The civil strife and chaos that tore Russia limb from limb in the early 20th Century, although brutally devastating, did not hail the end of the stability and power that had characterized the massive country for so much of history. The continuing strength of what was now the Soviet Union lay in 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 (...

Many people associate the 1920's in Russia as a preparation for Stalin, and the period of time after 1953 as a long recovery from his dictatorship. People who were anti-revolution pointed to the horror and fatality under Stalin as justification for their position on the issue of the revolution. On t...

The Soviet-German War is the most brutal episode of the most vicious war that mankind has ever seen (Clark 1). During the "Great Patriotic War", as Joseph Stalin coins it, the Soviet Union emerges through pure tenacity as one of the world's great superpowers. Although Stalin and ...

Essay Question 5: How useful is the eyewitness account of the Bolshevik revolution by John Reed for an historical understanding of the Bolshevik revolution? John Reeds, Ten Days that Shook the World immediately stands out as a crucial primary historical source on the Bolshevik revolution. His e...

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "No one nowadays has any reason to doubt the enormous significance of the events connected with the name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, though for some people these amounted to a catastrophe, or the beginnings of one, whereas for others they created the hope that a new and just socie...