Abstract
‘A brief history of communism in power’ describes how, by the 1970s, more than a third of the world's population lived in a Communist system. By the end of the 1940s, the number of states under Communist control had grown dramatically from just two to thirteen. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 led to a new determination in the West to reassert itself over communism, and by the beginning of the 1980s leading Western nations had a new generation of much tougher-minded anti-Communist leaders. The tide was about to turn, and the days of Communist power's expansion were over.