Communism in Power: From Stalin to Mao

Overview

Examine communism at its peak influence—from Stalin’s USSR to Mao’s China—in this 12-lecture course on 20th-century revolutionary regimes.

Course No. 30270

Professor Vejas Liulevicius analyzes how Marxist-Leninist states ruled a third of humanity through terror, propaganda, and ideological fervor—while sowing seeds of their own collapse.

Course Content

Soviet Crucible

1. Stalin’s Terror State (33 min)
   • Purges, gulags, and the Great Terror (1936-38)

2. WWII & Cold War Dawn (29 min)
   • Nazi invasion to Iron Curtain division

3. Khrushchev’s Thaw (31 min)
   • 1956 Secret Speech denouncing Stalin

Asian Revolutions

4. Mao’s China (30 min)
   • 1949 revolution to Great Leap Forward

5. Cultural Revolution (30 min)
   • Red Guards and decade of chaos (1966-76)

6. Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam (27 min)
   • Colonial struggle to communist victory

Extreme Experiments

7. North Korea’s Dynasty (27 min)
   • From Stalinism to hereditary rule

8. Cambodia’s Killing Fields (31 min)
   • Pol Pot’s agrarian genocide

9. Eastern Europe’s Variants (30 min)
   • East Germany, Romania, Albania