It is true that single party states need enemies, but it is a whole other issue as to if they "invent" these enemies just because they are needed. Stalin possibly purged 20 million people in the USSR between 1924 and 1939, but these people were not simply created out of nowhere. Stalin carefully c...

Joseph Stalin When most people see or hear the name Joseph Stalin, they most commonly associate it with a violent and ruthless political leader of the Soviet Union who managed to send more Russians to their deaths than Hitler did Jews. Aside from this fact, most individuals know very little about...

1984 vs. Animal Farm 1984, by George Orwell, is a very powerful drama which involves man and totalitarian society. It is a story of a lonely rebel whose only valuable is his mind and who later conspires with another in an attempt to separate from their increasingly dominant hate-infested s...

How far was Stalinism the outcome of Leninist political practice?The political system which existed in the Soviet Union under Stalin was a system of terror. The purges of the 1930s sent millions of Russians to their deaths or to the Gulags, the population was scared of the secret police, the NKVD, t...

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...

Ideological differences between Liberalism in England and Leninism in the Soviet Union place the two nations at opposite ends of the political spectrum. The former advocates for the importance of individualism and the ability of the market to regulate itself, whereas the latter prioritizes the stat...

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin, was born on April 22, 1870, in the sleepy little town of Simbrisk, Russia. Childhood in Simbrisk was serene and pleasant for Lenin, and his father, Ilya Nikolaievich, was highly respected by many of the nobles in this province. Vladimir took just as much intere...

LENIN A New Biography Dmitri Volkogonov, a former General in the Soviet army, was given unprecedented access to the clandestine Soviet archives during Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's rule, by Boris Yeltsin. In 1994, Volkogonov wrote a revealing book entitled, LENIN A New Biography, which rocked the Len...

When the Bolsheviks came into power, everything was in a state of chaos. In 1917, the level of literacy was low. However, soon there were nearly seven times more specialists who had higher education than in 1913, while those with secondary education increased by almost twenty- eight times. Illite...

Julius and Ethel RosenbergThe outcome of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial for espionage in 1951 and their subsequent execution in 1953 was directly related to the political climate at that time. The government's evidence against the Rosenbergs was not overwhelming, but due to a combination of f...

Ashley SmithHistory 4061/26/00 Book Report #1In his book, The Warlords, AJP Taylor defines a warlord as "...a man of great, of unique, power dominating both the military and civil affairs of his country; a dictator whose power was unlimited and who made all vital decisions" (Taylor 16). Taylor i...

Throughout Europe around the time of World War II, there were many countries who became totalitarian. Specifically, Italy, Germany, and Russia evolved new government systems as a result of many factors, some from World War I.Italy converted to their government of Fascism for many reasons. During Wor...

Enemy at the GatesInspired by a true story, Enemy at The Gates, is set in Stalingrad, Russia in the Fall of 1942 during the height of the second world war. The story opens aboard a rail car where soldiers are herded in like cattle to be taken to the battlegrounds in Stalingrad. Soldiers are practi...

A Decade in EuropeThe 1960'sEurope is an ever-changing landscape of culture and society. Many major advances in technology and knowledge were introduced to this scene in the nineteen-sixties. Political transformation took place in this decade as well as social and ethnic changes. The beginning of...

A Decade in EuropeThe 1960'sEurope is an ever-changing landscape of culture and society. Many major advances in technology and knowledge were introduced to this scene in the nineteen-sixties. Political transformation took place in this decade as well as social and ethnic changes. The beginning of...

Unless we accept the claim that Lenin's coup that gave birth toan entirely new state, and indeed to a new era in the history of mankind,we must recognize in today's Soviet Union the old empire of the Russians --the only empire that survived into the mid 1980s (Luttwak, 1). In their Communi...