Ethiopian Revolution
In 1974 mutinies and strikes toppled Emperor Haile Selassie, and the Derg military committee built a Marxist-Leninist state on the ruins of the monarchy.
Overview
The 1973 famine in Wollo, exposed by foreign journalists, fuel price shocks, and army mutinies over pay and conditions dissolved the imperial regime from below. In September 1974 the Derg, a coordinating committee of junior officers, deposed the emperor, who was murdered in his palace the following year. Chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam consolidated power through the Red Terror of 1977 and 1978, which killed tens of thousands of students and leftists in urban violence. Land to the tiller decrees nationalized the countryside, while the Somali invasion and Eritrean insurgencies militarized the state. Famine struck again in 1984 and 1985. The regime collapsed in 1991 when rebel coalitions took the capital, ending Africa most populous Marxist state.
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