Just sharing something silly that I decided to put together. Try to see how many of them you can recognize. Optional video essay background music to go along the post.
Tier 1: The big three. On top of the iceberg due to the enormous impact that they have had in the world’s history and popular culture, being known by even the most politically illiterate. It is very likely you have been told more than once to move here by angry people during political discussions.
Tier 2: Smaller socialist states that stand out more than the rest in their respective regions. Still well known and recognized, but most people have a weaker grasp on them than on the ones listed on the tier above.
Tier 3: More unlikely to pop up in debates about communism, this likelihood increases drastically if the person you are talking with had a grandmother whose castle, servants and favourite pony were taken away by one of these states.
Tier 4: This tier marks a barrier: an average Jane and Joe is most likely not able to recognize these. However, they do not suppose a very deep level of knowledge for a ML, who should already know about their existence and point one or two facts about them at the very least.
Tier 5: Many people are unable to even point on a map where these countries are located, and much less to even know that they were once socialist states. If you know in depth about them, it is very likely that you put a desproportionately large focus on anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism in your theory journey. It is also equally as likely that you haven’t seen the sun in years.
Tier 6: The bottom of the iceberg. These states are almost never mentioned even by the people who are well read on the states on the tier above, despite the very unique and interesting challenges that they had to face as socialist projects. Venturing into these shows a willingness to search for knowledge further away than anything that you will ever need in practice.
Tier 7: The dark depths of socialist history. Some are states that lasted for several years flying under the radar of even the most dedicated MLs, but most of these are ephemeral projects, having lasted as much as the elements at the bottom of the periodic table, or what is the same, about two or three times longer than the average anarchist project. If you know about these, you either live in the place where they existed or you most likely learnt about them not in the pursue of anything practical, but searching for knowledge purely for the sake of it.
Tier 8: Have you ever had a dream that that you um you had you’d you would you could you’d do you wi you wants you you could do so you you’d do you could you you want you want him to do you so much you could do anything?
Really didn’t expect to see the (old) Greek flag, but there it is, included towards the end of tier 7. So here’s a little bit of history that nobody has asked of, yet I hope will prove to be an interesting reading. It is about the two “Mountain Governments” of Greece, both formed by the Communist Party -during, and in the aftermath of- WWII.
The first one was formed during the war, when the communists led the struggle against the Nazi occupators. Communist led ELAS and EAM guerillas, as well as right-wing EDES, had organized themselves and waged partisan war against the Nazi with remarkable success. They managed to establish the first free government of liberated Greece in 1944 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Committee_of_National_Liberation/) in the areas that they had managed to free, in spite of both Athens’ Nazi-installed collaborationist “government” and the old bourgeoisie government that had fled to Cairo when the war broke out. The government-in-exile, led by king George II, was pretty powerless in its current situation, but for Western countries it remained the “official” government which represented Greece. Meanwhile, the “Mountain Government”, largely (if not mostly) communist-led, planned some important educational reforms in the liberated areas, and even held its own elections. The remarkable thing about them is that, for the first time in Greek history, women were allowed to vote.
When the Nazi left Greece, the bourgeoisie government felt safe enough to return from abroads. The Provisional Democratic Government was dissolved several months after it had been formed after a government of national unity was established in the now fully liberated Greece. Communists argued that the newly formed government was problematic because it included former collaborators of the Nazi and it served the interests England, who had found the chance to meddle extensively with Greek affairs. Guerilla forces were forcedly disbanded in favour of a national army, which the government tried to “cleanse” from anybody they considered to lean even slightly towards the Left. Prosecution of former members of EAM and ELAS began. A peaceful demonstration of EAM was violently crushed by the English armed forces and local right-wing armed paramilitia. White terror began, forcing a lot of people into hiding. This is how the Greek civil war broke between the anti-communist bourgeois government, supported by right-wing militia and England, and left-leaning factions of EAM-ELAS.
In these conditions the Communist Party organised partisans into a small army (Democratic Army of Greece), seized some mountainous areas and proclaimed a new government in 1947 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Democratic_Government). It didn’t last long, either. The Athens government won de-facto in 1948, and the second “Mountain Government” was dissolved in exile, in 1950.
Neither time did communists really have a chance to prove themselves in long-term government, as both of those goverments were provisional and existed in the midst of a war.
Wow, that turned out longer than I expected it to be. Still, I hope it was not too boring. The truth is, there is way too much history behind these events, entire books are dedicated to the events of those years. I just wanted to share the basic facts about it in the hope that somebody finds it useful/interesting.