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The rise of communism ww2
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Between 1985 and 1991, the youngest individual in decades to become head of the Soviet Communist Party dominated the history of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev launched a program of political and economic reform that dramatically affected domestic life and the place of his country in world affairs. The Soviet dictatorship was transformed into a multiparty state in which the Communist Party had to struggle to maintain a role. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union moved toward a free-market economy. With equal drama, the longstanding Cold War with the United States diminished and then turned into a cooperative relationship.
Gorbachev's reforms became more radical as time went on, and the end of political dictatorship released forces he could not control. Various ethnic groups began to assert themselves, sometimes in armed clashes with one another, sometimes in moves to leave the Soviet Union itself. Meanwhile, the economic problems of the country grew increasingly severe. Boris Yeltsin, once Gorbachev's lieutenant, emerged as a sharp critic of the Communist Party leader. When conservatives launched an unsuccessful coup in August 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and within six months Gorbachev was forced out of office by Yeltsin.
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The Communist dictator Joseph Stalin was conducting a program of industrial expansion under a series of five-year plans; he was also collectivizing agriculture. This meant bringing individual peasants into collective farms where they worked under direct government supervision. When peasants and peasant villages resisted collectivization, they were met by force on the part of the Soviet secret police and the Red
He goes with some other workers to a state run farm outside of Magnitogorsk to help repair tractors he remarks, “everything, in fact, had been thought of, he said, 'except good land and men to work it'.”7 This was the issue with Stalin's “revolution from above” be built these grand cities that were essentially just large plants like Magnitogorsk, but the people lived in horrible conditions, the collectivized farms that were meant to support the food supply for the workers of Magnitogorsk had bad land and nobody to work to the farms. In theory Stalin's plans could work, but the people, the land, the infrastructure could not feasibly attain the end result that was needed, it just wasn’t possible. For Stalin's plans to have worked he needed to be in the right place and the Soviet Union, and the unforgiving landscape just was not it. Things got so bad that Scott writes, “ the new Bolshevik government sent inspectors to every village to look for hoarded bread.”8 Scott writes, “ during the early thirties the main energies of the Soviet Union went into construction. New plants, mines, whole industries, sprang up all over the country” but he also recalls, “the new aggregates failed to work normally.
Victims of a new wave of political beliefs, namely collectivization were enforced by Stalin and his followers in the name of Communism. Dolot convinces the reader that powerful forces of government made it clear to village farmers there was no option for them. They had no choice but to join the collective farm. It was a do or die situation; a matter of survival with the consequences of rebellion meant arrest, execution, concentration camps, or starvation.
The first five-year plan, approved in 1929, proposed that state and collective farms provide 15 percent of agriculture output. The predominance of private farming seemed assured, as many farmers resisted collectivization. By late 1929, Stalin moved abruptly to break peasant resistance and secure the resources required for industrialization. He saw that voluntary collectivism had failed, and many “Soviet economists doubted that the first plan could even be implimented.”1 Stalin may have viewed collectivization as a means to win support from younger party leaders, rather than from the peasants and Lenin’s men. “Privately he advocated, industrializing the country with the help of internal accumulation” 2 Once the peasantry had been split, Stalin believed that the rural proletarians would embrace collectivization . Before this idea had a chance to work, a grain shortage induced the Politburo to support Stalin’s sudden decision for immediate, massive collectivization.
Some countries were well behind others in industrialization, such as Russia. Rapid industrialization was necessary in Russia, and Joseph Stalin tried to change their circumstances, he introduced two five-year plans, which increased Russia’s industrial production, their heavy industry improved, the output of iron, steel, electricity, oil, and coal rapidly increased, opportunities were given to women and they could start working as doctors and scientists etc. Although Stalin did industrialize Russia, he did it forcefully and through terror. Millions of people died from famine, others were sent to camps, which were horrific, he took away the lands and farms that were given to the peasants by Lenin. Anyone who did not 100% support Stalin was considered an enemy, and anyone who was a potential enemy, such as Trotsky, was exiled. Trotsky was a member of the central committee just like Stalin, he was another candidate for Lenin’s replacement, and he was well suited for that position, but Stalin rose to power quicker and gained power by
The first underlying cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the deterioration of the Soviets regimes moral standing. There was a growth of important dissident movements. For example, many key Soviet people, such as Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Russian nuclear bomb, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who is arguably the greatest writer that Russia produced in the 20th century, both became dissidents. Sakharov was banned to a closed town in the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the country. Although, Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn were not the only dissidents in Russia, as there many more prominent Russian figures. For example, the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, became a dissident. Other prominent figures, such as Svetlana Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s only daughter even became a dissident and left the country. Nikita Khrushchev’s son Sergei even left the country. There were a distressingly large number of people like Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Kasparov, Khrushchev and Alliluyeva that were either kicked out or snuck out. All of the dissidents concluded that they could not live in the Soviet society any more. However, this wa...
In source A, Stalin implies that peasants are being forced, against government policy, to work on collective farms. He suggests that “The Party’s policy rests on the voluntary principle, not force”. This however is contradictory to the real agenda of the USSR government. The government used force and deprived peasants of food and water themselves, if the peasants refused to collectivise. This degradation of peasants who refused to collectivise is shown in source C, in which, according to Churchill, Stalin admits to
It also marked the end of cold war between the Soviet Union and United States leading to reformed political, economic and military alliances worldwide. Upon its formation, outcome of Bolshevick Revolution of 1917, Soviet Union adopted Socialism later transforming to Communism. The main objective for Socialism and eventual Communism was to create a unified state based on centralized economic and political system. This ideology later transformed into totalitarian state. The underestimation of resistance from non-Russian ethnic groups (which was more than 50% of total population), and failure of the communism system to meet economic needs of the people were some of the reasons which to led to the decline of the USSR economy and arms competition with United States. Despite the Government’s effort to instill the ideology of communism to its people, it never took firm roots and Government ended up losing the grip of the people. With the political and economic stagnations caused by the communism, there was no choice but to change the way of doing things leading to dissolution of USSR in December 1991. The fifteen newly formed countries had overwhelming tasks of developing the economy, reorganizing the political systems, and settling the territorial disputes created earlier. There has been wars in the boundaries of the former
It has been noted, “This ‘reshaping’ had three main aspects: the elimination of all dissent; the liquidation of all forms of democracy and of working class organisation; the slashing of the living standards of the working class and the physical annihilation of millions of peasants” (Text 5). This quote explains how Stalin wanted to industrialize Russia, which includes the deaths of several peasants of Russia. The Russians did not just die from The Great Purge, but also from Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. The Five-Year Plan was an attempt to industrialize the Soviet Union. It was also a plan to increase the output of steel, coal, oil, and electricity.
In the early 1980s prior to Gorbachev’s presidency, the soviet economy was wracked by chronic shortages of food and consumer items. These shortages were in part due because of Leonid Brezhnev leadership being inefficient at directing the soviet economy. It was against this backdrop of economic decline and political instability that Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Gorbachev came from a peasant family and this humble background played a large role in his political thinking and gave him a strong humanitarian sympathy. His separation from the old regime gave him greater freedoms to move away from old thinking and enact policies grounded in a new way of thinking. Gorbachev was under different circumstances than past leaders because people at around this time wanted the country to move in different directions and at the same time, this led to Gorb...
As a dictator Stalin was very strict about his policies, especially working. For instance. Stalin had set quotas very high , as they were very unrealistic. The workers had very long days, and under the rule of Stalin most people worked many hours in overtime, and resulting in no pay. Stalin treated workers very, very harshly. Those who did not work were exiled to Siberia or killed. Some may say you got what you deserved in Stalin’s time. Those who worked very hard for Stalin sometimes got bonuses such as trips, or goods likes televisions and refrigerators. The workers had to conform to Stalin’s policies . Stalin’s harsh treatment of workers received a very unwelcoming response, but in fact the liberal amount of goods that the workers had made, had in fact
He wanted to introduce a reform program that had both concepts. Perestroika, was his restructuring concept, it started with an overhaul of the top members of the Communist Party, while it also was focused on economic issues. The centralized government planning had been replaced with a greater reliance on market forces. The idea of Glasnost was suppose to loosen the strict social controls imposed by the government. Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups and allowed citizens to express their own views. By 1998, Gorbachev had expanded these reforms to include democratization, which moved the USSR toward an elected form of government. His initial reforms were matched by new approaches to Soviet foreign policy. Gorbachev was determined to end his country's nuclear rivalry with the United States, he negotiated with Ronald Reagan. Although Reagan held strong anti-communist view and had intensified the Cold War by initiating a buildup of U.S forces in the early 1980’s. However many of these reforms such as Perestroika failed. One of the main reasons perestroika failed was because it wasn’t tried. During Gorbachev’s six years in power, he introduced at least 10 programs for the “radical restructuring” of the Soviet economy, none of these in fact were never implemented. Instead, economic reform was limited to “”half-measures,” while the law on individual economic activity, state enterprises
The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century, saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had eventually emerged into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union crumbled during this period, both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant aspect of every government.
But, the Russian government assumed the functions of the collapsing Soviet government as the various republics agreed to form a new commonwealth under Yeltsin’s leadership. On Christmas day of 1991, Gorbachev had decided to resign his presidency in the Soviet Union, therefore contributing more to the fall of the Union itself, on the same day. Following up Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation, in the year of 1996, Gorbachev had attempted to run for president in Russia. Sadly, “Gorbachev had gained less than 1% of the electoral and popular vote” (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica "Mikhail Gorbachev" 2017). Though upsetting, Gorbachev still remained a strong active politician in the public eye.
The cold war was failed by the Soviet Union for many reasons, including the sudden collapse of communism (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) This sudden collapse of communism was brought on ultimately by internal factors. The soviet unions president Gorbachev’s reforms: glasnost (openness) and perestroika (political reconstructering) ultimately caused the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Gorbachev’s basics for glasnost were the promotion of principles of freedom to criticize; the loosening of controls on media and publishing; and the freedom of worship. His essentials of perestroika were, a new legislature; creation of an executive presidency; ending of the ‘leading role’ of the communist party; allowing state enterprises to sell part of their product on the open market; lastly, allowing foreign companies to own Soviet enterprises (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Gorbachev believed his reforms would benefit his country, but the Soviet Union was ultimately held together by the soviet tradition he was trying to change. The Soviet Union was none the less held together by “…powerful central institutions, pressure for ideological conformity, and the threat of force.
Among the first policies enacted toward economic prosperity and industrialization were the Five Year Plans. The first Five Year Plan included rapid collectivization of the villages in the countryside in order to make enough agricultural profit to fund industrialization efforts. This period was plagued with violence, unattainable production targets and the destruction of traditional village life. The Second Five year plan began in 1933, in 1935 the term stakhanovite began to be used to identify those workers who developed new innovation that allowed them to greatly surpass average production. The term was named after Aleksei Stakhanov who was a miner.(Fitzpatrick and Slezkine 2000) “Speeches of Stakhanovites” is comprised of several speeches given at national Stakhanovite meetings that included member of the Politburo and Stalin himself. From these speeches we can see that there was a very positive image of Stalin among the Stakhanovites.They all begin and conclude by praising Stalin and the party. This shows that they clearly supported the policies of the Five Year Plans even though they demanded overoptimistic goals of produ...