Final Paper

Communism & Ideology

Agenda

• Lecture

• Discussion board post

• Consulting/questions about final paper

• HW: Marks, pgs. 161-184

• HW: Reading Comprehension Quiz #10 DUE TMRW

• HW: discussion board post due Thurs at 11: 59 pm

• HW: rough draft due in 3 weeks • Have clear argument

• Three sub-arguments to support

• 2 primary sources

• Use materials from Weeks 1-12

Communism: Early Decades Compare/contrast Mao and Stalin’s early priorities.

Communism’s Rise

• 1912: Dr. Sun Yatsen, Nationalist Party of China (Guomindang)

• Three principles: nationalism, democracy, livelihood

• 1917: Lenin led Bolshevik Revolution against provisional Russian government

• 1918-21: Civil War, establishes USSR

• 1923: Stalin takes over (after Lenin dies)

• 1919: Chinese Communist Party established

• 1920s: Nationalists purge Communists from military institutions and labor movements

Goals:

• Soviets want to overthrow European and American imperialism/colonialism

• pursue AUTARKIC policies (economic self- reliance)

• 1929: Mao Zedung focuses on rural strategy • soil depletion and erosion  problem with food

production

• deforestation = soil erosion, accumulated alluvium = flooding

Soviets Overcoming Nature

• Goal: create a second “planned” nature that followed Soviet plans

• Great Stalin Plan: afforestation project (planting trees) to transform great steppes (arid) into more hospitable land for farms • Hoped to battle droughts that affected

steppes

• 1930s: scientific studies  food production and tree belt placement

• 19th century: metaphorical struggle between Russian forests and the “Asiatic steppe”

Collectivization

• Moved peasants to large farms

• Used tractors to plow large tracts of steppes

• 1932-33: drastic reduction in crop production

• Possibly 11 millions people starved to death

• Failed to produce massive food, but:

• controlled peasants

• gave leaders a sense of progress

Compare/contrast Mao and Stalin’s early priorities.

War and Ecological Damage What were ecological effects of fighting? Human or nature-induced?

Nationalists vs. Communists vs. Japanese

• 1930s: decades of warlordism in China

• 1937: Japan invades northern China

• 1938: Nationalists destroy dike on Yellow River (Henan) to stop Japanese • 1 million people

drown • 2 million dislodged

http://www.disasterhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-4.png

Nationalists vs. Communists vs. Japanese

• River flood influenced war for years

• farmland flooded

• sunbaked land = hard

• Millions of refugees fled west to escape Japanese

• Agriculture in the mountains = eroded and depleted soil

• 1942: El Niño Event http://www.disasterhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screenshot-4.png

Soviets at War

• Soviets destroyed landscape: • hydroelectric dams

• Flooded mines

• Germans invaded so quickly, overextended supply line

• Scavenged from countryside

• Sept 1941: 871-day siege of Leningrad starved residents

• Hygiene services (garbage, sewage) stopped

• Disease broke out

Destruction in the War • Wholesale exploitation of nature for war effort

• Deforestation for fuel and agricultural land

• Mining of minerals and metals for industry  especially weapons

• Massive pollution from increased number of factories

• Destroyed air and water quality

• Invasions/imperialist goals of gaining crucial land for food or mineral production

• Resources become militarized

• People become exploited laborers

What were ecological effects of fighting? Human or nature- induced?

Postwar Plans How did Communism’s plans for nature develop after WWII?

Problems Facing Mao’s China

intensive irrigation  salinization and waterlogging  Wet-rice agriculture reached peak

yields in 18th century

most soils lacks crucial nutrients, especially nitrogen

 Decision to support North Korea = U.S. embargo on artificial fertilizers & farming tech

Without agricultural surpluses – can’t feed industrial workers

The Great Leap Forward (1959-62)

• 1949: 80 million hectares of agricultural land, 40% rice paddies

• Mao wanted more food

• no artificial fertilizers

• forced collectivization

• Cut down forests, reduced hillside coverage: • Caused: droughts, floods, siltation, reduction of soil nutrient • Effect: 33-45 million starved to death

• Communists leaders saw nature as an enemy (“Man must conquer nature”)

Influence of Soviet Theory

• Soviet agronomists REJECTED Western European notions of evolutionary biology • transform nature with radical new ideas

• 1952: Mao’s “transform nature” ideology

• Effect: distrust of Western sciences • reinstated in 1960s

Disease

• Mao China emphasized public heath

• This was important to Communist victory

• Four Pests campaign  kill source of diseases • Unintended consequences

• Also targeted syphilis as a “moral stain”

Post-Mao

need for trees  “Great Green Wall” decades long initiative

Subsequent leaders  is big population good?

 1953: almost 600 mill, 1976: more than 800 mill

 Birth control and One Child Policy followed

Soviets’ Cold War Exploitations • Mining for nuclear material and minerals

• Chemical, industrial, and nuclear by-products dumped into water supplies

• Nuclear testing

• Energy: river dams

• Lake Aral  Cautionary Tale

Postwar Plans How did Communism’s plans for nature develop after WWII?

Post to Blackboard Discussion Board

First Question, Today’s Lecture, Second Question, Thursday’s Lecture, Response 1. Compare and contrast how Communist ideologies in China and the

Soviet Union affect the environment [8 points] • Describe two detailed goals that Mao and Stalin had and how those goals affected

nature

2. How did the Cold War exacerbate [worsen] decolonization struggles? [8 points] • How did the international situation affect the fighting? • What were direct and indirect ways that fighting affected the land and people?

3. Respond to a classmate [8 points] • Comment if you think the goals and fighting scenarios you discussed had a larger

impact on nature than your colleagues – why or why not? • How did your colleague’s presentation of the material change your understanding of

it at all? Or can you clarify something to help your classmate understand something that you think you understood more clearly?

• HW: Marks, pgs. 161-184

• HW: Reading Comprehension Quiz #10 DUE TMRW

• HW: discussion board post due Thurs at 11: 59 pm

• HW: rough draft due in 3 weeks • Have clear argument

• Three sub-arguments to support

• 2 primary sources

• Use materials from Weeks 1-12