Unit 5:
The Cold War y el Franquismo
1. The World Divides into Blocs
1.1 The Capitalist Bloc and the Communist Bloc
In 1945, the Second World War ended. Among the victors, who had been allies until that point, there were two powers with antagonistic political ideologies. Furthermore, they sought to maintain and even increase their power and influence, drawing the rest of the world's countries into taking positions for or against them. These countries were the United States (capitalist system) and the Soviet Union (communist system). The polarization was so pronounced that Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, stated that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe.
Both the USA and the USSR implemented measures to consolidate their power and gain allies. These were:
On the part of the USA:
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The Truman Doctrine (1947): President Harry Truman committed to providing economic and military aid to any country wishing to combat communism.
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The Marshall Plan (1947): The USA granted large sums of money to the countries of Western Europe for post-war reconstruction. Through this, it gained allies, economic partners, limited the influence of communism, and revitalized the European economic market, from which the USA also benefited.
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, 1949): This is an alliance for mutual military assistance between member countries. It was created specifically with the possibility of a Soviet invasion of a Western European country in mind.
On the part of the USSR:
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During the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences, Stalin demanded that the USSR have a "security buffer" against potential attacks from Western Europe. Thus, the governments of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Albania, while independent, were sympathetic to and dependent on Moscow.
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The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON, 1949), through which member countries provided each other with financial aid and traded among themselves.
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The Warsaw Pact (1955): A military alliance between member countries. It is the communist equivalent of NATO.
1.2 Politics and Economy of Both Blocs
In the capitalist bloc, governments are republics or parliamentary monarchies, constitutionalist and multi-party. There is, in general, respect for fundamental liberties and rights:
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Right to life
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Right to marry
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Right to property
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Right to information
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Right to education
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Right to strike
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Equality before the law
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Freedom of expression
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Freedom of association in trade unions
The economy is mixed, though with a predominance of free-market capitalism.
Spain and Portugal were dictatorships and did not respect all these rights and freedoms, but they were allowed to belong to this bloc for being openly anti-communist.
In general, the capitalist bloc encompassed all of the Americas (except Cuba), Western Europe, Japan, Oceania, and some countries in Asia and Africa—continents where it disputed spheres of influence with the communist bloc.
In the communist bloc, governments were dictatorial republics, ruled by communist parties that were highly dependent on, or directly puppets of, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The liberties and rights of citizens were subordinate to the "interests of the working class," which in practice meant the policy of the single party.
In general, the communist bloc consisted of the USSR, Eastern Europe, China (though its case is very particular, as we will see), Cuba, North Korea, plus some countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. In Asia and Africa, it maintained disputes over spheres of influence with the capitalist bloc.
1.3 The Non-Aligned Countries
There existed, and still exists, a third bloc of countries that refused to adhere to either the capitalist or communist bloc. They are known as the Non-Aligned Countries.
The organization emerged at the First Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Belgrade (1961), promoted by leaders such as Josip Broz "Tito" (Yugoslavia) and Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt). Some of the Non-Aligned Countries were: India, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Ghana, Algeria, Mexico, and Argentina.
From the Baltic
to the Adriatic, an iron
curtain has descended
across the Continent
2. The Chinese Revolution and the Transition to Communism
China’s millennia-old imperial system collapsed in 1912, when the Republic was proclaimed. Two rival political parties then emerged, the Nationalists and the Communists, and their hostility grew until the Chinese Civil War began in 1927. In 1949, Mao Zedong’s Communists definitively defeated the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and from that point on the country became what is now the People’s Republic of China. At first, it was allied with the communist bloc and very close to Stalin, although this would change over time.
Mao Zedong established a one-party dictatorship (the Chinese Communist Party), curtailed freedoms and rights, but guaranteed certain basic services to the population (housing, education, food). The USSR provided economic and material assistance to China during its transition to communism, but after Stalin’s death in 1953, relations between the two countries cooled, as Mao believed that Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor as leader of the USSR, was too reformist.
In 1958, Mao launched the so-called Great Leap Forward, an ambitious project to industrialize the country by forcing peasants to set up home furnaces to produce steel, using any metal material they could put inside.
He also organized peasant families into communes in order to increase production, but planning was very poor. In some areas the land was overexploited until it became infertile, and, on the other hand, the lack of individual incentives —since all the fruits of labor were collective— did not encourage the Chinese to produce more.
Overall, the Great Leap Forward was a huge failure: the steel produced in the home furnaces was so poor in quality that it broke almost immediately, and agricultural production declined. Although figures were falsified out of fear of Mao’s anger, reality could not be hidden: between 15 and 50 million people died of hunger. In addition, the USSR was no longer providing economic aid. In 1962, the project was cancelled and the subject was no longer discussed.
In 1966, in order to regain influence after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, which consisted of carrying out a massive propaganda campaign in his favor. During the Cultural Revolution, thousands of people were persecuted and executed for being suspected of anti-communism or counterrevolutionary activities, and practically any aspect of life that could be considered non-Maoist was eliminated: books, traditions, art, scientific advances, temples. Many people were sent to “reeducation” camps to be “cured” of having a “bourgeois mentality".
The Little Red Book, in which Mao set out his political ideas, was published in 1964 and was compulsory reading in schools. Members of the Chinese Communist Party were also required to carry a pocket-sized copy. In 1976, Mao died, and a second modernization of China began, very successful economically, but without ceasing to be a one-party dictatorship.
Great Leap Forward
propaganda at its finest
Mao, AKA the Great Helsman
Communism
is not love. Communism
is a hammer which we use
to crush the enemy