congress meeting, Mao and Khrushchev openly hurled insults at each other in front of attending delegates, which would be reported across international headlines. In 1962, Mao accused Khrushchev of capitulating to the [[America|Americans]] during the 1962 [[Cuban Missile Crisis]], to which Khrushchev replied that Mao's attitude would lead to nuclear war. The same year, the Soviets backed [[India]], who they also had a good relationship with, against China in the [[Sino-Indian War of 1962]].

The USSR and the PRC nearly went to war in 1968 over a border dispute in Xinjiang. The Soviets even considered carrying out a preemptive strike in the Lop Nur Basin, also in Xinjiang, where the Chinese were preparing to test their first nuclear weapons. The United States however persuaded the Soviets not to do so, for fear of sparking a world war. In the 1970s, the Communist Party of China gave a large amount of support and funding to the [[Khmer Rouge]], which was opposed to Soviet-backed Vietnam and which received approval from [[Mao Zedong]] himself. It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from [[China]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Chandler|first=David P.|title=Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot|publisher=Routledge|year=2018|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mTlMDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT77&lpg=PT77&dq=Maha+lout+ploh#v=onepage|isbn=978-0-429-98161-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinas-aid-emboldens-cambodia |last=Strangio |first=Sebastian |title=China's Aid Emboldens Cambodia |website=Yale Global Online|access-date=2020-04-12}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-chinese-communist-partys-relationship-the-khmer-rouge-the-1970s-ideological-victory|title=The Chinese Communist Party's Relationship with the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s: An Ideological Victory and a Strategic Failure|date=2018-12-13|website=Wilson Center|access-date=2019-11-26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rfa.org/english/news/special/chinacambodia/relation.html|title=China-Cambodia Relations|website=www.rfa.org|access-date=2019-11-26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/cambodian-historians-call-for-china-to-confront-its-own-past/|title=China Is Urged to Confront Its Own History|last=Levin|first=Dan|date=2015-03-30|website=The New York Times|url-status=live|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2019-11-26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.visiontimes.com/2018/01/28/how-red-china-supported-the-brutal-khmer-rouge.html|title=How Red China Supported the Brutal Khmer Rouge|date=2018-01-28|website=Vision Times|language=en-US|access-date=2019-11-26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Kiernan|first=Ben|title=The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0300142990}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=54iUDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=By+mid-september+China+was+prepared+to+extend+to+Cambodia+a+total+of+US$1+billion#v=onepage|title=ASEAN Resistance to Sovereignty Violation: Interests, Balancing and the Role of the Vanguard State|last=Laura|first=Southgate|date=2019-05-08|publisher=Policy Press|isbn=978-1-5292-0221-2}}</ref> The Khmer Rouge was removed from power in 1979 when [[Cambodian–Vietnamese War|Vietnam invaded Cambodia]] and quickly destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge's forces. Later on in 1979, when the [[Soviet-Afghan War|Soviets invaded Afghanistan]] to support the communist government there, China allied itself with the US and Pakistan to support the [[Mujahideen|mujahideen]], as it saw Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as an aggressive move to encircle China. Soon after in 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, beginning the [[Iran-Iraq War]] that would last until 1988, the Soviets allied themselves with the US and French to support Iraq, largely because Iran had crushed the communist Tudeh party and thus the Soviets wanted revenge. To this, China sided with Iran, as did North Korea and Libya.

Throughout this, the Chinese leadership repeatedly pushed for the Soviets to relinquish [[Mongolia]] and "give it back" to China. The Soviets rejected this proposition, as did the Mongolians, who like the Vietnamese feared that China had imperialist ambitions on the country, seeking to exploit its resources and possibly even colonize it just as it had done so in its imperial era.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20200803213207/https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/ACF4CA.pdf The Soviets' Best Friend in Asia: The Mongolian Dimension of the Sino-Soviet Split</ref>

When [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] became the Soviet premier in 1985, he sought to normalize relations with China, starting by recalling some border guards from the Soviet-Chinese border, as well as reopening trade relations. The Chinese leadership was skeptical, however, of Gorbachev's policies of [[Perestroika|perestroika]] and [[Glasnost|glasnost]], believing that economic reforms should take place before political reforms. Regardless, the Chinese government welcomed an official state visit from Gorbachev in late May of 1989, along with the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The world press convened in Beijing to record the moment.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, posthumously granting Mao's wish — for China to be the world's most powerful state that calls itself communist.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200711033153/https://www.thoughtco.com/the-sino-soviet-split-195455 The Sino-Soviet Split: Russian and Chinese Political Strain in the 1900s]</ref>

===Great Leap Forward===
====The Great Chinese Famine====
[[The Great Chinese Famine]] (1958 till 1961) was caused and its severity compounded by a number of factors:

* Bad weather conditions, floods and droughts at the same time;
* The Four Pests Campaign;
* Peasants transferring to steel production;

* Bureaucratic mismanagement.

Four to five million people lost their lives.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Cheng Enfu, A Study of Unnatural Deaths ... S&S 82,2 (April 2018) (1).pdf| work = Google Docs| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JiHMNyN2636l6NM1RtgcipDU1ztNJlup}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Sun Jingxian, Population Change During China's 'Three Years of Hardship' (1959-1961) CCPESR April 2016 (1).pdf| work = Google Docs| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iLVagufemBYVG4d043mL6XH0auu8V5HE}}</ref> Official government statistics claim that fifteen million people perished as a result of the famine, but the composition of this statistic remains unclear (some suspect that this was an exaggeration and meant to discredit Máo or legitimise Deng Xiaoping’s policy changes), and antisocialists usually insist that between 20 and 100 million innocents died,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Ball|first=Joseph|title=Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?|url=https://monthlyreview.org/?p=5005|date=2006-09-21}}</ref> a toll that counts millions of hypothetical babies as ‘deaths’.<ref>https://www.reddit.com/comments/9f95t9/_/e5wcr63</ref>

Amartya Sen and John Drèze point out that, while the Chinese famine was devastating, it pales in comparison to the ordinary mortality rates which occur under market economies in an otherwise comparable nation like India:

{{quote|[I]t is important to note that despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former. Comparing India’s death rate of 12 per thousand with China’s of 7 per thousand, and applying that difference to the Indian population of 781 million in 1986, we get an estimate of excess normal mortality in India of 3.9 million per year. This implies that every eight years or so more people die in India because of its higher regular death rate than died in China in the gigantic famine of 1958–61. India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.|Amartya Sen & John Drèze|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|title=Hunger and Public Action|publisher=Harvard University|url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/sen/publications/hunger-and-public-action}}</ref>}}

This comes out to more than one hundred million excess deaths in India alone from 1947 (when India became formally independent) to 1980. As Paul Heideman put it:

{{quote|In other words, though India experienced no concentrated period of starvation which can be easily identified and hung around the neck of a particular ideology, its ordinary conditions for the latter half of the twentieth century, in which an extraordinarily unequal distribution of land obtained, created an excess mortality that, over the long term, dwarfed that of the worst famine of the century.|Paul Heideman|https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/capitalism-socialism-khmer-rouge-cambodia-china-famine-friedersdorf}}

This demonstrates the effects that capitalism has on a developing nation, but it is all the more troublesome when compared to the [[People's Republic of China#Infrastructure|immense gains made in the People’s Republic of China]].

===Cultural Revolution===
===Market reform===
====1989 Tiananmen Square protests====
Students have been protesting since 1986 for better economic conditions and greater freedom of the press, however those protests were suppressed. They flared up again in April of 1989 after the death of ousted General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was reform-minded and rather popular with the people. Protests were concentrated in Beijing but occurred in many other places as well, reiterating the goals of previous demonstrations.

The protest movement was supported by the liberal faction of the CPC including high-ranking party members such as Zhao Ziyang, who promised to open the door to liberalization if it had succeeded like in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Yugoslavia. The protest movement, as evidenced by their own accounts, called for political and economic liberalization, rallying around a statue which some say resembles the Statue of Liberty, while otherwise is said to more so resemble the works of Soviet sculptor Vera Mukhina. After the movement had been building in the square for seven weeks, unarmed soldiers were sent in to disperse the protesters, after which many soldiers were beaten to death, torched, and lynched. The New York Times' death count went from 2,600, to 8,000, then to tens of thousands. In reality, it wasn't a massacre of peaceful students, but skirmishes between PLA soldiers and armed detachments from the liberal reformist movement. Nobody was killed inside the square itself, only around 300 (including soldiers) were killed or trampled in smaller clashes in streets outside the square.<ref>[https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/ Tiananmen: The Massacre that Wasn’t]</ref><ref><[https://medium.com/@leohezhao/notes-for-30th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-incident-f098ef6efbc2 Notes for 30th Anniversary of TianAnMen Incident]</ref> The Chinese Communist Party did not and does not deny the incident and the deaths that occurred, nor did they hide the incident from the public. They held a press conference on national television two days after the incident occurred where they openly admitted the actions that took place, the estimated casualties, and the political motives involved.<ref>https://imgur.com/a/Wqq19Q6</ref> An on-scene Washington Post reporter disavowed his own article for its lies and lack of journalistic integrity, especially regarding the alleged machine-gunning of protesters.<ref>https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php</ref> A protest leader who came from Taiwan admitted that no protesters were killed in the square.<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqPI8xlnrwg&feature=youtu.be&t=1374</ref>

A WikiLeaks cable from a US ambassador to the US state department confirmed that no killings or machine-gunnings took place in the square.<ref>https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html</ref>
===China today===

==Politics==

==Economy==
===Market reforms===
A series of market reforms began to be implemented on December 18, 1978 by the reformists of the Communist Party, led by Deng Xiaoping. The Soviet Union, as well as the countries following its model, were seen as a lost cause and so the market reforms were made, intended to open China up more to the capitalist world. The level of market elements to be introduced into the country was set to be greater than that of the Soviet [[New Economic Policy]] of the 1920s, with the rationale being that factors such as technology becoming more complex meaning that capitalist economies must be drawn closer to, as it is difficult to develop such technologies from scratch. The proximity of China and foreign capitalist states meant that China would obtain more products and technologies directly, while also making espionage easier, as opportunities for copying technology are greater and easier. Stealing advanced technology would be insufficient, however, as that would also require establishing advanced factories and infrastructure, with the outputs of such production thus being scarce and inefficient. Orienting the relatively primitive economy towards mass-producing bulk products, through the utilization of comparative advantages, however, enables for the accumulation of capital in order to acquire advanced technology of various sorts in an easier manner than clandestinely. Of course this also needs to be coupled with directed developmental policies concerning the economy, or else the country will just turn into something like Bangladesh.

Though these reforms have indeed enabled China to develop its productive forces, so far in the short term, it is uncertain whether they are sustainable under Chinese state control or whether they will enable the People's Republic to survive the end of capitalism. Government vision does not always translate into success quite as may be hoped, with a socialist example of this being the power structure established in the USSR, which though was supposed to defeat capitalism by the end of the century,<ref>{{cite book|last=Tompson|first=William J.|year=1997|title=Khrushchev: A Political Life|location=New York City|publisher=St. Martin's Press|page=238}}</ref> did not actually evaluate to do so. The scope of the economic reforms that China has carried out are beyond that of the New Economic Policy, which in the Soviet Union was very troublesome to undo in the phase of constructing actual socialism, and which ended up exacerbating a famine that was going on at the time.<ref name="CEE">New Economic Policy. (n.d.) The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia®. (2013). Retrieved September 22 2020 from https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/New+Economic+Policy</ref> Deng Xiaoping's market reforms do seem to have enabled China to outlive the Soviet Union, but it is still uncertain whether they will be able to be undone without catastrophic damage. As capitalism does not tend to be environmentally friendly, it is also uncertain whether the world will be reparable from the effects of climate change<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200922044434/https://time.com/5824295/climate-change-future-possibilities/ What the World Will Look Like in 2050 If We Don’t Cut Carbon Emissions in Half]</ref> by the time China is to actually establish the socialist mode of production.

===Pollution===
Despite having a reputation for being one of the world’s worst polluters, the PRC emits much less carbon dioxide per person than the [[United States]] does, even while having a population that is five times greater.<ref>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/CO2_emissions_per_capita,_2017_(Our_World_in_Data).svg</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita)|url=https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/en.atm.co2e.pc|accessdate=2020-01-10}}</ref> (The PRC’s emissions can also be attributed to the fact that most of the West manufactures its goods there; most of its pollution is probably caused by producing things that are exported to the West.) The PRC is nine years ahead of schedule on meeting its Paris agreement climate change goals,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Vaughan|first=Adam|title=China is on track to meet its climate change goals nine years early|url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/2211366|accessdate=2020-01-10}}</ref> and has met ultra-low power plant emissions in advance of the 2020 goal.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=China meets ultra-low emissions in advance of the 2020 goal|url=https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-11/caos-cm110519.php|accessdate=2020-01-10}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=China is on track to meet its ultra-low emissions goals for 2020.|url=https://theecologist.org/node/2991669|accessdate=2020-01-10}}</ref>

==Infrastructure==

===Health===
{{quote|Because of its radical commitment to the elimination of poverty and to improving living conditions — a commitment in which Maoist as well as Marxist ideas and ideals played an important part — China did achieve many things that the Indian leadership failed to press for and pursue with any vigor. The elimination of widespread hunger, illiteracy, and ill health falls solidly in this category. When state action operates in the right direction, the results can be quite remarkable, as is illustrated by the social achievements of the pre-reform period.|Amartya Sen|<ref name=Sen>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Sen|first=Amartya|editors=Klasen, Stephan; Günther, Isabel|title=Perspectives on the Economic and Human Development of India and China|url=https://www.univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/handle/3/isbn-3-938616-63-6|publisher=Harvard University|year=2006|doi=10.17875/gup2006-202}}</ref>}}

Another important comment summarizing the findings of the study is as follows:

{{quote|We argue, in particular, that the accomplishments relating to education, healthcare, land reforms, and social change in the pre-reform period made significantly positive contributions to the achievements of the post-reform period. This is so not only in terms of their role in sustained high life expectancy and related achievements, but also in providing firm support for economic expansion based on market reforms.|Amartya Sen|<ref name=Sen/>}}

Professor Sen states here that the prereform period saw enormous increases in quality of life for the Chinese people, as well as important economic developments, without which the economic expansion following the 1979 market reforms most likely could not have taken place. He notes that during this period, a ‘remarkable reduction in chronic undernourishment took place,’ attributing this to the policies implemented by the people’s republic:

{{quote|The casual processes through which the reduction of undernourishment was achieved involved extensive state action including redistributive policies, nutritional support, and of course health care (since undernourishment is frequently caused by parasitic diseases and other illnesses).|Amartya Sen|<ref name=Sen/>}}

Professor Sen focuses more attention on the remarkable advances in healthcare during this period:

{{quote|China’s achievements in the field of health during the pre-reform period include a dramatic reduction of infant and child mortality and a remarkable expansion of longevity.|Amartya Sen|<ref name=Sen/>}}

It is also noted that the PRC’s life expectancy approximately doubled from approximately 35 years in 1949 to 68 years in 1981 (when the market reforms began to take effect).<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Hipgrave|first=David|title=Communicable Disease Control in China: From Mao to Now|journal=Journal of Global Health|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3484775|year=2011|pages=224–238}}</ref> Another source on public health in the [[short twentieth century]] PRC comes from the journal ''Population Studies'', in a study conducted by researchers from Stanford University and the National Bureau for Economic Research. One important comment is as follows:

{{quote|China’s growth in life expectancy at birth from 35–40 years in 1949 to 65.5 years in 1980 is among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history.|Babiarz KS, Eggleston K, Miller G, Zhang Q|<ref name=PopulStud>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Singer Babiarz|first1=Kimberly|last2=Eggleston|first2=Karen|last3=Miller|first3=Grant|first4=Zhangd|last4=Qiong|title=An exploration of China’s mortality decline under Mao: A provincial analysis, 1950–80|journal=Population Studies|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212|date=2014-10-13|pages=39–56|doi=10.1080/00324728.2014.972432}}</ref>}}

This alone goes to show the massive benefits that the revolutionary socialist movement attained. More important information is provided in the study, dealing with hospital and medical resources:

{{quote|Physician and hospital supply grew dramatically under Mao due to a variety of factors (including increases in government financing, the introduction of social insurance for urban public employees, and the launch of China’s Rural Cooperative Medical System in the mid-1950s). Rural Cooperative Medical Schemes (CMS) were vigorously promoted and became widespread in the late 1960s as part of the Cultural Revolution.|Babiarz KS, Eggleston K, Miller G, Zhang Q|<ref name=PopulStud/>}}

They also quote other research which found that the rapid gains in Chinese healthcare can be attributed to the specific policies that the communists implemented:

{{quote|China’s mortality decline between 1953 and 1957, which resembles that of the US between 1900 and 1930, was “primarily due to the unique social organisation of Chinese public health practices.”|Babiarz KS, Eggleston K, Miller G, Zhang Q|<ref name=PopulStud/>}}

Note that China achieved in four years what [[Imperial America]] took three decades to accomplish, due to their differing systems (i.e. planned economics vs. market economics). The study also confirms the immense success of the PRC’s vaccination programs:

{{quote|Systematic efforts to vaccinate the population against polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and cholera were rapid and reputedly successful (China nearly eradicated smallpox within the span of only three years, with the last documented cases occurring in Tibet and Yunnan in 1960).|Babiarz KS, Eggleston K, Miller G, Zhang Q|<ref name=PopulStud/>}}

Additional citations for the claims in the above quotes are provided in the original study.

===Education===
Professor Sen notes that the huge improvements (including dramatic increases in literacy) can be attributed primary to the pre-reform period:

{{quote|China’s breakthrough in the field of elementary education had already taken place before the process of economic reform was initiated at the end of the seventies. Census data indicate, for instance, that literacy rates in 1982 for the 15–19 age group were already as high as 96 percent for males and 85 percent for females.|Amartya Sen|<ref name=Sen/>}}

Another study confirms Professor Sen’s analysis of education:

{{quote|China made large strides in primary and secondary education under Mao.|Babiarz KS, Eggleston K, Miller G, Zhang Q|<ref name=PopulStud/>}}

==References==

[[Category:Asia]]
[[Category:East Asia]]
[[Category:China]]
[[Category:PRC]]

Yugoslavia

2021-01-05T15:57:19Z

CCPSHILL13:

The '''Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia''' (abbreviated as '''SFRY''', and previously known as the '''Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia''', abbreviated as '''FPRY''') was a [[people's republic]] in Europe. It was succeeded by the [[Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]] in the 1990s.

The University of Rochester gives the following overall assessment of the SFRY:

<blockquote>The history of Yugoslavia since 1945 embraces a period of rapid economic, political, and social modernization reflected in urban and industrial growth, improvements in literacy and economic well-being, changes in the traditional patriarchal family structure, moderation of ethnic hostilities, and integration into the international economy. However, in dialectical fashion, it also embraces a period of economic decline and intense ethnic reaction. In a very real sense, the route to the collapse of the Yugoslav federation, like the collapse of the Soviet federation, was paved by the policy toward nationalities that each had pursued, but it was precipitated by involvement in the global economy.<ref name=Kunitz>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Kunitz|first=Stephen|title=The Making and Breaking of Yugoslavia and Its Impact on Health|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448556|journal=American journal of public health|volume=94|number=11|year=2004|pages=1894–1904|doi=10.2105/ajph.94.11.1894}}</ref></blockquote>

== History ==
Prerevolutionary Yugoslavia was an economically underdeveloped nation, plagued by high levels of illiteracy, high mortality rates, low life expectancy, and epidemics of disease.

{{quote|The country remained largely undeveloped throughout the interwar years. Seventy-seven percent of the population were peasants. Illiteracy rates of those older than 10 ranged between 83.8% in Macedonia and 8.8% in Slovenia, with the national figure being 51.5% in 1921. Mortality and fertility were both high, epidemics were common despite innovative programs created by Andrija Stampar, the Croatian public health leader, and the government was ineffective in providing preventive and curative health services as well as needed infrastructure. High taxes and declining agricultural prices during the depression years of the 1930s may have contributed to the peasants’ hostility to the government and to their support for the Partisans during World War II, which was as much a civil war as a war against the German invaders.|University of Rochester|<ref name=Kunitz/>}}

According to the Helsinki Committee:

<blockquote>The overall social development of Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941 was overwhelmingly slow, so that the country was at the lower end of European trends (population poverty, illiteracy, low level of health culture, poor mobility, etc.), with a rather closed perspective. […] In the inter-war period, the housing infrastructure outside cities was either poor or non-existent, lacking electricity, water and sewage connections. Living conditions in municipal workers’ or peripheral settlements were poor.<ref name=Helsinki>{{safesubst:cite book|editors=Latinka Perović, Drago Roksandić, Mitja Velikonja, Wolfgang Hoepken, Florian Bieber|title=Yugoslavia from a Historical Perspective|url=https://www.yuhistorija.com/doc/yugoslavia%20from%20a%20historical%20perspective.pdf|location=Belgrade|publisher=Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia|year=2017|ISBN=978-86-7208-208-1}}</ref></blockquote>

In contrast, the SFRY was a time of tremendous improvement and hope for the people:

{{quote|This picture of the increase in the standard of living will become more complete if one takes into account the achieved level of technological development, high health and hygiene standards and higher educational level of the population. Should the question of progress be posed from the aspect of everyday life, it would be reflected in the wish for electricity, paved roads, a comfortable apartment or house, a marriage of love and not an arranged marriage, fertile land, job security, as well as the wish for the children to be better off in the future. It is precisely these issues that are conversation topics in the prize-winning feature film Train Without a Timetable (Veljko Bulajić, 1959): “There is also electricity and a state road over there, and you can have a radio in the house. It can play and sing for you all day long! Just like in a dream…” This dream was part of the changes brought by the 20th century to everyday life, including increased opportunities and needs. Yugoslavia was attuning the rhythm of the century to its own development level and political priorities.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

It is often assumed that the SFRY’s discontinuation in the early 1990s was purely the result of internal contradictions, but official reports indicate that the white [[bourgeoisie]] also pursued a policy of deliberate destabilization against them.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Papadopoulos|first=Marcus|title=The Defining Year Was 1991: The Demise of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union|url=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-nC83|date=2018-02-02|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200318003654/https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-defining-year-was-1991-the-demise-of-yugoslavia-and-the-soviet-union/5628115|archivedate=2020-03-18}}</ref> <ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Herman|first1=Edward|last2=Peterson|first2=David|title=The Dismantling of Yugoslavia (Part I)|url=https://monthlyreview.org/?p=2404|journal=The Monthly Review|volume=59|issue=05|date=2007-10-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140708151424/http://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia|archivedate=2014-07-08}}</ref>

Although opinions vary by country, the consensus in the former Yugoslavia is that the discontinuation was harmful overall,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Many in Balkans Still See More Harm From Yugoslavia Breakup|url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/210866/balkans-harm-yugoslavia-breakup.aspx|date=2017-05-18|accessdate=2020-03-26}}</ref> including Bosnia, Herzegovina,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=“Yugo-nostalgia” is widespread in Serbia and Bosnia - survey - WorldEnglish - on B92.net|url=https://www.b92.net/eng/news/world.php?yyyy=2017&mm=05&dd=26&nav_id=101379|date=2017-05-26|accessdate=2020-03-26|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170526120234/http://www.b92.net/eng/news/world.php?yyyy=2017&mm=05&dd=26&nav_id=101379|archivedate=2017-05-26}}</ref> Croatia,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Zašto su u Hrvatskoj jugonostalgični?|url=https://www.dw.com/sr/zašto-su-u-hrvatskoj-jugonostalgični/a-18377454|publisher=Deutsche Welle|date=2015-10-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20151001041406/http://www.dw.com/sr/zašto-su-u-hrvatskoj-jugonostalgični/a-18377454|archivedate=2015-10-01}}</ref> Macedonia,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Macedonians "miss Yugoslavia", poll shows|url=https://www.b92.net/eng/news/region.php?yyyy=2010&mm=11&dd=25&nav_id=71111|date=2010-11-25|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200326104516/https://www.b92.net/eng/news/region.php?yyyy=2010&mm=11&dd=25&nav_id=71111|archivedate=2020-03-26}}</ref> Montenegro,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=ISTRAŽIVANJE O CRNOGORCIMA: Većina govori srpski i žali za SFRJ|url=https://www.kurir.rs/region/crna-gora/2731189|date=2017-03-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170531190259/http://www.kurir.rs/region/crna-gora/2731189/istrazivanje-o-crnogorcima-vecina-govori-srpski-i-zali-za-sfrj|archivedate=2017-05-31}}</ref> Serbia,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Serbia Poll: Life Was Better Under Tito|url=https://balkaninsight.com/?p=146466|date=2010-12-24|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190430233048/https://balkaninsight.com/2010/12/24/for-simon-poll-serbians-unsure-who-runs-their-country|archivedate=2019-04-30}}</ref> and Slovenia.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Waterfield|first=Bruno|title=Many in Slovenia yearn for old Yugoslavia|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1573974/Many-in-Slovenia-yearn-for-old-Yugoslavia.html|location=Ljubljana|date=2007-12-29|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091008110543/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1573974/Many-in-Slovenia-yearn-for-old-Yugoslavia.html|archivedate=2009-10-08}}</ref>

== Economy ==
The prerevolutionary economy in Yugoslavia was stagnant:

{{quote|From 1921 to the outbreak of World War II, the country was not characterized by any exceptional economic progress. In that, however, it was no different from the majority of neighboring countries, whether it be, for example, Greece, Hungary or Bulgaria. Partly this was the consequence of demographic growth, but since we are talking about several decades, it is clear that on the whole the economy was stagnant and that it is not possible to talk about any significant progress in relation to economic development on Yugoslav territory in the time before the establishment of the common state.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The lower classes abolished this state of affairs once they established the people’s republic. Originally the socialists organized a [[planned economy]] closely based on that of the [[USSR]],<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Another Look at the Question of Yugoslav Socialism|url=https://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/another-look-at-the-question-of-yugoslav-socialism/amp|date=2010-07-03|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200213072807/https://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/another-look-at-the-question-of-yugoslav-socialism/amp|archivedate=2020-02-13}}</ref> but after the 1940s they transitioned to a semiplanned economy, based on workers’ self-management within state-owned enterprises:

{{quote|After 1945 the communist government nationalized large landholdings, industrial enterprises, public utilities, and other resources and launched a strenuous process of industrialization. After a split with the Soviet Union in 1948, Yugoslavia had by the 1960s come to place greater reliance on market mechanisms. A distinctive feature of this new “Yugoslav system” was “workers’ self-management” which reached its fullest form in the 1976 Law on Associated Labour. Under this law, individuals participated in Yugoslav enterprise management through the work organizations into which they were divided. Work organizations might be either “Basic Organizations of Associated Labour” (the subdivisions of a single enterprise) or “Complex Organizations of Associated Labour” uniting different segments of an overall activity (e.g., manufacture and distribution). Each work organization was governed by a workers’ council, which elected a board of management to run the enterprise.|Encyclopædia Britannica|<ref name=Britannica>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Allcock|first1=John|last2=Lampe|first2=John|title=Yugoslavia | History, Map, Breakup, & Facts | Britannica|url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Yugoslavia-former-federated-nation-1929-2003}}</ref>}}

This system led to dramatic economic growth:

{{quote|Development in the years after World War II, if we put aside the years of the Soviet blockade, is characterized by significant economic growth and development, if the latter is expressed, again, by the per capita GDP. While in the first twenty years or so the GDP per capita increased just under 40 percent, in the period from 1952 to 1979 it increased just under 5 times. As in both cases it was a matter of rebuilding the country after great war devastation, there is no doubt that Yugoslavia after World War II achieved an incomparably better economic development than it did after World War I.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The socialists initiated a great process of urbanization:

{{quote|A great wave of urbanization took place in the second half of the century when settlements with larger residential buildings and skyscrapers were built. New cities or larger urban complexes, such as New Belgrade, New Zagreb, New Gorica, Velenje and Split 3, were also built. From the aspect of urban planning, the reconstruction of Skopje after the disastrous earthquake of 1963 was especially successful. These new settlements were based on contemporary urban planning and architectural concepts such as residential buildings with social amenities, surrounded by green areas and having no direct access to major roads. Kindergartens and schools, parks, health centers, trading and small-scale craft facilities were also built according to plan.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The dismal housing situation was improved dramatically, as was access to essential services (electricity, water, sanitation, etc.):

{{quote|Each year, from the early 1960s through the 1980s, 100–150 thousand apartments were built and one third of them was built by the socially-owned sector. These apartments were given to workers on the basis of their occupancy right acquired in the enterprises and institutions where they were employed. A survey shows that in the years of peak housing construction, that is, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, all three-member worker households had electricity, almost all of them had water and sewage connections, one third had central heating and eight out of ten had a bathroom and toilet in the apartment.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

Unfortunately, the Yugoslav economy eventually began to stagnate, a problem which was made worse by the interference of the IMF, as well as the inflamed regional tensions which resurfaced after Tito’s expiration:

{{quote|Inflation and unemployment emerged as serious problems, particularly during the 1980s, and productivity remained low. Such defects in the system were patched over by massive and uncoordinated foreign borrowing, but after 1983 the International Monetary Fund demanded extensive economic restructuring as a precondition for further support. The conflict over how to meet this demand resurrected old animosities between the wealthier northern and western regions, which were required to contribute funds to federally administered development programs, and the poorer southern and eastern regions, where these funds were frequently invested in relatively inefficient enterprises or in unproductive prestige projects. Such differences contributed directly to the disintegration of the second Yugoslavia.|Encyclopædia Britannica|<ref name=Britannica/>}}

===Worker's self-management===
Yugoslavia attempted this organizational strategy with mixed results. It gave workers more influence in individual enterprises but at the same time had problems such as unemployment.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Class Struggle in Socialist Poland: With Comparisons to Yugoslavia|url=https://archive.org/details/ClassStruggleInSocialistPoland}}</ref>

==Foreign policy==
The Non-Aligned Movement was established in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia through an initiative of the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesian President Sukarno, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Nehru, Jawaharlal|title=Jawaharlal Nehru. : an autobiography.|date=2004|publisher=Penguin Books|isbn=9780143031048|oclc=909343858}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Non-Aligned Movement|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Non-Aligned-Movement|access-date=2020-07-10|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}}</ref> This led to the first Conference of Heads of State or Governments of Non-Aligned Countries.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Jugoslavija 1918–1988: Tematska zbirka dokumenata|last=Petranović|first=Branko|last2=Zečević|first2=Momčilo|publisher=Izdavačka radna organizacija "Rad"|year=1988|isbn=9788609001086|edition=2|location=Belgrade|pages=1078–1084|language=Serbo-Croatian|chapter=BEOGRADSKA KONFERENCIJA NEANGAŽOVANIH. NESVRSTANOST - Brionska izjava predsednika Tita, Nasera i Premijera Nehrua, jula 1956.|chapter-url=http://www.znaci.net/00001/138_87.pdf}}</ref> The term non-aligned movement first appears in the fifth conference in 1976, where participating countries are denoted as "members of the movement". The NAM, in general, was good in opposing both imperialism and colonialism.

Tito split from the USSR in 1948, also saying that the USSR was to blame for starting the Cold War as well as saying that Stalin's policies were akin to Hitler's. Relations between the two nations quickly deteriorated and an invasion of Yugoslavia was planned for 1949 using the militaries of Yugoslavia's neighboring Eastern Bloc states. Yugoslavia was kicked out of the Cominform, and Stalin sent a series of assassins after Tito, all of which failed. Famously, Tito replied to Stalin in a letter:
<blockquote>Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. [...] If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second<ref>{{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Zhores A. |last2=Medvedev |first2=Roy A. |last3=Jeličić |first3=Matej |last4=Škunca |first4=Ivan |year=2003 |title=The Unknown Stalin |publisher=I. B. Tauris |isbn=978-1-58567-502-9 |pages=61–62}}</ref>
</blockquote>
Yugoslavia under Tito supported the MPLA in Angola, which became largely reliant on Yugoslav arms since the Soviets stopped supplying them.

==Infrastructure==

===Health===
Prerevolutionary Yugoslavia was beset by terrible healthcare conditions, a situation which was only made worse by WWII:

{{quote|As regards the health care of the population in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it was at the lowest level according to the European standards. According to 1930 data, there were 12,204 medical personnel members, including 4,545 doctors and 208 dentists. There were also 172 hospitals and 22,895 hospital beds. In Yugoslavia up to 1939, there were 18,193 medical personnel members, including 5,131 doctors and 380 dentists, implying that there was one doctor per 3,060 inhabitants and one dentist per 41,324 inhabitants. Of this number of doctors, 927 worked in 169 hospitals with 23,534 beds (only 429 more than twenty or so years earlier).|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

Although there had been some reduction in the mortality rate under the prerevolutionary government, the improvement became much faster in the people’s republic, and it coincided with drastic improvements to infant mortality and life expectancy when compared to the prerevolutionary period. The socialists made the provision of healthcare a key aspect of their policy:

{{quote|Health policy in the former Yugoslavia was based on the promise of growth: expansion of existing health facilities and construction of new ones, an increase in the supply of health care workers and drugs and, ultimately, an improvement in health status. The promise was repeated so often that people came to consider such social benefits “to be their natural due,” a major premise of socialism.|NYU|<ref name=NYU>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Sarić|first1=Muhamed|last2=Rodwin|first2=Victor|title=The Once and Future Health System in the Former Yugoslavia: Myths and Realities|url=https://www.nyu.edu/projects/rodwin/future.html|accessdate=2020-03-26}}</ref>}}

This resulted in enormous increases in the health conditions of the country:

{{quote|By 1978, the number of hospital beds, in comparison to 1939, tripled from 19 to 60 beds per 10,000 population; the number of medical schools rose from three to eleven, resulting in a five-fold increase in the number of physicians; and health insurance was extended to cover 82 percent of the population. The infant mortality rate of 3 5.6 per 1,000 population in 1978 was only one-fourth of the pre-World War II figure. Moreover, diphtheria, malaria and typhus had been eliminated.|NYU|<ref name=NYU/>}}

These improvements are also discussed by the Helsinki Committee:

{{quote|In socialist Yugoslavia, the situation radically improved. Up to 1950, there were only 5,138 doctors and 196 dentists, while already in 1952 there were 6,548 doctors (since the first generations of post-war medical students had graduated), while the number of dentists decreased to 184. Until 1987, the Yugoslav population was treated by 43,869 doctors and 9,232 dentists, which means that there was one doctor per 533 inhabitants and one dentist per 2,535 inhabitants. In 1950, compared to 1939, the number of hospital beds increased more than twofold – there were 53,760 hospital beds. By 1960, this number had also increased more than twofold, so that there were 102,329 hospital beds, while until 1988 this number increased to 142,957.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The socialists expanded healthcare access across the entire republic:

{{quote|In addition, thanks to the development of the road network, better communications and different social policy, health care became accessible to a significantly greater number of people. Apart from doctors, the number of other medical personnel also increased. According to the 1962 data, there was a total of 112,946 medical workers; in 1975 — 193,374, and in 1987 — 303,105. […] Understandably, the most advanced medical services were provided in urban centers, but spa rehabilitation centers were being developed and basic health care also reached rural areas. Until 1989, in addition to hospitals, 8,384 general and specialist medical centers and 4,425 dental surgeries were opened.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

They also significantly reduced infant and child mortality:

{{quote|The improvement of state-sponsored social care for the population also resulted in a great decline of infant and child mortality rates due to which the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had ranked among the most backward European countries.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

Life expectancy increased dramatically:

{{quote|Life expectancy was also significantly increasing. In 1931, the life expectancy for females and males was 46.1 and 45.1 years respectively. Already in 1948, the life expectancy levels had increased to 53 years for females and 48.6 years for males... Up to 1981, the life expectancy at the Yugoslav level increased to 73.2 for females and 67.7 for males. Its increase continued, so that in 1990 the expected life expectancy for females in Yugoslavia was 74.9 and for males 69.1 years, whereby regional differences were reduced.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The mortality rate declined rapidly in the people’s republic; eventually, mortality rates in the SFRY became lower than those in Western Europe:

{{quote|Finally, the mortality rate also declined: from 21 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants in 1921 to 15 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants until 1939. After 1945, the mortality rate continued to decline from the maximum 14.2 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants to the minimum 8.1 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants in 1966. At the end of the observation period, the mortality rate was 9 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants, thus being lower than in Germany (9.2), France (9.3) or Britain (11.2).|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

In summary:

{{quote|Nutrition and hygiene greatly influenced the health of the population. […] The post-war development of medicine and health institutions made possible a greater availability of doctors and an almost five-fold increase in the number of hospital beds (in 1986 there were about 143,000), while all services were covered by mandatory health insurance. Regular medical check-ups and mandatory vaccination of the population were also organised. Occupational medicine and an occupational safety system provided greater security for the employed. Pensions and homes for the elderly instilled confidence in end-of-life care. Thanks to better health and hygiene as well as improved socio-economic conditions, the estimated life expectancy for those born in the early 1980s was 68 years for men and 73 for women, that is, twenty or so years longer than that for the generations born in the 1940s. For the same reasons, infant mortality declined from 143 per thousand in the 1930s to 27 per thousand in the mid-1980s, ranging from 12.6 per thousand in Slovenia to 54.3 per thousand in Kosovo.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

===Education===
Another area in which the socialists dramatically improved Yugoslavia is that of education. Prerevolutionary Yugoslavia was extremely backwards with regards to education:

{{quote|In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, despite specific efforts to raise the educational level of the population, no significant breakthroughs in this field were made. In 1921, the number of illiterate persons older than 10 years was even 4,402,059 (50.5 percent of the population), while by the 1931 census their number had increased to 4,408,471 (44.6 percent of the population older than 10 years).|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The situation rapidly and dramatically improved in the people’s republic:

{{quote|According to the 1948 census already, this number was considerably smaller — 3,162,941 (25.4 percent of the population). This decrease was the result of a mass literacy campaign during the war and in its aftermath. [C]onsiderable efforts were made towards educating the population, so that the number of illiterate persons older than 10 years continually declined, accompanied by an increase in the total population, so that in 1961 there were 3,066,165 (21 percent) such persons; in 1971 — 2,549,571 (15.1 percent) and in 1981 — 1,780,902 (9.5 percent). Of this number 1,576,238 were aged over 39 or, in other words, born before 1945.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The SFRY drastically expanded access to education:

{{quote|After 1945, the educational network expanded rapidly, both in terms of the number of schools and in terms of teaching diversity, while the number of compulsory years of elementary education increased and in 1958 compulsory eight-year elementary education was introduced. In the territory of Yugoslavia in 1946, there were 10,666 elementary schools with 1,441,679 students and 23,270 teachers which, considering the number of teachers, was a big decline compared to 1939. By 1975/78, the number of elementary schools in Yugoslavia had grown to 13,442, but after that it started to decline, mostly due to the merger of smaller schools, which was made possible thanks to improved transport and greater student mobility.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

==Culture==
===Gender relations===
Prerevolutionary Yugoslavia held a strongly reactionary view of women’s rights, which was rapidly changed in the people’s republic:

{{quote|Women’s emancipation in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the result of individual efforts, while in socialist Yugoslavia it was the result of an organized policy. Although a feminist movement existed in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it remained on the margins of social influence, while the status of women was best expressed in the Civil Code under which a married woman was denied legal capacity. This anachronous legal provision was abolished as early as 1946, with termination of the validity of the Civil Code.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

The SFRY actively promoted women’s emancipation:

{{quote|Women understandably obtained the right to vote, marital relations were liberalized, the political activism of women was promoted through the Anti-Fascist Womens’ Front and other mass organizations, and women were increasingly assuming social and political functions, while the legal solutions in all spheres of life tried to ensure gender equality. A considerable increase in the number of divorces can also be considered an expression of women’s emancipation.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

Women’s educational access improved dramatically:

{{quote|At literacy courses conducted during the period 1948–1950 as much as 70 percent of attendees were women, although the literacy and schooling of female children met with resistance in conservative environments, mostly for religious and patriarchal reasons. From 1921 to 1981, the percentage of illiterate women declined from 60 percent to 14.7 percent.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

Women were integrated into the economy, from which they had previously been largely excluded:

{{quote|After 1945, the share of the male population in the economically active population was decreasing, while the rate of the economically active population within the female population was relatively stable and ranged from 30.7 percent to 35.1 percent. This means that the absolute number of the economically active female population (and thus the share of the economically active population) was increasing in proportion to an increase in the share of the female population in the total population. However, this was not the case with the male population. This is a very credible testimony to women’s emancipation compared to the prewar period, which was especially evident after 1961.|Helsinki Committee|<ref name=Helsinki/>}}

== External links ==
* [https://archive.org/stream/yugoslaviacountr00curt_0 Yugoslavia: a country study] 

== References ==

[[category:History]]

Israel

2021-01-05T15:56:38Z

CCPSHILL13:

'''Israel''', formally the '''State of Israel''', is a Jewish settler-colonial state in the Middle East that was established from the British territory of Mandatory Palestine in 1948. It was founded on the ideology of Zionism, which from its roots in the late 19th century sought a Jewish state in the area now occupied by Israel. In theory and in practice, this necessarily means degrading the local Arabs to second-class citizens, if not expulsion. Israel has massive amounts of US backing due to its strategic geopolitical position, though almost universally has antagonistic relations with socialist states, those of the past and present.

Israel is frequently condemned internationally and especially so by leftists, who widely consider it necessary to support Palestine in the face of Israel in order to both oppose Israeli/US imperialism on top of establishing solidarity with the Palestinian people.

==History==
In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire ruled over the land of Palestine, which at the time generally correlated to three districts: the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, the Nablus Sanjak, and the Acre Sanjak. The population of these three districts, according to the Ottoman census of 1878 and later scholar estimates of foreign-born Jews at the time, gave a population distribution of 86-87% Muslim, 9% Christian, and 4-5% Jewish.<ref>{{cite book|last=Dowty|first=Alan|title=Israel / Palestine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UMQf5aEcrn4C&pg=PA13|date=16 April 2012|publisher=Polity|isbn=978-0-7456-5611-3|pages=13}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Mendel|first=Yonatan|title=The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Security and Politics in Arabic Studies in Israel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lWKoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT188|date=5 October 2014|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-1-137-33737-5|pages=188|quote=Note 28: The exact percentage of Jews in Palestine prior to the rise of Zionism is unknown. However, it probably ranged from 2 to 5 per cent. According to Ottoman records, a total population of 462,465 resided in 1878 in what is today Israel/Palestine. Of this number, 403,795 (87 per cent) were Muslim, 43,659 (10 per cent) were Christian and 15,011 (3 per cent) were Jewish (quoted in Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine, Cambridge: Polity, 2008, p. 13). See also Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 43 and 124.}}</ref>
Everybody spoke Arabic as the daily language, and in Jerusalem the religious populations were roughly equal, where they lived together peacefully. Then in parallel to nationalist movements of other peoples in Europe at that time, Zionism arose which caused many Jews to come to the Palestinian region in hopes of establishing their own state — most envisioned a secular one. In 1917, the United Kingdom, hoping to gain the support of Jewish people, issued the Balfour declaration, promising "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". After the British wrought control of the region from the Ottoman Empire, they began segregating the region by establishing different institutions for Jews, Muslims, and Christians, making it difficult for these groups to cooperate and inciting division among them instead — part of the British plan to divide and rule. Meanwhile, the British also attempted to honor the Balfour Declaration's promise to "facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions", overseeing an influx of 320,000 Jews between 1920 and 1939. By 1938, Jews were just under 30% of the population of Palestine.

===Establishment and consolidation===
The growing Jewish population focused on purchasing land from absentee non-Palestinian Arab landowners, then evicting Palestinian farmers who were living and working there. By controlling both the land and the labor, the settlers hoped to establish a more secure community within Palestine, however this heightened tensions between Jewish people and Arab Palestinians. Simultaneously, the Palestinian Arabs were developing a national conscious of their own, which manifested in the Palestinian revolt against the British in 1936, which lasted until 1939 when it was brutally put down with the help of Jewish militias. In the aftermath however, the British issued a white paper limiting Jewish immigration to the area, further calling for the establishment of a joint Arab-Jewish state in the region within ten years. This pleased neither side, with Jews angry at the British for limiting Jewish migration when Jews most needed to leave Europe, and the Arab Palestinians being unhappy at the prospect of waiting ten years for a state. During [[World War II]] the region was actually rather peaceful, however afterwards tensions resumed, which in the post-war situation made the United Kingdom give up the land to the newly-created United Nations. In November of 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into separate Palestinian and Jewish states, roughly equal in size. The plan however ceded more area to Jewish settlers than what they actually controlled, and thus was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine,<ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|accessdate=24 July 2013|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=75|quote=" p. 75 The night of 29–30 November passed in the Yishuv’s settlements in noisy public rejoicing. Most had sat glued to their radio sets broadcasting live from Flushing Meadow. A collective cry of joy went up when the two-thirds mark was achieved: a state had been sanctioned by the international community. ; p. 396 The immediate trigger of the 1948 War was the November 1947 UN partition resolution. The Zionist movement, except for its fringes, accepted the proposal.”}}</ref><ref name="UN">[https://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/palestine/ch2.pdf ''The Question of Palestine'': Brochure DPI/2517/Rev.1: Chapter 2, ''The Plan of Partition and end of the British Mandate'']</ref> but rejected by Arab leaders, who further indicated that they were unwilling to accept any form of territorial division, arguing that it violated the principles of national self-determination in the UN Charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.<ref name="UN"/><ref>Sami Hadawi, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ghf_OBksgykC&pg=PA76 ''Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine,''] Olive Branch Press, (1989)1991 p.76.</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|accessdate=24 July 2013|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=66, 67, 72|quote=" p.66, at 1946 "The League demanded independence for Palestine as a “unitary” state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews." ; p.67, at 1947 "The League’s Political Committee met in Sofar, Lebanon, on 16–19 September, and urged the Palestine Arabs to fight partition, which it called “aggression,” “without mercy.” The League promised them, in line with Bludan, assistance “in manpower, money and equipment” should the United Nations endorse partition." ; p. 72, at December 1947 "The League vowed, in very general language, “to try to stymie the partition plan and prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine"}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Benny Morris|title=1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ|accessdate=24 July 2013|year=2008|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=73|quote="p73 All paid lip service to Arab unity and the Palestine Arab cause, and all opposed partition... p. 396 The immediate trigger of the 1948 War was the November 1947 UN partition resolution. … The Palestinian Arabs, along with the rest of the Arab world, said a flat “no”… The Arabs refused to accept the establishment of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. And, consistently with that “no,” the Palestinian Arabs, in November–December 1947, and the Arab states in May 1948, launched hostilities to scupper the resolution’s implementation ; p. 409 The mindset characterized both the public and the ruling elites. All vilified the Yishuv and opposed the existence of a Jewish state on “their” (sacred Islamic) soil, and all sought its extirpation, albeit with varying degrees of bloody-mindedness. Shouts of “Idbah al Yahud” (slaughter the Jews) characterized equally street demonstrations in Jaffa, Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad both before and during the war and were, in essence, echoed, usually in tamer language, by most Arab leaders. ”}}</ref>

Soon after the plan was announced, there erupted a war from 1947-1949, which was the culmination of six decades of conflict between the native Arabs and the Jewish minority. In the middle of the war, in 1948, the Jewish settlers began forced resettlement of the Arabs<ref>{{cite book|last=McDowall|first=David|title=The Palestinians|year=1987|publisher=Minority Rights Group Report no 24|isbn=978-0-946690-42-8|author2=Claire Palley|page=10}}</ref> and between 400 to 600 Palestinian villages were pillaged, with urban Palestinian lands almost entirely destroyed.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Bardi|first1=Ariel Sophia|title=The "Architectural Cleansing" of Palestine|journal=American Anthropologist|date=March 2016|volume=118|issue=1|pages=165–171|doi=10.1111/aman.12520}}</ref> Over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes and became stateless refugees,<ref>Benny Morris, 2004. [https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA602 ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited''], pp. 602–604. Cambridge University Press; {{ISBN|978-0-521-00967-6}}. ''"It is impossible to arrive at a definite persuasive estimate. My predilection would be to opt for the loose contemporary British formula, that of 'between 600,000 and 760,000' refugees; but, if pressed, 700,000 is probably a fair estimate"''; – [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v06&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=973 ''Memo US Department of State, 4 May 1949''], FRUS, 1949, p. 973.: ''"One of the most important problems which must be cleared up before a lasting peace can be established in Palestine is the question of the more than 700,000 Arab refugees who during the Palestine conflict fled from their homes in what is now Israeli occupied territory and are at present living as refugees in Arab Palestine and the neighbouring Arab states."''; – [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1949v06&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=984 ''Memorandum on the Palestine Refugee Problem, 4 May 1949''], FRUS, 1949, p. 984.: ''"Approximately 700,000 refugees from the Palestine hostilities, now located principally in Arab Palestine, Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria, will require repatriation to Israel or resettlement in the Arab states."''</ref>
calling the war ''Al-Nabka'', or "the catastrophe". After Israel won the war, it illegaly seized land from Palestine, increasing its own territory by a third. In the three years following the war, about 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel.<ref>Morris, 2001, pp. 259–60.</ref> This is part of a process called ''aliyah'', a Hebrew word meaning "ascent" which refers to the immigration of Jews to Israel. Israel's Law of Return gives Jews and their descendants automatic rights regarding residency and Israel citizenship, and encourages such immigration, which benefits the state by expanding its labor pool on top of providing more settlers to occupy Palestinian lands.

In 1948, Jordan would annex the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem, while Egypt would occupy the remaining Gaza strip the following year. Both countries would relinquish authority over Palestinian lands in 1967, when Israel seized them in the Six-Day War, which was itself a war of aggression dreamt up by Israeli hardliners who wanted to annex more land; exploiting people's fears over Egypt building up its military by (falsely) stating that Egypt was preparing for an invasion.<ref>[https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/a-50-year-occupation-israels-six-day-war-started-with-a-lie/ A 50-Year Occupation: Israel’s Six-Day War Started With a Lie]</ref> Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had this to say afterwards:
<blockquote>The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Gamal Abdel Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/21/world/excerpts-from-begin-speech-at-national-defense-college.html EXCERPTS FROM BEGIN SPEECH AT NATIONAL DEFENSE COLLEGE]</ref></blockquote>
Syria and Jordan joined the war in support of Egypt, however were pushed back and Syria's Golan Heights region was invaded and occupied. Israel would later vote to illegally annex this region, despite the action being universally condemned by the United Nations security organization.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993 and 1995, dividing the West Bank into three areas: Areas A, B, and C. The Palestinian Authority, an interim Palestinian government, was established as a result of these agreements and was granted limited control of Areas A and B. However, Palestinian control over the West Bank shrank once more, as the Accords gave Israel 60% of the region, designated as Area C, for administration.

Area A is 18% of the West Bank, with the Palestinian Authority controlling most affairs of this area, including internal security. Area B is 21% of the West Bank, wherein the Authority controls education, health, and economy. In both Areas A and B, however, Israeli authorities have full external security control, meaning the Israeli military can enter these areas at any time, typically to raid homes or detain individuals under the pretext of safety. Area C, on the other hand, is just about entirely controlled by Israel, despite part of it being intended to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority in 1999 as per the Oslo Accords — though this did not materialize. Area C is where the vast majority of the over 200 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank are, where more than 400,000 settlers live. According to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, Israel has restricted Palestinians from building on, and even accessing much of the land in Area C, regularly denying requests for building permits. According to the United Nations, Palestinians who attempt to build in the area are subject to home demolition orders, resulting in displacement and the disruption of livelihoods. B'Tselem further states that Israel’s blocking of Palestinian development in the area is also carried out by “designating large swaths of land as state land, survey land, firing zones, nature reserves and national parks". On the other hand, Israeli settlements there are allocated large plots of land that are connected to advanced infrastructure, such as Jewish-only bypass roads that circumvent Palestinian areas. Besides severe restrictions on planning and construction, Palestinians are also unable to access basic resources such as water, with the end result being the indirect expulsion of Palestinians from the area. According to B'Tselem and other groups, the forcible transfer of Palestinians from an occupied territory is considered a war crime, whether direct or indirect.

In 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to annex parts of Area C, in particular the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea region — this is despite the fact that Palestinians outnumber Israelis there nearly six-to-one, however there is pressure to annex it nonetheless as it is considered to be the most fertile land in the West Bank, which has also proven lucrative for Israeli companies that have been exploiting the area's land and natural resources.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200927163054/https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/11/what-are-areas-a-b-and-c-of-the-occupied-west-bank/ What are areas A, B, and C of the occupied West Bank?]</ref>

==Politics==
===Nation-State Bill===
In 2018, Israel adopted its 14th Basic Law, which is akin to a constitutional amendment, which declares that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country — essentially formalizing Israel as an explicit ethnostate. Arabic was stripped of its official language status and downgraded to a "special status" where for now, it would be continued to be used within Israeli institutions, however is implicitly to be phased out. The law was criticized by a multitude of different groups, including Israeli Arab political leaders, Israeli opposition politicians, liberal Jewish groups in the US, the European Union, and the Turkish foreign ministry. The 1.8 million Arabs in Israel, who are about 20% of the population, are thus to be excluded even further through this law.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200629003404/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/israel-adopts-controversial-jewish-nation-state-law EU leads criticism after Israel passes Jewish 'nation state' law]</ref>

===Relations with the socialist world===
The Soviet Union was one of the first nations to recognize Israel following its creation in 1948, however Stalin soon became angered with it due to its growing alliance with the United States, a reason which led the majority of socialist countries to oppose Israel as well. This would manifest in selling arms to Israel's enemies and even participating in conflicts against Israel more directly, such as in the Six-Day War where some Soviet Marines secretly joined in on the fighting.<ref>Ginor, Isabella and Remez, Gideon: ''The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973: The USSR's Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict'', p. 23</ref> The Soviet Union would later fight against Israel again in the War of Attrition from 1967-1970, and in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 both Cuba and North Korea would fight against Israel. North Korea has never recognized Israel, while Cuba withdrew recognition in 1973. The [[People's Republic of China]], on the other hand, recognizes Israel and has sold weapons to it for many years, and has further developed close strategic military links with the country as well. Bilateral military relations have also developed into a close strategic partnership, and the two countries also began an extensive military cooperation as early as the 1980s.<ref>{{cite web|title=U.S. up in arms over Sino-Israeli ties |url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL21Ak01.html |date=2004-12-21 |publisher=Asia Times|accessdate=2008-06-11}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Israel and China quietly form trade bonds (pg. 2) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/22/world/israel-and-china-quietly-form-trade-bonds.html?sec=technology&emc=rss&pagewanted=2%3D9B02E4DF1339F931A15754C0A963948260&partner=rssnyt |date=1985-07-22|work=The New York Times |accessdate=2008-06-11 | first=Thomas L. | last=Friedman}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=China's weapon chase|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/831668.stm |date=2000-07-12 |work=BBC News |accessdate=2008-06-11}}</ref>
However, China is also in favor of a two-state solution, and has repeatedly voiced concerns about Israel's plan of annexing parts of the West Bank. The Palestinian state that publically China favors, nonetheless, is one based 1967 borders, which though represents some reversal of Israeli occupation, is still far less than what the Palestinians had before Jewish seizures of land had begun, and is still considerably less than even the 1947 UN Partition Plan.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200904072220/https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-20/President-Xi-holds-phone-talks-with-Palestine-s-Abbas--ShN60WdjIk/index.html China reaffirms commitment to two-state solution to Palestinian issue]</ref>

===Relations with the United States===
Israel serves as a foothold in the Middle East for the [[US]], allowing for the destabilization of the region. Besides this, Israel is also a customer for weapons and other products. The close relations between the two countries are further due to the large amount of Jews in the US, as a total sum and proportionately. Jews therefore have more influence in the US than in many other countries, with the presence of Jews and anti-Semitism being more tangible to the rest of the populace than for instance the plight of Armenians. The Holocaust and empathy for it is also a large part of the American collective conscious. Places where genocides have occurred, such as Rwanda or the Ottoman Empire, are also generally felt to be more foreign to Americans than Germany. Though the Holocaust was in fact comparatively extensive and systematic, it has been cemented as ''the'' genocide through various institutions, including the media, and with this there is the attitude of singling out the Holocaust for punishment, since almost nothing was done about the Armenian Genocide (Hitler himself is widely believed to have said "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"). America also directly fought against Nazi Germany in what was seen as a battle of ideals, with Germany being the opponent to America and its ways. Though Jews were only about half of those who died in the Holocaust, they are emphasized since persecution of Slavs was downplayed because of the Cold War, with few caring about what had happened to homosexuals or Roma on top of this. There is also the belief of many Evangelical Christians, which existed long before the State of Israel, that the "reestablishment" of Israel in modern times must happen. For instance, Clark Clifford, an adviser to President Truman, stated:
<blockquote>There was language in Deuteronomy, [Truman] said, in which the Bible promised the Jews. The language went something like, 'The day will come when you will be led into the land of your fathers and it shall become your own.' He believed that he was going to do everything he could to help them get their homeland.</blockquote>
This sentiment nowadays has morphed into Evangelicals zealously defending Israeli policy against Palestinians and arguing that the State of Israel must exist for Jesus to come back.

There is the idea that Israel is an outpost of "Western civilization", hence phrases like "Israel is the only democracy in the region" (which besides being nonsense is implying that Arabs cannot build a functioning civilization). [[Ayn Rand]]'s support for Israel is a case in point, from a 1974 talk:
<blockquote>The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don’t want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don’t wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can.</blockquote>

==Zionist ideology==
Zionism is defined by Merriam Webster as the international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel.
Early ideologues of the Zionist movement were heavily influenced by European racialist ideas. As such, the idea of establishing a Jewish colony in Palestine was entirely rooted in European racialism.
An ideological and practical collaboration between European racialists and Zionists was formed on the basis of deporting Jews from Europe and the historical precedent of Zionists collaborating with European fascists continues into the modern day.

==Atrocities==
Israel regularly commits war crimes, with soldiers torturing and killing Palestinian children for entertainment rather frequently.<ref>[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinian-israel-children/palestinian-children-tortured-used-as-shields-by-israel-u-n-idUSBRE95J0FR20130620 Palestinian children tortured, used as shields by Israel: U.N.]</ref><ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/439554.stm Israeli 'torture' methods illegal]</ref> Through organizations like AIPAC, Israel lobbies the US military into conducting imperialism on its behalf, and also tries to get evangelicals into positions of power to benefit itself.

The rocket attacks, suicide bombings, etc. of militant Palestinian groups pale in comparison to the counter-insurgency that the IDF is capable of and has carried out since the establishment of the State of Israel. In large part, this is due to the funding Israel gets from the United States, and thus has a lot more firepower than Palestinian forces.

Groups such as Hamas tend to operate as guerillas in densely-populated areas, and because of this the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) sometimes uses the excuse that Hamas is using "human shields" to justify the destruction of Palestinian schools, hospitals, houses, and other buildings. There have also been plenty of times throughout Israel's history where the IDF has hit such buildings even when it was shown that there were no militants present. Whether or not Hamas actually does use human shields to a significant extent is debatable, but ironically the IDF has been proven to have done so itself extensively in the past.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130829184248/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/israel Israeli high court bans military use of Palestinians as human shields]</ref> The IDF also reportedly gives out orders to Palestinian neighborhoods to clear out just so that it will be easier to justify attacking Palestinian lands, claiming anyone who hasn't left as a combatant. This is in contrast to the narrative that Israel does this to minimize casualties for its own sake. Israel has been put under intense scrutiny for the ruthlessness with which it carries out attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, with many observers noting that Israel is very likely targeting civilians intentionally.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20140801103710/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/29/israel-gaza-infrastructure-blackouts-idf-civilian Israel is finding it harder to deny targeting Gaza infrastructure]</ref>

Israel also has a 26-foot-tall wall around the West Bank, which Palestine calls an attempt at isolating the West Bank which also effects its economy, making it weaker against future incursions by Israel. Israel however claims that it was built only to prevent suicide bombers from reaching Israel, which is in fact substantiated by evidence however very conveniently, also strangles the Palestinian economy and the livelihood of its people — the wall even blocks many people's access to medical care. Palestine has trouble representing itself in the United Nations as it is only partially recognized, though despite this the United Nations has repeatedly attempted to pass resolutions condemning Israel, even declaring the wall illegal. However, any resolution against Israel is vetoed by the United States, which is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and very close ally of Israel. In 2003, the United Nations reached out to the International Court of Justice, requesting an advisory opinion on the legality of the wall, to which the ICJ responded that the construction of the wall, even for just the stated reason of security that Israel put forth, was a violation of international law. Specifically, the Fourth Geneva Convention and the United Nations' articles on state responsibility. The ICJ struck down Israel's "self defense" argument, stating that the Palestinian territories are in fact occupied by Israel. This occupation was noted to have violated the UN charter and several UN resolutions which prohibit territorial annexations by force, further denying the people of Palestine the right of self-determination. As an occupying power, Israel was also called out for violating Paragraph 6, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which reads:

<blockquote>The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.<ref>https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/WebART/380-600056 Treaties, States parties, and Commentaries - Geneva Convention (IV) on Civilians, 1949 - 49 - Deportations, transfers, evacuations</ref></blockquote>

The Court further cited Article 25 of ''Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts'',<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200616191517/https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-178825/ ICJ Advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the OPT – Full text]</ref> which states that:

<blockquote>Necessity [which Israel argues is the reason for the wall and occupation] may not be invoked by a State as a ground for precluding the wrongfulness of an act not in conformity with an international obligation of that State<ref>https://www.law.umich.edu/facultyhome/drwcasebook/Documents/Documents/International%20Law%20Commission%202001%20Draft%20Articles%20on%20State%20Responsibility.pdf Article 25 of ''Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts''</ref></blockquote>

Israel, however, dismissed the jurisdiction of the court and no binding resolution was enacted.

With the backing of the United States, which has veto power and worldwide influence, Israel generally acts with impunity when violating international law. The issue of the wall is the only one to have made it to court, although there are many other crimes against humanity which Israel is guilty of.

During the COVID-19 pandemic Israel rushed to vaccinate its population, innoculating over 10% within two weeks of receiving vaccines. However, in this it neglected Palestinians in occupied areas, preferring its own settlers instead.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/03/palestinians-excluded-from-israeli-covid-vaccine-rollout-as-jabs-go-to-settlers]</ref>

==Legitimacy of Jewish claims on the region==
Exclusive Jewish claims on the land of Palestine are invalid on several levels. Firstly because Jews were not even the original people in the land, even by the account of their own mythology, as they came to Israel from Egypt. Furthermore, "historical claims to land" in any case is nonsense. Israel is supported by a mythic tale about how the Jewish god himself supposedly gave the Jews the land, even though most Jews (at least 70% in Israel) don't even believe in that religion.<ref>[https://www.haaretz.com/israel-china-among-least-religious-nations-1.5350737 Israel Among the Least Religious Countries in the World]</ref>

As it relates to the narrative of the Exodus, it's been postulated that the account of such is false on the sheer basis that Palestine was under the control of Egypt of the time, and thus the Jews were not actually escaping the Pharaoh. Some theories hold that the Jews come from southern Arabia properly.<ref>[https://youtube.com/watch?v=iSuKgz3LweE Forbbiden Pictures Revealed Saudi Arabia Mt. Sinai]</ref> Mainstream history and archaeology now consider the Exodus to not have happened in the manner described in the Torah, and the story to be a narrative put together between the 8th and 5th centuries BCE, based on earlier oral traditions and collective memories possibly dating as far back as the 13th century BCE.<ref>[http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Dkr7rVd3hAQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=McDermott,+John.+Reading+the+Pentateuch:+A+Historical+Introduction.+Paulist+Press,+2002&source=bl&ots=_CJWaODak1&sig=34MiohXpIkBpdL0HUxFfn_6ouT4&hl=en&ei=Xa3zS6TNOs6GkAW3uvDlDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=McDermott%2C%20John.%20Reading%20the%20Pentateuch%3A%20A%20Historical%20Introduction.%20Paulist%20Press%2C%202002&f=false John McDermott, "Reading the Pentateuch" (Paulist Press, 2002) p.22]</ref><ref>[https://www.academia.edu/11906343/Faust_A._2015_The_Emergence_of_Iron_Age_Israel_On_Origins_and_Habitus_in_T.E._Levy_T._Schneider_and_W.H.C._Propp_eds._Israel_s_Exodus_in_Transdisciplinary_Perspective_Text_Archeology_Culture_and_Geoscience_Springer_pp._467-482 Faust, A., 2015, The Emergence of Iron Age Israel: On Origins and Habitus, in T.E. Levy, T. Schneider and W.H.C. Propp (eds.), Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective: Text, Archeology, Culture and Geoscience, Springer, pp. 467-482]</ref><ref>Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman, ''The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts'', Free Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-684-86912-4.</ref>

==References==

[[Category:Asia]]
[[Category:West Asia]]
[[Category:Middle East]]
[[Category:States]]
[[Category:Capitalist states]]

Cuba

2021-01-05T15:55:57Z

CCPSHILL13:

The '''Republic of Cuba''' (sometimes abbreviated '''ROC''') is a [[people’s republic]] in the Caribbean that was led by [[Fidel Castro]]. They have withstood the longest blockade in all history.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Vandepitte|first=Marc|title=60 Years of Tropical Socialism. Assessment of the Cuban Revolution|url=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-nM3h|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190125011323/https://www.globalresearch.ca/60-years-tropical-socialism-assessment-cuban-revolution/5666259|archivedate=2019-01-25}}</ref>

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan stated in April 11, 2000 that the Republic of ‘Cuba’s achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [The Republic of Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities — health, education, and literacy.’

== History ==
Cuba was colonized by the Spaniards during the nineteenth century, and its prime exports were coffee, sugar, and tobacco. The Spanish aristocracy imported a great deal of African slaves for this colony. Political tendencies such as national independence and other (mild) reformisms became popular, but none was indigenous. Around 1850 the colony received an influx of lower-class Spanish immigrants, but even they were treated poorly by the aristocracy: sixteen or eighteen hour workdays, seven days weekly, were common, and work conditions in for example the tobacco industry were rife with poor pay, monotony, and health hazards. [[Mutualism]] grew in popularity, and Cuban workers held their first [[strike]] in 1865. By the 1880s, the profusion of [[libertarian socialist]] propaganda in the form of pamphlets and newspapers that arrived regularly and clandestinely from Barcelona reinforced the transmission of socialist ideas. As a result a new wave of Cuban workers proceeded to involve themselves in the [[Alianza Revolucionaria Socialista]] (ARS). Anarchists organized all of the strikes that shook the Cuban tobacco industry at the end of the decade. Socialists were widely divided on the importance of either obtaining independence from Iberia or concentrating on assisting other workers. Finally in the late 1890s the American ruling class successfully intimidated the Spanish aristocracy into transferring their colonies over to them, including Cuba.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Fernández|first=Frank|chapter=1|chapterurl=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement#toc7|title=Cuban Anarchism: The History of A Movement|url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement|year=2001}}</ref>

===Cold War era===
In spite of the good GDP, the [[neocolony]] was rife not only with poor working conditions but also gambling, drugs, unwilling sex work, and political corruption, all before the [[Cuban Revolution]]:

{{quote|Opinions aside, although Cuba ranked as one of the most prosperous developing countries in the 1950s based on gross domestic product (GDP), social indicators for this period portray dismal social conditions, particularly among the rural peasants.|Andrea Carter|<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Carter|first=Andrea|coauthors=Søren E. Frandsen, Arie Kuyvenhoven, Joachim von Braun|editor=Per Pinstrup‐Andersen|title=Cuba’s Food‐Rationing System and Alternatives|url=https://www.coralgablescavaliers.org/ourpages/users/099346/IB%20History/Americas/Cuba/Cuba_s%20Food%20Rationing.pdf|location=New York|publisher=Cornell University|year=2013|page=3}}</ref>}}

It was a popular tourist resort for the white bourgeoisie,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Farber|first=Samuel|title=Cuba Before the Revolution|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/cuban-revolution-fidel-castro-casinos-batista|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160420173959/https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/cuban-revolution-fidel-castro-casinos-batista/|archivedate=2016-04-20}}</ref> and possibly as many as 91% of the rural workforce was malnourished.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Carter|first=Andrea|coauthors=Søren E. Frandsen, Arie Kuyvenhoven, Joachim von Braun|editor=Per Pinstrup‐Andersen|title=Cuba’s Food‐Rationing System and Alternatives|url=https://www.coralgablescavaliers.org/ourpages/users/099346/IB%20History/Americas/Cuba/Cuba_s%20Food%20Rationing.pdf|location=New York|publisher=Cornell University|year=2013|page=2}}</ref> In July 1953 a crew of revolutionaries, including Fidel Castro, assaulted Fort Moncada, but the move failed. Nonetheless, the Cuban lower classes were growing increasingly restless, and consequently the neocolonial government (headed by Fulgencio Batista) suppressed trades unions, strikes, and censored much of the press.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=The Truth About Cuban Socialism|url=https://wp.me/p8zBok-tk|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170422181117/http://writetorebel.com/2017/03/15/the-truth-about-cuban-socialism|archivedate=2017-04-22}}</ref> Castro pretended to be noncommunist in hopes of discouraging foreign aid to the neocolony. Nevertheless, by January 1959 the Cuban masses had successfully overthrown the neocolonial government and Batista fled to Europe. Statistics indicate that the antisocialist dictatorship caused somewhere between 1,000–20,000 deaths,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Swanger|first=Joanna|chapter=seven|title=Rebel Lands of Cuba: The Campesino Struggles of Oriente and Escambray, 1934–1974|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hNNbCQAAQBAJ|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2015|page=243|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=hNNbCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA243|ISBN=9781498506601}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=|first=Lillian|chapter=1|title=Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nw9_A3Wk7PMC|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|year=2012|page=43|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nw9_A3Wk7PMC&pg=PA43|ISBN=9780807835630}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Wickham-Crowley|first=Timothy|chapter=3|title=Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cFIyrzz43iIC|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|year=1990|page=63|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=cFIyrzz43iIC&pg=PA63|ISBN=9780873327053}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Clodfelter|first=Micheal|edition=4th|title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kNzCDgAAQBAJ|location=North Carolina|publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|year=2017|page=637|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=kNzCDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA637|ISBN=9781476625850}}</ref><ref>Conflict, Order, and Peace in the Americas; Samuel Shapiro, Invisible Latin America, The World Guide 1997/98: A View from the South; H. A. Reitsma & J. M. G. Kleinpenning, The Third World in Perspective</ref> but the CIA has suggested that 20,000 is actually only one portion of the total deaths.<ref name=compared>{{cite web|title=Political Murders in Cuba--Batista Era Compared with Castro Regime|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79T00429A000300030015-8.pdf|date=1963-01-21}}</ref>

While the upper classes left in anger and relinquished much of their property, which the Cubans subsequently reappropriated,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Huberman|first1=Leo|last2=Marlor Sweezy|first2=Paul|chapter=|title=Socialism in Cuba|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aaPaAAAAMAAJ|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1969|pages=110–1}}</ref> a minority of anarchists were also dissatisfied with the revolution’s course and either quit the Republic of Cuba in disappointment or committed acts of terrorism against the state.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Fernández|first=Frank|chapter=4|chapterurl=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement#toc7|title=Cuban Anarchism: The History of A Movement|url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement|year=2001}}</ref> Nevertheless, the lower classes overall favored the new administration, and they have shown no inclination to use explosives in order to commit terrorist attacks against the government despite many exile claims to the contrary;<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Minutes of Meeting of the Special Group (Augmented) on Operation MONGOOSE, 6 September 1962|url=https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32105754.pdf|date=1962-09-06}}</ref> a State Department memo in 1960 admitted that anticommunists should not intervene militarily but rather by economic means, as the ‘majority of Cubans support Castro.’<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|title=Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Cuba|url=https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499|volume=VI}}</ref> In January 1963, the CIA conceded that despite several hundred executions, ‘the large-scale campaigns of murders and terrorism characteristic of the last years of the Batista regime have not occurred during the Castro regime.’<ref name=compared/> Education and healthcare in the Republic of Cuba improved massively,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Huberman|first1=Leo|last2=Marlor Sweezy|first2=Paul|chapter=|title=Socialism in Cuba|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aaPaAAAAMAAJ|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1969|page=23}}</ref> as did agricultural output,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Huberman|first1=Leo|last2=Marlor Sweezy|first2=Paul|chapter=|title=Socialism in Cuba|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aaPaAAAAMAAJ|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1969|page=113}}</ref> but in some respects progress was slow due to the excess of unfinished projects.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Huberman|first1=Leo|last2=Marlor Sweezy|first2=Paul|chapter=|title=Socialism in Cuba|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aaPaAAAAMAAJ|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1969|pages=168–9}}</ref> Some Western antisocialists established a programme in the 1960s to provide economic growth, employment, agrarian reform, education, housing, healthcare, more equitable distributions of national income, and other benefits to the people of Central and South America in order to discourage their interest in communism. But in 1970, researchers Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis discovered that the Republic of Cuba actually came closer to these goals than most of the programme’s members.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Levinson|first1=Jerome|last2=de Onís|first2=Juan|edition=second|title=The Alliance that Lost Its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yFuwAAAAIAAJ|location=Chicago|publisher=Quadrangle Books|year=1970|page=56|ISBN=9780812901511}}</ref>

{{quote|The Revolution has been wildly audacious, experimental, and diverse. It has evolved under often adverse circumstances. It created unprecedented socioeconomic equality, and showed the world that it is indeed possible for a poor, Third World country to feed, educate, and provide health care for its population. It fostered astonishing artistic and intellectual creativity, while also creating stifling bureaucracies and limits on freedoms that many in the United States take for granted. It also showed just how extraordinarily difficult it is to overcome economic underdevelopment. […] If we want to imagine a better world for all of us, I can think of no better place to start than by studying the Cuban Revolution.|Aviva Chomsky|<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Chomsky|first=Aviva|editor=Jürgen Buchenau|edition=second|chapter=9|title=A History of the Cuban Revolution|url=https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4447044/mod_resource/content/1/A-History-of-the-Cuban-Revolution.pdf|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc.|year=2015|pages=172–3|ISBN=978-1-118-94228-4}}</ref>}}

===Modern era===
After the [[short twentieth century]], the republic was left with almost no other [[planned economies]] to turn to in case of emergency, and nobody was interested in purchasing their machinery. Hence a food crisis commenced<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Rutledge|first=Kristen|title=Thousands of Cubans Losing Their Sight Because Of Malnutrition|url=https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=13310|year=1993|accessdate=2020-02-10}}</ref> and many people wanted to leave, an option which the Cuban administration deregulated only to be further obstructed by the American ruling class.<ref>{{safesubst:cite news|last=Franklin|first=Jane|title=The politics behind Clinton's Cuba policy|url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-08-30-1994242173-story.html|date=1994-08-30|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190513065405/https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-08-30-1994242173-story.html|archivedate=2019-05-13}}</ref><ref>Parenti, Michael, The Face of Imperialism, p. 111.</ref> During this time the same ruling class also arrested and permanently imprisoned five Cubans for counterterrorism (albeit under the arbitrary accusations that they were violating travel laws and intended to commit conspiracies against the U.S.).<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Cuban Political Prisoners ... in the United States – William Blum| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://williamblum.org/essays/read/cuban-political-prisoners-...-in-the-united-states}}</ref> Medical data indicate that at least 47,000<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=L.|first=Eisenberg|title=The sleep of reason produces monsters -- human costs of economic sanctions.|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9110916|journal=The New England Journal of Medicine|date=1997-04-24|volume=336|number=17|pages=1248–50|doi=10.1056/NEJM199704243361711}}</ref> youths died as a result of the sanctions that antisocialists imposed on the Republic of Cuba.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Gordon|first=Joy|title=A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy: The Ethics of Economic Sanctions|journal=Ethics & International Affairs|url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1747-7093.1999.tb00330.x|volume=13|issue=1|year=1999|pages=123–142|doi=10.1111/j.1747-7093.1999.tb00330.x}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Hidalgo|first1=Vilma|last2=Martinez|first2=Milagros|title=Is the U.S. Economic Embargo on Cuba Morally Defensible?|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/20345/pdf|journal=A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture|volume=3|number=4|year=2000|pages=100–120|doi=10.1353/log.2000.0005}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Nichols|first=Dick|chapter=|title=The Cuban Revolution: Defying Imperialism, Building the Alternative|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r0GHscf95qQC|location=|publisher=Resistance Books|year=2005 |page=|pages= |pageurl= |isbn=1876646462 |oclc= |text=}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=The Impact of the U.S. Embargo on Health & Nutrition in Cuba|url=https://www.medicc.org/resources/documents/embargo/The%20impact%20of%20the%20U.S.%20Embargo%20on%20Health%20&%20Nutrition%20in%20Cuba.pdf|location=Washington|publisher=American Association for World Health|year=1997|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20081007184223/http://www.medicc.org/resources/documents/embargo/The%20impact%20of%20the%20U.S.%20Embargo%20on%20Health%20&%20Nutrition%20in%20Cuba.pdf|archivedate=2008-10-07}}</ref> The upper classes were betting that the Republic of Cuba would soon collapse.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Quinn|first=Shane|title=Collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuban Revolution Survives Despite Widely Held Predictions|url=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-nMS1|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101004758/https://www.globalresearch.ca/collapse-of-the-soviet-union-cuban-revolution-survives-despite-widely-held-predictions/5669405|archivedate=2020-01-01}}</ref> International pressure from the white bourgeoisie continues to place the republic under strain.

{{quote|The difficult challenges facing Cuba as it moves forward are not unlike those facing social benefits systems everywhere: budget-buster pension and health costs, increasing demands due to economic crisis, demands to improve both efficiency and effectiveness. All face the challenge of engaging the participation of consumers and require the development of effective mechanisms for monitoring access, reach, and quality of services at the community level, particularly for vulnerable groups. But, unlike the people of many other countries, Cubans face these challenges as a people who have constructed a society that is equitable and humane. Those values and that experience inspire and inform new systems as Cuba moves into the future.|Oxfam America|<ref name=Oxfam>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Uriarte|first=Miren|title=Social Policy at the Crossroads: Maintaining Priorities, Transforming Practice|url=https://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/research_reports/art3670.html/OA-Cuba_Social_Policy_at_Crossroads-en.pdf|publisher=Oxfam America|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090303221405/http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/research_reports/art3670.html/OA-Cuba_Social_Policy_at_Crossroads-en.pdf|archivedate=2009-03-03}}</ref>}}

== Politics ==
U.S. officials have privately stated that there ‘is no question that the bureaucracy operates relatively freely and probably makes decisions without consulting Castro.’<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=CASTRO|url=https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32112987.pdf|year=1975|page=7}}</ref> The Communist Party does not select candidates, nor does it decide elections, nor does it track voters, nor does it participate in the elections at all; individuals directly nominate any adults whom they think should be candidates.<ref>https://invidio.us/embed/2aMsi-A56ds</ref> The Republic of Cuba has abolished corruption through the semidirect democracy of electing people to the National Assembly of Peoples Power.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Roman|first=Peter|title=People’s Power: Cuba’s Experience with Representative Government|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|year=2003|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFQ7bVuGkBsC|page=103|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFQ7bVuGkBsC&pg=PA103|ISBN=0-7425-2564-3}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Arnold|first=August|title=Cuba’s Municipal Elections|url=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-50a|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130204012021/http://www.globalresearch.ca/cuba-s-municipal-elections/19230|archivedate=2013-02-04}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Saney|first=Isaac|title=Cuba, Human Rights and Self-Determination|url=https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=96454|date=2017-10-06|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180106213347/https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/06/cuba-human-rights-and-self-determination|archivedate=2018-01-06}}</ref>

{{quote|Most Cubans I speak to support the reshaping of the economy and the greater ties with the US. Just like us, they want to better their lives, they want a better mobile phone, a bigger house, they want to travel. But none of them would want to live in a Cuba, no matter how rich, without universal free education, free healthcare, cheap public transport and the lowest rates of violent crime in the Americas. None of them. This is Fidel’s legacy.|The Independent|<ref name=Shaikh>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Shaikh|first=Thair|title=My family live in Cuba – the people may be poor, but Fidel Castro's legacy will live on|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/fidel-castro-death-cuba-embargo-peasants-poor-urban-areas-modernisation-a7441036.html|date=2016-11-26|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20161127141225/http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/fidel-castro-death-cuba-embargo-peasants-poor-urban-areas-modernisation-a7441036.html|archivedate=2016-11-27}}</ref>}}

Cubans are significantly more satisfied with their political system than U.S. citizens are with theirs. The same holds true for the healthcare and education systems:

{{quote|More than two-thirds of Cubans—68 percent—are satisfied with their health care system. About 66 percent of Americans said the same in a November 2014 Gallup poll. Seventy-two percent of Cubans are satisfied with their education system, while an August 2014 Gallup poll found that less than half of Americans—48 percent—are “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied with the quality of K-12 education.|New Republic|<ref name=Gillin>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Gillin|first=Joel|title=Cubans Are More Satisfied With Their Political System Than Americans Are|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/121502|date=2015-04-09|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150410075324/http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121502/cuban-poll-shows-more-political-satisfaction-americans|archivedate=2015-04-10|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref>}}

The Cuban populace also recently ratified a new constitution, which reasserts the role of the Communist Party, and affirms that the Republic of Cuba is a socialist state advancing towards communism. The constitution also includes some political and economic reforms, such as the recognition of small businesses, and the presumption of innocence in the court system. Independent evidence supports the official vote tally (approximately 90% support):

{{quote|The independent online newspaper ''El Toque'' asked readers to send in local tallies, a dozen of which showed overwhelming support for ratification.|Reuters|<ref name=idUSKCN1QE22Y>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Frank|first=Marc|title=Cubans overwhelmingly ratify new socialist constitution|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-constitution-referendum-idUSKCN1QE22Y|date=2019-02-25|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref>}}

Yoani Sanchez, sometimes known as ‘Cuba’s best-known dissident,’ witnessed the count at her local polling station, reporting the results as ‘400 yes votes, 25 no votes and 4 blank ballots.’ This suggests that the official results were correct, and the Cuban people did overwhelmingly support the new constitution.<ref name=idUSKCN1QE22Y/>

While the Cuban people largely support economic reform and normalization of relations with the United States, their overall support for the achievements of their planned economy remains high:

{{quote|Objective indicators, like the country’s low infant mortality and illiteracy rates, have long shown that Cuba has relatively strong social services. This new polling data suggests that Cubans are well aware of it.|New Republic|<ref name=Gillin/>}}

=== Opposition ===
A common argument against communism is that the Cuban exile population (and their antisocialism) ‘proves’ that communism is only harmful. This omits a key fact: the exiles come primarily from the wealthy class of the neocolonial era. A study conducted by researchers from Stanford University (published in the Oxford University Press), entitled ''Cubans in Exile: A Demographic Analysis'', discusses this topic:

{{quote|Comparison of the occupational, age, and educational composition of the community with the Cuban population indicates that the refugees are better educated and come from higher status occupations than the population from which they have exiled themselves. [M]ore recent exiles are more representative of the Cuban population, but the rural worker is still vastly underrepresented.|Oxford University Press|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Fagen|first1=Richard|last2=Brody|first2=Richard|title=Cubans in Exile: A Demographic Analysis|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/799194|journal=Social Problems|publisher=Oxford University Press|volume=11|number=4|year=1964|pages=389–401|doi=10.2307/799194}}</ref>}}

Another factor to consider is that the exodus occurred during a time of conflict and difficulty for Cuba; the revolution was still very new, and the government had not entirely established itself yet. This likely explains why there were some outliers (i.e. exiles from the working-class population), although the majority were still from the wealthy sectors of Cuban society.

==Foreign policy==
Massive Soviet military assistance enabled Cuba to project power abroad. It was involved in a broad range of military and humanitarian activities in [[Guinea-Bissau]], [[Syria]], [[Angola]], [[Algeria]], [[South Yemen]], [[North Vietnam]], [[Laos]], [[Zaire]], [[Iraq]], [[Libya]], [[Zanzibar]], [[Ghana]], [[Equatorial Guinea]], [[Eritrea]], [[Somalia]], [[Ethiopia]], [[Congo-Brazzaville]], [[Sierra Leone]], [[Cape Verde]], [[Nigeria]], [[Benin]], [[Cameroon]], [[Zimbabwe]] and [[Mozambique]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College |date=1977 |publisher=U.S. Army War College |page=13 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kMdLAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA13&lpg=#v=onepage}}</ref> Cuba sent more than 300,000 of its citizens to fight in Angola (1975–91) and defeated South Africa's armed forces using tanks, planes, and artillery.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Farber |first1=Samuel |title=Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment |date=2011 |publisher=Haymarket Books |page=105}}</ref> Cuban intervention in Angola contributed to the downfall of the apartheid regime in [[South Africa]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Cuban Identity and the Angolan Experience |date=2012 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |page=179}}</ref> The presence of a substantial number of blacks and mulattos in the Cuban armed forces (40–50 percent in Angola)<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Valenta|first1=Jiri|title=The Soviet-Cuban Alliance in Africa and the Caribbean|date=1981|page=45}}</ref> helped give teeth to Castro's campaign against racism and related prejudice like xenophobia.

==Economy==
Since the very beginning, the Cuban revolution has been committed to the improvement of life for the people in both the economic and social spheres:

{{quote|When Cuba’s revolution came to power in 1959, its model of development aimed to link economic growth with advances in social justice. From the start, transforming economic changes were accompanied by equally transforming social initiatives. For example, in 1959, Cuba carried out a profound agrarian reform which ended ''latifundia'' [land estate system] in the island and distributed land to thousands of formerly landless small farmers.|Oxfam America|<ref name=Oxfam/>}}

The Republic of Cuba is a [[planned economy]], but it did reintroduce some liberal reforms in the 1990s. Nevertheless, today they have a body of elected delegates who direct the economy away from the established framework and into one that successfully allows for workers’ self-management.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Reid|first=Stuart|title=Cooperatives in Cuba|url=https://www.grocer.coop/node/7763|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101005559/https://www.grocer.coop/node/7763|archivedate=2020-01-01}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Wolfe|first=Jonathan|title=Cooperatives in Cuba|url=https://www.pri.org/node/72415|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150227161445/http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-02-25/cuban-cooperatives-present-new-economic-model|archivedate=2015-02-27}}</ref> With over five thousand in existence, the cooperatives have already achieved a prominent rôle in the planned economy over the last decade and are likely to develop further in the previsible future.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Pineiro|first=Camila|title=All Things Co-op: Cuba Cooperatives
|url=https://www.democracyatwork.info/atc_cuba_cooperatives|date=2019-12-17|accessdate=2020-01-15}}</ref> Despite economic pressure, the Republic of Cuba has largely succeeded in providing a decent quality of life for its people. The unemployment rate remains below 3%, as it has for decades.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=UNData|url=https://data.un.org/en/iso/cu.html|accessdate=2020-02-11}}</ref>

The republic currently has one of the lowest malnutrition rates of any nation;<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=2019 Global Hunger Index|url=https://www.globalhungerindex.org/cuba.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20191224025555/https://www.globalhungerindex.org/cuba.html|archivedate=2019-12-24|accessdate=2020-02-24}}</ref> all citizens are legally entitled to food.<ref>https://invidio.us/embed/JSEIKHcYtQU</ref> It is currently a world leader in organic farming,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba Leads the World in Organic Farming|url=https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=354|year=2001|accessdate=2020-01-15}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Ruxton|first=Caitlin|editor=Chip McAuley|title=Cuba Years Ahead in Eat Local Movement|url=https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=5636|date=2009-10-22|accessdate=2020-01-15}}</ref> and Havana in particular has a good deal of food providers.<ref>https://invidio.us/embed/YoCYIRUXE3A</ref> Nevertheless, the World Food Program has claimed that 70–80% of its domestic food requirements derive from imports, with most slated for social protection programmes,<ref name=WFP>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba Has "Largely Eliminated Hunger and Poverty"|url=https://www.wfp.org/node/111|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref> but the republic has been reducing its reliance on foreign imports for a couple decades now.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=A. Altieri|first1=Miguel|last2=R. Funes-Monzote|first2=Fernando|title=The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture|journal=The Monthly Review|url=https://monthlyreview.org/?p=7672|volume=63|number=8|date=2012-01-01|accessdate=2020-02-09}}</ref> Data from the World Health Organization indicate that as of 2017 they have a malnutrition rate of less than 2.00.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = MALNUTRITION DEATH RATE BY COUNTRY| work = World Life Expectancy| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrition/by-country}}</ref><ref>https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death#malnutrition</ref> The FAO concluded that the Republic of Cuba’s ‘remarkably low percentages of child malnutrition put [them] at the forefront of developing countries’<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Nutrition country profiles: Cuba summary| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/nutrition/cub_en.stm}}</ref> and World Food Program USA has likewise concluded that over the last five decades, their ‘comprehensive social protection programs’ have ‘largely eliminated hunger and poverty.’<ref name=WFP/> <ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba - World Food Program USA|url=https://www.wfpusa.org/?p=71531|date=2016-08-03|accessdate=2020-02-24}}</ref> As of 2018 the Global Hunger Index has rated the Republic of Cuba as ‘low’ on their index.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = 2018 Global Hunger Index Results - Global, Regional, and National Trends - Global Hunger Index - peer-reviewed annual publication designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels| work = Global Hunger Index - A Peer-Reviewed Publication| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://www.globalhungerindex.org/results}}</ref> According to a report from the United States Department of Agriculture, the average Cuban consumes approximately 3300 calories per day, far above the Latin American and Caribbean average, and only slightly lower than in the United States. Approximately two thirds of nutritional needs are met by monthly food rations, while the rest is bought independently. The report also states:

{{quote|The Cuban economy has made remarkable progress toward recovery from the economic disaster generated by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.|USDA|<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba’s Food & Agriculture Situation Report|url=http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/cuba/CubaSituation0308.pdf|year=2008|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131105150934/http://www.fas.usda.gov/itp/cuba/CubaSituation0308.pdf|archivedate=2013-11-05}}</ref>}}

Oil accounted for about 85% of their electricity generated in 2013, but they have set a goal of producing 24% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030 in an effort to diversify their energy portfolio. The state-owned power company Unión Eléctrica has been planning thirteen wind projects with a total capacity of 633 MW, and the republic plans to add 755 MW of biomass-fired capacity, 700 MW of solar capacity, and 56 MW of hydroelectric power as well.
The republic’s demand for electricity has been growing as a result of new economic reform, but production has remained stagnant, causing occasional blackouts and other deficiencies. Consequently they have taken measures to reduce the amount of electricity that the government consumes so that the private sector can remain safe from blackouts or other deficiencies.<ref>https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.php?iso=CUB</ref>

The Republic of Cuba’s successful models of sustainable development — in areas of food, housing and health — have been widely replicated throughout Latin America.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Yaffe|first=Helen|title=Cuba's green revolution — achieving sustainability|url=https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/cubas-green-revolution-â-achieving-sustainability|issue=830|date=2010-03-13|accessdate=2020-01-15}}</ref> The Global Footprint Network has evaluated them as being ecologically sustainable (in contrast to the U.S.A.),<ref>https://i.redd.it/trygb2yptn721.jpg</ref> in fact it is only country in the world that meets WWF conditions of sustainable development,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Diep|first=Amanda|title=Only eight countries meet two key conditions for sustainable development as United Nations adopts Sustainable Development Goals|url=https://www.footprintnetwork.org/?p=8064|date=2015-09-23|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=As World Burns, Cuba Number One for Sustainable Development|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/As-World-Burns-Cuba-Number-1-for-Sustainable-Development-WWF-20161027-0018.html|date=2016-10-27|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190502054253/https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/As-World-Burns-Cuba-Number-1-for-Sustainable-Development-WWF-20161027-0018.html|archivedate=2019-05-02}}</ref> for both the Human Development Index and Ecological Footprint.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=José Cabello|first1=Juan|last2=Garcia|first2=Dunia|last3=Sagastume|first3=Alexis|last4=Priego|first4=Rosario|last5=Hens|first5=Luc|last6=Vandecasteele|first6=Carlo
|title=An approach to sustainable development: the case of Cuba|journal=Environment, Development and Sustainability|volume=14|publisher=Springer Netherlands|issue=4|url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-012-9338-8|date=2012-02-19|pages=573–591|doi=10.1007/s10668-012-9338-8|ISSN=1573-2975}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Hickel|first=Jason|title=The sustainable development index: Measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the anthropocene|journal=Ecological Economics|volume=167|date=2020-01-01|url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919303386|doi=10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.05.011}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Christine|first=Ro|title=Every Country Is Developing, According To The New Sustainable Development Index|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2019/12/01/every-country-is-developing-according-to-the-new-sustainable-development-index|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20191202013719/https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2019/12/01/every-country-is-developing-according-to-the-new-sustainable-development-index|archivedate=2019-12-02}}</ref> They have 30.6% forest coverage due to their reforestation programme<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba has 30.6% Forest Coverage Due to Reforestation Program|url=https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cuba-has-30.6-Forest-Coverage-Due-to-ReforestationProgram-20160825-0003.html|date=2016-08-25|accessdate=2020-01-15}}</ref> for example, and the ''Guardian'' has stated:

{{quote|[T]he evidence suggests that Cuba has made excellent progress towards the MDGs in the last decade, building on what are already universally acknowledged to be outstanding achievements in equitable health and education standards. According to a new MDG Report Card by the Overseas Development Institute, Cuba is among the 20 best performing countries in the world.|Jonathan Glennie|<ref name=Glennie>{{safesubst:cite news|last=Glennie|first=Jonathan|title=Why we should applaud Cuba’s progress towards the millennium development goals|url=https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/30/millennium-development-goals-cuba|date=2010-09-30|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130916223135/http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/30/millennium-development-goals-cuba|archivedate=2013-09-16|accessdate=2020-02-11}}</ref>}}

This also includes a statement from a Cuban economist on how this progress is made:

{{quote|The Cuban economy is planned and we redistribute income from the most dynamic sectors, which generate most foreign exchange, towards those that are less dynamic but necessary for the country. That’s how we maintain a budget to keep health and education high quality and free of charge to the user.|Anonymous Cuban|<ref name=Glennie/>}}

== Infrastructure ==
The revolution greatly improved the housing situation in the Republic of Cuba, and also brought significant urban development:

{{quote|Initiatives in the cities were no less ambitious. Urban reform brought a halving of rents for Cuban tenants, opportunities for tenants to own their housing, and an ambitious program of housing construction for those living in marginal shantytowns. New housing, along with the implementation of measures to create jobs and reduce unemployment, especially among women, rapidly transformed the former shantytowns.|Oxfam America|<ref name=Oxfam/>}}

Likewise, the social security and pensions system in the republic has drastically improved since the revolution:

{{quote|Both coverage and distribution have improved significantly since the revolution. With a pension system since the 1930s, Cuba was one of the first Latin American countries to establish one. It consisted of independent pension funds and by 1959 covered about 63% of workers, but the system varied greatly in terms of benefits and relied almost exclusively on workers’ contributions. Since 1959, the program has been funded completely by the government. In 1958, about 63% of the labor force was covered for old age, disability, and survivors insurance; today, the coverage is universal.|Oxfam America|<ref name=Oxfam/>}}

In 1959, approximately 50% of Cuban households had access to electricity. By 1989, more than 95% of households had access to electricity, including in rural areas, which had previously been almost entirely deprived.<ref name=EDF>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Panfil|first1=Michael|last2=Whittle|first2=Daniel|last3=Silverman-Roati|first3=Korey|title=The Cuban Electric Grid: Lessons and Recommendations for Cuba’s Electric Sector|url=https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/cuban-electric-grid.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20171109080354/https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/cuban-electric-grid.pdf|archivedate=2017-11-09|page=8}}</ref> They achieved full electrification by the 2010s,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|editor=Liu|title=Cuba achieves full electrification in 2018|url=http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-12/15/c_137676260.htm|date=2018-12-15|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20181215092154/http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-12/15/c_137676260.htm|archivedate=2018-12-15}}</ref> and have surpassed many of their neighbors in terms of electricity generation:

{{quote|By 1990 Cuba had roughly 1.8 times more generating capacity per person than the Dominican Republic and 1.3 times more than Jamaica.|Environmental Defense Fund|<ref name=EDF/>}}

In Cuba, access to clean water and sanitation has drastically improved since the revolution. As of 2018, 96.4% of the urban population and 89.8% of the rural population had access to clean drinking water, while 94.4% of the urban population and 89.1% of the rural population had access to improved sanitation services.<ref>https://data.un.org/en/iso/cu.html</ref>

{{quote|This is Fidel’s legacy. Clean water and electricity for all. And universal free education and healthcare. Cubans often joke that they’re healthier and better educated than Americans despite the 50-year-plus US blockade.

So for me, rural Cuba is Fidel’s Cuba. His ideals live on here — and the rural poor of Cuba have benefited the most from his cradle-to-grave policies. Here, the grandchildren of peasants really do go on to become consultant surgeons and commercial airline pilots.|The Independent|<ref name=Shaikh/>}}

=== Health ===
{{quote|Whether it is a consultation, dentures or open heart surgery, citizens are entitled to free treatment. As a result the impoverished island boasts better health indicators than its exponentially richer neighbour 90 miles across the Florida straits.|Guardian|<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Healthcare in Cuba|url=https://amp.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2007/jul/17/internationalnews|date=2007-07-17|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141005113933/http://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2007/jul/17/internationalnews|archivedate=2014-10-05}}</ref>}}

Another source on this is the study ''Health in Cuba'', published by the Oxford University Press’s ''International Journal of Epidemiology'':

{{quote|Cuba represents an important alternative example where modest infrastructure investments combined with a well-developed public health strategy have generated health status measures comparable with those of industrialized countries. […] If the Cuban experience were generalized to other poor and middle-income countries human health would be transformed.|International Journal of Epidemiology|<ref name=IJE>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Cooper|first1=Richard|last2=Kennelly|first2=Joan|last3=Orduñez-Garcia|first3=Pedro|title=Health in Cuba|url=https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/4/817/686547|journal=International Journal of Epidemiology|volume=35|issue=4|date=2006-08-04|archiveurl=https://academic.oup.com/ije/article-pdf/35/4/817/2003802/dyl175.pdf|archivedate=2006-05-04|pages=817–24|doi=10.1093/ije/dyl175}}</ref>}}

This is demonstrated by the particular health statistics of the republic after the revolution. For example, prerevolutionary life expectancy was approximately 6.3 decades, compared to approximately 7 decades in the U.S.A. By 1973 (thirteen years after the revolution), the republic had caught up to the U.S.A.; it has since surpassed them in terms of life expectancy with an average of 7.5 decades;<ref name=B&R>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Parenti|first=Michael|chapter=2|title=Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism|url=https://cartiparenti.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf|location=San Francisco|publisher=City Light Books|year=1997|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190828235152/https://cartiparenti.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf|archivedate=2019-08-28|page=39|ISBN=0-87288-330-1}}</ref> UNICEF<ref name=UNICEF>https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba_statistics.html</ref> and World Bank statistics indicate that the republic has achieved a higher life expectancy<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Life Expectancy in the USA and Cuba|url=https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=CU-US|publisher=World Bank|accessdate=2020-02-24}}</ref> and better mortality rate<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Infant Mortality in the USA and Cuba|url=https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?locations=CU-US|publisher=World Bank|accessdate=2020-02-24}}</ref> than the United States. The prerevolutionary adult male mortality rate was also already slightly lower than that of the United States, but the gap has widened significantly in the Republic of Cuba’s favor since the revolution.<ref>https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.AMRT.MA?locations=CU-US</ref> The prerevolutionary percentage of women surviving the age 65 was significantly lower in the republic than in the United States; today, it is slightly higher.<ref>https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TO65.FE.ZS?locations=CU-US</ref> Maternal mortality rates, while not as good as those in Canada or the U.S.A., have improved massively since the 1950s and today are better than the rates of other countries of comparable backgrounds in the Americas:

{{quote|Under the Revolution, Cuba has enjoyed some meaningful progress in lowering maternal mortality rates (the number of pregnancy or delivery related deaths per 100,000 live births per year). In 1955, the maternal mortality rate in Cuba was 145, and in 1958, it was 125. According to the PAHO, however, by 2012, Cuba showed a maternal mortality rate of 41, better than the rates of 56–68 in Brazil or 120–158 in Guatemala, although not as good as 9–12 in Canada or 21 in the USA. According to data provided by the British medical journal, ''The Lancet'', in 2013, the maternal mortality rate in Cuba had fallen to 39.8 per 100,000 live births, compared to 54.0 in Mexico, and 58.7 in Brazil.|Ronn Pineo|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Pineo|first=Ronn|title=Cuban Public Healthcare: A Model of Success for Developing Nations|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0169796X19826731|journal=Journal of Developing Societies|date=2019-03-04|volume=25|issue=1|doi=10.1177/0169796X19826731}}</ref>}}

Presently, the Republic of Cuba possesses best healthcare system in the developing world.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Keck|first1=C. William|last2=Reed|first2=Gail A.|title=The Curious Case of Cuba|journal=American Journal of Public Health|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464859|volume=102|number=8|year=2012|pages=e13-22|doi=10.2105/AJPH.2012.300822}}</ref> The republic is also famous for its number of medical professionals, causing some people to return there<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Moreno|first=Sarah|title=Thousands of Cuban exiles are exploring an unusual option: Returning to Cuba to live|url=https://hrld.us/2Dkxukr|date=2018-03-12|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref> or seek their medical training there.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Why Are Americans Getting Their Medical Degrees In Cuba?|url=https://wp.me/p7fSmo-BA|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200101003503/https://ponderwall.com/index.php/2019/03/26/cuba-medical-degrees|archivedate=2020-01-01}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=MacLeod|first=Alan|title=Meet the Americans Studying Medicine on the Cuban Government’s Dime|url=http://thealtworld.com/?p=15031|date=2019-03-31}}</ref> Since the 1990s the Republic of Cuba has had the most doctors per capita, one for every 214 inhabitants, of all the countries in the world,<ref name=B&R/> and presently has the most doctors per capita in the world.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Herman|first1=Chris|last2=Zlotnik|first2=Joan|last3=Collins|first3=Stacy|title=Social Services in Cuba|url=http://www.ecocubanetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/NASW%20CUBA%20REPORT.pdf|publisher=National Association of Social Workers|accessdate=2020-02-24}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Density of physicians (total number per 1000 population, latest available year)|url=https://www.who.int/gho/health_workforce/physicians_density/en|date=2018-12-28}}</ref>

Cuban scientists were the first to introduce a vaccine for lung cancer,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Carroll|first=Rory|title=Cuba approves first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer|url=https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2008/jun/26/cancer.cuba|date=2008-06-26|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130902102105/http://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/jun/26/cancer.cuba|archivedate=2013-09-02}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=McGinley|first=Laurie|title=In a first, U.S. trial to test Cuban lung-cancer vaccine|url=https://wapo.st/2fhqTQ7|date=2016-10-27|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20161028154241/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/10/27/in-a-first-u-s-trial-to-test-cuban-lung-cancer-vaccine|archivedate=2016-10-28|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref> an anti-AIDS contagion pill,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Robinson|first=Circles|title=Drug Trial in Cuba to Prevent HIV Infections|url=https://havanatimes.org/?p=154220|date=2019-05-29|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref> and they designed new hepatitis B vaccines;<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Henriques|first=Carolina|title=New Chronic Hepatitis B Treatment Available in Cuba|url=https://wp.me/p5rQ17-Wt|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20151224114238/http://hepatitisnewstoday.com/2015/12/15/new-chronic-hepatitis-b-treatment-available-cuba|archivedate=2015-12-24}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=LLA|first1=Rodríguez Lay|last2=M|first2=Bello Corredor|last3=MC|first3=Montalvo Villalba|last4=AG|first4=Chibás Ojeda|last5=S|first5=Sariego Frómeta|last6=M|first6=Diaz González|last7=Y|first7=Abad Lamoth|last8=M|first8=Sánchez Wong|last9=A|first9=Sausy|last10=CP|first10=Muller|last11=JM|first11=Hübschen|title=Hepatitis B virus infection assessed 3 to 18 years after vaccination in Cuban children and adolescents born to HBsAg-positive mothers.|url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28439708|journal=Archives of Virology|volume=162|number=8|date=2017-04-24|pages=2393–2396|doi=10.1007/s00705-017-3365-6}}</ref> ''Time'' reported that the Republic of Cuba has eliminated the transmission of HIV and syphilis through pregnancies,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Worland|first=Justin|title=Mother to Child HIV Transmission: Cuba Eliminates HIV in Newborns|url=https://ti.me/1KsPx9i|date=2015-07-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150701152114/http://time.com/3943045/cuba-hiv-mother-daughter|archivedate=2015-07-01|accessdate=2020-01-17}}</ref> making them the world’s first country to do so,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=WHO validates elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis in Cuba|url=https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/mtct-hiv-cuba/en|date=2015-06-30|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180111035415/http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/mtct-hiv-cuba/en|archivedate=2018-01-11}}</ref> and since 2019 they have been distributing PrEP gratis to those who need it,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Smith|first=Gwendolyn|title=Cuba just started giving PrEP away for free to those who need it|url=https://www.lgbtqnation.com/?p=274922|date=2019-04-12|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190413151703/https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/04/cuba-just-started-giving-prep-away-free-need|archivedate=2019-04-13}}</ref> reducing the chance of HIV infection by as much as 90%.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba starts giving out free preventive HIV pill|url=https://oncubanews.com/en/?p=196144|date=2019-04-04|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190410233347/https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba/cuba-starts-giving-out-free-preventive-hiv-pill|archivedate=2019-04-10}}</ref> In 2000, the performance of the Republic of Cuba’s provision placed the country at #39 on the World Health Organization’s league table,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=The world health report 2000 - Health systems: improving performance|url=https://www.who.int/whr/2000/en}}</ref> and in 2014 the republic was spending 11.1% of its GDP on healthcare.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Total expenditure on health as a percentage of the gross domestic product (%)|url=https://gamapserver.who.int/gho/interactive_charts/health_financing/atlas.html|year=2014}}</ref> The Food Security and Nutrition Monitoring System indicated in 2015 that youths over the age of two have a 31.6% chance of developing anaemia, however.<ref name=WFP/> Today the republic offers genital reconstructions gratis,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Darlington|first=Shasta|title=Cuban enjoys new benefit of free sex-change operation|url=https://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/06/01/cuba.sex.change|date=2011-06-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812014458/http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/06/01/cuba.sex.change|archivedate=2011-08-12}}</ref> and vulnerable demographics such as the ill, the disabled, and those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged receive special protections and other benefits.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|title=Caribbean Countries Health Care System Profiles Handbook - Strategic Information, Development and Opportunities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5ko6CgAAQBAJ|year=2013|page=125|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=5ko6CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA125|ISBN=9781577511991}}</ref> ''Bloomberg'' placed the Republic of Cuba’s healthcare above the U.S.’s,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Miller|first1=Lee|first2=Wei|last2=Lu|title=These Are the World's Healthiest Nations|url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-24/spain-tops-italy-as-world-s-healthiest-nation-while-u-s-slips|date=2019-02-24|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190224171502/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-24/spain-tops-italy-as-world-s-healthiest-nation-while-u-s-slips|archivedate=2019-02-24}}</ref> and the ''New York Times'' has confirmed that U.S. students do travel there to seek medical training.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Americans graduate from Cuban medical school|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/world/americas/25iht-cuba.1.6817768.html|date=2007-07-25|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180131015610/http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/world/americas/25iht-cuba.1.6817768.html|archivedate=2018-01-31}}</ref>

The Republic of Cuba has sent teachers, doctors, and workers to dozens of superexploited countries gratis. For example, in the 2010s they became the most important supporter to the Haitians after the 2010 earthquake.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Maddox|first=Sarah|editors=José Manuel Pestano Rodríguez, José Manuel de Pablos Coello, William Du Bois|title=Cuba Provided the Greatest Medical Aid to Haiti after the Earthquake|url=https://www.projectcensored.org/?p=1468|date=2010-10-02|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725112344/http://projectcensored.org/12-cuba-provided-the-greatest-medical-aid-to-haiti-after-the-earthquake|archivedate=2018-07-25|accessdate=2020-01-25}}</ref> During the same decade they assisted Mozambicans that survived a hurricane,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=New Cuban Doctors' Mission in Mozambique Ensures Quality|url=http://www.ahora.cu/en/health/4733|date=2019-03-29}}</ref> and they provided the most important medical support to western Africa during the Ebola outbreak.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Ullathorne|first1=Graham|last2=Dalley|first2=Gillian|last3=Rainbird|first3=David|title=Cuba’s Ebola response puts US embargo to shame|url=https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/05/cuba-ebola-response-united-states-embargo-shame|date=2014-12-05|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160719142254/https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/05/cuba-ebola-response-united-states-embargo-shame|archivedate=2016-07-19}}</ref> Their republic has also treated more children (13,000) who were victims of the [[Chernobyl]] incident<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Chernobyl victims heal in Cuba|url=https://www.dawn.com/news/146507|date=2005-07-06|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200225071511/https://www.dawn.com/news/146507/chernobyl-victims-heal-in-cuba|archivedate=2020-02-25}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba and Chernobyl|url=https://invidio.us/embed/H10xE1CcKxQ|accessdate=2020-04-16}}</ref> than all other countries put together.<ref name=B&R/> Both the Republic of Cuba and the [[People’s Republic of China]] have distributed 933 tons of medicine to the [[Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela]].<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Venezuela recibe 933 toneladas de medicinas y materiales médicos|url=http://amp.uniradioinforma.com/noticias/internacional/556699/venezuela-recibe-933-toneladas-de-medicinas-y-materiales-medicos.html|date=2019-02-14|language=Spanish}}</ref>

In 2020, they transported their doctors to fourteen other countries due to COVID-19,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Fernandez|first=Belen|title=Cuba Under Media Attack for Sending Doctors, Not Bombs, to Help Covid-19 Victims|url=https://fair.org/?p=9013735|date=2020-04-14}}</ref> including [[Grenada]], [[Jamaica]], the [[Republic of Nicaragua]], [[Suriname]] and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, increasing the more than 28,000 medical volunteers it has serving in sixty-one other countries. Each student is expected to visit eighty houses daily, and they have visited more than a million people by March 20. On March 23, the Republic of Cuba announced new measures such as suspending school for four weeks; closing dance clubs, pools and gyms; giving special attention to seniors who live at home or who live alone; increasing food production; and cancelling most travel between cities. All Cubans returning to the republic are quarantined for two weeks, and for now tourists cannot reenter the country.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Evans|first=Terry|title=Working people in Cuba set the example for int’l solidarity|journal=The Militant|url=https://themilitant.com/?p=47833|date=2020-03-28|volume=84|number=13}}</ref>

They are highly prone to tropical storms, hurricanes, heavy rainfalls, drought and occasional earthquakes,<ref name=WFP/> consequently they have developed the best response system in the Caribbean,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Marcetic|first=Branko|title=Before the Hurricane|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-cuba-disaster-plan|date=2017-08-30|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170901180028/https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/hurricane-harvey-cuba-disaster-plan|archivedate=2017-09-01}}</ref> with less than a hundred deaths in the past decade or so.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Gorry|first=Conner|editors=Gail A. Reed, MS; Michele Frank, MD; Conner Gorry; Diane Appelbaum, RN, FNP, MS; Debra Evenson, JDS|title=Hurricane Wilma: Living to Tell the Tale|url=https://www.medicc.org/publications/medicc_review/0905/top-story.html|journal=MEDICC Review|volume=VII|number=9|year=2005|archiveurl=https://www.medicc.org/resources/documents/medicc-review-disaster-management.pdf|archivedate=2005-11-00|ISSN=1527-3172}}</ref> They have successfully evacuated up to 1.5 million people<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Hurricane Ivan brushes Cuba's tip|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3650682.stm|date=2004-09-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070921115434/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3650682.stm|archivedate=2007-09-21}}</ref> and weathered the most catastrophic hurricanes to date.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Caribbean Hurricane Network - Updates from the Islands - 2004 Season|url=https://stormcarib.com/hurr04.htm|date=2004-09-23|section=nine|sectionurl=https://stormcarib.com/hurr04.htm#nine}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Hurricanes & Tropical Storms|url=http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/content/storm/2005/atlantic/dennis/news.html#recap|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100815064207/http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/content/storm/2005/atlantic/dennis/news.html#recap|archivedate=2010-08-15}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Hurricane Ivan drenches western Cuba|url=https://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2004-09-13-hurricane-ivan_x.htm|date=2004-09-13|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20050911034655/http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2004-09-13-hurricane-ivan_x.htm|archivedate=2005-09-11}}</ref> Each residential block has somebody assigned to take a census on who is being evacuated to which shelter, with special attention paid to elders and pregnant people, and as efforts are organized locally, compliance is increased.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Thompson|first=Martha|coauthors=Izaskun Gaviria|title=Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction from Cuba|url=https://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/research_reports/art7111.html/OA-Cuba_Weathering_the_Storm-2004.pdf|publisher=Oxfam America|year=2004|pages=31–2|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927023654/http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/research_reports/art7111.html/OA-Cuba_Weathering_the_Storm-2004.pdf|archivedate=2007-09-27}}</ref> A big part of the Cuban resilience to hurricanes and similar extreme weather (compared to other Caribbean nations) is also that they have not cut down all their forests; it is a conscious decision to keep forests up as that keeps the force of winds down. (Comparatively: other islands get devastated as they have done more deforestation.)

=== Education ===
Since the revolution, the Republic of Cuba has made enormous strides in education. One of the most significant developments was the National Literacy Campaign (which Che Guevara spearheaded):

{{quote|The National Literacy Campaign of 1961, recognized as one of the most successful initiatives of its kind, mobilized teachers, workers, and secondary school students to teach more than 700,000 persons how to read. This campaign reduced the illiteracy rate from 23% to 4% in the space of one year.|Oxfam America|<ref name=Oxfam/>}}

The revolutionary literacy in the repubic was between 60% and 76%, depending on the estimates used. Today, the CIA World Factbook gives the Cuban literacy rate as 99.8%.<ref>https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html</ref> International entities such as UNESCO corroborate this.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Greenberg|first=Jon|title=Fact-checking Bernie Sanders' claim on Cuba literacy under Castro|url=https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/24/bernie-sanders/sanders-correct-cuba-literacy-campaign-skimps-prop|date=2020-02-24|accessdate=2020-02-25}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba Literacy Rate 1981-2020|url=https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CUB/cuba/literacy-rate|accessdate=2020-02-25}}</ref> In addition, the republic spends a greater percentage of GDP on education than any other country in the world.<ref>https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/369rank.html#CU</ref>

At one point the Republic of Cuba had 25,000 Third World students studying on scholarships, and it still has many scholarship students from Africa and other continents. Since the 1990s they have been the republic with the most teachers per capita of all countries in the world, including developed countries.<ref name=B&R/> UNICEF data indicate that they have a higher literacy rate than the United States.<ref name=UNICEF/>

== Demographics ==
Cuban citizenry is 64% white and 36% black and mulatto combined. Although the republic has made great strides towards equity, socio-economic inequalities may still persist. For example, using the survey results conducted by an unknown ‘small Cuban research team’ that one author worked with during her time at the [[Cuban Research Institute]], GIGA (a German Foreign Office project) researchers Katrin Hansing (associate director for the Cuban Research Institute at FIU) and Bert Hoffmann argued that Afro-Cubans have less access to bank accounts, the Internet, remittances, and other amenities,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Hansing|first1=Katrin|last2=Hoffmann|first2=Bert|editor=GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies|title=Cuba’s New Social Structure: Assessing the Re-Stratification of Cuban Society 60 Years after Revolution|url=https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/system/files/publications/wp315_hansing-hoffmann.pdf|work=GIGA Working Papers|location=Hamburg|publisher=GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies|month=February|year=2019|number=315}}</ref> although the procedure for validating these surveys remains unclear.

In the late 1990s there were 2,000–3,000 Americans living in the Republic of Cuba, most of whom were born in the Anglosphere to Cuban parents. Motives for immigrating included love, escaping neoimperialist authorities, and seeking a better life.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Abel|first=David|title=Americans take refuge in Cuba Expatriates: About 2,000 to 3,000 Americans live in Cuba. Most of them were born in the United States to Cuban parents. A handful are on the run from U.S. authorities.|url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-10-01-1998274110-story.html|date=1998-10-01|accessdate=2020-03-27}}</ref>

===Migration===
A legal immigration agreement between the Republic of Cuba and the United States facilitates visas for Cuban citizens each year who want to join their many family members in the U.S., and since the Republic of Cuba is a developing country suffering under six decades of aggression and blockade from antisocialists, many people emigrate for economic reasons. Cubans are nonetheless completely free to leave the Republic of Cuba at any time so long as they have visas from other countries in order to travel and the money to pay for the travel. As part of their campaign against the republic, antisocialists have maintained a policy of encouraging dangerous illegal migration. The U.S. had a so called ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy that gave special incentives to Cuban nationals to migrate illegally to there where they were guaranteed citizenship.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Cuba reaffirms its commitment to regular, safe, and orderly migration|url=https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news/article/3306/cuba-reaffirms-its-commitment-to-regular-safe-and-orderly-migration|date=2017-01-16|accessdate=2020-03-27}}</ref>

Cuba has one of the lowest immigration rates in [[South America|South and Central America]] as well as the Caribbean. The majority of immigrants from the Caribbean islands and South America have been from Haiti and other capitalist countries<ref>https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2013/02/a-visit-to-havana-.html</ref>. One of Cuba’s Caribbean neighbors is the [[Dominican Republic]]. 41,000 Dominicans immigrated to the US in 2012 (not including the tens of thousands more that came undocumented). Under 10,000 total came from Cuba that year, a fraction of the Dominicans that immigrated. The Dominican Republic produces far more immigrants than Cuba, and yet has a smaller population by 2 million, and requires a longer and more dangerous journey to the US for immigrants. Indeed, millions of people from all over the world immigrate to the US, including 11.7 million [[Mexico|Mexicans]]. Millions more have come from all other Latin American countries. What’s clear is that there is not a mass exodus of refugees from Cuba. Cuban emigres are given the spotlight by the US government and media because it can be conveniently used to as ammunition to demonize a country that is not compliant with imperialism. The simple fact is that any time there is a developed country nearby a less developed country, there is a tendency for the latter to produce immigration towards the former. Cuba experiencing emigration is nothing abnormal or unexpected.

The claim that “Cubans are fleeing communism/socialism” is also tremendously hypocritical. When immigrants come from any other Latin American country, almost all which are capitalist. Regardless of their actual reasons, any immigrant that comes from Cuba is automatically a victim of communism who is fleeing their government. Nearly all immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean migrate for economic reasons: they have little food, no way to make a living, may lose their home, or are employed on a poverty wage. Thus, they emigrate in hopes of alleviating economic problems. What’s more ironic is that these are problems that capitalist Latin American countries face at higher rates than Cuba. Homelessness, unemployment, and poverty in Cuba are among the lowest in the Americas and even the world. In fact, Cuba is the 2nd-most developed country in Latin America, per the 2014 Human Development Index. While capitalist countries produce immigrants out of their systemic inability to provide such basic human rights, Cuba produces immigrants merely because some Cubans wish to live in a more developed country, and reap whatever individual benefits may come with development. If it is true that Cubans leave because “socialism/communism made their lives hard,” one must also acknowledge that statistically speaking, socialism provided the best lives they could’ve had in Latin America.

Ironically many families of Cuban exiles and immigrants live even more poorly than they did in Cuba<ref>https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/this-country-is-worse-than-cuba-the-trump-eras-cruel-reality-for-cuban-asylum-seekers/</ref>. A distinct example includes the family of Cuban Dictator Batista, deposed by Castro and the communist movement decades ago<ref>https://www.local10.com/news/local-10-investigates/ex-cuban-leader-fulgencio-batistas-daughter-now-homeless</ref>. A myth spread by popular culture and media, is that Cuban immigrants - read bourgeoisie - 'fleeing Castro' helped improve the economy of Southern cities like Atlanta and Miami<ref>https://vdare.com/articles/national-data-cuban-immigration-and-the-myth-of-miami</ref> <ref>https://vdare.com/articles/national-data-chart-cuban-immigration-and-the-myth-of-miami</ref>.

== Culture ==
{{quote|Social policy has also favored the development of equity across society, including the equitable distribution of benefits across all sectors of the population, sometimes favoring the most vulnerable. In the last 40 years Cubans have greatly reduced differences in income between the lowest and the highest paid persons. Women have benefited significantly from the revolution as they have educated themselves and entered the labor force in large numbers. The differences among Cubans of different races have also been reduced.|Oxfam America|<ref name=Oxfam/>}}

==Further reading==
[[Reading material on Cuba]]

==External links==
* https://www.invent-the-future.org/?p=40
* https://web.archive.org/web/20100316013355/http://www.cubatruth.info/

==References==

North Korea

2021-01-05T15:55:24Z

CCPSHILL13:

{{Infobox country
| englishname = Democratic People's Republic of Korea
| nativename = 조선민주주의인민공화국
| shortname = DPRK
| mapfile = [[File:DPRK_map.svg.png|300px|frameless|Map of DPRK]]
| flagfile = [[File:Flag_of_the_DPRK.svg.png|125x63px|frameless|Flag of the DPRK]]
| emblemfile = [[File:Emblem_of_the_DPRK.svg.png|85x88px|frameless|Emblem of the DPRK]]
}}
The '''Democratic People’s Republic of Korea''' ('''DPRK'''), unofficially known as '''North Korea''', is a [[people’s republic]] in Asia established in 1948. It rests on the northern part of the Korean peninsula, bordering by [[South Korea]] to its south. On their border is the heavily-fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone. North Korea, like South Korea, claims to be the sole legitimate government of the peninsula and adjacent islands. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang.

Getting reliable information out of North Korea is rather difficult, given how secretive the nation is. This facilitates the foreign propaganda efforts against North Korea, however they can still be demonstrated to be false by various means, including comparing contradicting claims or piecing together various bits of evidence.

==History==
Having settled the sovereignty of Japanese rule over the Korean peninsula with the Russian Empire and the United States in 1905, the [[Japanese Empire]] forced a treaty upon Korea, stating that all foreign relations of Korea were to be directly managed by Japan, effectively rendering Korea a Japanese colonial protectorate. After gradually dissolving the Korean army, police, and other previously independent Korean institutions, yet another treaty was signed in 1910, officially annexing Korea.

From 1910 to 1945, Korea was a direct colony of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese anticommunists coerced the Korean workers into harvesting resources like minerals and food for the Empire. Korean workers themselves subsisted on meager meals. During this period, Korea was still largely preindustrial, and the industry that existed was generally quite simple.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=2|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=58|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> The average Korean man had to work ten hours a day, whereas women and youths had to work about eleven hours.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=2|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=59|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> In school they forced Koreans to recite a pledge of allegiance to the Empire, and the anticommunists slowly attempted eradication of their native language.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=2|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=62|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> When the workers protested their conditions or specifically protested the colonisation itself, the anticommunist occupants acted quite brutally towards them.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=69|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> Consequently, the DPRK would purge its government of Axis collaborators<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Cumings|first=Bruce|title=The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the emergence of separate regimes, 1945–1947|publisher=Yuksabipyungsa|year=2002|page=161|ISBN=8976966120}}</ref> and the Allies would repatriate hundreds of thousands of Japanese after the Imperialists surrendered in August 1945, although the repatriation of Japanese engineers in particular went slowly at first due to the urgent need for technical expertise at that time.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Park|first=Jung Jin|editors=Barak Kushner & Sherzod Muminov|title=North Korean Nation Building and Japanese Imperialism: People’s Nation, People’s Diplomacy, and Japanese Technicians|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3TMlDwAAQBAJ|publisher=Taylor & Francis|date=2016-12-08|pages=199–220|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=3TMlDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA199|ISBN=9781317284802}}</ref>

In 1945 the Red Army came to liberate Korea from Imperial occupation and were greeted as liberators,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=73|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> but the Western ruling class wanted all of Korea for itself,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=74|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> which is partially why the peninsula is divided today. The other reason is that the Rhee administration, one of the few Koreans sympathetic to Western interests, sabotaged a vote for unification by violently suppressing thousands of voters.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=84|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> The Western bourgeoisie established a paramilitary régime; the East did not. There was nothing like that in the DPRK. The Rhee administration was declining in popularity due to their violent antisocialism, but they salvaged the situation by waging war against the DPRK.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=88|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> Beginning in 1948, South Korean antisocialists initiated most of the border clashes in Korea;<ref name=trumanlibrary>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Matray|first=James|title=Revisiting Korea: Exposing Myths of the Forgotten War|url=http://trumanlibrary.org/korea/matray1.htm|year=2001|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100707061838/http://trumanlibrary.org/korea/matray1.htm|archivedate=2010-07-07}}</ref> with the support of the American bourgeoisie, antisocialist guerrillas from South Korea invaded Northern villages as early as 1949.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Gittings|first1=John|last2=Kettle|first2=Martin|title=US and S Korea accused of war atrocities|url=https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2000/jan/18/johngittings.martinkettle|date=2000-01-18|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170612052302/https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2000/jan/18/johngittings.martinkettle|archivedate=2017-06-12}}</ref> The DRPK suggests that by 1949 the South Korean army had already committed 2,617 armed incursions. There is no evidence confirming that the DPRK started the conflict directly;<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|pages=88–94|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> they were just quick to respond.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|pages=97–8|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> Nor is there evidence that the [[Soviet Union]] ordered the DPRK to assault South Korea.<ref name=trumanlibrary/> <ref>{{safesubst:Cite book|last=Blum|first=William|authorlink=|chapter=5|editor=|title=Killing Hope|url=|edition=|location=Monroe, Maine|publisher=Common Courage Press|year=1995|isbn=|oclc=|page=46|pageurl=|text=}}</ref> The Republic of Korea’s army fared poorly to the point where desertion was common,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=3|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=98|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> but then the Korean bourgeoisie requested assistance from the U.S. Army, who started its assault before anybody passed a [[U.N.]] resolution supporting the Empire’s intervention, and its military forces added to the mayhem in the conflict by introducing the use of napalm;<ref name=trumanlibrary/> the anticommunists promptly proceeded to illegally bomb everything that they could bomb.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Empire Files: War With North Korea - Propaganda vs. Reality|url=https://invidio.us/embed/QDJlNQlRbIA|accessdate=2020-03-12}}</ref>

The Korean War was ultimately started by the American imperialists and their allies, who overthrew the People's Republic of Korea which had many communist and left-wing nationalist leaders. After the suppression of the peoples committees in the southern zone, they either left to the north or stayed in the south to oppose the US puppet regime.<ref>[https://www.bannedthought.net/Korea-DPRK/KoreanWar/TheUS-ImperialistsStartedTheKoreanWar-1993.pdf The US Imperialists Started the Korean War]</ref> ''The Korean War: An Unanswered Question'' is a book written by a former South Korean ambassador that covers this topic. According to him, Syngman Rhee wanted a violent unification and provoked the war with US backing.<ref>[http://www.bannedthought.net/Korea-DPRK/KoreanWar/TheKoreanWar-AnUnansweredQuestion-1993.pdf ''The Korean War: An Unanswered Question'']</ref>

After the war, the DPRK would proceed to mature just like any other planned economy: literacy, healthcare, food output, electrification, gender equality, cooperatives, population, and related advantages grew.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Socialism and Democracy in the DPRK|url=https://wp.me/p8zBok-CY|date=2017-03-28|accessdate=2020-01-12}}</ref> In 1947 grain output was one hundred and seventy thousand tons larger than yesteryear and agricultural production continued to increase until, at the time of the Korean War’s outbreak, basic self-sufficiency in food became a possibility.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=4|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=139|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> But 1,800,000–4,500,000 Asians died as a result of the fighting of 1950–1953.<ref>https://docs.google.com/document/d/1we5OEdteZFfAh11v0s_RVh3LWAkVICGrFnvksVynGxw#heading=h.2mt5q77thopy</ref><ref name=Lucas>{{safesubst:cite web |last=A. Lucas |first=James |title=US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II |archiveurl=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-n2Jt |archivedate=27-November-2015 |date=27-November-2015 |url=https://popularresistance.org/?p=78226}}</ref> After the warfare ended, the other [[planned economies]] proceeded to provide the DPRK with reconstruction and other assistance, including a famine prevention.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Armstrong|first=Charles|title=The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 - 1960　　北朝鮮の破壊と再建’、1950-1960年|url=https://apjjf.org/-Charles-K.-Armstrong/3460/article.html|journal=Asia-Pacific Journal|volume=7|issue=0|date=2009-03-16}}</ref> Beginning with the process of the postbellum reconstruction in 1953, only 1.2% of peasant households were organized as cooperatives, which encompassed a mere .6% of total acreage. By August of 1958, 100% of peasant households were converted into cooperatives, encompassing 100% of total acreage.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Cumings|first=Bruce|title=North Korea: Another Country|location=New York|publisher=The New Press|year=2004}}</ref> Despite having only 20% accessible arable land, they announced food sufficiency in 1960.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=6|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|pages=225–7|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> By the 1970s they achieved full electrification: practically all households, even in remote hamlets, had access to the benefits of electricity, and by night the lights were visible everywhere in populated areas—not the millions of bright bulbs or neon lights of Western cities, but sufficient to serve its purpose. They intentionally avoided wasting power, and ranked among the most advanced countries as far as economical utilization of electricity is concerned.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Brun|first1=Ellen|last2=Hersh|first2=Jacques|chapter=6|title=Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the Strategy of Economic Development|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=1976|page=221|isbn=0-85345-386-1}}</ref> Even many sources which are anti-DPRK say that the North Korean economy and living conditions were originally superior to the South's for the first few decades.<ref>http://countrystudies.us/north-korea/16.htm</ref><ref>http://countrystudies.us/north-korea/46.htm</ref>

The DPRK has rarely deployed military forces beyond the Korean peninsula, with the exception of 87 Air Force personnel in [[Vietnam]] during 1967–1969,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=North Korea fought in Vietnam War|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/696970.stm|date=2000-03-31|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20121203032749/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/696970.stm|archivedate=2012-12-03}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Pribbenow|first=Merle|title=North Korean Pilots in the Skies over Vietnam|url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/node/20948}}</ref> a score of pilots to Egypt in 1973,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Shazly|first=Lieutenant General Saad el|edition=revised|title=The Crossing of the Suez|year=2003|publisher=American Mideast Research|pages=83–84|ISBN=0-9604562-2-8}}</ref> and possibly 1,500 combat troops or pilots to Angola in 1986.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=James III|first=W. Martin|title=A Political History of the Civil War in Angola: 1974–1990|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LlDhDwAAQBAJ|location=New Brunswick|publisher=Transaction Publishers|year=2011|page=212|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=LlDhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA212|ISBN=978-1-4128-1506-2|LCCN=2010051379}}</ref> Otherwise, military aid has been limited to materiels and military advisors.

After the [[short twentieth century]], the DPRK was left to fend for itself, with almost no other planned economies that it could turn to in case of emergency, and American sanctions restricting trade with any other economies.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Whitty|first1=Michael|last2=Kim|first2=Suk|last3=Trevor|first3=Crick|editors=Semoon Chang & Suk Hi Kim|chapter=4|title=The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions Against North Korea|series=Economic Sanctions Against a Nuclear North Korea: An Analysis of United States and United Nations Actions Since 1950|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dRmayDng2RwC|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|publishers=McFarland & Company, Inc.|year=2007|page=86|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=dRmayDng2RwC&pg=PA86|ISBN=978-0-7864-3231-8}}</ref> Thus when natural disasters devastated their agriculture,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Democratic People's Republic of Korea|url=https://www1.wfp.org/node/114|accessdate=2020-03-12}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Kim|first=Suk|editors=Semoon Chang & Suk Hi Kim|chapter=1|title=North Korea: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow|series=Economic Sanctions Against a Nuclear North Korea: An Analysis of United States and United Nations Actions Since 1950|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dRmayDng2RwC|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|publishers=McFarland & Company, Inc.|year=2007|page=18|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=dRmayDng2RwC&pg=PA18|ISBN=978-0-7864-3231-8}}</ref> and the American upper classes would not even let them join the IMF or World Bank,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Abramowitz|first1=Morton|last2=Laney|first2=James|title=Testing North Korea: The Next Stage in U.S. and ROK Policy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6cHqjurgrYEC|publisher=Council on Foreign Relations®, Inc.|year=2001|page=43|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=6cHqjurgrYEC&pg=PA43|ISBN=0-87609-281-4}}</ref> allegedly on grounds of the DPRK’s ‘unwillingness to met the minimum necessary transparency standards, its placement on the U.S. list of states supporting terrorism, and Japanese opposition stemming from unresolved political issues.’<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Kim|first=Samuel|editors=Samuel S. Kim & Tai Hwan Lee|title=North Korea and Northeast Asia in World Politics|series=North Korea and Northeast Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w0Xyv6PvFSoC|location=Lanham, Maryland|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.|year=2002|page=45|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=w0Xyv6PvFSoC&pg=PA45|ISBN=0-7425-1710-1}}</ref> Consequently, possibly one to three million Koreans starved,<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Uriarte|first1=Damian|last2=O’Conner|first2=Julie|editor=Les Adler|title=U.S. Media Ignores Humanitarian Aspects of Famine in Korea|url=https://projectcensored.org/?p=416|year=1999|accessdate=2020-03-12}}</ref> although the actual number is probably lower.{{efn|The one who proposed the minimum of one million was Andrew Natsios, [https://redd.it/e2uw1b an anticommunist who simply based his statistic on the guesswork of some monks in one Korean village], hence the actual minimum is probably far lower than one million.}} The upper classes were betting that the DPRK would unfiguratively collapse by the twenty-first century.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Exploring the Implications of Alternative North Korean Endgames: Results for a Discussion Panel on Continuing Coexistence Between North and South Korea|url=https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB205/index.htm#doc14|date=1998-01-21}}</ref>

==Politics==
Western writer Daniel Pinkston reported that the DPRK elected 443 new members (including 107 active military members) in the 1990s.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite journal| publisher = Freedom House | last = Pinkston | first = Daniel| title = North Korea’s 11th Supreme People’s Assembly Elections |url=https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/1998/north-korea|journal = Nuclear Threat Initiative| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 2003-07-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170302164721/https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/1998/north-korea|archivedate=2017-03-02}}</ref> The Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments determined that the DPRK’s voters cast ballots personally to a deputy in candidacy and in a place where a secret ballot is thoroughly maintained.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Constitutional and Pariamentary Information|url=http://www.asgp.info/Resources/Data/Documents/CJOZSZTEPVVOCWJVUPPZVWPAPUOFGF.pdf|publisher=Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments|year=1992|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131016023953/http://www.asgp.info/Resources/Data/Documents/CJOZSZTEPVVOCWJVUPPZVWPAPUOFGF.pdf|archivedate=2013-10-16}}</ref>

There is a theory that North Korean society is divided into a caste system called "Songbun", however this is not true. [https://rhizzone.net/articles/songbullshit/ There is a good debunking of it on this site].

==Economy==
Since the 1970s,<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|title=Communist North Korea: A Bibliographic Survey|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5v_EAAAAMAAJ|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|year=1971|page=38|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=5v_EAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA38}}</ref> citizens in the DPRK have not had to pay any taxes.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|chapter=II|chapterurl=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Socialist_Constitution_of_the_Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea_(2016)#CHAPTER_II._THE_ECONOMY|title=Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Socialist_Constitution_of_the_Democratic_People's_Republic_of_Korea_(2016)|date=1972-12-27|date_published=2016-06-30}}</ref> Foreign investors still have to pay them, however, and foreigners residing in the DPRK for more than a year are obligated to pay personal income taxes.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Ko|first=Haksoo|editors=Young Back Choi, Yesook Merrill, Yung Y. Yang & Semoon Chang|chapter=9|title=Foreign Investment Regulation in North Korea: An Assessment|series=Perspectives on Korean Unification and Economic Integration|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EHHtHjTCZ8sC|location=United Kingdom|publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing|page=118|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=EHHtHjTCZ8sC&pg=PA118|ISBN=1-84064-418-4}}</ref>

Comprehensive official statistics have not been made public since the 1960s, likely in part because being open about their economic data would only intensify the effectiveness of the sanctions against them; the Republic of Korea for example could specifically target sensitive sectors of the economy.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Feron|first=Henri|title=Doom and Gloom or Economic Boom? The Myth of the 'North Korean Collapse' 破綻か好況か　「北朝鮮崩壊」という神話|url=https://apjjf.org/2014/12/18/Henri-Feron/4113/article.html|journal=Asia-Pacific Journal|volume=12|issue=18|number=3|date=2014-05-02}}</ref> Nevertheless, academics and international organizations have provided data that are probably reliable.

After the famine, the DPRK recontinued its reduction of dystrophy quite consistently this century.<ref name=Smith>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Smith|first=Hazel|title=Crimes Against Humanity? Unpacking the North Korean Human Rights Debate|journal=Critical Asian Studies|volume=46|issue=1|date=2014-02-19|pages=127–143|doi=10.1080/14672715.2014.863581}}</ref> The official figures in 2015, in conjunction with the additional observations based on FAO satellite analysis and educated analyses regarding production (accumulated from past experience inside the DPRK), have indicated that the food situation was probably improving overall, although the report did lack information from past on-the-ground food security assessment missions.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: Outlook for Food Supply and Demand in 2014/15 (November/October)|publisher=Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations|date=2015-02-03|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160602212015/http://www.fao.org/giews/english/shortnews/20150203DPRK.pdf|archivedate=2016-06-22}}</ref> Data from the World Health Organization as of 2017 indicate that the DPRK probably has a malnutrition rate of less than 2.00,<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = MALNUTRITION DEATH RATE BY COUNTRY| work = World Life Expectancy| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/malnutrition/by-country/}}</ref> as in 2016.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Causes of Death - Our World in Data|url=https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death#malnutrition|date=2018-02-14|accessdate=2020-04-25}}</ref> In 2018<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = 2018 Global Hunger Index Results - Global, Regional, and National Trends - Global Hunger Index - peer-reviewed annual publication designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels| work = Global Hunger Index - A Peer-Reviewed Publication| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://www.globalhungerindex.org/results/}}</ref> however, the Global Hunger Index confusingly scored it as ‘serious’, for complicated reasons.<ref name=Smith/> Regardless, food production has grown considerably during this century.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Silberstein|first=Benjamin|title=Between Sanctions, Drought and Tensions: How Bad is North Korea’s Food Situation?|url=https://www.38north.org/?p=14023|date=2017-11-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20171114225018/http://www.38north.org/2017/11/bksilberstein111417|archivedate=2017-11-14}}</ref> For example, the DPRK successfully constructed a livestock farming base in the Sepho area during 2017.<ref>{{cite web|title=Sepho Area Livestock Farming Base Completed in DPRK|url=https://exploredprk.com/?p=19095|date=2017-10-28|accessdate=2020-01-13}}</ref>

Electrification is unfortunately less common, but library computers are still usable, and sometimes citizens watch television (or have hemp) before or after having foods like apples, corn, grains, potatoes, and soybeans to eat.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|title=Major Statistics Indicators of North Korea|url=https://kosis.kr/upsHtml/upload/Magazine/NEW/IF/bukhanY17.pdf|year=2017|pages=79–102}}</ref> Over 73% of the DPRK’s electricity comes from clean sources.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Korea, North - International - Analysis - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.php?iso=PRK}}</ref> The antisocialist ''Reuters'' did a report on solar panels in the DPRK.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Pearson|first=James|title=In North Korea, solar panel boom gives power to the people|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/northkorea-solar/in-north-korea-solar-panel-boom-gives-power-to-the-people-idUSL4N0XC2O620150421|date=2015-04-21|accessdate=2020-01-22}}</ref>

Antisocialist sources, such as the Republic of Korea’s central bank, have confirmed that in the 2010s the DPRK has enjoyed economic growth at a seventeen-year high despite sanctions and droughts.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last1=Kim|first1=Christine|last2=Chung|first2=Jane|title=North Korea 2016 economic growth at 17-year high despite sanctions - South Korea|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-northkorea-economy-gdp/north-korea-2016-economic-growth-at-17-year-high-despite-sanctions-south-korea-idUKKBN1A6083|date=2017-07-21|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170903230926/http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-northkorea-economy-gdp/north-korea-2016-economic-growth-at-17-year-high-despite-sanctions-south-korea-idUKKBN1A6083|archivedate=2017-09-03}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Kopf|first=Dan|title=The state of the North Korean economy might surprise you|url=https://qz.com/1300685|date=2018-06-11|accessdate=2020-03-12}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = North Korean economic growth surpasses South Korea’s for first time in eight years| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/825246.html}}</ref>

North Korea is self-sufficient in most things besides oil and fuel, which it cannot obtain within it own borders, and so has to rely on allies for these resources. Nonetheless, North Korea has a coal liquefaction program, though it is limited. This self-reliance does not mean isolationism, but rather being prepared for contingencies wherein other countries may not be relied upon, as had happened previously at the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

==Infrastructure==
While there are restrictions on outsiders bringing along their telecommunications, many citizens of the DPRK use mobile telephones regularly, and it isn’t hard to make international calls from the major hotels.<ref name=eyewitness>{{safesubst:cite web|title=An Eyewitness Account of North Korea and Its People: Bravely Building a Friendly, Socialistic Society While in the Cross Hairs of Imperialism|url=https://www.TrotskyistPlatform.com/?p=402|date=2015-03-06|accessdate=2020-03-12}}</ref>
===Health===
The DPRK has immunized themselves from diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis,<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book|last = Smith| first = Hazel| title = North Korea: Markets and Military Rule|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4eBwBwAAQBAJ|publisher=Cambridge University Press| date = 2015-04-09|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=4eBwBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA271|page=271|isbn=978-0-521-89778-5}}</ref> and it provides wheelchairs for its disabled citizens of all ages.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite web|author=counterpropaganda re Korea| title = You can see Pyongyang's wheelchair-using citizens for yourself.pic.twitter.com/AvluAtDY1k| work = @korcounterprop| format = Tweet| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 2018-09-21| url = https://nitter.net/i/status/1043310274852220928}}</ref> Abortions are freely permitted as well.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Abortion law North Korea|url=https://www.womenonwaves.org/en/id/4888|accessdate=2020-03-12}}</ref>

==Defectors==
Though it is true that the DPRK has been suffering from hardship, particularly from the Arduous March (and still does, though its troubles are gradually alleviating), there are several defectors from the country who are notable in spreading misinformation about the it, either exaggerated or outright false. North Korean defectors often have contradictory narratives as well because evidently, there is little collaboration between the various agencies that manage the media presence of such individuals; agencies such as Atlas Network and the National Endowment for Democracy, which incentivize defectors to exaggerate their stories or lie in order to maximize the money they will get for such. Some "defectors" are actually just North Korea's foreign workers who were tricked into defecting with the promise of finding a job, but who then have their passports taken, get locked up in isolation for several months, and then indoctrinated.<ref>{{cite web|title=Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul (서울의 평양 시민들)|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktE_3PrJZO0}}</ref>

One of the most prominent defectors is Yeon-mi Park. She has, for example, asserted that when she was growing up in North Korea (she was born in 1993), there were no art galleries or natural history museums,<ref>Park, Yeon-mi. (February 5, 2019) [https://nitter.net/i/status/1092923769893634049 "I was awed by human imagination. This was an astonishing experience. When I was growing up in North Korea, there was no such things like art museums or natural history museums. I mean we… https://instagram.com/p/BthJOt3nlFO"] ''Twitter.com''</ref> which is blatantly false. She makes other such lies about the DPRK in exchange for lucrative payments, with the irony being that the ultimate goal of these false stories is the attempted justification of sanctions which will hurt the very people she says need help. There are times when her narratives are exposed, either by referencing the information to the stories of other defectors or to other existing information, to which she will resort to saying that her English isn't very good (which given her demonstrated ability, isn't very believable), or that she has a poor memory. However, the "poor memory" argument also points to her account being unreliable, if it is assumed to be true. On other occasions, Park has claimed that there is only one television channel in North Korea and that she has seen someone get executed for watching a western film, though North Korea is known to broadcast dubbed western films on national TV. In a 2018 interview, she also gives the impression that she was never taught about the existence of things like Africa or Australia,<ref>Chalupa, Andrea. (June 11, 2018) [https://nitter.net/i/status/1006368736323006464 "Thinking of Yeonmi Park tonight. After escaping North Korea, she had to learn a world of facts, like Australia and Africa exist. Here she is with a rare copy of Animal Farm. She told me reading Animal Farm helped her heal by showing that evil systems are made and are not natural."] ''Twitter.com''</ref> despite the DPRK having no reason to hide the existence of those continents, and it does in fact have world maps and geography textbooks in school.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=DPRK Geography 1 Textbook|url=https://archive.org/stream/DPRKTexts/Education/Secondary/1/geography}}</ref> Reports like these are just attempts to make the DPRK seem as outlandish as possible.

==Fake executions==
On occasion a story gets reported in Western media that some important person got executed, sometimes brutally, by the North Korean leadership, and often for trivial reasons. There is however an immense amount of falsehood among these kinds of stories, with pretty much all of these people reappearing alive later on, ending up at worst demoted. Some examples include:
*Hyon Song-wol, a singer who was rumored to be Kim Jong-un's girlfriend, was said to have been executed in August 2013 with her immediate family being forced to watch, then sent to prison camps as "victims of the regime's assumption of guilt by association".<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130831221629/https://world.time.com/2013/08/29/kim-jong-uns-former-lover-executed-by-firing-squad-after-making-sex-tape Report: Kim Jong Un’s Former Lover Executed by Firing Squad After Making Sex Tape]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130829105827/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10272953/Kim-Jong-uns-ex-lover-executed-by-firing-squad.html Kim Jong-un's ex-lover 'executed by firing squad']</ref> It turns out that she was alive, and appeared to have gotten a senior role in the party’s propaganda department, producing and performing music.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20140518152202/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631112/Kim-Jong-Uns-ex-Hyon-Song-Wol-appears-TV-despite-death-rumours.html Back from the dead? Kim Jong-un’s ex-girlfriend appears on television nine months after reports she'd been EXECUTED for making a sex tape]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200709142111/https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1307063/North-Korea-news-Kim-Jong-un-alive-Kim-il-sung-grandad-ceremony-world-war-3 Kim Jong-un shock - North Korean leader BACK FROM THE DEAD]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190609070818/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/executed-singer-trots-back-from-the-dead-fp8clfnl8 ‘Executed’ singer Hyon Song-wol is Kim Jong-un’s new right-hand woman]</ref>
*Kim Hyong-hui, Kim Jong-un's aunt, was reported by a defector to have been poisoned in the mid-2010s because "she complained when her husband was executed".<ref>[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3078006/North-Korean-dictator-Kim-Jong-ordered-poisoning-aunt-complained-husband-executed.html Kim Jong-un 'ordered his aunt be poisoned because she complained when her husband was executed']</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20150512070657/https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/11/asia/north-korea-kim-aunt-poisoned/index.html North Korean leader ordered aunt to be poisoned, defector says]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20150512160218/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11600225/North-Koreas-leader-Kim-Jong-un-poisoned-his-aunt.html North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un 'poisoned his aunt']</ref> She reappeared alongside Kim Jong-un in 2020, at a Lunar New Year concert.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200126192128/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51257178 North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's aunt reappears after six years]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200127035302/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/27/kim-jong-uns-aunt-reappears-six-years-after-purge-rumours Kim Jong-un's aunt reappears, six years after purge rumours]</ref>
*Hyon Yong-chol, who was said to have been executed with an anti-aircraft gun in front of hundreds of people for minor offenses, such as falling asleep in Kim Jong-un’s presence.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=North Korea defence chief reportedly executed with anti-aircraft gun|url=|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150513094043/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/13/north-korean-defence-minister-executed-by-anti-aircaft-gun-report|archivedate=2015-05-13}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=North Korea publicly executes defense chief, South Korean spy agency says|url=|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150514225256/http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/13/asia/north-korea-executes-defense-chief/index.html|archivedate=2015-05-14}}</ref> Two days later he was seen alive and well, with South Korea's National Intelligence Service, which had first reported on the matter, getting its credibility put under scrutiny and questioned upon news of this.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=NIS under scrutiny for claiming Hyon Yong-chol’s execution|url=|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150517114736/http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/691425.html|archivedate=2015-05-17}}</ref> Hyon Yong-chol was reported to have been executed '''again''' on March 31, 2019, after a failed summit with the US<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190531000833/https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/kim-jong-un-reportedly-executes-officials-after-hanoi-summit-collapse.html North Korea’s Kim Jong Un reportedly executes officials after failed Hanoi summit with US]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190531182350/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-purge/north-korea-executes-envoy-to-failed-u-s-summit-media-white-house-monitoring-idUSKCN1T02PD North Korea executes envoy to failed U.S. summit -media; White House monitoring]</ref> — once more, he was all right.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190604015430/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48493702 Kim Yong-chol: 'Purged' N Korean diplomat appears with Kim]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20190607175306/https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/06/03/north-korea-official-kim-yong-chol-reappears-days-after-purge-report/1326430001 Top North Korean official Kim Yong Chol reappears days after purge report]</ref>
*Ri Yong-gil, who was army chief of staff, was reported to be executed in February 2016.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=North Korea 'executes' army chief of staff Ri Yong-gil|url=|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160210210723/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35543364|archivedate=2016-02-10}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Kim's 'Reign of Terror' continues as N. Korean Army General Ri Yong-gil is executed|url=https://invidio.us/watch?v=QFNNDv2-RWI}}</ref> As it turns out, he was indeed alive and actually appointed to two senior-level positions in the government.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=North Korean general thought to be executed is actually alive|url=|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160602104650/https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/10/ri-yong-gil-north-korean-general-thought-be-execut|archivedate=2016-06-02}}</ref> Two years later, he appears again, promoted to one of the top three military chiefs.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Previously ‘Executed’ North Korean Official Promoted to Military Chief|url=|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200608052749/https://sputniknews.com/asia/201806041065095830-Executed-Korean-Promoted-Chief|archivedate=2020-06-08}}</ref> At the KPA foundation parade of February 2018, as well as the 2018 Day of the Sun parade on April 15th, he appears as well standing next to Kim Jong-un.
*Kim Hyok-chol, diplomat to South Korea who according to South Korea's largest newspaper, was said to have been executed by firing squad. It turned out this was false, as he appeared alive four days later.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20200601070431/https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/asia/north-korea-diplomats-intl/index.html 'Executed' North Korean diplomat is alive, sources say]</ref>
*Ri Yong-gil, a senior military leader who "executed" in early 2016 for "factionalism, misuse of authority and corruption" was seen alive later in May.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20191220224459/https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/asia/north-korea-army-chief-ri-yong-gil-alive/index.html North Korean general, reported executed, turns up at party congress]</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20171229071116/https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korean-general-reported-executed-appears-to-be-alive-1462851351 North Korean General, Reported Executed, Appears to Be Alive]</ref><ref name "NYT Ri">[https://web.archive.org/web/20200604090544/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/world/asia/north-korea-execution.html North Korean General, Thought to Be Executed, Resurfaces]</ref>
*Ma Won-chun, a senior general and architect, was again seen alive after nearly a year from his supposed execution as reported by South Korean officials. He was in fact just demoted.<ref name "NYT Ri"/><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200116031209/https://www.nknews.org/2015/10/ma-won-chun-reappears-after-11-month-absence-purge-rumor/ Ma Won Chun reappears after 11-month absence, purge rumor]</ref>
*Hwang Pyong-so, former director of the North Korean Army’s General Political Bureau and North Korea's "second most powerful man" was expelled from the Workers' Party of Korea fortaking bribes, which a South Korean newspaper described as "end of his political career, and possibly his life".<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20180307012802/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/hwang-pyong-so-north-korea-disappear-second-powerful-man-leader-kim-jong-un-a8111891.html Hwang Pyong-so: Mystery over disappearance of North Korea's 'second most powerful man']</ref> He was in fact purged but only demoted, not executed.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200916220502/https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2018/02/18/politics/Hwang-Pyongso-comes-back-from-being-purged/3044664.html Hwang Pyong-so comes back from being purged]</ref>

==Otto Warmbier==

Otto Warmbier was an American college student who visited the DPRK in 2017 and gained worldwide fame after he was arrested and jailed there - before falling into a coma and dying a few days after his return to the USA. Warmbier visited the DPRK as part of a trip advertised as "The trip your parents wouldn't want you to take", and on one of the last days of his stay is said to have stolen a poster that had Kim Jong-il's name on it from his hotel. While at the Pyongyang Airport, officials approached Warmbier, requesting him to "step out of line". Warmbier reportedly shrugged and complied, being led away. Warmbier was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor, although sentences like these are symbolic and foreigners like him usually leave within a year, alive and well.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20200626122626/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_nationals_detained_in_North_Korea</ref> However some time into his sentence he fell ill with an unidentified neurological disease and collapsed into a coma. He was kept in a hospital in Pyongyang for four months before being returned to the USA in January 2018.

What is known is that he came back from North Korea in a coma, released after 17 months in captivity,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-trumps-diplomatic-thaw-otto-warmbiers-parents-sue-north-korea-for-having-brutally-tortured-and-murdered-their-son/2018/04/26/625e4fb8-495e-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html|title=Amid Trump's diplomatic thaw, Otto Warmbier's parents sue North Korea for having 'brutally tortured and murdered' their son |last=Nakamura|first=David|date=April 26, 2018|work=The Washington Post|language=en-US |issn=0190-8286 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180510115540/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-trumps-diplomatic-thaw-otto-warmbiers-parents-sue-north-korea-for-having-brutally-tortured-and-murdered-their-son/2018/04/26/625e4fb8-495e-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html |archive-date=May 10, 2018 |url-status=live |df=mdy-all }}</ref> and that he died after his parents requested his feeding tube to be removed.<ref>{{cite news|last=Clark |first=Doug Bock|title=The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage|url=https://www.gq.com/story/otto-warmbier-north-korea-american-hostage-true-story|date=July 23, 2018|archivedate=August 1, 2018 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180801104201/https://www.gq.com/story/otto-warmbier-north-korea-american-hostage-true-story}}</ref> It's virtually impossible to find out what exactly happened in his case, since his parents also refused to have his body autopsied. He has suffered a neurological injury during his stay in North Korea, to which there are several theories. One is that the North Korean government had him deprived of air so that he wouldn't become another "survivor" of the country who would end up pushing for sanctions against it, while another is that he attempted suicide in panic. However, the German emergency physician who accompanied a US negotiator to retrieve Warmbier has said that there are no signs of torture, not even any bruises.<ref>[https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr/nordkorea-warmbier-105.html Zweifel an "Todesfolter" im Fall Warmbier]</ref> The North Korean government has released a video that allegedly shows him stealing a poster in a restricted area, though because of its low resolution it has a possibility of being falsified.

==External links==
* http://bannedthought.net/Korea-DPRK/index.htm

==Notes==
{{notelist|refs=
}}
==References==

German Democratic Republic

2021-01-05T15:54:49Z

CCPSHILL13:

The German Democratic Republic (abbreviated '''GDR''' or '''DDR''', and unofficially known as '''East Germany''') was a [[people's republic]] in central Europe that existed from 1949 to 1990.

{{Infobox country
| englishname = German Democratic Republic
| nativename = Deutsche Demokratische Republik
| shortname = GDR
| mapfile = [[File:East_Germany_1956-1990.svg.png|300px|frameless|Map of the GDR]]
| flagfile = [[File:Flag_of_the_German_Democratic_Republic.svg.png|125x63px|frameless|Flag of the GDR]]
| emblemfile = [[File:State_arms_of_German_Democratic_Republic.svg.png|85x88px|frameless|Emblem of the GDR]]
}}

== History ==
[[World War II]] left Germany a shadow of its former self. Cities had been leveled, and the economy had been utterly devastated. Eastern Germany in particular was at a serious disadvantage; it had always been far less industrialized than Western Germany, and as such, it had depended largely upon the West for its economic needs.

{{quote|Before World War II, the area that later became East Germany was not well developed industrially. Because this area lacked raw materials, heavy industry was generally located in other parts of the German state. Compounding the problems for the newly created East German state in 1949 was the massive destruction during World War II of the industrial plant that had existed there and the subsequent Soviet dismantling and removal of factories and equipment that had survived the war. [...] During the interwar years, the territory that is now East Germany was profoundly dependent on external economic ties. In the mid-1930s, it shipped almost half of its total production to the other parts of Germany. […] This domestic trade featured sales of agricultural products; textiles; products of light industry, such as cameras, typewriters, and optical equipment; and purchases of industrial goods and equipment.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Thus, Eastern Germany depended totally on the West for its heavy industrial needs, and paid for these needs by selling its agricultural and light industrial products. However, this balance between East and West was thrown off after the war:

{{quote|Major dislocations occurred after World War II, when Germany was divided into two sections, one part dominated by the Soviet Union, and the other by the Western Allies. Because it could no longer rely on its former system of internal and external trading, the Soviet Zone of Occupation had to be restructured and made more self-sufficient through the construction of basic industry.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This was challenging for the young GDR, especially seeing as it received virtually no large-scale economic aid from the USSR (which was too busy reconstructing itself after WWII to worry about funding the GDR). In addition, the GDR had to pay heavy reparations to the USSR for the damage caused during WWII. This acted as a major obstacle to development. According to ''The East German Economy, 1945–2010'', published by the German Historical Institute, direct and indirect reparations paid by East Germany between 1946 and 1953 amounted to $14 billion in 1938 prices.

{{quote|The reorientation and restructuring of the East German economy would have been difficult in any case. The substantial reparations costs that the Soviet Union imposed on its occupied zone, and later on East Germany, made the process even more difficult. Payments continued into the early 1950s, ending only with the death of Stalin. According to Western estimates, these payments amounted to about 25 percent of total East German production through 1953.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This is in direct contrast to the West, which received large aid investments from the United States as part of the Marshall Plan, as well as lucrative trade relationships with the developed nations. After the war on the second of August, 1945 the allies presented the Postdam agreement which described the demilitarization of Germany, repayments that Germany needed to pay and the control of allied powers.<ref>https://www.nato.int/ebookshop/video/declassified/doc_files/Potsdam%20Agreement.pdf</ref> While the agreement was supposed to cause allies to control Germany jointly their differing economic and political goals made it impossible. By the start of 1950s, two German states existed: the market capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and the socialist planned German Democratic Republic (GDR). The war losses USSR had during the war amounted to 1,700 cities and urban areas, 70,000 villages, 32,000 enterprises and 65 kilometers of railway, thousands of schools and hospitals and about 20 million people lost their home. The 30% of national wealth was lost. The numbers were released by Izvestia, a government run newspaper and were thought of by Western powers as made up for propaganda purposes. The numbers released after the fall of USSR show that was not the case.<ref> Figures from Dimitri Wolkogonow, Stalin. Triumpf und Tragödie. Ein politisches Porträt (Düsseldorf, 1993), 681–2; Rainer Karlsch and Jochen Laufer, eds., Sowjetische Demontagen in Deutschland 1944– 1949 (Berlin, 2002), 31–2; Uhl, Teilung, 7–9. On the validity of the figures, see the more recent publications Jochen Laufer, Pax Sovietica. Stalin, die Westmächte und die deutsche Frage 1941–1945 (Cologne, 2009), 263; Bogdan Musial, Stalins Beutezug. Die Plünderung Deutschlands und der Aufstieg der Sowjetunion zur Weltmacht (Berlin, 2010), 249, 452.</ref> The Soviet zone was divided economically into two parts, the north which was predominantly agricultural, and the south which was heavily industrialized, being the Third Reich industrial core. The south focused on metal working, electrical, chemical and machine tools. Despite that the Soviet zone had problems with lack of raw materials like copper. Iron and hard coal. At the other hand the quantity of brown coal, potash, gravel and uranium which was to become important in Soviet nuclear industry were plentiful, with the GDR becoming the third largest uranium producer in the world. <ref>Rainer Karlsch, Uran für Moskau. Die Wismut – Eine populäre Geschichte (Berlin, 2007), 231–7; Matthias Judt, ed., DDR-Geschichte in Dokumenten (Berlin, 1997), 89–91; Karlsch, Allein bezahlt, 35; Steiner, Plan zu Plan, 19–24.</ref> Overall the German industry did not suffer great losses in the war with 15% lost in industrial capacity.<ref>Wolfgang Zank, Wirtschaft und Arbeit in Ostdeutschland</ref>

In 1989, the [[PRC]] offered to save the GDR from collapse:

{{quote|Comrade Egon Krenz 
Today I held extensive talks with comrade Lin Hanxiong, minister of urban planning (who first visited the GDR in 1982 to revitalise relations). Comrade Lin Hanxiong stated that the fate of socialism in the GDR is of utmost strategic importance for world socialism and for the victory of socialism in the PRC. The CPC leadership is ready to do whatever is necessary to support the survival of socialism in the GDR. In light of complicated labour shortages in the GDR, the PRC is willing to offer any required amount of skilled labour in any necessary qualification. 
The PRC does not expect any payment in foreign exchange, because they consider it political assistance. Balance settlement could be done by goods. 
Comrade Lin Hanxiong announced his willingness to travel to Berlin on short notice to engage in direct talks with the responsible state organs. The PRC is ready for very short term decisions. Comrade Lin Hanxiong stressed that ideally a reply by the GDR should arrive before the 5th congress of the CC CPC at the beginning of November. 
Request answer. 
berthold 
27.10. 14.00|Peking|https://img.welt.de/img/geschichte/mobile202839650/5722502937-ci102l-w1024/Printfoto1.jpg}}

=== Aftermath ===

Most people in the West imagine the fall of the GDR as a time of widespread euphoria and freedom; however, for millions of people in the GDR this was far from the case. One account of this time was written for the ''Guardian'' by Bruni de la Motte, an East German woman who has since become a British trade union negotiator. She reports that widespread unemployment and misery occurred after the [[short twentieth century]]:

{{quote|Little is known here [the West] about what happened to the GDR economy when the wall fell. Once the border was open the government decided to set up a trusteeship to ensure that “publicly owned enterprises” (the majority of businesses) would be transferred to the citizens who’d created the wealth. However, a few months before unification, the then newly elected conservative government handed over the trusteeship to west German appointees, many representing big business interests. The idea of “publicly owned” assets being transferred to citizens was quietly dropped. Instead all assets were privatized at breakneck speed. More then 85% were bought by West Germans and many were closed soon after. In the countryside 1.7 million hectares of agricultural and forest land were sold off and 80% of agricultural workers lost their job.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

Another article from the ''Guardian'' reports on the long-term impact this has had on the economy in Eastern Germany, noting that there has been virtually no advancement in the East-to-West productivity ratio since 1991:

{{quote|Productivity in the former east was 70% of that in the west in 1991 and rose to just 73% in 2012, in part a legacy of the number of factories that were bought by West German industrialists and deliberately run into the ground to scotch competition. […] Experts say the fact that most of the large industry and production bases are in the west and that those in the east are far smaller — with most employers in agriculture or service industries like meat-processing and call centres — will have a long-term effect of increasingly holding back the economy in the east and ensuring that the wage discrepancy remains and likely worsens.|Kate Connolly|[https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/german-reunification-25-years-on-how-different-are-east-and-west-really]}}

A mass-purging of academia and professional life likewise took place after the short twentieth century:

{{quote|Large numbers of ordinary workers lost their jobs, but so too did thousands of research workers and academics. As a result of the purging of academia, research and scientific establishments in a process of political vetting, more than a million individuals with degrees lost their jobs. This constituted about 50% of that group, creating in East Germany the highest percentage of professional unemployment in the world; all university chancellors and directors of state enterprises as well as 75,000 teachers lost their jobs and many were blacklisted. This process was in stark contrast to what happened in West Germany after the war, when few ex-Nazis were treated in this manner.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

This coincided with a housing crisis as well as the mass seizure of workers’ homes:

{{quote|In the GDR everyone had a legally guaranteed security of tenure and ownership to the properties where they lived. After unification, 2.2m claims by non-GDR citizens were made on their homes. Many lost houses they’d lived in for decades; a number committed suicide rather than give them up. Ironically, claims for restitution the other way around, by East Germans on properties in the West, were rejected as “out of time”.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

She remarks that since the short twentieth century, many people have come to appreciate the benefits that the socialists offered:

{{quote|Since the demise of the GDR, many have come to recognize and regret that the genuine “social achievements” they enjoyed were dismantled: social and gender equality, full employment and lack of existential fears, as well as subsidized rents, public transport, culture and sports facilities. Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and “state socialism” came shortly before the collapse of the “free market” system in the west.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall]}}

This is supported by the fact that (as mentioned above) 57% of former East Germans say that life was better in the planned economy.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Artery Publications| isbn = 9978-0-9558228-3-4| last1 = de la Motte| first1 = Bruni| last2 = Green |first2 = John| title = Stasi Hell or Workers' Paradise? Socialism in the GDR: What Can We Learn From It?| year = 2009| url = https://archive.org/stream/StasiHellOrWorkersParadise}}</ref> <ref>https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html</ref> Bruni de la Motte explains this thus:

{{quote|The GDR experience of socialism stands in marked contrast to the dismantling of the welfare state and the concomitant rampant privatization of every aspect of life now taking place in Western Europe, from culture to healthcare and other essential services, as well as to the denial of social values and the extreme individualization of life. We live in an atomized society, rapidly falling apart, with little social ethos and no long-term goals. Many today, especially young people, are living without hope or sense of a secure future. Socialism can still offer an antidote and an alternative. And the experience of socialist countries like the GDR can provide pointers for a way forward and help renew one’s hope.|Bruni de la Motte|[https://archive.org/stream/StasiHellOrWorkersParadise]}}

== Economy ==
Despite all of the aforementioned significant disadvantages, the GDR’s economy managed to overcome its difficulties and develop at an unusually rapid rate. This is especially true in terms of heavy industry:

{{quote|During the 1950s, East Germany made significant economic progress, at least as indicated by the gross figures. By 1960 investment had grown by a factor of about 4.5, while gross industrial production had increased by a factor of about 2.9. Within that broad category of industrial production, the basic sectors, such as machinery and transport equipment, grew especially rapidly, while the consumer sectors such as textiles lagged behind.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Despite the priority given to heavy industry, consumption also increased steadily during this period:

{{quote|Consumption grew significantly in the first years, although from a very low base, and showed respectable growth rates over the entire decade.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

From 1949 to the late 1960s the consumption of meat, dairy, eggs, fish, sugar, tea, and alcohol all increased.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Monthly Review Press| last = Turgeon| first = Lynn| title = Transitional Economic Systems, The Polish-Czech Example| year = 1972| url = https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7iUwYR74MlbcFBxbWxsdHNLMHM| page = xv}}</ref>

At the end of the 1950s, some analysts feared an economic crisis in the East, spurred by the ‘brain drain’ from East to West; however, this did not occur, and the GDR’s economy continued to grow impressively in the 1960s.

{{quote|As the 1950s ended, pessimism about the future seemed rather appropriate. Surprisingly, however, after the construction of the [[Berlin Wall]] and several years of consolidation and realignment, East Germany entered a period of impressive economic growth that produced clear benefits for the people. For the years 1966–1970, GDP and national income grew at average annual rates of 6.3 and 5.2 percent, respectively. Simultaneously, investment grew at an average annual rate of 10.7 percent, retail trade at 4.6 percent, and real per capita income at 4.2 percent.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This growth continued on through the next decade:

{{quote|As of 1970, growth rates in the various sectors of the economy did not differ greatly from those of a decade earlier. […] Production reached about 140 to 150 percent of the levels of a decade earlier. […] The growth rates in production resulted in substantial increases in personal consumption. [T]hroughout the 1970s the East German economy as a whole enjoyed relatively strong and stable growth. In 1971, First Secretary Honecker declared the “raising of the material and cultural living standard” of the population to be a “principal task” of the economy; private consumption grew at an average annual rate of 4.8 percent from 1971 to 1975 and 4.0 percent from 1976 to 1980. […] The 1976–1980 Five Year Plan achieved an average annual growth rate of 4.1 percent.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The 1980s saw some economic difficulties for the GDR as Western banks clamped down on credit for the East and the USSR reduced oil deliveries by ten percent. This led to a period of slow growth as the GDR rushed to step up exports; despite this, the economy did manage to pull through and deliver impressive growth results during this period (though it did fall short of the plan).

{{quote|The 1981–1985 plan period proved to be a difficult time for the East German economy. […] However, by the end of the period the economy had chalked up a respectable overall performance, with an average annual growth rate of 4.5 percent (the plan target had been 5.1 percent).|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The overall impacts of the industrialization strategy of the GDR were extremely positive.

{{quote|Industry is the dominant sector of the East German economy, and is the principal basis for the relatively high standard of living. East Germany ranks among the world's top industrial nations, and in the Comecon it ranks second only to the Soviet Union.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

== Infrastructure ==
{{quote|The East German standard of living has improved greatly since 1949 [when the GDR was established]. Most observers, both East and West, agree that in the 1980s East Germans enjoyed the highest standard of living in Eastern Europe. Major improvements occurred, especially after 1971, when the Honecker regime announced its commitment to fulfilling the “principal task” of the economy, which was defined as the enhancement of the material and cultural well-being of all citizens.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

This focus on increasing quality of life for all citizens, rather than providing profit for the capitalist class, is a unique feature of the planned economy, which provided steadily improving living standards:

{{quote|Since the inception of the regime, the monthly earned income of the average East German has increased steadily in terms of effective purchasing power. According to the 1986 East German statistical yearbook, the average monthly income for workers in the socialized sector of the economy increased from 311 GDR marks in 1950 to 555 GDR marks in 1960, 755 GDR marks in 1970, and 1,130 GDR marks in 1985. Because most consumer prices had been stable during this time, the 1985 figure represented a better-than-threefold increase over the past thirty-five years.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

State subsidies meant that basic necessities (food, housing, and so forth), public services (healthcare, education, etc.), and even small luxuries (restaurant meals, concerts, etc.) were all remarkably cheap, especially when compared to the capitalist West:

{{quote|In East Germany, the GDR mark can purchase a great number of basic necessities because the state subsidies their production and distribution to the people. Thus housing, which consumes a considerable portion of the earnings of an average family in the West, constituted less than 3 percent of the expenditures of a typical worker family in 1984. Milk, potatoes, bread, and public transportation were also relatively cheap. Many services, such as medical care and education, continued to be available without cost to all but a very few. Even restaurant meals, concerts, and postage stamps were inexpensive by Western standards. […] In the mid-1980s, East Germans had no difficulty obtaining meat, butter, potatoes, bread, clothing, and most other essentials.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The GDR also greatly improved the housing situation:

{{quote|Beginning in the 1960s, the government initiated a major campaign to provide modern housing facilities; it sought to eliminate the longstanding housing shortage, and modernize fully the existing stock by 1990. By the early 1980s, the program had provided nearly 2 million new or renovated units, and 2 million more were to be added by 1990. As of 1985, progress in this area appeared to be satisfactory, and plan targets were being met or exceeded.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The situation in terms of consumer goods was also improving; the US Federal Research Division reports that as of 1985 in the GDR, 99 percent of households had a refrigerator, 92 percent had a washing machine, and 93 percent had a television. These numbers are compatible to the United States in 2016 (though washing machine ownership was higher, and TV ownership slightly lower, in the GDR). Economists had often thought that the GDR mark was weaker in terms of purchasing power than the West German D-mark; however, a study from the Institute for Economic Research in West Berlin (as reported by the US Federal Research Division) disproved this idea:

{{quote|In 1983, the Institute for Economic Research in West Berlin undertook one of its periodic studies in which the purchasing power of the GDR mark was measured against that of the West German D-mark. […] The Institute concluded that, as a whole, the GDR mark should be considered to have 106 percent of the value of the D-mark in purchasing power, an impressive gain over the 76 percent estimated for 1960, 86 percent for 1969, and 100 percent for 1977. [T]he analysis clearly invalidated the view commonly held in the West that the GDR mark had very little purchasing power.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

=== Health ===
The GDR provided medical treatment free of charge to its people. This system allowed them to keep up with West Germany in terms of healthcare conditions, despite the latter being wealthier (by virtue of its extensive trade relations with developed nations). The ''Health Care Financing Review'' (a US government-affiliated publication) reports:

{{quote|In terms of real resources devoted to health services and in terms of health service activities, the two countries seem to have been fairly similar. The GDR was reported as having 2.3 physicians per thousand in 1985 (World Health Organization, 1987), compared with 2.6 in the FRG. In 1977, the GDR was reported as having 10.6 hospital beds per thousand, compared with 11.8 in the FRG, and both countries had similar levels of dentists and pharmacists per thousand. Hospital length of stay was reported as similar in the two countries, Given that hospital beds per thousand were similar, this suggests that admission rates were not very different. Finally, consultation rates with doctors seem to have been similar in the two countries at 9.0 per person in the GDR in 1976 and 10.9 per person in the FRG in 1975 (Health OECD: Facts and Trends, forthcoming). If the GDR enjoyed a similar volume of health services to the FRG but had much lower health expenditures per capita, then the prices of health services must have been much lower in the GDR.|Health Care Financing Review|[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193657]}}

The GDR maintained high healthcare standards, which improved steadily, and in some cases faster than those in the West (though starting at a lower level; Eastern Germany had always been worse-off in terms of health than the West):

{{quote|Turning to health status, in 1987, the reported expectation of life at birth in eastern Germany, 69.9 years for males and 76.0 for females, was not far behind that of western Germany at 72.2 for males and 78.9 for females. The infant mortality rate, which had been 7.2 per 100 in 1950, had fallen to 0.92 in 1986. Although the infant mortality rate was above that of western Germany in 1986 (0.85), the fall since 1950 had been larger. If the official figures can be believed, the former GDR had respectable health statistics for a country with its standard of living. […] Improvements to health status in eastern Germany seem to have kept up, more or less, with those in western Germany.|Health Care Financing Review|[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193657]}}

Life expectancy in the German Democratic Republic was higher than that in Austria, Australia, Belgium, the British Empire, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, and West Germany.<ref>https://www.nybooks.com/?p=24687</ref>

=== Education ===
{{quote|Attendance at kindergarten was not mandatory, but the majority of children from ages three to six attended. The state considered kindergartens an important element of the overall educational program. The schools focused on health and physical fitness, development of socialist values, and the teaching of rudimentary skills. The regime has experimented with combined schools of childcare centers and kindergartens, which introduce the child gradually into a more regimented program of activities and ease the pains of adjustment. In 1985 there were 13,148 preschools providing care for 788,095 children (about 91 percent of children eligible to attend).|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

After this, children entered the compulsory stage of education:

{{quote|Compulsory education began at the age of six, when every child entered the ten-grade, coeducational general poly-technical school. The program was divided into three sections. The primary stage included grades one through three, where children were taught the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. The primary stage also introduced children to the fundamentals of good citizenship and, in accordance with the 1965 education law, provided them with their “first knowledge and understanding of nature, work, and socialist society.” Instruction emphasized German language, literature, and art as a means of developing the child's expressive and linguistic skills; about 60 percent of classroom time was devoted to this component. Mathematics instruction accounted for about 24 percent of the curriculum and included an introduction to fundamental mathematical laws and relations. Another 8 percent was devoted to physical education, which comprised exercises, games, and activities designed to develop coordination and physical skill. Poly-technical instruction was also begun at the primary level and consisted of gardening and crafts that gave the child a basic appreciation of technology, the economy, and the worker; about 8 percent of classroom time was allotted to such instruction.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

After completing mandatory education, students had several choices:

{{quote|Upon completion of the compulsory ten-year education, the student had essentially three options. The most frequently chosen option was to begin a two-year period of vocational training. In 1985 about 86 percent of those who had completed their ten-year course of study began some kind of vocational training. During vocational training, the student became an apprentice, usually at a local or state enterprise. Students received eighteen months of training in selected vocations and specialized in the final six months. In 1985 approximately 6 percent of those who had completed their poly-technical education entered a three-year program of vocational training. This program led to the ''Abitur'', or end-of-school examination. Passing the ''Abitur'' enabled the student to apply to a technical institute or university, although this route to higher education was considered very difficult. In 1985 East Germany had a total of 963 vocational schools; 719 were connected with industries, and another 244 were municipal vocational schools. Vocational schools served 377,567 students.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Students were guaranteed a job upon completing the ten-year compulsory education:

{{quote|The educational system’s major goal was producing technically qualified personnel to fill the manpower needs of the economy. The government guaranteed employment to those who completed the mandatory ten-year program.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

The university system was also of remarkably high-quality, and attendance was extremely inexpensive (though entrance requirements were very competitive):

{{quote|In 1985 East Germany had 54 universities and colleges, with a total enrollment of 129,628 students. Women made up about 50 percent of the student population. Courses in engineering and technology headed the list of popular subjects. Medicine, economics, and education were also popular choices. There were 239 technical institutions, with a total student population of 162,221. About 61 percent of the students studied full time, while the remainder enrolled in correspondence study or took evening classes. The three most popular fields of study at the institutes were medicine and health, engineering and technology, and economics. Courses at the university and technical institutes consisted primarily of lectures and examinations. Completion of the program led to a diploma or license, depending on the field of study.

As of the mid-1980s, higher education was very inexpensive, and many of the textbooks were provided free of charge. Full or partial financial assistance in the form of scholarships was available for most students, and living expenses were generally minimal because most students continued to live at home during their courses of study. Germans have a high regard for education, and the regime has generally supported young people who have wanted to upgrade their level of skills through further training or education.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

== Culture ==
Inexpensive cultural activities such as theaters and concerts were widely available.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Artery Publications| isbn = 9978-0-9558228-3-4| last1 = de la Motte| first1 = Bruni| last2 = Green |first2 = John| title = Stasi Hell or Workers' Paradise? Socialism in the GDR: What Can We Learn From It?| year = 2009| url = https://archive.org/stream/StasiHellOrWorkersParadise| pages = 29–30}}</ref>

=== Gender relations ===
{{quote|The East German record in the area of women’s rights has been good. Women have been well-represented in the work force, comprising about half of the economically active population. As of 1984, approx. 80 percent of women of working age (between eighteen and sixty) were employed. The state has encouraged women to seek work and pursue careers and has provided aid to working mothers in the form of day-care centers generous maternity benefits.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Women’s access to education was very strong in the GDR, again much stronger than in the capitalist West:

{{quote|The state also has made a concerted effort to provide educational opportunities for women. The number of women with a university or technical school education has increased over the years. Of the students enrolled in universities and colleges in 1985, about 50 percent were women.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

Birth control was widely-available and free of cost, and abortion was available upon the bearer’s request:

{{quote|A liberal abortion law, promulgated in 1972 amid protests from religious circles, permits abortion upon request of the mother. […] As of the mid 1980s, information on contraceptive methods was available to the public, and women could obtain birth control pills at no cost.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

In addition, the GDR sought to provide assistance to working mothers through a highly-developed child-care system:

{{quote|An elaborate network of daycare centers provides care for the child while the mother is at work. In 1984 there were 6,605 year-round nurseries with room for 296,653 children. These nurseries provided care for 63 percent of eligible children.|US Federal Research Division|[https://archive.org/stream/eastgermanycount00bura_0]}}

=== Cuisine ===
The German Democratic Republic had their own foods, such as Spreewald pickles, Mocha Fix, Schnittchen, and Schnitzel, among others.

== References ==

[[Category:GDR]][[Category:History]]

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

2021-01-05T15:54:17Z

CCPSHILL13:

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"
! colspan="2" | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик
|-
| colspan="2" |[[File:800px-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (orthographic projection).svg.png|frameless|300x300|center|The Soviet Union]] <div style="text-align:center">Map of the USSR</div>
|-
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center; vertical-align:bottom; padding-top: 5px;" |[[File:Ussrflag.jpg|125x63px|frameless|Flag of the Soviet Union]]
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center; vertical-align:bottom; padding-top: 5px;" | [[File:State Emblem of the Soviet Union.svg.png|85x88px|frameless|Emblem of the Soviet Union]]
|-
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center;" | Flag
| style="width:50%; border:none; text-align:center;" | State Emblem
|}
The '''Union of Soviet Socialist Republics''' ('''USSR'''; or in Russian "СССР"), also known as the '''Soviet Union''', was a [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 30 December 1922 and 26 December 1991. It was governed as a single-party state by the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] with Moscow as its capital.

==History==

===Russian Revolution===
The RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) emerged out of the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]], with [[Bolshevism|Bolshevik]] revolutionary [[Vladimir Lenin]] as its first president. The new government created a constitution establishing itself as a Socialist republic.

===Red vs. White Civil War===
In 1918, following the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, a civil war between the Bolsheviks (or ‘Reds’) and the remaining monarchists (the ‘Whites’), along with various disgruntled social democrats and liberals such as their rival faction, the Mensheviks, tore apart the RSFSR. Despite support from the capitalist Western Powers, the Whites were ultimately defeated in 1920.

During the war, the Bolsheviks militarily intervened in Ukraine, which was under the control of anarcho-communists (led by [[Nestor Makhno]]) and Ukrainian ultranationalists. The anarchists made a treaty with the Bolsheviks in 1920, but the Bolsheviks refused to publicly acknowledge it, leading to the arrest of Nestor Makhno and his delegation upon confronting the Bolsheviks.

===New Economic Policy===
''Main Article: [[New Economic Policy]]''
The New Economic Policy was part of what historian Brinton called the thermidor after the French Revolution's Thermidorian Reaction. It involved a variety of concessions to the backward strata of Soviet society, including the restoration of obstacles to divorce, laws against homosexuality, and the abolition of the age of consent laws.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Brinton|first=C.|title=The Anatomy of Revolution|year=1965|pages=225–226}}</ref> Economically, it meant that industrial state owner enterprises gained autonomy in its policies while in rural areas individual private initiative and enterprise was allowed to dominate economic conduct.

In 1928 the NEP ended when the Soviet government implemented the first Five Year Plan. This became known as central planning or a command economy, which lasted until circa 1991 when the economy had reached a critical point in the [[Crisis|crisis of the absolute over-accumulation of capital]].

===Socialism in one country===
In spite of an arguably overpowered bureaucracy and some of the reactionary concessions, the Soviets made extensive achievements which vastly improved life for hundreds of millions of people. These achievements were the result of the [[planned economy]] (built primarily during the 1930s). Even reactionaries<ref>{{cite book|last=Losurdo |first=Domenico |chapter=1 |chapterurl=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WS8cCjXDgdJaXFrkW9b1ldY3xlwiPPQ89AwZo53Amlk |title=Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend |url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/18K7U3g_ZsHwasqAS_BiokoWg5A0vXAsCkwYoO_xw93A |location=|publisher=|year= |page= |pageurl= |isbn= |oclc= |text=}}</ref> have been unable to deny this;<ref>{{cite book|last1=Downey |first1=Town |last2=Smith |first2=Nigel |chapter=6 |chapterurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYIqpmIgYZ4C&pg=PA37 |title=Russia and the USSR 1900–1995 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYIqpmIgYZ4C |location=Great Clarendon Street |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1996 |page=43 |pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=vYIqpmIgYZ4C&pg=PA43 |isbn=0-19-917248-X |oclc= |text=}}</ref> as antisocialist propagandist Nick Eberstadt admitted:

{{quote|[[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]’s results were incontestable. This is a point those of us in the West often overlook. Stalin inherited a country that was the primary casualty of World War I, and bequeathed to his successors a super-power. It is but a single measure of the success of the ‘Leader’, and his understanding of the endurance of his nation, that between 1940 and 1953, a period marked by an immensely destructive world war costing perhaps twenty million Soviet lives and a series of purges claiming perhaps not many less, the USSR doubled its production of coal and steel, tripled its output of cement and industrial goods, and increased its pool of skilled labor by a factor of ten. These rates of growth were geometrically higher than in the less devastated and Terror-free West.|Nick Eberstadt|<ref name=Eberstadt>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Eberstadt|first=Nick|title=The Health Crisis in the USSR*|url=https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/6/1384/660149|journal=International Journal of Epidemiology|volume=35|issue=6|date=2006-12-04|pages=1384–1394|doi=10.1093/ije/dyl238}}</ref>}}

The claim that the Soviets purged ‘perhaps not many less’ than twenty-million people, however, is obvious nonsense:

{{quote|The Stalinist regime was consequently responsible for about a million purposeful killings, and through its criminal neglect and irresponsibility it was probably responsible for the premature deaths of about another two million more victims amongst the repressed population, i.e. in the camps, colonies, prisons, exile, in transit and in the POW camps for Germans. These are clearly much lower figures than those for whom Hitler’s regime was responsible.|Stephen Wheatcroft|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|publisher=University of Glasgow|volume=48|number=8|year=1996|pages=1319–1353}}</ref>}}

The Stalin administration was thus responsible for about three million deaths, and even that is only if one includes Fascist POWs, victims of an unintentional but tragic famine (Wheatcroft’s own research proves that it was unintentional), and gulag prisoners. The purges of the late 1930s are a black mark on the USSR’s legacy; this much cannot be denied. That being said, they have been the subject of decades-worth of unjustified and intolerable distortions and exaggerations by bourgeois academics, necessitating a thorough reply. While Westerners are often treated to numbers ranging from 20 to 50 million, the true figures (while worrisome enough in their own right) are nowhere near that high. According to Professor J. Arch Getty:

{{quote|From 1921 to […] 1953, around 800,000 people were sentenced to death and shot, 85 percent of them in the years of the Great Terror of 1937–1938. From 1934 to Stalin’s death, more than a million perished in the gulag camps.|J. Arch Getty|<ref name=Future/>}}

To these figures must be added an important qualification: contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of gulag inmates were not innocent political prisoners. Professor Getty notes that those convicted of ‘counterrevolutionary crimes’ made up between 12 and 33 percent (depending on the year) of the gulag population, with the rest having been convicted of ordinary crimes. He also rejects the common claim that non-Russian nationalities were disproportionately targeted. To quote from his article in the ''American Historical Review'', concerning the gulag inmates in particular:

{{quote|The long-awaited archival evidence on repression in the period of the Great Purges shows that the levels of arrests, political prisoners, executions, and general camp populations tend to confirm the orders of magnitude indicated by those labeled as "revisionists" and mocked by those proposing high estimates. […] Inferences that the terror fell particularly hard on non-Russian nationalities are not borne out by camp population data from the 1930s. The frequent assertion that most of the camp prisoners were "political" also appears not to be true.|J. Arch Getty|<ref name=Getty>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Getty|first1=J. Arch|last2=Rittersporn|first2=Gábor|last3=Zemskov|first3=Viktor|title=Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years|journal=The American Historical Review|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf|publisher=Oxford University Press|volume=98|number=4|year=1993|pages=1017–1049|doi=10.2307/2166597|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2166597}}</ref>}}

According to this research, alleged counterrevolutionaries never made up more than a third of the gulag population (and generally much less, around 12%). This is backed-up by a CIA report on the topic, which found that as many as 95% of camp prisoners were non-political in camps that they investigated.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Forced Labor Camps in the USSR|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf|date=1957-02-11|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200120215158/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A032000400001-1.pdf|archivedate=2020-01-20}}</ref> The majority of camp prisoners were thus genuine criminals, convicted of rape, murder, theft, and similar. In addition, the gulag camps were not death camps like those of the [[Third Reich]]; they were prisons, albeit harsh ones. Even noted antisocialist scholars (such as those who worked on the infamous ''[[Black Book of Communism]]'') have admitted this. To quote again from Professor Getty:

{{quote|Stalin’s camps were different from Hitler’s. Tens of thousands of prisoners were released every year upon completion of their sentences. We now know that before World War II more inmates escaped annually from the Soviet camps than died there. […] Werth, a well-regarded French specialist on the Soviet Union whose sections in the ''Black Book'' on the Soviet Communists are sober and damning, told ''Le Monde'', “Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union.”|J. Arch Getty|<ref name=Future>{{safesubst:Cite web| last = Getty| first = J. Arch| title = The Future Did Not Work| work = The Atlantic| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 2000-03-01| url = https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/03/the-future-did-not-work/378081/}}</ref>}}

It must also be noted that, contrary to the popular conception of the USSR as a place of ‘total terror’ (to quote Hannah Arendt), the majority of the population did not feel threatened by the purges. Referring to the time of the Great Purge, Professor<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Dr. Robert Thurston|url=https://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/history/about/faculty/emeriti-faculty/thurston/index.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200118140600/http://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/departments/history/about/faculty/emeriti-faculty/thurston/index.html|archivedate=2020-10-18}}</ref> Thurston notes that the Great Purge was an exceptional occurrence, which cannot be used to characterize the USSR pre-1953 as a whole:

{{quote|I will not simply imply but will state outright that the ''Ezhovshchina'' (Great Purge) was an aberration. Torture was uncommon until August 1937, when it became the norm; it ended abruptly with Beria’s rise to head of the [[NKVD]] in late 1938. Mass arrests followed the same pattern. […] A campaign for more regular, fair, and systemic judicial procedures that began in 1933–1934 was interrupted and overwhelmed by the Terror in 1937. It resumed in the spring of 1938, more strongly and effectively than before. Thus more than one trend was broken by the ''Ezhovshchina'', only to reappear after it.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934–1941|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1996|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bw0h}}</ref>}}

He also points out that some arrests which took place during the Great Purge were based on previously ignored (yet arguably still legitimate) crimes against the Soviet state, such as fighting with the reactionary forces during the Civil War:

{{quote|People were suddenly arrested in 1937 for things that had happened many years earlier but had been ignored since, for example, serving in a White army.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

The question arises: why arrest former White Army soldiers, among others? The answer lies in the general fear of counterrevolution which pervaded the party at this time. According to Professor<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Professor James Harris|url=https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/64/professor-james-harris|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044120/https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/64/professor-james-harris|archivedate=2020-01-19}}</ref> James Harris:

{{quote|By the mid–1930s, the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the militarists in Japan, both stridently anti-communist, posed a very real threat to the USSR. War was then on the horizon, and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] felt he had no choice but to take preemptive action against what he saw as a potential fifth column — a group that would undermine the larger collective.|James Harris|<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Harris|first=James|title=Historian James Harris Says Russian Archives Show We’ve Misunderstood Stalin|publisher=History News Network|url=https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/163498|accessdate=2020-01-03}}</ref>}}

Bear in mind that since the moment of its founding (still a recent event, at this time), Soviet Eurasia had been invaded by multiple capitalist powers<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Budanovic|first=Nikola|title=The Day That The USA Invaded Russia And Fought The Red Army|url=https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-day-that-the-usa-invaded-russia-and-fought-with-the-red-army-x.html|date=2016-11-17|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044116/https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-day-that-the-usa-invaded-russia-and-fought-with-the-red-army-x.html|archivedate=2020-01-19}}</ref> (including the [[United States]]) in the early 1920s, and had also been subject to espionage and internal sabotage. Combined with the looming threat of war with an increasingly powerful Third Reich, it is hardly surprising that these factors came together to form an atmosphere of paranoia, which lent itself to the sort of violent excess seen during the Purge. This coincides with Professor Thurston’s interpretation of the events, from his book ''Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia'':

{{quote|[B]etween 1934 and 1936 police and court practice relaxed significantly. Then a series of events, together with the tense international situation and memories of real enemy activity during the savage Russian Civil War, combined to push leaders and people into a hysterical hunt for perceived ‘wreckers.’ After late 1938, however, the police and courts became dramatically milder.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

This general atmosphere of fear (not of the purges, but of external and internal enemies) is most likely why the majority of the Soviet people seemed to support the government’s actions during the Purge period:

{{quote|The various reactions to arrest cataloged above suggest that general fear did not exist in the USSR at any time in the late 1930s. […] People who remained at liberty often felt that some event in the backgrounds of the detained individuals justified their arrests. The sense that anyone could be next, the underpinning of theoretical systems of terror, rarely appears.|Robert Thurston|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=Fear and Belief in the USSR’s “Great Terror”: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939|journal=Slavic Review|publisher=Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies|year=1986|volume=45|issue=2|pages=213–34|doi=10.2307/2499175}}</ref>}}

===World War II===
''Main Article: [[World War II]]''

===Khrushchev-era===
Nikita Khrushchev won a power struggle that ensued after Stalin's death, coming to power in the mid-1950s and lasting until 1964 when he was ousted. During his "secret speech" at the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] in 1956, he denounced Joseph Stalin and decentralized control within the party on top of easing control over society, this being known as de-Stalinization. The speech he gave caused many people to leave non-ruling communist parties, especially in the West, with an estimate of approximately one-half given by Grover Furr. However, there were also those who were merely shaken by the news and remained in said parties until Soviet intervention in Hungary later that year, which was considered the "last straw". Stalin's reputation was at a high during World War II, when the USSR was fighting with the Allies against the Axis, though it wasn't flawless before de-Stalinization. As an example, during the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] plenty of commentators wrote of the USSR and Nazi Germany as totalitarian twins and the term "Communazis" gained widespread use. FDR, not known for any hatred of the Soviets, stated in a February 1940 speech: "The Soviet Union, as a matter of practical fact, as everybody knows … is run by a dictatorship, a dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world." The USSR's invasion of Finland was also not popular in the West. Then of course came the [[Cold War]], in which Stalin was frequently portrayed as a demented and bloody tyrant who betrayed promises at Yalta and threatened freedom across the globe. By the time of his death everything he was ever accused of (mass bloodshed and famine as a consequence of collectivization, the assassination of Kirov and consequent bloody purges, deportation of nationalities, anti-Semitism in his last years, the gulag system, allying with Nazi Germany against the democracies, Katyn, etc.) had already been covered in the West. Obviously among "official" communist parties Stalin would, of course, be respected as both a leader and a theoretician, whose works were (as in the USSR itself until 1956) upheld as being on the same level as Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The view of Khrushchev's speech in the West is that it was shocking simply because a leader of the Soviet Union was speaking out against Stalin, not that he was saying anything new. Numerous commentators pointed out that Khrushchev left out much else that could be said, and that Khrushchev had exclusively fixated on Stalin as an individual so as to absolve "the system" from any blame. Glasnost would echo this situation later, mostly being seen as confirming what was already alleged about Stalin (e.g. Gorby handing over Katyn documents to Poland in 1990).

===Gorbachev-era reforms===
In 1987, Gorbachev passed a law that decentralized much of the economy and expanded market activity, however was not by itself a restoration of capitalism. Nowhere within the law were capitalist relations of production legalized.
{{quote|The Basic Provisions stress that the economy shall continue to be planned and managed as "a unified national economic complex" as the principal means for carrying out the Party's economic policies. These policies are to be embodied in a 15-year plan that sets goals and priorities and outlines a program for implementing them. This plan, which is to contain specific targets for the 15- year period, is to be the basis for detailed formulation of the plan for the initial 5-year period, with a breakdown by years. Per the current procedure, this plan will be worked out by Gosplan and sent down to republic Councils of Ministers and to ministries. These bodies, in turn, send "initial planning data" to firms, on the basis of which the latter work out and ratify their own 5-year and annual plans. Plans are reviewed annually and revised if required. Proposals for revisions are submitted to Gosplan, which reviews them, revises the 5-year plan if necessary, and submits a report to the Council of Ministers and to the Central Committee, along with the draft state budget.
 
The firms receive: (1) "non-binding control figures" that specify the value of output, profit, foreign currency receipts, and major indicators of scientific and technical progress and social development; (2) a mandatory bill of state orders for output that "ensure meeting society's priority needs"; (3) limits, which include rationed goods and centralized investment allocations; (4) long-term economic normatives based on a list approved by the Council of Ministers regulating, among other things, growth of total wages, payments for capital and labor, and the allocation of profits among various kinds of taxes and reserve funds set up by ministries and enterprises. Three major funds are the bonus fund, the social development fund, and the fund for financing research and development and investment.
 
Clearly, the state intends to determine the rate and direction of the bulk of investment. To what extent will depend on how state centralized investment is defined. The state also intends to determine the directions of economic development and to enforce programs of scientific-technical progress that are worked out from the top.|Gertrude E. Schroeder|"Anatomy of Gorbachev's Economic Reform" in ''Milestones in Glasnost and Perestroyka: The Economy'', pp. 205-206}}

The 1987 reforms were still somewhat "moderate" compared to Yugoslavia's system, and clearly didn't go nearly as far as Deng's reforms.

One of the reasons used to justify Perestroika was because the USSR had problems with shortages beforehand. The continued existence of shortages are evidence the reforms didn't work and instead made the situation far worse than it had been before. Shortages clearly weren't an unknown phenomenon in socialist economies during the 20th century. It's something bourgeois economists usually focus on when criticizing socialism, hence the two-volume Economics of Shortage by János Kornai. Not coincidentally, Kornai's text had a lot of influence among Chinese reformers and he personally worked to convince them to enact market reforms at the 1985 Bashan conference, whereas Kornai's influence on Soviet reformers (at least those who advised Gorbachev) was a lot more limited. Furthermore, shortages are not proof of capitalist restoration. Marxists frequently argue that capitalism displays a very different problem: a crisis of overproduction caused by the purchasing power of workers declining amid an ever greater abundance of goods flooding the market.

===Collapse and dissolution===
{{hatnote|Main article: [[Collapse of the USSR]]}}
In the 1980s, [[Imperial America]] expanded its arms chase, terrorizing the Soviets into catching up, a process made more stressful by the struggle in the Afghan war. Antisocialist officials also pressured banks and other businesses, and even the Swedish state, into ignoring the Soviet Union.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Krehbiel|first=Paul|title=The Demise of the Soviet Union: The Secret War that Helped Destroy Soviet Socialism, 1981–1991|url=http://ouleft.org/wp-content/uploads/RR-PAUL-SECRETWAR.pdf|accessdate=2020-03-13}}</ref> Gorbachev introduced new reforms to both the economy and politics, which worsened the condition of the workers by increasing wealth inequality — though it never reached the same rate as it had in capitalist countries, e.g. the U.S. — as well as breadlines, and allowed more critical opinions to be voiced politically. But heads of newspapers were now in fact being replaced or pushed towards a more right-wing view by that same government, meaning such policies did not actually result in more discourse. Nonetheless it became a more and more accepted view to advocate for regulated or even free markets, which then led to the rising popularity of Yeltsin. He criticized the Soviet elite and advocated for market reforms, promising less waiting lines and a decrease in inequality. In April 1990 Yeltsin became the chairman of the Russian parliament. The direction the country was taking triggered a [[1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt|coup attempt in August 1991]], but which failed as Yeltsin called for a strike against it. While according to a referendum from 1991 most people did not want a complete dissolution of the Soviet republics, this is exactly what happened until the end of 1991: Parts of the government were simply dismantled, the party lost its power, and eventually republics started declaring independence — the union, in a sense, was falling apart.

After the Soviet Union’s discontinuation, living standards decreased dramatically and to this day many former citizens of it regret its fall, as many polls show, though the results sometimes strongly vary among some of the former republics.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=People who lived under communism more convinced ordinary people did not benefit from societal changes|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/global/?p=44546|date=2019-10-09}}</ref>

==Politics==
Modern evidence suggests that the masses did indeed support the Stalin administration, which likewise encouraged mass participation from the working people:

{{quote|Stalin, the press, and the Stakhanovite movement all regularly encouraged ordinary people to criticize those in authority. […] If the citizenry was supposed to be terrorized and stop thinking, why encourage criticism and input from below on a large scale? […] my evidence suggests that widespread fear did not exist in the case at hand [the ‘Great Terror’ period].|Robert Thurston|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=On Desk-Bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest|journal=Slavic Review|publisher=Cambridge University Press|volume=45|number=2|year=1986|pages=238–244|doi=10.2307/2499177|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2499177}}</ref>}}

These states were not entirely non-participatory as some have suggested; the working masses did have a genuine voice in political affairs.<ref name=vincesherman>{{safesubst:cite web|author=vincesherman|title=The Trade Unions & Actually Existing Socialism: A Point of Comparison for the American Worker|url=https://return2source.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/the-trade-unions-actually-existing-socialism-a-point-of-comparison-for-the-american-worker/amp|date=2013-02-19|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20180920140818/https://return2source.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/the-trade-unions-actually-existing-socialism-a-point-of-comparison-for-the-american-worker/amp|archivedate=2018-09-20}}</ref> Professor Thurston states that ‘at the lower levels of society, in day-to-day affairs and the implementation of policy, [the Soviet system] was participatory.’ He notes that workers were frequently encouraged to take part in decision making:

{{quote|The regime regularly urged its people to criticize local conditions and their leaders, at least below a certain exalted level. For example, in March 1937 Stalin emphasized the importance of the party’s ‘ties to the masses.’ To maintain them, it was necessary ‘to listen carefully to the voice of the masses, to the voice of rank and file members of the party, to the voice of so-called “little people,” to the voice of ordinary folk.’|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Thurston|first=Robert|title=Reassessing the History of Soviet Workers: Opportunities to Criticize and Participate in Decision-Making, 1935–1941|journal=International Council for Central and East European Studies|url=https://www.docdroid.net/t9gG4jQ/thurston-robert-reassessing-the-history-of-soviet-workers-opportunities-to-criticize-and-participate-in-decision-making.pdf|pages=160–188}}</ref>}}

While there were limits to criticism, Professor Thurston notes that ‘such bounds allowed a great deal that was deeply significant to workers, including some aspects of production norms, pay rates and classifications, safety on the job, housing, and treatment by managers.’ The workers had a voice in various official bodies, and they generally had their demands met:

{{quote|The Commissariat of Justice also heard and responded to workers’ appeals. In August 1935 the Saratov city prosecutor reported that of 118 cases regarding pay recently handled by his office, 90, or 73.6 percent, had been resolved in favor of workers.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

Workers also took part in direct oversight of managers:

{{quote|Workers participated by the hundreds of thousands in special inspectorates, commissions, and brigades which checked the work of managers and institutions. These agencies sometimes wielded significant power.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

The rights of Soviet workers were often noted in later accounts of the pre-1953 era:

{{quote|One émigré recalled that his stepmother, a factory worker, ‘often scolded the boss,’ and also complained about living conditions, but was never arrested. John Scott, an American employed for years in the late 1930s as a welder in Magnitogorsk, attended a meeting at a Moscow factory in 1940 where workers were able to ‘criticize the plant director, make suggestions as to how to increase production, increase quality, and lower costs.’|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

Professor Thurston makes the following observation:

{{quote|Far from basing its rule on the negative means of coercion, the Soviet regime in the late 1930s fostered a limited but positive political role for the populace. […] Earlier concepts of the Soviet state require rethinking: the workers who ousted managers, achieved the imprisonment of their targets, and won reinstatement at factories did so through organizations which constituted part of the state apparatus and wielded state powers.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

These facts are all the more impressive when we recall the dismal state of workers’ rights in the market economies at this time:

{{quote|This occurred at a time when American workers in particular were struggling for basic union recognition, which even when won did not provide much formal influence at the work place.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Reassessing/>}}

Professor Thurston also states:

{{quote|Stalin did not intend to terrorize the country and did not need to rule by fear. Memoirs and interviews with Soviet people indicate that many more believed in Stalin’s quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

Perhaps one of his most interesting statements (indeed, one of the most statements from any bourgeois historian dealing with the Stalin administration) and perhaps the most succinct summary of this issue is the following:

{{quote|There was never a long period of Stalinism without a serious foreign threat, major internal dislocation, or both, which makes identifying its true nature impossible.|Robert Thurston|<ref name=Life/>}}

This relates to how the Soviet government reacted to the genuine material conditions faced by the Soviet Union, rather than simply following its own whims and desires. Working people did not only have the right to take part in decision-making at the workplace; they also had a voice in national policy decisions. Professor Kawamoto (Hitotsubashi University) states that the USSR had ‘a more democratic face than what is usually imagined, especially among Western people.’ As they put it:

{{quote|The Soviet regime was democratic in its own sense of the word. [P]articipation through sending letters and attending discussions gave self-government a certain reality and helped to legitimize the Soviet regime. Therefore, listening to the people was an important obligation for the authorities. [T]he government encouraged people to send letters to the authorities and actively used the all-people’s discussions.|Kazuko Kawamoto|<ref name=Kawamoto>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Kawamoto|first=Kazuko|title=Rethinking Soviet Democracy|journal=Japanese Political Science Review|url=https://researchmap.jp/read0148263/?lang=english}}</ref>}}

It is also noted that Soviet citizens ‘believed that they were entitled to demand policy changes, and the draft writers, including specialists, officials, and deputies, felt obliged to respond to those demands.’ The process of gathering public opinion was intensive enough that it often slowed down the process of legislation:

{{quote|Regarding the process of creating the Principles, direct participation worked largely as expected in the ideology of Soviet democracy, although it took many years.|Kazuko Kawamoto|<ref name=Kawamoto/>}}

As Professor Kawamoto says, ‘the reason why it took so long was deeply rooted in the ideas of Soviet democracy.’

In addition to the aforementioned means of popular participation, Soviet officials also traveled throughout the nation to gather information on popular opinion. Using the development of Soviet family law as an example, Professor Kawamoto states:

{{quote|The draft makers were not only passive recipients of letters but also traveled throughout the Soviet Union to listen to the people. When the work in the Commissions of Legislative Proposals was reaching its end, members of the subcommittee and officials working for them visited several union republics from April to June 1962 to research the practice of family law and collect opinions on important standards in the draft of the Principles… After these research trips, the commission finished the draft and presented it to the Central Committee of the Party in July.|Kazuko Kawamoto|<ref name=Kawamoto/>}}

While Soviet democracy was not without its flaws (as mentioned, the process was often rather slow, and there were limits on the extent of criticism), it would be highly inaccurate to describe the USSR as a ‘totalitarian’ society, with no democratic structures; on the contrary, the USSR did practice its own form of democracy, and it did so rather effectively.

===Scope of authority===
The government's authority over cities was uncontested throughout its existence, bar areas which were under foreign occupation during the Great Patriotic War. There were however cases of villages being seized by the Basmachi movement in Central Asia, which was in essence defeated in 1931, with its remnants extinguished in Kirghizia by 1934. In the Baltics there were the "Forest Brothers", who were anti-Soviet resistance forces that were pretty much defeated by Stalin's death. There were also some anti-collectivization rebellions.<ref>[https://b-ok.cc/book/831235/8b358a Peasant Rebels under Stalin]</ref>

==Political Economy of the Soviet Union==

===Wage Labour===

In capitalist theories of the Soviet Union labour-power is considered a commodity in the Soviet Union, bought and sold on a labour-market.

===Commodity Production===

In capitalist theories of the Soviet Union, commodity production is regarded to have had a generalised character, with inputs and outputs being commodities. Labour-power was sold to and bought by individual state enterprises, the means of production were sold between individual enterprises, and outputs, capital and consumer goods, were likewise sold to a market of consumers.

===Competition of Capitals===

In capitalist theories of the Soviet Union there is some debate about the existence of the competition of capitals. Tony Cliff and Raya Dunayevskaya claim that the law of value operated nonetheless due to international trade. [[Paresh Chattopadhyay]] disagrees, arguing that the law of value couldn't exist under such conditions and maintains that enterprises were reciprocally independent and were 'competitive' in the Marxist sense by confronting each other through the exchange of commodities.

===Accusations of imperialism===

The USSR has been accused of [[imperialism]] primarily by left communists, Trotskyists, and Hoxhaists. In the Marxist sense, the USSR was not imperialist because it was not capitalist; a prerequisite of imperial exploitation. As Harry Haywood (a veteran CPUSA member-turned-Maoist-turned-critic of China's foreign policy) put it:
<blockquote>History demonstrates that, overall, Soviet foreign policy has been basically defensive and non-aggressive. This fact does not mean that everything the Soviet Union does is correct or that it cannot make serious mistakes or pursue wrong lines. For example, its relations with China and other socialist countries have been marked at times by chauvinism and hegemonism. But these problems do not make the Soviet Union a social imperialist power. Without a monopoly capitalist class and without capitalist relations of production there is no fundamental and compelling logic in the Soviet economy that creates a need to export capital and exploit other countries through trade. As a result it also has no colonies and no empire to sustain.</blockquote>
Chapters 6-8 of ''[[Is the Red Flag Flying?]]'' develops on this.

It was possible for the USSR to use its political power to impose onerous or otherwise "lopsided" economic arrangements on other countries, e.g. the joint-stock companies in parts of Eastern Europe and China after WWII, but these were just as easily abolished after Stalin's death. By contrast, if a communist were elected President of the United States they would not be able to change the imperialist nature of the American capitalist economy, let alone of capitalism more broadly.

In contrast to supposed imperialism, Soviet reformers in the late 80s were lamenting how the USSR's foreign policy was oriented toward subsidizing allies' economies rather than dealing with them on a more "businesslike" footing (e.g. Cuban sugar was bought at prices considerably higher than that of the world market).

In terms of "imperialism" in a non-Marxist sense, e.g. in terms of political control, then the lines are blurred a bit. Just as the United States presumably wouldn't stand by if France or Italy went communist, the USSR was clearly willing to deploy troops to prevent any possibility of counter-revolution in the Warsaw Pact states. But this sort of analysis obscures the fundamental differences between the US and USSR in favor of "power politics" and other general concepts typical of bourgeois relations.

=== Non-mode of production ===
Some Marxists provide an alternative theory of the nature of the political economy of the Soviet Union. The theory was first formulated by [[Hillel Ticktin]].

== Economy ==
{{hatnote|Main article: [[economics of the Soviet Union]]}}

With the exceptional periods of the 1910s and the 1990s, the Soviet Union was a [[planned economy]]. It achieved massively positive economic results until the 1970s, when revisionist policies and the [[Cold War]] began to cause a stagnation.

=== Prerevolutionary background ===
In 1917, Russia was a backwards, semicapitalist and feudal society. They had only recently abolished the manor system, and replaced it with the most brutal and primitive form of capitalism. The nation was dreadfully underdeveloped, with no sign of improving in the future, and what little growth did occur led to massive inequalities. According to a Professor of Economic History at Oxford University:

{{quote|Not only were the bases of Imperial advance narrow, but the process of growth gave rise to such inequitable changes in income distribution that revolution was hardly a surprise. Real wages for urban workers were static in the late Imperial period despite a significant increase in output per worker[.] The revolution was also a peasant revolt, and the interests of the peasants were different[.] As in the cities, there was no gain in real wages.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Allen|first=Robert|title=A Reassessment of the Soviet Industrial Revolution|url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf|journal=Comparative Economic Studies|publisher=Oxford University|volume=47|issue=2|year=2005|pages=315–332|doi=10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100101|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119044114/https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf|archivedate=2020-01-19}}</ref>}}

The University of Warwick corroborates these observations:

{{quote|Agriculture had reached North American levels of productivity by 1913 and wheat prices collapsed after 1914. The expansion of the railroads had run its course and there was no prospect of protected light industry becoming internationally competitive. The appropriate comparators for the prospects for Russian capitalism in the twentieth century are not Japan but Argentina or even India. Moreover, Russian capitalist development had brought little if any benefit to the urban and rural working class, intensifying the class conflicts that erupted in Revolution.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Clarke|first=Simon|title=Reviewed Work: Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution|journal=Labour / Le Travail|url=https://homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/FarmtoFactory.pdf|publisher=Princeton University Press|volume=55|year=2005|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200118140746/https://homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/FarmtoFactory.pdf|pages=300–302|jstor=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25149595|archivedate=2020-01-18}}</ref>}}

=== Revolutionary period ===
With the 1917 revolution (and after the bloody civil war, with its policy of [[war communism]]), the Soviet economy began to grow rapidly.<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Allen|first=Robert|title=The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928–1940|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/standard-of-living-in-the-soviet-union-19281940/2922A641CA53F7BF592ECDDAF3316070|journal=The Journal of Economic History|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1998|date_published=2009-03-03|doi=10.1017/S0022050700021732}}</ref> The New Economic Policy (which nationalized large-scale industry and redistributed land, while allowing for the private sale of agricultural surplus) succeeded in transforming Russia from a semicapitalist existence into a developing state capitalist society, laying the groundwork for a [[planned economy]].

{{quote|Following War Communism, the New Economic Policy (NEP) sought to develop the Russian economy within a quasi-capitalist framework.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Economic circumstances came to require the transition to a planned economy:

{{quote|However, the institutional and structural barriers to Russian economic development were now compounded by the unfavorable circumstances of the world economy, so that there was no prospect of export-led development, while low domestic incomes provided only a limited market for domestic industry. Without a state coordinated investment program, the Soviet economy would be caught in the low-income trap typical of the underdeveloped world.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

In 1928 (after they selected the new head of the Communist Party), the [[RSFSR]] instituted a fully planned economy, and the first Five Year Plan was enacted. This resulted in rapid economic growth:

{{quote|Soviet GDP increased rapidly with the start of the first Five Year Plan in 1928. […] The expansion of heavy industry and the use of output targets and soft-budgets to direct firms were appropriate to the conditions of the 1930s, they were adopted quickly, and they led to rapid growth of investment and consumption.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Bourgeois economists often alleged that this rapid growth came at the cost of per-capita consumption and living standards. However, more recent research has shown this to be false:

{{quote|There has been no debate that ‘collective consumption’ (principally education and health services) rose sharply, but the standard view was that private consumption declined. Recent research, however, calls that conclusion into question. […] While investment certainly increased rapidly, recent research shows that the standard of living also increased briskly. […] Calories are the most basic dimension of the standard of living, and their consumption was higher in the late 1930s than in the 1920s. […] There has been no debate that ‘collective consumption’ (principally education and health services) rose sharply, but the standard view was that private consumption declined. Recent research, however, calls that conclusion into question. […] Consumption per head rose about one quarter between 1928 and the late 1930s.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Calorie consumption rose rapidly during this period:

{{quote|Calories are the most basic dimension of the standard of living, and their consumption was higher in the late 1930s than in the 1920s. […] In 1895-1910, calorie availability was only 2100 per day, which is very low by modern standards. By the late 1920s, calorie availability advanced to 2500. […] By the late 1930s, the recovery of agriculture increased calorie availability to 2900 per day, a significant increase over the late 1920s. The food situation during the Second World War was severe, but by 1970 calorie consumption rose to 3400, which was on a par with western Europe.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Overall, the development of the Soviet economy during the interbellum period was extremely impressive:

{{quote|The Soviet economy performed well. […] Planning led to high rates of capital accumulation, rapid GDP growth, and rising per capita consumption even in the 1930s. […] The expansion of heavy industry and the use of output targets and soft-budgets to direct firms were appropriate to the conditions of the 1930s, they were adopted quickly, and they led to rapid growth of investment and consumption.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

The USSR’s growth during the interbellum period exceeded that of the market economies:

{{quote|The USSR led the non-OECD countries and, indeed, achieved a growth rate in this period that exceeded the OECD catch-up regression as well as the OECD average.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

This success is also attributed specifically to the revolution and the planned economy:

{{quote|This success would not have occurred without the 1917 revolution or the planned development of state owned industry.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

The benefits of the planned economy become obvious upon closer study:

{{quote|A capitalist economy would not have created the industrial jobs required to employ the surplus labour, since capitalists would only employ labour so long as the marginal product of labour exceeded the wage. State-sponsored industrialization faced no such constraints, since enterprises were encouraged to expand employment in line with the demands of the plan.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Economic growth was also aided by the liberation of women, and the resulting control over the birth rate, as well as women's participation in the workforce:

{{quote|The rapid growth in per capita income was contingent not just on the rapid expansion of GDP but also on the slow growth of the population. This was primarily due to a rapid fertility transition rather than a rise in mortality from collectivization, political repression, or the Second World War. Falling birth rates were primarily due to the education and employment of women outside the home. These policies, in turn, were the results of enlightenment ideology in its communist variant.|Robert C. Allen|<ref name=Allen/>}}

Reviews of Allen’s work have backed up his statements:

{{quote|Allen shows that the Stalinist strategy worked, in strictly economic terms, until around 1970. […] Allen’s book convincingly establishes the superiority of a planned over a capitalist economy in conditions of labour surplus (which is the condition of most of the world most of the time).|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Other studies have backed-up the findings that the USSR’s living standards rose rapidly:

{{quote|Remarkably large and rapid improvements in child height, adult stature and infant mortality were recorded from approximately 1945 to 1970. […] Both Western and Soviet estimates of GNP growth in the Soviet Union indicate that GNP per capita grew in every decade in the postwar era, at times far surpassing the growth rates of the developed western economies. […] The conventional measures of GNP growth and household consumption indicate a long, uninterrupted upward climb in the Soviet standard of living from 1928 to 1985; even Western estimates of these measures support this view, albeit at a slower rate of growth than the Soviet measures.|Williams College|<ref name=Brainerd>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Brainerd|first=Elizabeth|title=Reassessing the Standard of Living in the Soviet Union: An Analysis Using Archival and Anthropometric Data|url=https://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf|publisher=Williams College|year=2008|doi=10.2139/ssrn.906590|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150318181223/http://web.williams.edu/Economics/brainerd/papers/ussr_july08.pdf|archivedate=2015-03-18|accessdate=2020-03-20}}</ref>}}

As early as 1917, forest conservation became one of Bolshevism’s duties.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Lenin|first=Vladimir|chapter=8|title=The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch08.htm#v24zz99h-071-GUESS|year=1917}}</ref> With one minor exception, the Politburo consistently rejected the drive toward hyperindustrialism in the forest: Moscow capitulated only briefly to the industrialists in 1929, and in the 1930s and 1940s it set aside larger tracts of the RSFSR’s most valuable forests as preserves, off-limits to industrial exploitation.<ref name=Stalin_Environmentalism>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Brain|first=Stephen|title=Stalin’s Environmentalism|url=https://drive.google.com/file/d/13QiQYmG65Vlr7ncIJI44ynMIWwOzWOWR|journal=The Russian Review|publisher=Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review|year=2010|month=January|volume=69|number=1|pages=93–118}}</ref>

=== Cold War ===
While the Soviet economy outperformed the market economies in numerous ways, the introduction of market reforms and other revisionist policies after 1953 may have contributed to the system’s deceleration and delayed the increase of living standards:

{{quote|Three different measures of population health show a consistent and large improvement between approximately 1945 and 1969: child height, adult height and infant mortality all improved significantly during this period. These three biological measures of the standard of living also corroborate the evidence of some deterioration in living conditions beginning around 1970, when infant and adult mortality were rising and child and adult height stopped increasing and in some regions began to decline.|Williams College|<ref name=Brainerd/>}}

Economic growth also began to slow around this time:

{{quote|After the Second World War, the Soviet economy resumed rapid growth. By 1970, the growth rate was sagging, and per capita output was static by 1985.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

The [[Cold War]] was another factor which contributed to slowing growth rates:

{{quote|The Cold War was an additional factor that lowered Soviet growth after 1968. The creation of high tech weaponry required a disproportionate allocation of R & D personnel and resources to the military. Innovation in civilian machinery and products declined accordingly. Half of the decreased in the growth rate of per capita GDP was due to the decline in productivity growth, and that decrease provides an upper bound to the impact of the arms race with the United States.|Simon Clarke|<ref name=Farm/>}}

Despite the delayed growth rates, food consumption remained at acceptable levels. By 1976 the average caloric intake of the Soviet population was 3,330.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book| publisher = Springer| isbn = 978-1-349-10349-2| last = Birman| first = Igor| title = Personal Consumption in the USSR and the USA| date = 1989-06-18| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_hexCwAAQBAJ|page=36|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=_hexCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36}}</ref> Similarly, a 1983 report confirmed that Soviets and U.S. citizens ate about the same amount of food quotidianly, but the Soviet diet may have be more eutrophic; they put the daily caloric intake at 3,280.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=STRENGTH‐DIET|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf|date=1983-01-08|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200224040849/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00274R000300150009-5.pdf|archivedate=2020-02-24}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=The Nutrient Content of the Soviet Food Supply|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf|year=1984|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200203193608/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf|archivedate=2020-02-03}}</ref> Dr. Kenneth Gray, the White House’s top expert on Soviet agriculture, confirmed in his testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that ‘the food shortages in the USSR are occurring at fairly respectable levels of consumption.’<ref name=Medley>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Medley|first=Joseph| accessdate = 2019-10-09| title = Soviet Agriculture: A Critique of the Myths Constructed by Western Critics|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611145106/http://www.usm.maine.edu/eco/joe/works/Soviet.html}}</ref>

While the USSR did become a major importer of grain by the 1980s,<ref name=Medley/> they intended these imports strictly for feeding livestock, since it takes between seven and fourteen pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. They thereby increased their consumption of meat and dairy.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book |last=Syzmański |first=Albert |authorlink= |chapter=5 |title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union |url=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion |location=London |publisher=Zed Books Ltd. |year=1984 |section=Imports |page=132 |pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion#page/n74/mode/1up |isbn=0 086232 018 6 |oclc=}}</ref> Per capita meat consumption in the USSR doubled from the 1960s to the 1980s and exceeded such nations as the [[Kingdom of Norway]], Italy, Greece, the [[Kingdom of Spain]],<ref name=HRSU72>{{safesubst:cite book |last=Syzmański |first=Albert |authorlink= |chapter=5 |title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union |url=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion |location=London |publisher=Zed Books Ltd. |year=1984 |section=Living Standards|pages=128–9 |pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion#page/n72/mode/1up |isbn=0 086232 018 6 |oclc=}}</ref> [[Japan]], and the [[State of Israel]]. Milk production increased almost sixty percent in two decades, to the point when during the 1980s the USSR became by far the world’s largest milk-producing country. According to the 1982 [[CIA]] report on the Soviet economy, ‘The Soviet Union remains basically self-sufficient with respect to food.’<ref>{{safesubst:cite book| publisher = Transaction Publishers| isbn = 978-1-4128-3909-9| last1 = Hoffmann| first1 = Erik P.| last2 = Laird| first2 = Robbin Frederick| title = The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era| page = 431|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=63_obglArrMC&pg=PA431}}</ref> These were the accomplishments of an agrarian labour force that decreased from 42% in 1960 to 20% in 1980, working in a country where over 90% of the land is either too arid or too frigid for farming.<ref>{{safesubst:cite news| issn = 0882-7729| title = Soviet farming: more success than failure?| work = Christian Science Monitor| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 1982-12-13| url = https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/1213/121323.html}}</ref>

Although Vladimir Lenin would inspire many ecosocialists in the U.S.S.R.,<ref>{{safesubst:Cite news| title = Lenin’s Eco-Warriors - The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/opinion/lenin-environment-siberia.html| accessdate = 2019-10-09| date = 2017-08-15|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170815005108/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/opinion/lenin-environment-siberia.html|archivedate=2017-08-15}}</ref> and Moscow initiated history’s first state-directed effort to reverse artificially induced climate change,<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Brain|first=Stephen|title=The Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature|journal=Environmental History|publisher=Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History|year=2010|month=October|volume=15|number=4|page=671|JSTOR=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25764488}}</ref> the immense pressure to compete with antisocialist régimes meant that pollution and irresponsible use of the environment would become very significant issues in later decades.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Szymański|first=Albert|chapter=5|title=Is the Red Flag Flying?|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-6/red-flag.pdf|location=London|publisher=Zed Press|year=1979|page=83|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/IsTheRedFlagFlying#page/n45/mode/1up|ISBN=0 905762 35 5}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:Cite web| title = Environmental Policy and Law in the USSR| accessdate = 2019-10-09| url = https://elr.info/sites/default/files/articles/17.10068.htm}}</ref> For example, a series of dry years in the 1970s (particularly 1974–1975) and low flows between 1982 and 1986 contributed to the Aral Sea’s desiccation, but overconsumption of the water for irrigation was another factor. Starting in the 1960s, the Soviets proposed a large-scale project to redirect part of the flow of the Ob basin’s rivers to Central Asia over a gigantic canal system; replenishing the Aral Sea was considered as one of the project’s main goals.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book| publisher = Cambridge University Press| isbn = 978-1-139-42941-2| last = Glantz| first = Michael| title = Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin| date = 1999-05-13|pageurl = https://books.google.com/books?id=2YXnBxZg7c4C&pg=PA174| page = 174}}</ref> It was only due to its staggering costs and the negative public opinion in the R.S.F.S.R. that the federal authorities unfortunately relinquished the project by 1986. (The worst effects of the sea’s desiccation manifested '''after''' the short twentieth century:<ref>https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:AralSea1989_2014.jpg</ref> when a market economy was well in place.) The discontinuation of many Soviet industries also lead to a temporary reduction in CO₂ emissions in the Eastern world;<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last1=Schierhorn|first1=Florian|last2=Kastner|first2=Thomas|last3=Kuemmerle|first3=Tobias|last4=Meyfroidt|first4=Patrick|last5=Kurganova|first5=Irina|last6=V Prishchepov|first6=Alexander|last7=Erb|first7=Karl-Heinz|last8=A Houghton|first8=Richard|last9=Müller|first9=Daniel|title=Large greenhouse gas savings due to changes in the post-Soviet food systems|journal=Environmental Research Letters|url=https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab1cf1|publisher=IOP Publishing Ltd|date=2019-06-21|volume=14|number=6}}</ref> United Nations data from 1990 indicate that the Soviet Union was emitting 13.5 tons of CO₂ per capita (lower than antisocialist states such as Australia (17.2), Canada (16.2), and Imperial America (19.1)).<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|title=Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (CDIAC)|url=http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx|publisher=United Nations Statistics Division and United States Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)|accessdate=2020-02-11}}</ref>

In summary:

{{quote|Compared with the later period it is justifiable to talk of the indisputable advantages of the command over the market economy in Russian conditions. […] [T]hese advantages are evident even in comparison with the degenerate mid-1980s version of the command economy, which was very different from the classical model. […] The USSR economy also exceeded the main capitalist countries in this period in terms of a number of indicators of economic efficiency. […] [T]he fading of the rate of economic growth which began at the end of the 1950s was not an inevitable consequence of the faults of command economy as an economic system but was the result of its gradual dismantling and the incompetent actions of the political and economic leadership in this period.|G.I. Khanin|<ref>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Khanin|first=G.I.|title=The 1950s: The Triumph of the Soviet Economy|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3594504|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|publisher=Taylor & Francis, Ltd.|volume=55|number=8|year=2003|pages=1187–1211|ISSN=0966-8136|DOI=10.1080/0966813032000141088}}</ref>}}

== Infrastructure ==

=== Health ===
The USSR placed importance on the health of its people, and alongside quality food products, provided health care as a constitutional right. 
''ARTICLE 120. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.'' - (Soviet Constitution of 1936 Chapter 10: FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS)<ref>[https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html#chap10]</ref>
 
''- Article 41: Citizens of the USSR have the right to rest and leisure. This right is ensured by the establishment of a working week not exceeding 41 hours, for workers and other employees, a shorter working day in a number of trades and industries, and shorter hours for night work; by the provision of paid annual holidays, weekly days of rest, extension of the network of cultural, educational, and health-building institutions, and the development on a mass scale of sport, physical culture, and camping and tourism; by the provision of neighborhood recreational facilities, and of other opportunities for rational use of free time. The length of collective farmers' working and leisure time is established by their collective farms.

- Article 42: Citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection. This right is ensured by free, qualified medical care provided by state health institutions; by extension of the network of therapeutic and health-building institutions; by the development and improvement of safety and hygiene in industry; by carrying out broad prophylactic measures; by measures to improve the environment; by special care for the health of the rising generation, including prohibition of child labour, excluding the work done by children as part of the school curriculum; and by developing research to prevent and reduce the incidence of disease and ensure citizens a long and active life.'' - (Soviet Constitution of 1977, Part II. The State And The Individual; Chapter 7: The Basic Rights, Freedoms, And Duties Of Citizens Of The USSR)<ref>[https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02.html#chap07 ''CONSTITUTION (FUNDAMENTAL LAW) OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS: Part II, Chapter 7'']</ref>

Health conditions in Imperial Russia had been deplorable; it was among the unhealthiest nations in Europe, if not Earth in general:

{{quote|Without doubt the Soviet Union was one of the most underdeveloped European countries at the time of the October Revolution. In terms of life-expectancy it lagged behind the other industrialized countries of Europe by a gap of about 15 years.|University of Munich|<ref name=Dinkel>{{safesubst:cite journal|last=Dinkel|first=Reiner|title=Declining Life Expectancy in a Highly Developed Nation: Paradox or Statistical Artifact?|url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-95874-8_22|journal=Paradoxical Effects of Social Behavior|publisher=Physica-Verlag HD|year=1986|pages=311–321|doi=10.1007/978-3-642-95874-8_22|ISBN=978-3-7908-0350-1}}</ref>}}

However, after the October Revolution, healthcare conditions began to improve rapidly.<ref>{{safesubst:Cite book
|author=Howard M. Leichter
|authorlink=
|chapter=7
|editor=|editors=
|title=A Comparative Approach to Policy Analysis: Health Care Policy in Four Nations
|url=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cfI6AAAAIAAJ
|archiveurl=https://wp.me/pa7b25-X
|archivedate=27/July/2018
|edition=
|location=New York
|publisher=Cambridge University Press
|year=1979
|volume=
|section=
|page=200
|pageurl=https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cfI6AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA200
|isbn=0-521-22648
|oclc=
|text=In this hospital great pains were taken to keep surgical areas antiseptic and patient areas clean. The patients could enjoy fresh air and relaxation in an outdoor garden. In general, the patients, who included persons of varied ethnic and social backgrounds, were getting good medical attention. […] As the two literary descriptions suggest, the quality of medical care has improved substantially under communist rule.}}</ref> By the end of the interbellum period, healthcare standards (measured by life expectancy and mortality rates) were superior to those of Western Europe and the USA:

{{quote|One of the most striking advances of socialism has been and was generally seen to be the improvement in public health provision for the population as a whole. In accordance with this assumption mortality-rates in the Soviet Union declined rapidly in the first two decades after World War II. In 1965 life-expectancy for men and women in all parts of the Soviet Union, which still included vast underdeveloped regions with unfavorable living conditions, were as high or even higher than in the United States. Such a development fits perfectly into the picture of emerging industrial development and generally improving conditions of living.|University of Munich|<ref name=Dinkel/>}}

Even reactionary intellectuals were forced to acknowledge these achievements; according to Nick Eberstadt (an antisocialist think-tank adviser), healthcare standards in the Soviet Union during the interbellum period surpassed those of the USA and Western Europe:

{{quote|Over much of this century the nation in the vanguard of the revolution in health was the Soviet Union. In 1897 Imperial Russia offered its people a life expectancy of perhaps thirty years. In European Russia, from what we can make out, infant mortality (that is, death in the first year) claimed about one child in four, and in Russia’s Asian hinterlands the toll was probably closer to one in three. Yet by the late 1950s the average Soviet citizen could expect to live 68.7 years: longer than his American counterpart, who had begun the century with a seventeen-year lead. By 1960 the Soviet infant mortality rate, higher than any in Europe as late as the Twenties, was lower than that of Italy, Austria, or East Germany, and seemed sure to undercut such nations as Belgium and West Germany any year.|Nick Eberstadt|<ref name=Eberstadt/>}}

He even notes that these achievements made planned economics seem nearly indefatigable:

{{quote|In the face of these and other equally impressive material accomplishments, Soviet claims about the superiority of their “socialist” system, its relevance to the poor countries, and the inevitability of its triumph over the capitalist order were not easily refuted.|Nick Eberstadt|<ref name=Eberstadt/>}}

While health conditions did start to decline after the introduction of revisionist policies in the mid-1960s, this was likely caused mostly by the substance abuse, lopsided age demographics due to WWII, and the disparities in mortality rates between the European and Asian regions of the union rather than actual deficiencies in the healthcare system.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Cockshott|first=Paul|title=Economic Factors in Soviet Collapse|url=https://invidio.us/embed/EE-kCZnlGZU|accessdate=2020-03-26}}</ref> Either way, the planned economy’s healthcare achievements remain unimpeachable.

In January of 1960, news of a smallpox epidemic reached Moscow, which immediately mobilized all the resources of its hospitals, clinics, police departments and the KGB to search for and contain probable carriers. For example, they interrupted university lectures to quarantine one hundred fifty students, and searched elsewhere for other contacts until they establish an entire chain, interrupting trains and flights to quarantine potentially infected people. They placed a total of 9,342 people under quarantine. The Soviets prevented the spread of smallpox by vaccinating all of Moscow’s and Moscow Region’s residents of all ages. Within only a week, they successfully vaccinated more then 9.5 million people, an unprecedented case in history. By mobilizing law enforcement, epidemiologists, and all medics, they successfully defeated the virus in only 19 days, concluding on February 3, 1960. In total, they found only forty-five Moscow residents suffering from smallpox, only three of whom died.<ref>{{safesubst:cite web|last=Egorov|first=Boris|title=How the USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days|url=https://www.rbth.com/history/331857|date=2020-03-19|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200321031034/https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox|archivedate=2020-03-21}}</ref>

===Education===
Already in 1919, despite the lackluster economic conditions, the Bolsheviki improved education substantially:

{{quote|Thousands of new schools have been opened in all parts of Russia and the Soviet Government seems to have done more for the education of the Russian people in a year and a half than Czardom did in 50 years. […] The achievements of the department of education under Lunacharsky have been very great. Not only have all the Russian classics been reprinted in editions of three and five million copies and sold at a low price to the people, but thousands of new schools for men, women, and children have been opened in all parts of Russia. Furthermore, workingmen’s and soldiers’ clubs have been organized in many of the palaces of yesteryear, where the people are instructed by means of moving pictures and lectures. In the art galleries one meets classes of working men and women being instructed in the beauties of the pictures. The children’s schools have been entirely reorganized, and an attempt is being made to give every child a good dinner at school every day. Furthermore, very remarkable schools have been opened for defective and over-nervous children. On the theory that genius and insanity are closely allied, these children are taught from the first to compose music, paint pictures, sculpt and write poetry, and it is asserted that some valuable results have been achieved, not only in the way of productions but also in the way of restoring the nervous systems of the children.|William C. Bullitt|<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Kominsky|first=Morris|IV|title=The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars|url=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers|edition=|location=Boston|publisher=Branden Press, Inc.|year=1970|id=8283-1288-5|volume=I|page=256|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers#page/n250/mode/1up}}</ref>}}

Corporal punishment, common in Imperial Russia, became illegal and increasingly rare.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last1=Gould|first1=Laurie|last2=Pate|first2=Matthew|chapter=1|editor=Graeme R. Newman|title=Corporal Punishment around the World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uf-1r3SVVrYC|location=Santa Barbara|publisher=Praeger|year=2012|page=26|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uf-1r3SVVrYC&pg=PA26|ISBN=978-0-313-39131-6|LCCN=2012017133}}</ref> Education continued to improve from the 1920s to the 1960s, and various nonsocialist observers, including Western government officials, have attested to the high quality of Soviet education, noting the diverse range of subjects, support for students, and complexity compared to U.S. education.<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Kominsky|first=Morris|IV|title=The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars|url=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers|edition=|location=Boston|publisher=Branden Press, Inc.|year=1970|id=8283-1288-5|volume=I|pages=294–303|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/TheHoaxers#page/n288/mode/1up}}</ref>

{{quote|In common with primary and secondary education, all higher education is free, and students in higher education who maintain a ‘B’ average also receive a stipend. Such stipends vary according to the year of study, the subject studied, the type of school and the student’s progress; no stipend is paid for a year that must be repeated. In the mid-1970s university students received 40–60 roubles a month and technical school students 30–45 roubles. Admission to higher education is by examinations for specific institutions; there are no IQ tests or general aptitude tests in the USSR. Students who fail one institution’s entrance exam can reapply in future years or apply to other institutions. Advantages are given to higher education applicants with work experience, for example, quotas, extra points on examinations, special tutorial programmes. In 1967, 30% of admissions to higher education were of people who had been working full time. In general, Soviets are actively encouraged to continue with formal education throughout their lives. Indeed, the Soviets have one of the highest rates of attendance at institutions of higher education in the world.|Albert Szymański|<ref>{{safesubst:cite book|last=Syzmański|first=Albert|chapter=5 |title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union |url=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion|location=London |publisher=Zed Books Ltd.|year=1984|page=137|pageurl=https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion#page/n76/mode/1up |isbn=0 086232 018 6}}</ref>}}

==Environment==
===Environmentalism===
The USSR produced so little plastic that it was essential non-existent, and the plastic that was produced was made to last. Most bottles were made of glass, with old ones sent to factories to be sanitized and reused, with broken glass either swept up to be melted down or otherwise disposed of. Metal and paper waste was treated just like in wartime, similar to the US scrap collection system during World War II, resulting in minimal metal and paper waste. Littering was fined and weekly cleanup volunteers helped reduce trash in public places.

Widespread availability and use of public transport meant less CO2 produced as well. Cars also tended to have 4-6 cylinders meaning they used less gas, with trucks using diesel fuel which requires less refinement and is thus cheaper, while also using less energy from power plants.

The focus on nuclear power further reduced CO2 emissions, with nuclear power gradually coming to supersede coal-based power. Windmills were also used in areas for water pumps and flour production.
And furthermore Stalin, for one, had a series of ecological programs which replanted thousands of square kilometers of forests cut down or destroyed in preparation for and during World War II - [[The Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature]] (1948-1953). In all these ways, the Soviets sought to reduce the ecological effects of their rapid and massive industrialization necessary to survive their early years as a nation.

The Russian Federation, on the other hand, shirked environmental maintenance work which was regularly done in the USSR. The current system is to cut down a section of forest, dig a deep pit, dump waste in the pit, light it on fire, and then bury it while the methane and other fuel continue to let the fire burn under ground; leaking into the air and nearby villages. This has caused and still causes large protests, especially since this is a significant step down from the more efficient trash sorting and processing system present in the Soviet Union.

===The Aral Sea===
Aral Sea has been slowly drying up for a while naturally. If no humans effect it this would take a few millenia to eliminate. Obviously human impact has sped up this process. In the 1960s, Soviet researchers predicted the complete evaporation of the body of water, and a river used to irrigate farmland had the excess water siphoned into the lake and would have been rerouted to continue to do so. This was, however, expensive, and during the privatizations (and subsequent economic catastrophe) of the 1980s, that came with the rise of Gorbachev, the plan was abandoned. After Kazakhstan seceded, high-intensity cotton farming practices and infrastructure mismanagement - most water running through irrigation to the farms evaporated on the way there - accelerated the shrinkage. Most of the former Aral Sea is a desert. The destruction of the Aral Sea is a product of resource mismanagement both during the Soviet Union and after, with the latter being exemplified by Yeltsin's capitalist shock therapy which largely disregarded environmental sustainability rather than simple ignorance of impact.

===Radioactive dumping===
There is only one lake with high radiation levels as a result of radioactive dumping, Lake Karachay, but that was because radiation wasn't understood nearly as well at the time. Similarly, radioactive dumping by Soviets has occurred in the Barents and Kara Seas, however this was not a phenomenon unique to the USSR.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20200609083923/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste Ocean disposal of radioactive waste]</ref>

==Railways==

From 1927 to 1941, the USSR expanded their freight rail network to be 20x larger than before, surpassing the US. From 1965 to 1980, the USSR build 639km of track a year (or about 1.5km a day).

==References==

[[Category:History]]
[[Category:USSR]]