Yes, the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe was complete. It was not until the emergence of ‘solidarity’, which became the first ‘mass’ movement against soviet communism that actually challenged the system effectively. By the early nineteen eighties solidarity had more than nine million members, that was over a third of the Polish workforce and in a survey at the time ninety five percent of poles said they trusted solidarity. Solidarity also had the support of the Catholic Church, which was a part of glue that held Poland together, in other Eastern European countries religion had been crushed because communism was anti religious but they could not do so in Poland because nearly all the Poles were Catholics. The head of the Catholic Church was a pole that made an influential visit home to Poland during the height of Solidarity. Lech Walesa was the man behind all of these new and ‘capitalistic’ ideas. Throughout his working career he fought the powers that were. Having led the strikes in the Gdansk shipyard in the summer of 1980. He then eventually founded solidarity in August of 1980 and ...
On the other hand, it was not only war that helped the communists to take power in East-Central Europe after 1944. Stalin and the communist parties took advantage of political, economic, and social factors to spread their influence across. Stalin believed that he must impose his own social system in each territory he would occupy, and this required a full-scale Soviet military presence throughout East-Central Europe. He did not succeed in his objective overnight, but set out to make certain that he, alone, would determine the political agenda in the region. Stalin also knew that it was the size of the Soviet Union that aided in the defeat of Germany and was the same factor that would protect the region from further attacks.
... rule came to an end in a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia (Kennedy 1034). In addition, East Germany began to allow its people to pass freely to West Berlin through the Berlin Wall, and the East Germans soon began to tear the wall down. Germany was reunified in 1990, when East Germany united with West Germany (Walker 388). In 1991, the Soviet Communist Party lost control of the Soviet government. Later that year, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and the republics that made up the nation became independent states. Russia was by far the largest of these states. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President George Bush formally declared that their countries did not regard each other as potential enemies (Walker). These events marked the end of the Cold War and of communist threat as we know it.
The Eastern European country chosen for discussion is Belarus. This paper will first discuss the transition from communism based on the experience of living under communist rule. Second, the significant historical factors from 1920-1991 that led to the fall of communism will be given and traced as to how they affected the process of the transition. Finally, the choices made by Belarus during and after the transition period will be traced back to historical and transitional factors that influenced them. Inarguable evidence will be noted throughout the paper to prove the need for transition from communism and the problems with the transition. The country of Belarus is still in transition. How do they compare? Most if not all of the other former Soviet Republics have reached a post-transition status.
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.
In the fall of 1989, people all around the world were watching unbelievable scenes on their televisions. Thousands of people in eastern Europe were meeting in the streets and squares and demanding the end of the communist rule. For the first time in history, opposition to communism was publically voiced. Barbed wire border fences in Hungary were being torn down. East Germans were fleeing to the West. Overnight the Berlin wall collapsed. The start of these historical events was the Polish Revolution of 1989.
of the beginning of the fall of Communism in Poland. The Communist government saw that the
The Awakening by Kate Chopin follows the journey of protagonist Edna Pontellier as she "awakens" from a life of obedience and complacency and rebels against the patriarchal ideology that entraps her. Throughout the novel she strives to fee herself form the stifling obligations and expectations that oppress her, but finds that she is unable to live the free life she desires. This realization causes her to seek freedom in death, instead. In Marxist theory, particularly as subscribed to by Louis Althusser, it is the role of the repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) and the ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) to provide willing workers and supplies to the base and enable a system to reproduce itself. It is the ideological state apparatuses, however, that are the most effective and insidious in this task. This is because they operate on multiple fronts (many of them privately owned) such as: education, church, culture, and even family (Althusser 96). Edna's own undoing is caused by the realization that she can never sever her ties to the ideology of motherhood. What is significant about this novel, however, is the while the main focus in undoubtedly Edna, she is far from the only character to be oppressed by the system of Ideological State Apparatuses and social construction. Chopin successfully illustrates that Edna's plight is not a singular one or even confined to women as a gender. Rather, it is a widespread condition of human existence, of life within a social order. Under a Marxist lens, the reader finds the novel is a prime example of an exploitative system which relies on ideology to secure its own reproduction. The novel is full of characters who are limited by their social personas, illustrating the universality of such a con...
Socialists' Ways to Promote Collectivism Plans Definition: socialists and collectivism Briefly explain the socialist’s ideas of collectivism Link with other socialist’s ideas e.g. common ownership, equality social class, cooperation.. Recent examples of how collectivism has helped changed the world; how they have sought to promote collectivism. Conclusion Key words to remember…. The term socialists derive from the Latin sociare, meaning to combine or to share. Collectivism is, broadly, the belief that collective human endeavour is of greater practical and moral values than individual self-striving.
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union spread their political ideology among the countries of East Central Europe. Instantly, Josef Stalin spread Stalinization across each of the countries to assert Soviet control. He created totalitarian governments with limited freedoms for its citizens. Following the death of Stalin, the new leader of the Soviet Union, Nika Khrushchev, began changing the repressive policies of Stalin, opening the doors to the countries of East Central Europe to challenge the rule of the Soviets. Using the Soviet Thaw as an opportunity to reform the system of government, many countries including Hungary and Czechoslovakia had uprisings against Soviet Rule. The Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring were uprisings against the Soviet Union that both ended in defeat with Soviet Union. However, the outcomes for both countries differed in many ways because of the differences in the motives for the uprising, the loss of life and the differences in the leadership of the uprisings.
In 1995, Walesa was beat by Aleksander Kwasniewski, whose campaign asked people to look into the future and forget about the past, for presidency. The church suffered because it made many efforts to influence politics and tried to influence Poland to become a post communist society, but sometimes backfired (Szczepkowski).
At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union had sustained tremendous casualties and the country was almost destroyed. In order for Russia to be able to protect itself in the future, it would need to be surrounded by countries that would be loyal to Soviet Russia. The countries would serve as a buffer zone to stop possible future invading armies. The Soviet takeover of Poland was a defensive tactic to protect Russia, not to try and convert Europe to communism like America assumed.
There were many events that lead up to the Bolshevik Revolution. First off, in 1848, Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels published a thought-provoking book. The Communist Manifesto expressed their support of a world in which there was no difference in class. A world in which the workers and commoners ran the show and there was no high and supreme ruler. Many intellectual Russians began to become aware of this pamphlet as well as the advanced state of the world compared to Russia. Other countries were going through an industrial revolution, while the Czars had made it clear that no industrial surge was about to happen in Russia. The popularity of the Czars further went down hill as Nicolas II’s poor military and political decisions caused mass losses in World War I. Eventually, the citizens could take no more and began a riot in St. Petersburg that led to the first Russian Revolution of 1917.
“The only way to identify the requirements of justice is to see how each particular community understands the value of social goods”(Kymlicka 211). This is the approach to justice from the communitarian. Communitarianism in the last few decades has sparked in popularity among political philosophers. Communitarians believe that political theories, such as classic liberalism, leaves out the importance and significance of the community. The communitarian respects and upholds social practices and traditions as a way of governing, and as a way of justice. Because of the importance of the cultural aspect, this political current is thought of as a cultural relativist approach to justice. The communitarian does not accept the notion of being able to detach the self from roles of society. While communitarianism shows a great respect for cultural practices and tradition, it is an incomplete theory on the notion of being able to protect individual citizens from social institutions, like the community itself.
At first glance, sixteenth century Shakespearian drama and the nineteenth century dialectic philosophy expressed by Marx and Engels share no probable relationship to one another. Upon closer examination, however, developments in contemporary Shakespearian England illustrate that the social and economic centralization that generate the necessary characteristics of a proto-modern nation state were emerging in sixteenth century England. The unprecedented urbanized demographic shift created by the Enclosure Acts, which enabled the systematic destruction of the feudalistic relationship between the peasantry and the nobility; the emergence of a state sponsored market economy; the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the resulting ascendancy of English navel power; and the galvanizing image of English nationalism contained in the figure of Queen Elizabeth I all provided a compelling backdrop for the existence of modern class based antagonisms within Shakespearian dramatic themes.
Since 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and Eastern European Communism came to an end, many of those who have lived through or bore witness to communism published their experiences to the public through media. These personal accounts tell, for the most part, of repressive and manipulative governments that constantly abused their power. Since the original goal for communism was equality, the East German government clearly corrupted the hopes that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had for the future of the Eastern European government and society.