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Why Was Communism So Cruel

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What is communism? Over the years, we have been taught that communism is bad. We have fought multiple wars over it, such as in Vietnam and Korea. Major world leaders like Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong of China have successfully killed and starved their own people under a communist system. Was communism really created to be so cruel? In reality, the tragedies that occurred under communism weren’t meant to happen at all. In fact, true communism was simply supposed to eliminate class struggles and equalize the work force (Schmoop). Furthermore, two major political figures that aided communist uprising were Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and founder of the Russian Communist Party. Marx, …show more content…

The goal was to steady the food supply and free the rural work force. However, it resulted in massive casualties because many starved, as the state didn’t properly distribute food supply, and farmers who did not cooperate with collectivization were sent to exile in the Gulag (Stalin history). If Stalin took a progressive approach to collectivization and didn’t murder his own citizens, communism wouldn’t have started off on the wrong foot. In 1949, another world super power, China, adopted a communist system. Mao wanted to add his own twist to communism by introducing mass mobilization of the labor force with the goal of improving industrial and agricultural production (BBC). This had the exact opposite effect because it created a decline of output and, therefore, led to poor harvests and starvation (BBC). His careless dictatorship resulted from steering away from the true objective of communism. Marx’s idea of communism was meant to be positive by expressing concerns for the working classes, yet practice of it became oppressive under the leadership of early communist leaders such Stalin and Mao

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