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Impact of Stalin in Russia
Impact of Stalin in Russia
Impact of Stalin in Russia
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Coming from a peasant background, Nikita Khrushchev served as the head of the Ukrainian party organization in the midst of and following World War II. Subsequently, he found himself as a member of the Soviet political elite during the late Stalin period. Following the death of Stalin, a brewing rivalry between Malenkov and Khrushchev manifested itself. It resulted in Malenkov resigning as prime minister in February 1955. The resignation of Malenkov allowed Khrushchev to become the most important figure within the collective leadership. Though he was a supporter of Stalin during his tenure, Khrushchev further advanced his position within the party by denouncing Stalin's crimes. Khrushchev revealed that Stalin liquidated thousands of party members and military leaders, which contributed to the initial Soviet defeats in World War II. With these allegations, Khrushchev not only distanced himself from Stalin and from Stalin's associates, but he also questioned the dictator's use of terror as an instrument of policy. De-Stalinization encouraged many in artistic and intellectual circles to speak out against the abuses of the former regime. Although Khrushchev's tolerance for critical creative works varied during his tenure, the new cultural period, known as “the thaw", represented a clear break with the repression of the …show more content…
arts under Stalin. Khrushchev continued to expand his influence, although he still faced opposition. His rivals united to vote him out of office in 1957. Khrushchev, however, demanded that the matter be put to the Central Committee, where he enjoyed strong support. The Central Committee overturned the decision and expelled Khrushchev's opponents, whom Khrushchev labeled the "antiparty group." In a departure from Stalinist procedure, Khrushchev did not order the imprisonment or execution of his defeated rivals. Khrushchev moved to consolidate his power further in the ensuing months. In October, he removed Marshal Zhukov as the defense minister, presumably because he feared Zhukov's influence in the armed forces. Khrushchev became prime minister in March 1958, thus formally confirming his predominant position. Despite his rank, Khrushchev never exercised the dictatorial authority of Stalin, nor did he ever completely control the party, even at the peak of his power. Khrushchev's relative political insecurity probably accounted for some of his grandiose pronouncements. His desire to undermine opposition and mollify critics explained the nature of many of his domestic reforms and the vacillations in his foreign policy toward the West. Throughout his years of leadership, Khrushchev attempted to carry out reform in a range of fields. The problems of Soviet agriculture, a major concern of Khrushchev's, had earlier attracted the attention of the collective leadership, which introduced important innovations in this area of the Soviet economy. The state encouraged peasants to grow more on their private plots, increased payments for crops grown on collective farms, and invested more heavily in agriculture. Khrushchev's attempts at reform in industry and administrative organization created even greater problems. Connected with his ideas of decentralization, Khrushchev's decision in 1962 to recast party organizations along economic, rather than administrative lines drew harsh criticism. Symptomatic of the country's economic difficulties was the abandonment in 1963 of Khrushchev's special seven-year economic plan (1959-65) two years short of its completion. Khrushchev’s leadership was marked by a series of high-profile international crises.
While championing change, he wouldn’t tolerate dissent. Khrushchev sent in tanks to Budapest, ruthlessly suppressing a 1956 Hungarian uprising against Soviet-imposed policies. There was also the shooting down of an American U2 spy-plane over the Soviet Union in 1960, the building of the notorious Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. By 1964, Khrushchev’s blunders and perceived failures had alienated much of the party elite. Finally, he was ousted by opponents, led by his own protégé, Leonid
Brezhnev.
... Cuban attack with all-out nuclear retaliation. In response to the increased Soviet ships coming with weapons, JFK ordered a blockade, which he called quarantine because a blockade is an act of war, around Cuba. For 13 days, the world held its breath as the threat of a nuclear war hung over the world, but the Soviets eventually turned back and Khrushchev agreed to remove weapons from Cuba in exchange for no US invasion of Cuba. Meanwhile in Berlin, the city was in turmoil between the East (Soviet) and the West (US controlled). In order to stop the mass exodus of East Berliners, the construction of the 90-mile Berlin Wall began. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev sought ways to ease the tension between the two groups, establishing a hotline between the White House and the Kremlin, and later this led to the Limited Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
The Communist Party was one of the main sections in Soviet society that was impacted profoundly by Stalin’s terror. In 1935, the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a faithful Communist and Bolshevik party member that had certain popularity, threatening Stalin’s consolidation of power, initiated The Great Purge. His death, triggering three important, widely publicised ‘show trials’ in Moscow, ultimately encouraged the climate of terror during the Great Purge. Bolsheviks Zinoviev, Kamenev and their associates were accused of conspiring against Stalin and the government, with each confessing to their supposed crimes, which were then broadcast around the world. It was later discovered that these confessions were forced after long months of psychological abuse and cruel acts of torture. As Stalin...
Originally platformed by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin took control of the communist party in 1924 when Lenin died of a stroke. Communist ideals were heavily in opposition to classical liberal values; Whereas Liberalism stressed the importance of the individual, Communism sought to better the greater good of society by stripping many of the individual rights and freedoms of citizens. Communism revoked the class structure of society and created a universal equality for all. This equality came with a price however. Any who opposed the communist rule were assassinated in order to keep order within society. Joseph Stalin took this matter to the extreme during an event known as the Great Purge. The Great Purge, also known as The Great Terror, began in 1936 and concluded in 1938. During these two years, millions of people were murdered and sent to labour camps in Siberia for opposing the Communist party and the ultimate dictator, Stalin himself. In some cases, even those who did not oppose the regime were killed. Sergey Kirov was a very popular member of the communist party and Stalin saw this as a possible threat to his ultimate power. As a result, Stalin order Kirov to be executed. Stalin furthered his violation of individual rights by introducing the NKVD who worked closely with the russian secret police force. One of the primary goals of the secret police was to search out dissidents who were not entirely faithful to the communist regime. This violation of privacy caused histeria en mass in the Soviet Union and millions were killed as a result. The Soviet union resisted liberalism to such an extreme that it resulted in the deaths of millions of people, leading to some of the darkest days in russian
The Soviet Union and the United States were very distant during three decades of a nuclear arms race. Even though the two nations never directly had a battle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, amongst other things, was a result of the tension. The missile crisis began in October of 1962, when an American spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union in Cuba. JFK did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles, so he made his decisions very secretly. Eventually, Kennedy decided to place a ring of ships around Cuba and place missiles in Turkey. Eventually, both leaders superpowers realized the possibility of a nuclear war and agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba if the US didn't invade Cuba. Even though the Soviets removed took their missiles out of Cuba and the US eventually taking their missiles out of Turkey, they (the Soviets) continued to build a more advanced military; the missile crisis was over, but the arms race was not.
In this situation, Joseph Stalin killed Sergey Kirov only to eliminate a political rival that opposed his idea of government. Joseph Stalin did not want to give people even an option to join or support another political party other than his. Joseph Stalin was cruel and represented a totalitarian government because of the killing of millions that included Sergei Kirov. Joseph Stalin also had created a massacre that unfortunately caused a lot of lost lives. This act of terror is also known as the great purge and according to, “The Purges in the USSR,” Stalin asked the Politburo for its support and to give itself cover to purge the party of threatening elements to the Stalin regime. The policy was used to give legitimacy to the killing of millions of Russians during his rule and eventually the great purge took place, “the first people rounded up were labelled ‘Trotskyites’. They were put in prisons run by the People’s Commisirariat for Internal affairs or NKVD who, according to the very few that survived this experience, used both physical and psychological torture to gain information about other ‘traitors’ to the cause.” Stalin sent his enemies to prison often sending them to hard
Khrushchev rose steadily up the party ladder, always combining his talents as an administrator with his technical training. After assignments in the Ukraine, he became head of the Moscow regional party committee, and in 1934 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist party. In these positions he directed the construction of the Moscow subway. Although increasingly influential, Khrushchev was never an intimate associate of Joseph Stalin; he concentrated on technical rather than political accomplishment. After World War II he was brought back to Moscow, where he became ¡¥one of stalin¡¦s top advisers¡¦. When Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev used his wit to thrust all his opponents for leadership, including Malenkov. He became both Party Secretary and controlled the government through his associate Marshal Bulganin, who he named Premier. He ruled from 1956 to 1964.
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...
This was the Cuba Missile Crisis, and this was the turning point of the Cold War. When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba by overthrowing the previous dictator, Fulgencio Batista, he was hailed as a liberator by the Cuban people themselves and became a hero to the American people as well. However, Castro soon took actions inimical to American interests and aligned his country publicly with the Soviet Union. The U.S. public and government were gravely concerned about the creation of a communist state and member of the Soviet Bloc only seventy miles from its southern shores; this problem became a major focus of the new Kennedy administration when it took office in January 1961.
Harry Truman During his presidential terms, Harry Truman showed resilience when faced with the many foreign affairs he faced. Events that would highlight Truman’s characteristics as an admirable leader include the hardships he faced during World War II, and his efforts for the containment of communism during the Cold War tensions. Truman fell into office after Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage, he was sworn into office on April 12, 1845 therefore becoming the 33rd president of the United States. Within a month of Truman’s position in office, World War II in Europe had nearly concluded, within a month Hitler had committed suicide and Germany was throwing up the white flag, however the war in the Pacific with Japan had escalated.
THE COLD WAR The Cold War was a very complex war. Many ideas, conflicts and emotions were going on. This was a major turning point in the world of war. War is a much more powerful word.
Both sides acted in various ways leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. They both tried to gain an indirect advantage over the other with an arms race that lasted over 40 years. The Soviets in particular spent billions in creating weapons with money that would’ve been better served improving their economy. Before Khrushchev was even in charge, Stalin ordered the construction of a laboratory which would eventually harness hundreds of tons of Uranium to be developed into explosives. In 1961, the Soviets detonated a massive hydrogen bomb known as the ‘Tsar Bomba’ for a trial. This was the most powerful explosive ever detonated by mankind, yielding a blast with the strength of 50-58 megatons of d...
On the 7th of September, Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the USSR. His main goal was to promote a more peaceful image of the USSR to other countries. During Khrushchev’s administration, the strict censoring of the Stalin era had calmed down, thus allowing an abundance of artists to express themselves freely. Many quality movies were produced during this time as well. In 1955 Khrushchev met US President and the Warsaw Pact was created between the countries of Eastern Europe.
... a change in this image to a realization that Stalin’s suppression of dissidents and opposition had real effects on soviet society and can not be justified by Marxist and Leninist Ideology instead they were just Stalin looking to maintain his autocracy.
The Cuban missile crisis was a very dangerous episode, bringing the world’s major military powers to the brink of nuclear war. This event was important to world history and to all the leaders involved. President Kennedy was assassinated shortly after that, but is still regarded as one of the best Presidents in U.S. history mainly because of how he dealt with that event. Fidel Castro and the country of Cuba are not recognized by the U.S. to this day and are still banned from trade. The Soviet Union has collapsed since the Cuban Missile Crisis and is now known as Russia.
The process of de-Stalinization was the political restructuring that took place in the Soviet Union through several significant incidents after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. These reforms intended to eradicate the horrific institutions established by Stalin, under whom the people of Ukraine experienced severe mental and social anguish. De-Stalinization began in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev was elected as the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Khrushchev launched new reforms that abominated the doings of his predecessor and shattered Stalin’s persona as an infallible leader. The three key elements of de-Stalinization, also referred to as the Thaw, are bold authoritative pronouncements that started the process, introduction