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South Yemen, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, was a state that existed from 1967 to 1990 as the only communist state in the Middle East and the Arab world. It was made up of the southern and eastern Governorates of the present-day Republic of Yemen, including the island of Socotra. It was bordered by North Yemen to the North-West, Saudi Arabia to the North, and Oman to the East.
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 the 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 collapse of Aden Protectorate, a state of emergency was declared in 1963, when the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) rebelled against the British rule.
The Federation of South Arabia and the Protectorate of South Arabia merged to become the People's Republic of South Yemen on 30 November 1967, which later changed its name to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen after the Corrective Move, which it become a Marxist–Leninist one-party state in 1969 and was supported by Cuba, East Germany, North Korea and the Soviet Union. Despite its efforts to bring stability into the region, it was involved in a brief civil war in 1986. South Yemen was unified with the Yemen Arab Republic, commonly known as "North Yemen", on 22 May 1990 to form the present-day Republic of Yemen.