Stalin and Industrialization in the 1930's For many countries in Europe during the early nineteen hundreds, industrialization had already left its mark and was considered widespread. Other countries were several steps behind such industrial powers as Great Britain. Their economies still dep...

COLD WAR When World War II in Europe finally came to an end on May 7, 1945, a new war was just beginning. The Cold War: denoting the open yet restricted rivalry that developed between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, a war fought on political, economic, and propag...

Cuban Missile Crisis John F. Kennedy's greatest triumph as President of the United States came in 1962, as the world's two largest superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, edged closer and closer to nuclear war. The Soviet premier of Russia was caught arming Fidel Castro with nu...

Joseph Stalin, leader of Russia (1928-1953), created a Five-Year Plan that included methods and goals which were detrimental to Russian agriculture in 1928. Stalin wanted to transform individual farms into large collective farms because he saw that the government was losing money to private trader...

Enemy at the Gate The Enemy at the Gates takes the story of a young Russian soldier who was catapulted into history because of his heroism during the World War II battle at Stalingrad. Vasili Zaitzev was a true to life person who learned at a young age of being a sharpsho...

WHO ARE THE "NEW POOR" IN RUSSIA? WHAT MEASURES MIGHT BE SUCCESSFUL IN REDUCING POVERTY? The structure of the question implies that the issue of poverty in Russia is not new. Therefore, first of all this paper will concentrate on analysing the income distribution in Soviet Russia and...

Imagine the next time you step into the voting booth your ballot only lists one candidate to choose from. Or perhaps your ballot lists four candidates, but they are all from the Liberal party. Dictatorships are one party political systems that are ruled by one leader or an elite group of people unde...

Although the Cuban economy may be thought of as a complete failure, the command system structure can still be an effective way of creating a successful economy. From the 1960s revolution to the 1990's collapse of Russia, the Soviet Union managed to maintain the Cuban economy by trading them sugar ...

In January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower's presidency was coming to an end, and the nation was preparing for the new administration of John Kennedy. Within a week of each other, the two men both made addresses to the nation – Eisenhower made a farewell speech, and Kennedy delivered his inaugural addres...

The Russian Avant-Garde began in Russia in about 1915. It was the year that Malevich revealed his Suprematist compositions that reduced painting to total abstraction and rid the pictures of any reference to the visual world. He is credited with being the first artist to do this; that is, forsake the...

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR II Even while World War II war still being fought, leaders of the Allied powers began thinking about how to reconstruct Europe after the war. Winston Churchill of Britain, Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union a...

A gun is a weapon that uses the force of an explosive propellant to project a missile. The rifle and the shotgun are both long-barreled weapons used for long-range shooting; the pistol has a shorter barrel and is accurate only at relatively short ranges. The revolver has a revolving barrel that allo...

China ascribes to its own form of communism, Maoism (as opposed to the Soviet Marxist model). It also has many characteristics that distinguish it from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and make any sort of economic comparison difficult, to say the least. As much as the socialist econo...

The use of either physical (such as the aggressiveness shown by the Cheka, the Russian secret police) or political force (such as War Communism) was prevalent in both the French (Between May 1789 – 1795) and Russian (Between February 1917 – 1924) revolutions. To protect and reinforce the...

Joseph Stalin led the Socialist Soviet Union in the "Revolution from Above," a movement to centralize the government and transform society without popular participation. Because Stalin's radical goals were destructive for the populace to attain, his legitimacy was based on the credibility of his ...

Stalin and Hitler ruled over regimes considered totalitarian by the definition that they maintained extreme control on political, social, and economic aspects of life in their respective countries with the purpose of pursuing their own ideological ends. Although these two regimes are very similar i...

The Soviet totalitarian regime held the many nations of the USSR together for almost three quarters of a century; the disintegration of this political system brought with it economic and political instability as well as civil wars in the separated states. Why did the collapse of the communist regim...

Josef Stalin is perhaps the most praised, reviled and recognised dictator in the modern world. His influence as such has reached across the globe, affecting leaders and citizens alike. Many of his techniques have been adopted by prominent leaders, today and in the past. One such example is fellow s...

Odessa and Die Spinne are believed to be by many, including Simon Wisenthal, an organization created in the wake of the fall of the Third Reich to help Nazi war criminal to escape justice. This is believed because over one hundred Nazis wanted for crimes against humanity escaped. Also the crimin...

1. Russian Revolution, violent upheaval in Russia in 1917 that overthrew the czarist government. 2. Marx, Karl, 1818-83, German social philosopher, the chief theorist of modern socialism and communism. Marxism, economic and political philosophy named for Karl Marx. It is also known as scientific (...

Our Eldest Brother George Orwell's infamous "Big Brother" has infected the minds of every one of the millions of readers of 1984. But this horrific view of the future, one in which the government knows everything, keeps the low class down as an economic necessity, and wages a constant war wit...

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg The outcome of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial for espionage in 1951 and their subsequent execution in 1953 was directly related to the political climate at that time. The government's evidence against the Rosenbergs was not overwhelming, but due to a...

Introduction On the morning of Tuesday October 16, 1962, President John F. Kennedy was reading the Tuesday morning newspapers in his bed at the Whitehouse. Not twenty fours hours before, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security adviser, received the results of Major Richard S. H...

The shocking fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe in the late eighties was remarkable for both its rapidity and its scope. None more than for East and West Germany. "The unification of Germany has been one of the most significant and moving events of the 20th century. Yet the ...

Although many of his ideas did not bring the expected results, Nikita Khrushchev policies of de-Stalinization were politically wise. He went against many of Stalin's tyrannical policies and gave the people a much greater sense of freedom. In the process known as "de-Stalinization", legal proced...