Big Picture Questions

1. Why did the communist experiment, which was committed to equality, abundance, and a humane socialism, generate failed economies and oppressive, brutal, and totalitarian regimes?
2. In what ways did communism have a global impact beyond those countries that were governed by communist parties?
3. What was the global significance of the cold war?
4. “The end of communism was as revolutionary as its beginning.” Do you agree with this statement?
5. Looking Back: What was distinctive about twentieth-century communist industrialization and modernization compared to the same processes in the West a century earlier?