Introduction

Karl Marx’s notion of the necessity of ending the private ownership of the means of production has been applied in all communist countries through the introduction by the state of planned command economies under party control. For the communist countries in which Marxism is linked to Leninism in ideological and political fusion, the economic foundation and the political structure cannot simply part company. In Eastern Europe events are overriding these basic problems of Marxism-Leninism, and even in the Soviet Union everything appears to be in flux. According to the basic Soviet textbook, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, there is a “social need” for “great men.” The establishment of the People’s Republic, when Mao requested that the first Soviet ambassador should be a man well versed in Marxism-Leninism, Josef Stalin sent his former head of the Comintern, Pavel Yudin, who became Mao’s confidant.