Communist Contagion

“What Does Russia Want?” is an article that appeared in Time Magazine. It includes a map from the early Cold War, showing how the Soviet Union managed to spread the communist ideology throughout Eastern Europe and Asia. 

What’s interesting about this map is that it depicts the level of communist adoption through a metaphor for a contagion. In that metaphor, the Soviet Union acts as a doctor diagnosing its patients based on the degree of their infection (or that is, their degree of immersion in the communist ideology). Red areas are “quarantined,” or fully immersed in this ideology. Areas with dotted lines are “infected,” or countries that are friendly to communism or that have a minority who adopted its policies. And areas with dots are “exposed,” or potential future adopters of communism.