Revolution #178, October 4, 2009

EVERYTHING YOU’VE BEEN TOLD ABOUT COMMUNISM IS WRONG
CAPITALISM IS A FAILURE, REVOLUTION IS THE SOLUTION

Quiz Answers

1. (B) Penny Kane, The Second Billion (New York: Penguin, 1987), chapter 5.
2. (C) At the start of the Cultural Revolution, Mao raised the slogan “it is right to rebel against reactionaries” and called on people to “bombard the headquarters” of capitalist roaders who were carrying out elitist and oppressive policies. Providing resources for posters and newspapers, free use of trains for students, and encouragement in the press were some key ways in which mass criticism and struggle were promoted. See “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (Adopted on August 8, 1966), in Important Documents on the Cultural Revolution in China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1970).
3. (A) Ruth Gamberg, Red and Expert (New York: Schocken, 1977), p. 41.
4. (B) Andrew Martin, “So Much Food. So Much Hunger,” The New York Times, September 20, 2009.
5. (A, B, C) In socialist China women were encouraged to and did participate in all levels of the government, educational system, economy, and other aspects of society. And Maoists led the struggle to break further with the legacy from the old society of women’s oppression and tradition’s chains.
6. (B) The Russian Revolution of 1917 had brought political and social emancipation to Jews in a country with a history of virulent anti-Semitism and violent anti-Jewish pogroms. Equality of rights for Jews continued under Joseph Stalin during the 1930s and World War 2. By contrast, Jews in Hungary, Romania, and Poland faced organized fascist movements and institutional anti-Semitism in the 1930s—and, later, death camps. See Arno Mayer, Why Did The Heavens Not Darken (New York: Pantheon, 1988).
7. (D) This took place in the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union as part of the larger struggle for women’s liberation in the 1920s and 1930s. A recent documentation is Marianne Kamp, The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling Under Communism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006).
8. (C) Secretary of State Madeline Albright made this statement in an interview on the CBS news show 60 Minutes (May 12, 1996) in response to a question about the suffering caused by U.S. sanctions imposed on Iraq following the U.S.’s invasion. On the humanitarian cost of these sanctions, see UNICEF, Information Hotline, “Iraq surveys show humanitarian emergency,” Wednesday, August 12, 1999 (www.unicef.org).

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