How long did the Soviet Union try to spread communism?

Answer 1

The Soviet Union tried to export communism to the world almost as soon as the Bolsheviks led by Lenin be lived that they were in firm control of Russia to the end of the USSA aka Soviet Union's total collapse in the last decade of the 20th century. After WW2, Stalin occupied most of Eastern Europe and he set up local communist leaders in these countries. It was clear to world leaders in the USSR, the West and other nations that the spread of "Soviet style communism" had a better chance to succeed based on how many more countries became communist. One success was the creation of a communist government in Cuba. The leaders of the USSR ( which by the way meant the "Russian Politburo" ) were hopeful that Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro could spread communism to South America. This never happened as Castro's partner and leader of the South American cause Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia.

After WW2 when China became a communist nation along with North Korea, the USSR seemed somewhat successful in their goals. By 1972, Vietnam became a communist country as well.

A rather huge set back to both China and the USSR came around 1960. This was called the Sino-Soviet Split. China had a radical agenda with regards to the spread of communism, most of which the Chinese leadership believed it could control in Southeast Asia. The success in Vietnam was followed by the communist leaders in Cambodia.

But lets return to the 1960 Sino-Soviet rift. The radical Chinese communists led by Mao Tse-Dong believed that "Russia" was drifting away from radical Marxism with its policy of "detente" with the West. Russia was called the "running dogs of capitalism" by the Chinese. The Soviets did not appreciate being named as a culprit in the slow down of communism in Western Europe, North and South America.

The result was that the Soviets began to stop sharing high level technology they had with China. This hampered China as it needed hi-tech information to pull itself out of a poor economy and no internal resources to generate their own. The Soviets made it clear by troopand missiledeployments, that China was forgetting who was the leader in communism, namely themselves.

China was not always forth coming with its own crusade to spread communism in Vietnam as a prime example. According to Nikita Khrushchev, he was present at a meeting between Ho Chi Minh, leader of North Vietnam and the Chinese leadership. Ho was asking China for military support in its campaign against the French in South Vietnam. The Chinese response was that they could not help due to the crushing losses they absorbed by helping the North Koreans.. Ho was ready to give up according to Khruschev. This was unknown by the French who indicated they were quitting the action in South Vietnam. For their purposes thay announced this before Ho was going to make his announcement. This changed everything.