Soviet Union Essays

Russia is one of the largest countries in the entire world. Russia is made up of 142,355,415 people, and the landmass itself is 17,098,242 square kilometers (Russia). This is one of the biggest nations existing today. It is located in Asia and has been through major government changes in the 20th century. Throughout its history, this country’s government has had three major government changes each with an obvious significance.

In the following essay, I will be talking about Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. I am going to go more in depth of how Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin rose to power. Stalin was a Russian dictator who ruled from 1920 until 1953, which was the same year of his death. He was born in December 18, 1878, until March 5, 1953 which was when he died. He was also an author during his spare time and he wrote many books like: The October Revolution, The Foundations of Leninism, and many others.

Mao’s China rose from the ruins of 40 years of war, broken and humiliated, into an untouchable nuclear power which threatened the balance of the bipolar world order. The primary and secondary documents on Mao and Maoism details this path built on utopian radicalism, the death and misery of millions, and an intricate relationship with the Soviet Union. This relationship began formally in 1950 with the Sino-Soviet alliance and ended in the late 1960s. The alliance was doomed from the start, both countries had little in shared cultural legacies, different perceptions on the significance of the alliance, and was based on the momentary weakness of China. However, it stood as the greatest threat to the “political supremacy of western capitalists

With the United States and Soviet Union having conflict with each other, it was difficult for each other to confront on the battlefield due to threats occurring for years. Not only were there threats against one another, but there was also struggle politically and economically. In order to build an economy with Europe and contain it within the Soviet Union, the Marshall Plan was passed to help the European countries. Also, the Molotov Plan was created by the Soviet Minister to help with the country. In other words, both the Marshall Plan and Molotov Plan came together as one to create plans to weaken the economy in other countries that were their enemies.

Furthermore, Ronald Reagan started his argument with uses of word choices and appeals of emotions which creates strong feelings that effectively helps him to persuade the Soviet Union as well as the president Gorbachev. As he mentioned in paragraph two “standing before the Brandenburg gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow man, every man is a Berliner forced to look upon a scar” here Reagan expressed the feeling of not being able to be connected to the other part of German. Those emotional appeal makes the Soviet Union to think about how the people were not connected to the other side of the berlin wall, which creates an eagerness inside them to bring down the

After World war II, the Soviet Union and the United States were the strongest nations. Both sides had different ideas of government and economics. A war of ideas developed between those two countries, also known as the Cold War. The United states is a capitalistic country, where people and business control the production of goods. People decide where they work and live.

On March 11th, 1985 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was elected the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Upon being elected, he immediately raised concerns about the social, economic and political issues in the Soviet Union, mainly those of economic decline, rising ethnic tensions and a rise in nationalism, leading to a stronger desire for Soviet Republics to gain their independence. This essay analyses the two sources by Gorbachev that set the complete reform of the Soviet Union in motion, ‘Gorbachev’s first views’ depicting his desire for reform and change, and ‘Gorbachev and the need for perestroika’ which depicts his dissatisfaction with the current system and the status-quo. Perestroika and Glasnost are undoubtedly the most essential sets of policies to understand Gorbachev’s intentions for reform and change of the system in the Soviet Union. This essay’s research question is “What kind of changes did Perestroika and Glasnost bring to the socio-economic aspect of the Soviet Union?”

Matthew Klepach Mr. Saleeba English IV 15 March 2018 Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin, born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili, was one of the fiercest leaders of the Soviet Union. He ruled Russia with an iron fist from 1929 to 1953. During his rule, approximately twenty-million of his own citizens died. But to understand his leadership and why he was a cruel leader, we must go back to how it all started.

Russian Federalism - a unique combination of constitutional , political and socio-economic asymmetry- has been governed by extra-legal, political and economic relations rather than constitutionalism and the rule of law . The Russian state that rose out of the ruins of the Soviet Union in January 1992, characterized a highly authoritative political culture accompanied by a weak and an immature civil society. Post communist elites have maneuvered federalism essentially as a protective cloak for the advancement of their own narrow political and economic interests and as a bulwark to carve out electoral dictatorships. Under the presidency of Putin, the principles of federalism and democracy have come under attack and electoral authoritarianism

Transferring these concepts into what national identity means for Russia, and though is a topic that has created various and contradictory arguments, literature suggests that Russian national identity started developing in times of the Emperor Peter the Great, since there was a need for feeling attached to a communal identity which created the concept of “Rossiyan”, which according to Karamzin, being a Rossiyan meant having a connection with the homeland and the need to be a perfect citizen (Tishkov, Valerie. 2008). These citizens formed a united community of diverse professionals and workers who perceived themselves as part of the Rossiyan people and perceived Russia as their homeland. The national identity during these years was created around the Russian culture, language, and religion. The Russian identity “was bound up with the supranational world of belief, the political world loosely defined by the ruling dynasty, and was contrasted to “others” at the periphery.”

When Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev came into power. He brought about huge changes such as the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, the progress of the early Soviet space program, and ‘several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy’. However, as to quote the internet, ‘Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for national defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchev 's rule saw the most tense years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Some of Khrushchev 's policies were seen as erratic, particularly by his emerging rivals within the Party, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964’.

The bloodshed and carnage of WWI was still fresh in the minds of Europe. Russia had recently gone through a revolution that destroyed the monarchy, and put the leader of the Bolsheviks, the party that led the revolution, in charge. His name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin. Lenin and the Bolsheviks practiced communism, the belief a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production. In other words, there is no privately owned property, and all property is owned by the state.

Stalin manages to halt this type of alienation and to introduce goals to the society that will increase their standards of life as a whole. Stalin’s totalitarian regime is connected to the idea of a “permanent revolution”. Therefore, as with each revolution, the society has a common goal that it needs to achieve. (USSR Handout). In addition to that, Stalin established three 5-year plans that aimed for industrialization of USSR and which created quotas for the workers.

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is a book written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the main protagonist of this book is named Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, in which the novel is based around. Shukhov is an ordinary prisoner in the Gulag at the Soviet Union alongside many others, while in the Gulag, he tries his best to avoid trouble at all costs, and this is shown in this quote “Shukhov never overslept reveille. He always got up at once, for the next ninety minutes, until they assembled for work, belonged to him, not the authorities, and any old-timer could earn a bit.” Shukhov had very limited time for himself, had very limited food, and very limited resources for survival. While in the Gulag, Shukhov’s gang was called ‘gang 104’, Tyurin being its foreman.

The Bolshevik and Chinese Communist revolutions shared similar political climates leading up to their eventual success in gaining control of their respective states. Both revolutions would have to overthrow governments put in place by revolutions. The nations in which both revolutions occurred in would also have a strong history in a long standing form of government. These revolutions were both able to achieve success largely in part due to their nations previous political climates.

There is a lot going on in the early 1900s Soviet Union. There are many different ideas and ideology floating around. One of the most important ones that is floating around is the Leninist version of the communist ideology. There is not a whole lot of differences between the two, communism and Leninism. Each one of them is very similar and is related to the other.

The Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution is the cooperative term for a brace of revolutions in Russia that occurred in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist monocracy and led to the formation of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic known as the Russian SFSR. The Head of state was forced to relinquish, and the old regime was substituted by a temporary government or the “Provisional Government” during the first revolution in February 1917. In the second revolution, during October, the Temporary Government was removed and replaced with a Bolshevik Government. The February Revolution: The February Revolution began on March 8, 1917.

Vladimir Lenin was a prominent yet controversial figure of the 20th century; he founded the Bolshevik party and crafted the 1917 Socialist Revolution in Russia. The Bolsheviks strived to destruct the Tsarist regime and instead sought the establishment of a socialist state. Consequently, Lenin was the first leader of the Soviet Union. Politically, socially and economically, Lenin used socialism and its influence to avail the Russian population out of the abysmal environment of which they resided. Lenin had an immense influence in the turn of the 20th century including his leadership of the Bolshevik revolution from the first communist state in history.

Of the many things that can be compared between Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution, one of the most significant similarities is characters. One of the many allegories is Old Major and Vladimir Lenin. Vladimir Lenin was born on April 10th, 1870. He was born into a wealthy family and early in his life, his brother was executed for trying to kill Czar Alexander the 3rd in a bombing plot. This event eventually led him to becoming a Marxist.

Throughout the history of the world, there have been many revolutions. Without them, the world would not be able to progress. But what is a revolution? Google defines it as ‘a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as ‘a sudden, extreme, or complete change in the way people live, work, etc.’.