Communism Fascism Essay

Yara Akl
8 May 12
Communism & Fascism Essay

The Russian Revolution is not just one revolution. It consisted of many revolutions in 1917, like the February Revolution and the October Revolution. In the February Revolution, this took place sometime in March in 1917. The Members of the Imperial parliament, or Duma, assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. It was focused around Petrograd, (which is now St. Petersburg). The army leadership felt they did not have the means to put an end to the Revolution and the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II of Russia, abdicated. The Soviets, the workers’ councils, which were led by more radical socialist factions, initially permitted the Provisional Government to rule, but insisted on a prerogative to influence the government and control various militias. The February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the army in a state of mutiny. In the October Revolution, the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the Soviets, overthrew the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg. The Bolsheviks claimed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end the war, the Bolshevik leadership signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918.
Civil War The Civil war erupted between the Red and White Factions, (Red being Bolshevik and White being anti- Bolshevik), which was to continue for several years, with the Bolsheviks being the winners. They won in Ukraine. They also defeated An Army led by Aleksandr Kolchak in 1919 in Serbia. This made a way for the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). While many historical events that were kept on note occurred in Moscow and St. Petersburg, there was also a broad-based movement in cities throughout the state, among national minorities throughout the empire, and in the rural areas, where peasants took over and redistributed land.
The remainder of The White forces that were commanded by a man named Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangle were beaten in Crimea and got evacuated in 1920 in Autumn. Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland established themselves in the war.
Joseph Stalin
In August of 1939, after the failure to establish an Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance, Joseph Stalin’s UUSR entered into a “Non-Aggression” pact with Nazi Germany, which divided their spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. The pact basically allowed the Soviet Union to regain some of the former territories of the Russian Empire in Finland, Poland, Northern Bukovina, The Baltics, and Bessarabia during World War II. After Germany violated the pact, by invading the Soviet Union in 1941 and opening an Eastern Front, the Soviet Union joined the Allies. The Soviet Union managed to stop the Axis advance in the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. Eventually, the Red Army drove through Eastern Europe in 1944–1945 and captured Berlin in May of 1945. Having played the decisive role in the Allied victory against Germany, the USSR emerged as a recognized superpower after the war.
Joseph Stalin headed the Soviet delegations at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, which drew a map of post-war Europe. Communist-dominated leftist (Leftist: People or views which generally support social change to create a more egalitarian society) governments loyal to the Soviet Union were installed in the Eastern Bloc Satellite States as the USSR, were struggling from the Cold War with the United States, and NATO. In Asia, Joseph Stalin established good relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim II-sung in North Korea, and the Stalin-era Soviet Union in various ways served as a model for the newly formed People’s Republic of China and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Benito Mussolini
The first successful Fascist takeover was in Italy under Benito Mussolini. He was born in 1886 in North Central Italy. His mother was a devoted Catholic and schoolteacher, while his father was an atheist and anarchist who liked to smash ballot boxes on Election Day. Benito himself was a troublemaker who had a bad habit of knifing his classmates. As a young adult, he fled to Switzerland to avoid the draft and was converted to socialism there. In 1904, he returned to Italy and served his time in the army in return for a pardon. He then became the editor of several socialist newspapers in which he advocated both political assassination and pacifist resistance to a war with Turkey, calling the national flag a rag fit to be planted on a dung heap. When World War I broke out, he first advocated neutrality, and then called for Italian involvement on the Allied side.
The rise of the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini opposed the rise of the international left, especially the far-left along with others who opposed Fascism. Fascists and communists fought on the streets during this period as the two factions competed to gain power in Italy. The already tense political environment in Italy escalated into major civil unrest when Fascists began attacking their rivals, beginning on April 15, 1919 with Fascists attacking the offices of the Italian Socialist Party's newspaper called “Avanti!”
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler’s rise to power obviously began in Germany (at least formally)in September of 1919, When Hitler joined the political party that was known as the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, (or DAP, later commonly referred to as the “NAZI PARTY”). This political party was formed and developed during the post-World War I era. It was anti-Marxist and was opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles and it advocated extreme nationalism and Pan-Germanism as well as anti-Semitism. Adolf Hitler’s so called “rise” is considered to have ended in March of 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month; President Paul Von Hindenburg had already appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections, etc. The Enabling Act assured that Adolf Hitler could exercise dictatorial power without legal objection.
He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Being one of the best speakers of the party, he told the other members of the party to either make him leader of the party or he would never return. He was aided in part by his willingness to use violence in advancing his political objectives and to recruit party members who were willing to do the same. The Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and the later release of his book Mein Kampf (translated as My Struggle) introduced Adolf Hitler to a bigger audience. In the mid-1920s, the party engaged in electoral battles in which Adolf Hitler participated as a speaker and organizer, as well as in street battles and violence between the Rotfrontkampferbund and the Nazi’s Sturmabteilung. Through the late 1920’s and dearly 1930’s, the Nazis gathered enough electoral support to become the largest political party in the Reichstag, and Adolf Hitler’s blend of political acuity, deceptiveness and cunning converted the party’s non-majority but plurality status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933.
Once in Power, the Nazis created a mythology surrounding the rise to power, and they describe the period that roughly corresponds to the scope of this article as either the Kampfzeit (the time of struggle) or the Kampfjahre (years of struggle).