How did communist rule develop and change in Russia and China between 1917 and 1989, and what were the limits of that change?
Paper 1 Option 1D/equivalent: the establishment, consolidation and evolution of communist states in Russia and China, assessing change and continuity in government, economy and society over the long period.
An Edexcel A-Level History Paper 1 breadth guide to the development of communist states in Russia and China from 1917 to 1989. Covers the establishment and consolidation of one-party rule, the command economy and its reforms, social change, and how to assess change and continuity over the long period for Sections A, B and C.
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What this dot point is asking
Edexcel Paper 1 is a breadth study: you assess change and continuity across a long period of roughly 70 years. For a communist-states option you track how one-party rule, the command economy and society developed in Russia (1917 to 1989) and China (1949 to 1989), and judge what changed and what stayed the same. Paper 1 has three sections: Section A (one essay on causation or consequence), Section B (a choice of breadth essays on change), and Section C (the interpretations question on two historian extracts).
The answer
Establishing and consolidating communist rule
The Russian path ran through Lenin's seizure of power, the suppression of rivals (the Kronstadt revolt of 1921 crushed the last serious internal challenge), and Stalin's victory in the succession struggle of the 1920s. The Chinese path ran through Mao's Long March survival in the 1930s, victory in 1949 and the early consolidation campaigns. In both cases a vanguard party claimed to rule on behalf of the proletariat while concentrating power in a narrow leadership.
The command economy and its reforms
The defining economic feature was state ownership and central planning, but it changed repeatedly, which is exactly what the breadth question rewards you for tracking.
- Russia. War Communism (forced grain requisitioning, 1918 to 1921), the New Economic Policy (a limited market revival, 1921 to 1928), Stalin's collectivisation and Five Year Plans from 1928 (the First Plan claimed huge output rises in coal, steel and electricity), Khrushchev's reforms (the Virgin Lands scheme from 1954), and Gorbachev's perestroika from 1985 that failed to revive a stagnant system.
- China. Land reform (1950 to 1952), the First Five Year Plan on the Soviet model (1953 to 1957), the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) with its backyard furnaces and rural communes, and Deng Xiaoping's market reforms from 1978 (the household responsibility system, Special Economic Zones such as Shenzhen) that opened the economy.
Society, ideology and terror
Both states reshaped society through universal education, mass propaganda, attacks on religion and a cult of the leader (Stalin, Mao), while using terror to enforce conformity. The Soviet Great Terror (1936 to 1938) executed around 680,000 people; the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976) caused mass persecution and perhaps one to two million deaths. By the 1980s the two diverged: China combined continued party dictatorship with economic liberalisation under Deng, while the USSR under Gorbachev attempted political opening (glasnost) that accelerated collapse.
Assessing change and continuity
The historian Robert Service (A History of Modern Russia, 2009) stresses the continuity of the repressive party-state beneath shifting policy. Frank Dikotter (Mao's Great Famine, 2010) argues the Great Leap was a deliberate, knowing catastrophe rather than a mere planning error, which sharpens the case that political control overrode economic rationality. Archie Brown (The Rise and Fall of Communism, 2009) reads the period as one in which the founding structures persisted while the system's confidence and coherence drained away, ending in the Soviet collapse of 1991 and the Chinese pivot to market authoritarianism.
Examples in context
A worked Section C habit: when an extract argues the command economy was the essence of communist rule, support it with the Five Year Plans and communes, then challenge it with the primacy of the party and terror, then judge how convincing the extract is for the stated view, engaging its exact wording rather than writing a free essay.
Try this
Q1. How far do you agree that economic change in communist Russia and China between 1917 and 1989 owed more to political ideology than to practical necessity? [20 marks]
- What the marker wants. A thematic AO1 essay ranking ideology (Marxist commitment to collective ownership, the leader's vision) against necessity (war, famine, the need to industrialise), tracked across the period and reaching a judgement.
Q2. What was the New Economic Policy? [2 marks]
- Cue. Lenin's limited market revival from 1921, allowing private trade and small enterprise after the failure of War Communism, a notable change in communist economic policy.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of Pearson Edexcel exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
Edexcel 201920 marksHow far do you agree that the command economy was the most important feature of communist rule in Russia and China across the period 1917 to 1989?Show worked answer →
This is a Section B breadth essay, marked on AO1 (knowledge and analysis across the whole period). Level 5 demands sustained synthesis and a judgement, not a narrative of each regime in turn.
For. The command economy defined both states: War Communism (1918 to 1921), the First Five Year Plan (1928 to 1932) that lifted Soviet pig-iron output sharply, collectivisation, China's First Five Year Plan (1953 to 1957) and the Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962). It drove industrialisation and famine alike (the Soviet famine of 1932 to 1933, around 5 to 7 million dead; the Chinese famine of 1959 to 1961, around 30 to 45 million dead).
Against. One-party dictatorship and terror (the Cheka, the Great Terror of 1936 to 1938, the Cultural Revolution), ideology, the leader cult and the transformation of society arguably mattered more, since the economy served political control.
Level 5 ranks the command economy against these factors, tracks change over time (NEP versus War Communism, Deng's reforms from 1978), and reaches a clear, supported judgement.
Edexcel 202120 marksHow far do you agree that there was more continuity than change in the way communist states controlled society in the years 1917 to 1989?Show worked answer →
A Section B change-and-continuity essay (AO1). Markers reward analysis structured by theme across the whole period rather than chronology.
Continuity. Both states sustained one-party rule, censorship, a secret police (Cheka, NKVD, KGB; the Chinese security apparatus), a leader cult and ideological control of education throughout.
Change. Methods softened and hardened in waves: Khrushchev's Thaw and de-Stalinisation from 1956, Brezhnev's managed conformity, Gorbachev's glasnost from 1985; Mao's mass campaigns versus the relative pragmatism of Deng after 1976.
Level 5 weighs the persistence of dictatorial structures against the changing intensity of control, supports each claim with precise evidence, and judges whether the deep continuity of one-party rule outweighs the visible swings in method.
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Sources & how we know this
- Pearson Edexcel A-Level History (9HI0) specification — Pearson Edexcel (2015)