Edward R. Murrow & John Wayne v. Communism: "Challenge of Ideas"
Anti-communist episode features Edward R. Murrow, John Wayne, Hanson Baldwin (New York Times military editor), Frank McGee, Lowell Thomas, and Helen Hayes. 'DEPICTS THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE CONFRONTING AMERICA AND THE FREE WORLD TODAY, A STRUGGLE THAT IS BEING FOUGHT NOT ON THE BATTLEFIELD BUT THROUGH THE WORDS OF DIPLOMATS, GESTURES OF FRIENDSHIP, CULTURAL DEMONSTRATIONS, FOREIGN AID AND MILITARY POWER. DESCRIBES THE EVERYDAY WAR OF IDEAS OF COMMUNISM VS DEMOCRACY. NARRATOR IS EDWARD R. MURROW.'
The Big Picture episode TV-512
Public domain film from the US National Archives
Modern communism
The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of Lenin's Bolsheviks, which was the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority... Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe...
The moderate Mensheviks (minority) opposed Lenin's Bolshevik (majority) plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace, bread, and land"...
The Second International had dissolved in 1916 over national divisions, as the separate national parties that composed it did not maintain a unified front against the war, instead generally supporting their respective nation's role. Lenin thus created the Third International (Comintern) in 1919 and sent the Twenty-one Conditions, which included democratic centralism, to all European socialist parties willing to adhere. In France, for example, the majority of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party split in 1921 to form the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC). Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy.
During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized all productive property and imposed a policy named war communism, which put factories and railroads under strict government control, collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of industry. After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give a "limited place for a limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until 1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party leadership, and the introduction of the Five Year Plans spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks, in 1922, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 was Stalin's attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party...
Cold War
Its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and Communist parties played a leading role in many independence movements. Marxist–Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Marxist–Leninist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern...
By 1950, the Chinese Marxist–Leninists had taken over all of mainland China. In the Korean War and Vietnam War, communists fought for power in their countries against the United States and its allies...
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