South Yemen

South Yemen, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), abbreviated to Democratic Yemen, was a country in South Arabia that existed in what is now southeast Yemen from 1967 until its unification with the Yemen Arab Republic in 1990. The sole communist state in the Middle East and the Arab world, it comprised the southern and eastern governorates of the present-day Republic of Yemen, including the islands of Perim, Kamaran, and the Socotra Archipelago. It shared ill-defined and often disputed borders with the Yemen Arab Republic to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the east. Its capital and largest city was Aden.

South Yemen's origins can be traced to 1874 with the creation of the British Colony of Aden and the Aden Protectorate, which consisted of two-thirds of present-day Yemen. Prior to 1937, what was to become the Colony of Aden had been governed as a part of British India, originally as the Aden Settlement subordinate to the Bombay Presidency and then as a Chief Commissioner's province. After the establishments of the Protectorate and Federation of South Arabia amidst rising Pan-Arab and anti-colonial sentiment, an armed rebellion began in 1963 that was led by the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) against British colonial rule. The Federation and Protectorate of South Arabia were overthrown to become the People's Republic of Southern Yemen (PRSY) on 30 November 1967.

On 22 June 1969, the Marxist–Leninist faction of the NLF, led by Abdel Fattah Ismail and Salim Rubai Ali, overthrew the Nasserist President Qahtan al-Shaabi in an internal bloodless coup that was later called the Corrective Move. The Marxist–Leninist takeover later led to the creation of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), and South Yemen's transformation into a one-party, socialist state. The official name of the state was changed a year after the reforms to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and was able to establish strong relations with Cuba, East Germany, North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union. Despite its efforts to bring stability into the region, it was involved in a brief civil war in 1986. The PDRY unified with the Yemen Arab Republic, on 22 May 1990 to form the present-day Republic of Yemen.

Politically, South Yemen operated as a centralized Marxist–Leninist state where legislative authority rested with the Supreme People's Council. The official state ideology was scientific socialism. The state supported regional left-wing movements in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, the Yemen Arab Republic, and the Horn of Africa. Economically, the state transitioned from Aden's colonial port-based system to central planning, agricultural land reform, and state-backed cooperatives. Although resource-scarce for much of its history, major petroleum deposits were discovered in the Shabwah Governorate in late 1986.

Socially, the PDRY established a state welfare system offering universal basic living standards, Universal health care, and education, achieving one of the highest literacy rates in the region. The government actively secularized personal law and enacted progressive policies for women's rights, notably through the 1974 Family Law which banned child marriage and polygamy.