of the USSR, one of the most important aspects to look at is the massive industrialization that took place under the Soviet regime. This industrialization, like so many other things, is a complicated issue, with many arguments circling around it. The process was marked both by tremendous progress and expansion, as well as gross inefficiency and waste. To better understand the Soviet industrialization, it is necessary for us to briefly look at the history that preceded it. When the Bolsheviks came
Soviet Propaganda The soviet communist party, or the Bolsheviks, always new that strong propaganda was essential to increase the consciousness of the masses. As stated in the Encyclopedia of Propaganda, " propaganda was central to Marxist-Leninist ideology long before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917."(675) The power of persuasion and coercion were exercised with great force by Soviet leaders. The two leaders whom utilized propaganda to influence public opinion in the USSR were Vladimir Lenin
helped structure the country to form the Soviet Union. Over time, this eventually became the highest government authority of executive power under the Soviet System. Following the creation of the USSR in 1922, the Unions became modeled after the first Sovnarkom, but to deal with domestic matters, the Soviet republics maintained their own governments. By 1946, the Council of People’s Commissars transformed into the Council of Ministers, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics changed the People’s
The general perspective of the Soviet Union was that the country was a dictatorship, specifically, an oppressive, brutal, top-down autocracy that guided all aspects of life of its people. From grocery stores having set quantities of goods, only purchasable by ration card, to strict, set times of work and off-duty hours, to censored press, The Soviet Union was indeed a dictatorial state. However, the people of the Soviet Union did not simply fall into line with the established rules of society- They
Sino-Soviet relations Following the Second World War a new political order existed. The world essentially was divided between two dominant and opposed spheres, that of the United States and that under the hegemony of the Soviet Union. This global order heavily influenced the foreign policy decisions of policy makers in both Washington and Moscow. Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Communist party and the absolute dictator of the Soviet Union, sought national security for the Soviet Union
The Collapse of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was a global superpower, possessing the largest armed forces on the planet with military bases from Angola in Africa, to Vietnam in South-East Asia, to Cuba in the Americas. When Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, nobody expected than in less than seven years the USSR would disintergrate into fifteen separate states. Gorbachev's
The Breakup of The Soviet Union In this essay I am going to talk about the breakup of the Soviet Union and all of the events that took place before, during, and after the split up. I will look into the C.I.S (Commonwealth of Independent States), the Government, economy and the conflicts of the former U.S.S.R. In July of 1991, President Mikhail Gorbachev and ten other Repulic leaders all met and signed a treaty giving each Republic more self-government. Five more leaders were to sign the treaty
Soviet Ideology, Cultural Policy, and Propaganda Marxism-Leninism ideology and its connection to Soviet cultural policies is a topic of frequent exploration, however this paper will take that common investigation a step further by considering the role of Soviet propaganda and its relationship to the shifting ideologies of the Soviet Union and its official cultural policies. The research will be carried out by identifying the nature of Soviet ideology as well as what it entails. Furthermore, Stalin-era
The fall of the Soviet Union Before one can understand the fall of the Soviet Union, he has to know how the nation came into being and the leaders, and the location of the country and the time period of its reign. How did the Soviet Union come into existence? Through the 1900’s the Soviet Union was entangled in a vast number of conflicts all because they wanted to spread communism. Subsequently, the rampant spread of communism and Soviet ideals had an impact in the First World War, Second World
Hitler’s Alliance With The Soviet Union When the world awoke August 24, 1939 it appeared that the absolute impossible had just occurred in Europe, National Socialist Germany and Soviet Russia had just agreed on a Non Aggression pact. By that morning the entire political world had changed, it had been thrown roughly on its head and people quickly asked how it could have happened? Over a period of three years the German chancellor, Adolph Hitler had repeatedly pushed the major powers to
The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had emerged eventually into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union was crumbling at this period both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant
and The Soviet Union were originally joined together by the want to defeat The Nazi army, in 1941-1945. The alliance remained, and strengthened, among the two until the end of World War II. At the end of World War II, a rupture between the two occurred. The differences began earlier, but there was a straw that broke the camels back. The reason The United States and The Soviet Union’s alliance did not work out is because The Soviet Union and The United States were complete opposites, The Soviet Union
the soviets and the U.S. were at war to generally end communism. The cold war started after the arms race and the soviets were spreading into east Europe creating the iron curtain. The iron curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two seperate areas from the end of world war II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The U.S. is partly to blame because they founded the Europeans after WWII and deemed communism bad after the fought side-by-side in the war. the soviets are
Stalin was a Russian dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1929 to 1953. Though he grew up poor with an abusive father, under his direction, Russia was transformed from impoverished to a global superpower. He is well known for ruling with fear and violence, having killed millions of his citizens during his reign, but few people realize his great contributions during World War II. Joseph Stalin’s ignorant commands causing thousands of soldiers of the Red Army to be defeated
lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.” The novel, A Mountain of Crumbs, depicts the hopelessness, opression and deception of life behind the Iron Curtain during the 70s and 80s. Many rights of the people within the Soviet Union were violated and unacknowledged. In ages past, there were no human rights but the idea evolved after a while. It was at the end of World War II that the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with the purpose of saving
“Montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots” (Sergei Eisenstein) In pre-revolutionary Russia 90 per cent of the nation’s films were imported from elsewhere around the world. With the exception of a minor number, the vast majority of films created in Russia during this time were considered mediocre. Between the years 1914 to 1916 the figure for imported films dropped to 20 per cent. An explosion of creative and artistic talent seemed to burst out of Russia from then until
Introduction The Soviet-Afghan War spanned nine years from late 1979 to early 1989 encompassing the terms of two Soviet premiers and two United States presidents. Known also as the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam War” it too was a war of technology and power against a hardened and adaptive guerilla militia know as the Mujahedeen (people doing jihad) that lead to an undetermined victor and a withdrawal of Soviet forces. In 1978 the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was a poor, agrarian and socialist
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 1979, the goal was to help Afghan communist forces set up a communist government. The Soviet Union felt Afghanistan had key resources and a foothold in the Middle East to spread communist ideas. The result would be a war that the Soviet Union wishes it never got involved in and likened to their “Vietnam War”, meaning winning a number of battles but not the war like what happened to the U.S. in Vietnam. The background of the war, outcome of the
Communism in the Soviet Union and Why it Failed Communism is defined as "a system of political and economic organization in which property is owned by the community and all citizens share in the enjoyment of the common wealth, more or less according to their need." In 1917 the rise of power in the Marxist-inspired Bolsheviks in Russia along with the consolidation of power by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the word communism came to mean a totalitarian system controlled by a single political party
The Soviet Union and the Legacy of Communist Rule The December of 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union—and with it, an entire era. Like the February Revolution of 1917 that ended tsardom, the events leading up to August 1991 took place in rapid succession, with both spontaneity and, to some degree, retrospective inevitability. To understand the demise of Soviet Union is to understand the communist party-state system itself. Although the particular happenings of the Gorbachev years undoubtedly