Everyone is a product of their circumstance, yet, consequential individuals can shape events within their times. Leon Trotsky, key member of the Russian Bolshevik party in the early 20th century, exemplifies this statement. Born into a period of turbulent change socially and politically, due to the Russian industrial revolution, Trotsky was shaped by his context and events in early life. However, it is to a greater extent that Trotsky was a significant player and shaper of events within his times, being the November revolution of 1917 and the Russian civil war. Yet, as fervor for change lessened, so did Trotsky’s prominence; he was too associated with International Marxism to adapt to the new world.…
Over time, the Russian land and people have changed to accommodate for their needs but they have also kept some aspects the same whether it was for the better or the worse. Throughout 1801 and 1939, many things changed in the Soviet Union while keeping many things the same.…
In this weeks readings I was most interested in the Danilevsky reading regarding the connection between Slavs and Europe as well as comparisons between Russia and Western Europe. There were two main points that I found most important. The first point was the discussion of the slavs inability to form nation states, as well as the Russian inability to create a historically stable state because of the various nationalities and cultures of people that were vested in Russia. In the reading The Slav role in world civilization by Danilevsky the author talks about the lack of unity within the Russian state, because it is composed of over a hundred nationalities. (Danilevsky). I couldn’t help to connect this to the current situation that is still…
The concept of Stalinism, being the ideologies and policies adopted by Stalin, including centralization, totalitarianism and communism, impacted, to an extent, on the soviet state until 1941. After competing with prominent Bolshevik party members Stalin emerged as the sole leader of the party in 1929. From this moment, Stalinism pervaded every level of society. Despite the hindrance caused by the bureaucracy, the impact of Stalinism was achieved through the implementation of collectivization and the 5-year plans, Stalin’s Political domination and Cultural influence, including the ‘Cult of the Personality’. This therefore depicts the influence of Stalinism over the Soviet State in the period up to 1941.…
DeJonge Alex. Stalin and the shaping of the Soviet Union. Glasgow: William Collins Sons and Co. Ltd., 1984.…
These broad contrasts in convictions augmented the hole between the Soviet Union and the…
Stalin is known as one of the most brutal and ruthless dictators in human history. He feared that the Ukraine, the largest of the non-Russian republics, was a threat to his Communist empire. In 1929, Stalin eliminated any threat from Ukrainian nationalists. Over 5,000 spiritual and intellectual leaders such as priests, bishops, writers, professors, and scientists were arrested and either murdered or sent to prison camps in Siberia. They were falsely blamed of planning a rebellion, but Stalin’s motive was to eliminate those who could organize and resist. This left the common citizens without any guidance or direction (Gavin).…
The Soviet Union in the twentieth century was a tumultuous time for Russians who wished to speak their minds and for those who wished to stretch communism to the corners of the globe. With a government consumed by annihilating its opponents and censorship, Soviet writers such as Nikolai Bukharin and Grigori Deborin were compelled to depict the glory of communism or face the harshest of consequences. In “Down With Factionalism!,” Bukharin justifies his slander of Leon Trotsky in the battle to succeed Vladimir Lenin for the leadership of Russia. In Deborin’s “The Second World War,” he explains how the Soviet Union’s allies, England and the United States, let them down and how the USSR, alone, should be credited with saving Europe from Nazi Germany. Bukharin and Deborin rationalize soviet tactics through denouncing a political opponent and condemning capitalistic allies.…
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It stretched from Europe to the Pacific Ocean and included people with diverse cultures and traditions.2 Russia was a land of disparity and contradiction by the turn of the 20th century. It was caught in between two worlds: the traditional world of the peasantry and the modern world of the westernized elite.3 As these two world coexisted, their values, culture, and way of life extremely differed. Regardless of the persistence of a rural society and economy, Russia became exposed to profound urban and industrial growth during the second half of the 19th century. 4Many peasants surfed…
In George Orwell's 1984, the strategies used by Oceania's "Party" to achieve total control over the population are similar to the ones emplaced by Joseph Stalin during his reign. Indeed, the tactics used by Oceania's "Party" truly depicts the brutal totalitarian society of Stalin's Russia. In making a connection between Stalin's Russia and Big Brothers' Oceania, each party implements a psychological and physical manipulation over society by controlling the information and the language with the help of technology.…
The Soviet Union set out on a mission to cripple other nations, specifically the US, so that they would adopt communism as their new governments. They recruited top psychologists and other intellectuals to Moscow and manipulated them into using Psychopolitics. The intellectuals then went back into their countries spreading the ideals of sovietism, that there was only one sane personality and one sane state--anything else is a deviation and unacceptable. Most of these intellectuals went back to their…
During 1917 the political system of Russia, and the political opinions of its public, began to change. The First World War was deeply taking its toll, with the casualties running into millions, and food shortages were reaching crisis levels across Russia. Presided over by the Provisional Government, who had little support and even less real power, the people of Russia became restless. In October, the animosity between Government and populace came to a head, and a revolution put Lenin’s socialist Bolshevik party in power. This essay will show that, while the Bolshevik party was dedicated and driven in the values they believed in, it was only the seizing of opportunity, and a lot of luck, that they succeeded in taking power.…
Robert describes “ideologies of race, gender, and maturity as mutually reinforcing “notions of modernity” that shaped U.S. and Soviet attitudes and policies, and portrays the Cold War as a struggle between “competing explication claims” emanating from Moscow as well as Washington.” However the main goal was state of survival, after the end of World War II the chance of facing another war was a major treat to the super power and thus wanted to avoid it.…
Six years after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, Victory in Europe was declared. But with the fall of the Nazis, a new enemy of the West appeared—the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, or the USSR, was a Marxist-Leninist state with a highly centralized government and economy, that through its one-party, the Communist Party, promised social and economic equality for all. But the Red State did not fulfill its promises, with Soviet Premiers like Stalin killing millions of its citizens. It truly seemed as though Marxism, as it was practiced in the Soviet Union, was nothing but equality in social and economic misery for all. It is perhaps because of the USSR’s interpretation of Marxism that Kurt Vonnegut was inspired to write his short story Harrison…
In a fit of patriotic zeal, American folk musician Woody Guthrie famously scrawled the words “this machine kills fascists” onto his acoustic guitar. It marked the beginning of an era where American rock & roll music would infiltrate politics and alter political realities both at home and abroad. Guthrie’s “machine” was a synecdoche for music, specifically, music’s ability to topple authoritarianism and rattle the political landscape. The epitaph foretold that sometimes a guitar, more than even armaments or peace treaties, had the capacity to reshape the world.…