ations. Its fire power has carried the Soviet
Union to victory in civil and international war. Its ruling
oligarchy--the Soviet Communist Party--has maintained its authority
through the stresses of domestic strife and major international
conflict. In terms accepted by the existing free-for-all West, the
Soviet Union is an established world power.

Through the first three decades of its existence the Soviet Union was
the only government avowedly engaged in building a socialist rival to
monopoly capitalism and determined to replace capitalism as the dominant
planet-wide social system. After 1943 it was joined by a dozen other
European, Asian and American countries, dedicated like the Soviet Union
to the task of building socialism. In addition to these dozen countries,
several others such as India, Burma, Indonesia, Ceylon, Ghana and Libya,
declared their intention of building socialism by legal, and gradual
stages. Almost all of the countries busied with socialist construction
were in East Europe and Asia. The countries building toward socialism
were more widely scattered, but by and large they were Eurasian.

From 1919 to 1943 socialist construction was directed, at least in
theory, by the Communist International with headquarters in Moscow--the
"general staff of the World Revolution". Under war pressure the
Communist International was dissolved in 1943. No equally inclusive
international socialist authority has since been established.

World revolution is not confined to the Old World of
Africa--Asia--Europe. It is widely prevalent in the Americas where it
can claim a certain priority. Outstanding among colonial uprisings of
modern times was the rebellion of the British colonies of North America,
from 1776 to 1783. Even more widespread was the rebellion of the
Spanish, Portuguese and French colonies of Central and South America
which spanned most of the nineteenth century and extended on into the
twentieth. Russian Bolsheviks held the headlines on revolutionary
activity from 1917 to 1943 but it should not be forgotten that one of
the most prolonged and thorough-going revolutions of the present century
gripped Mexico from 1910 to 1917. At the beginning of this period Mexico
was a political semi-dependency of the United States. It was
semi-feudal, with a large population of Amerindians and a pre-industrial
economy. Foreign capitalists and entrepreneurs, including those from the
United States, played a leading role in th