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...

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...

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...

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...

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 (...

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...

This poster art form took off in the early 20th century as a result of the Russian Revolution and grew a tremendous amount during the 1920's and 1930's. Founded in 1917 in Russia by sculptor Antoine Pevsner and his younger brother Naum Pevsner Gabo, they believed that art should be functional and ...

The Atomic Bomb Kaboom! In an instant two kilometers of a thriving downtown city are leveled. At the hypocenter the pressure exceeds thirty-five tons per square meter and the air is swirling at four hundred forty meters per second. The above is an accurate description of the destruction tha...

Although Shukhov does not think or talk about religion for the bulk of the novel, his final conversation with Alyoshka, a devout Baptist, reveals that faith can be a means of survival in the oppresive camp system. Shukhov's interest in Alyoshka's discussion of God, faith, and prayer marks ...

As a result of throwing pesticides into the sea, the great catastrophe in the area of the Aral Sea, strongly affected its residents. It is no exaggeration to say that the case of the Aral Sea is one of the greatest environmental catastrophes ever recorded. Unbelievably, the Aral Sea once was one of ...

The Cold War began as an ideological struggle between the two superpowers that emerged in the aftermath of World War Two (WWII). The destruction of the former Western European balance of power post-WWII allowed for new nations to emerge superpowers. The tensions that arose from the restructured bipo...