Soviet Union: What Should Textbooks Emphasize?
The Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that ran under an Authoritarian Communist regime. It was established by Vladimir Lenin in 1917 after the fall of the Russian Monarchy, and officially became the Soviet Union in 1922; The USSR eventually collapsed at the end of 1991 due to destructuring of its centralized government. The history of the Soviet Union is rich and can be difficult to break down. Trying to grasp the Soviet Union’s description for a textbook can be done by separating it into three categories. Textbooks should emphasize the geographic and economic size of the USSR, the social and political conditions, and the cultural
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It also had 7 satellite countries between itself and Germany. The physical size of the USSR can be shown in Document A, which outlines all of the countries in the Soviet Union, as well as the satellite countries. The physical size of the county shows how much power it had over Europe. This would be an important factor to outline in a textbook because it shows how many people it had access to, as well as how much room they had to use for industry and infrastructure. This point can be reiterated in Document E, where it directly shows that the USSR had more money to spend on its military and its nuclear power. This theme continues to be shown in Document B, where it shows that they had more soldiers to send out to war, a larger size geographically from the US. The tremendous size of the country shows its physical capabilities in both geographical power, but also economic …show more content…
For example, Document F shows that the Soviets were the first to enter space. This is a huge advancement, and was largely motivated by the Cold War. This shows how they advanced as a country because of a major external influence, like the Cold War. This would need to be in a textbook about the Soviet Union because it explains why and how they pushed to have a better, more cultured environment. This can be shown in Documents G and H, which both show athletic prowess within the USSR. These were mainly motivated by competition with the US, and again shows how their cultural advancements were a large part of their society. Explaining how the Soviet Union pushed to create culture in their society would really be important in a textbook, because it would show how competition motivated