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Values and Political Change in Postcommunist Europe pp 48–66Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Communism and After

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Abstract

Communist rule still seemed viable in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed it was expanding rapidly, particularly in the developing world. In Vietnam, following the conclusion of a long drawn-out war with France and then the United States, a socialist republic was established in 1976 after north and south had reunited. In Laos, the year before, a people’s democratic republic had been formed after the king had abdicated and the monarchy had been abolished; and in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge came to power after they had overthrown the pro-Western government of Lon Nol. There were at least sixteen communist governments of this kind by the mid-1980s; further afield, radical and Soviet-aligned regimes were established in many of the countries of Africa and Asia, including Afghanistan, Angola and Ethiopia. Nicaragua was ruled, after 1979, by the Sandinista National Liberation Front; and in Grenada the New Jewel Movement had established a People’s Revolutionary Government. Leonid Brezhnev, addressing the 26th CPSU Congress in 1981, could reasonably claim that the ‘revolutionary struggle of the peoples’ had registered ‘new victories’.1

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Glasgow, UK

    William L. Miller (Edward Caird Professor of Politics) & Stephen White (Professor of Politics)

  2. University of Nottingham, UK

    Paul Heywood (Professor of Politics)

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© 1998 William L. Miller, Stephen White and Paul Heywood

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Miller, W.L., White, S., Heywood, P. (1998). Communism and After. In: Values and Political Change in Postcommunist Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230377448_3

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