<Li> The end of communism in Europe (1980--1992) in which Soviet client states were heavily on the defensive, as in Afghanistan and Nicaragua . The United States escalated the conflict with very heavy military spending . After a series of short - lived leaders, Michael Gorbachev came to power in the Kremlin and began a policy of glasnost and perestroika, designed to revive the stagnating Soviet economy . European satellites led by Poland grew increasingly independent and in 1989 they all expelled the communist leadership . East Germany merged into West Germany with Moscow's approval . At the end of 1991, the Soviet Union itself was dissolved into non-communist independent states . Many communist parties around the world either collapsed, or became independent non-communist entities . However, China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba maintained communist regimes . After 1980, China adopted a market oriented economy that welcomed large - scale trade and friendly relations with United States . </Li> <P> At the start of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was an autocracy controlled by the Tsar, with millions of the country's largely agrarian population living in abject poverty, and the anti-communist historian Robert Service noted, "poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in". The man responsible for largely introducing the ideology into the country was Georgi Plekhanov, although the movement itself was largely organised by a man known as Vladimir Lenin, who had for a time been exiled to a prison camp in Siberia by the Tsarist government for his beliefs . A Marxist group known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in the country, although it soon divided into two main factions: the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov . In 1905, there was a revolution against the Tsar's rule, in which workers' councils known as "soviets" were formed in many parts of the country and the Tsar was forced to implement democratic reform, introducing an elected government, the Duma . </P> <P> In 1917, with further social unrest against the Duma and its part in involving Russia in the First World War, the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution . They subsequently began remodelling the country based upon communist principles, nationalising various industries and confiscating land from wealthy aristocrats and redistributing it amongst the peasants . They subsequently pulled out of the war against Germany by signing the Treaty of Brest - Litovsk, which was unpopular amongst many in Russia for it gave away large areas of land to Germany . From the outset, the new government faced resistance from a myriad of forces with differing perspectives, including anarchists, social democrats, who took power in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, Socialist - Revolutionaries, who formed the Komuch in Samara, Russia, scattered tsarist resistance forces known as the White Guard, as well as Western powers . This led to the events of the Russian civil war, which the Bolsheviks won and subsequently consolidated their power over the entire country, centralising power from the Kremlin in the capital city of Moscow . In 1922, the Russian SFS Republic was officially redesignated to be the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, whilst in 1924 Lenin resigned as leader of the Soviet Union due to poor health and soon died, with Joseph Stalin subsequently taking over control . </P> <P> In 1919, the Bolshevik government in Russia organised the creation of an international communist organisation that would act as the Third International after the collapse of the Second International in 1916--this was known as the Communist International, although was commonly abbreviated as Comintern . Throughout its existence, Comintern would be dominated by the Kremlin despite its internationalist stance . Meanwhile, in 1921 the Soviet Union invaded its neighboring Mongolia to aid a popular uprising against the Chinese who then controlled the country, instituting a Marxist government, which declared the nation to be the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924 . </P>

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