ABSTRACT
The Communist takeover in Ethiopia took the form of a coup by a group of disaffected army officers who gradually transformed themselves into a Marxist-Leninist vanguard. Before the Communist takeover Ethiopia consisted of a patchwork of ethnic groups loosely ruled by a monarchy and a stratum of provincial nobles and state bureaucrats drawn from the dominant Shoan-Amhara ethno-linguistic group. In 1981 the Derg renamed itself the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia, thus combining the role of government, supreme military council, and Party Politburo. The Derg affirmed that a one-party state would be created once the masses were "sufficiently educated and prepared." In agriculture the Derg's long term aim was to establish a socialist property sector, but in the short term its priority was to destroy the powers of the rural nobility and other "feudal elements." The Derg admits to persistent peasant indifference on the cooperatives and state farms, exhibited in high rates of absenteeism, careless work, and low productivity.
