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The fall of the Soviet Union
The fall of the Soviet Union
World War 2 effects on people
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Most people tend to take life for granted and then lament after experiencing their lost. Yet, feeling regret over their ignorance is all that one can do as time cannot turn back on its own. Undoubtedly, the collapse of USSR leaves tremendous impacts on people lives. “My Perestroika,” a documentary film directed by Robin Hessman, gives insight into the last years of the Soviet Union. Through five Russians’ perspectives, the movie reveals the difference between childhood and reality, the effect of this event and the changes people had to make after their world turned upside down.
The film begins with a parade of students, who were all wearing white shirts with epaulettes along with scarves and red caps. They all looked the same. One student, perhaps a class president, was given an enthusiastic thanks to the Soviet leader at the time, Leonid Brezhnev, “for the fact that [they were living] in the Country of Happy Childhood.” Yet, at the camera starts to pan across that sea of similarity, a woman’s narrator says, “I cannot say I wanted to be like everyone else, it was not that exactly, I simply was like everyone else.” That voice belongs to Lyuba Meyerson, a History teacher at Moscow’s School No. 57 and one of the five Russians that were being interviewed in the movie. Yet, Lyuba and her husband, Borya, remain as a core characters. Perhaps the reason lies on ideas that they are both history teachers and were children when the USSR collapsed. Thus, they could easily connect the dot and missing information regarding how this event changed everything in Russia, while putting personal details of the effect on their lives.
With other three classmates, these five people are known as a “stagnation generation,” as they all grew up in the Brezh...
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... of his seventeenth store selling exclusive French men’s shirts and ties, he is considered as a successful demonstration with the new Russia system. It is perhaps because unlike those four, Andrei knows how to adapt to the new society. Instead of lament the collapse and childhood, Andrei moves on. Sharing a contradict viewpoint to Olga, he believes that this new society creates a better living condition. If in the past, nobody was able to achieve his or her dreams; dreams were merely fantasies. The new regime enables the impossible.
Different perspectives of five Russians, who are known as a “stagnation generation,” create a unified theme for the documentary. Not only illustrating the impact of the collapse of USSR on people’s lives, at the same time, the movie offers an idea that the change can be positive or negative depends on each person’s path to deal with it.
Historically, Russia has always been a country of perplexing dualities. The reality of Dual Russia, the separation of the official culture from that of the common people, persisted after the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. The Czarist Russia was at once modernized and backward: St. Petersburg and Moscow stood as the highly developed industrial centers of the country and two of the capitals of Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the population were subsistent farms who lived on mir; French was the official language and the elites were highly literate, yet 82% of the populati...
Not a doom laden, emphatically political treatise on the reunification of East and West Germany but a touching and sometimes comedic insight into the gargantuan changes impacting on the small scale, day to day life as experienced by an East German family, Christiane Kerner and her two children Alex and Ariane. Awaking from a coma, Alex fears his mother?s condition may worsen if she learns of re-unification, going to increasingly elaborate lengths in maintaining the illusion of the GDR's omniscience. Becker?s stance as to reunification is ambivalent throughout, the film's concerns not didactic but subtly relayed. How the personal and political interweave is skilfully constructed by Becker,...
In conclusion, many soviets citizens appeared to believe that Stalin’s positive contributions to the U.S.S.R. far outweigh his monstrous acts. These crimes have been down played by many of Stalin’s successors as they stress his achievements as collectivizer, industrializer, and war leader. Among those citizens who harbor feelings of nostalgia, Stalin’s strength, authority , and achievement contrast sharply with the pain and suffering of post-revolutionary Russia.
Mau, Vladimir. " The road to 'perestrokia': economics in the USSR and the problem of
In describing the setting, the general locale is the prison in the coldest part of Russia- Siberia, geographically but socially depicting the social circumstances in the prison, but draws analogies to the general social, political and economic circumstances of Russia during the Stalinist era (form 1917 revolution up to 1955). The symbolic significance of the novel and the film (genres) reflects experiences, values and attitudes of the Russian society. The genres reflect the origins of the Russian social disorders and massive counts of political misgivings which watered down real communism in Russia. We are constantly reminded of the social and cultural heritage and originality of Russian ethnic groups through those different levels of meanings
Being one of the greatest Russian writers of 20th century, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had a unique talent that he used to truthfully depict the realities of life of ordinary people living in Soviet era. Unlike many other writers, instead of writing about “bright future of communism”, he chose to write about everyday hardships that common people had to endure in Soviet realm. In “Matryona’s Home”, the story focuses on life of an old peasant woman living in an impoverished collectivized village after World War 2 . In the light of Soviet’s propaganda of creating a new Soviet Nation, the reader can observe that Matryona’s personality and way of life drastically contradicted the desired archetype of New Soviet Man. Like most of the people in her village,
My childhood was mostly spent in Ohio around snow. But it all changed when I moved to California. Frank Conroy’s essay “My Generation”, Conroy explains on how and why his generation got the name “Silent Generation”. In this essay I will be explaining on how my life leads up to college and why the students of 2014 will be remembered by the social media users.
Dostoyevsky's writing in this book is such that the characters and setting around the main subject, Raskolnikov, are used with powerful consequences. The setting is both symbolic and has a power that affects all whom reside there, most notably Raskolnikov. An effective Structure is also used to show changes to the plot's direction and Raskolnikov's character. To add to this, the author's word choice and imagery are often extremely descriptive, and enhance the impact at every stage of Raskolnikov's changing fortunes and character. All of these features aid in the portrayal of Raskolnikov's downfall and subsequent rise.
Soon after World War II the Soviet Union had created a red iron curtain around Eastern Europe, communist regimes could be seen throughout with countries like Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These regimes where severely oppressive and violated basic human rights, hence a growing opposition was beginning to form. From the mid-1970’s Vaclav Havel, a former playwright would become the most prominent Czechoslovakian “dissident” and campaigner against the abuses of the Communist Regime by actively defending the rock group Plastic People of the Universe, being one of the three public spokespeople for Charter 77 and by writing various essays critiquing the communist regime. No essay has had more influence and been instrumental in “dissident” movements in Eastern Europe than the essay “The Power of the Powerless”. Within this essay and others that Havel wrote throughout the 1970s and 80s Havel describes the Communist system, critiques it and explains his strategy for overcoming the regime.
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.
Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg is a large, uncaring city which fosters a western style of individualism. As Peter Lowe notes, “The city is crowded, but there is no communality in its crowds, no sense of being part of some greater ‘whole.’” Mrs. Raskolnikov initially notices a change in her son marked by his current state of desperate depression, but she fails to realize the full extent of these changes, even after he is convicted for the murder. The conditions and influences are also noticed by Raskolnikov’s mother who comments on the heat and the enclosed environment which is present throughout the city. When visiting Raskolnikov, she exclaims "I'm sure...
...Russian society and social norms. The greatest reminder of this is found in the fact that Lopahkin, the man who Ranevsky once spoke to condescendingly, is now the family’s last hope for survival. Ironically enough, Lopahkin is often glancing at his watch, a reminder that time is changing, and a message that he, himself, is a testament to.
Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, written by Dr. Sergei I. Zhuk, provides an intriguing outlook into a subject that would be the last thing I would think to read before this class. He aims to show just how the culture of Soviet Russia was affected and changed by Western society. These influences, in the end, reenforce Soviet ideology as well as undermine it. This book really helps to let the readers understand just how life was like and how it changed in the Soviet times due to the influence of Western society.
The arena for this ideological contest is Petersburg, full of slums, revolutionary students and petty titular councilors. Scientifically and artificially constructed in the midst of marshland, the city itself is a symbol of the incompatibility of logical planning with humankind's natural sensibilities. The city did not grow randomly or organically, but entirely by czarist decree. Nonetheless, it is a dank and depressing place to live, at least for those in the vicinity of Haymarket Square, where the story takes place. Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky's biographer, says of ...
These aristocrats, despite their high education and power, will do nothing to help win the war. They live like parasites on the body of Russia’s society. This is how Tolstoy describes this class in general, but he also depicts two representatives of this upper class, Andrew Bolkonsky and Pierre Bisuhov, who were the more intellectual ones, and whose lives and views of war and life changed as the result of the war. Andrew was interested in a military career, and wasn’t completely satisfied with the czar, while Pierre wasted his life on alcohol – his everyday activity.