ASIA

  The fortunes of Asian Communism were varied. Two common features can be distinguished: instead of aiming to overthrow capitalism (barely established in much of the continent except Japan), Communism in Asia, as in the rest of the Third World, aimed to free the country from colonialism and modernize it. Success thus depended on mobilizing the peasantry and leading the anti-colonial or patriotic movement. This largely explains its triumph in China and its defeat in India.

In 1942 the Indian Communist party refused to support the Congress party call on the British to "Quit India" and preferred to co-operate with Britain in the war effort as it had been instructed to do by the USSR. It thus enjoyed the status of being the only legal nationalist organization in India during the war. This was a poisoned chalice because it left it isolated from the post-war independence movement. Communism in India remained of significance only in the south-western state of Kerala and in the northern state of West Bengal.

In Korea the Communist party had been one of the leading forces in the anti-colonial war against Japan. The country, however, was too small for the party to establish a liberated zone as the Chinese Communist party had been able to do. At the end of the war the party had become overly dependent on the USSR, which was able to establish, north of the 38th parallel, a Communist government similar to those of Eastern Europe while, south of the parallel, a right-wing regime emerged under American protection. The Korean War confirmed the partition of the country. A similar pattern emerged in Vietnam, with the difference that the Vietnamese Communists were more independent of Moscow than the Korean (there was no common border with the USSR). Led by Ho Chi Minh, they fought successfully against the French colonialists and defeated them in 1954. The ensuing international negotiations partitioned the country, leaving the Communists in control of the north and a pro-Western right-wing regime in the south. By the Sixties the conflict between north and south led to direct US military involvement. After a long and bitter conflict the United States was forced to withdraw in 1973. In 1975 Vietnam was reunited under Communist rule. Pro-Communist regimes were also established in Cambodia and Laos.

In Indonesia the Communist party had successfully established itself as the largest Communist party in Asia after the Chinese. It supported the semi-democratic personal rule of the nationalist and non-aligned leader Ahmed Sukarno. In 1965-1966 pro-American forces led by General Suharto ousted Sukarno and utterly destroyed the Communist party. It has been estimated that up to one million Communists were murdered in the ensuing massacre.

In the Middle East and Africa, Communist parties remained peripheral, though a number of post-colonial regimes styled themselves "Marxist-Leninist" and added Communist-type appellations such as "People's" or "Popular" to their names: examples include Benin, Ethiopia, Yemen, Angola, and Mozambique. In South Africa the Communist party was a component of the African National Congress and joined in 1994 the first postapartheid government led by Nelson Mandela.