Russia

Take outline notes on Russia (25 points)

p681-685 Revolution in Russia: Liberism to Communism
 * MI: Lenin and the Bolsheviks took over Russia, seemingly to do good but the state ended up worse than the war had left them as they switched to communism.
 * revolts in St. Petersburg, Russia were spured by wartime misery including food shortages, they also protested conditions of early industrialization set against incomplete rural reform and unresponsive political system.
 * protestors called for food and work and a new political regime
 * soviet (counsel of workers) took over the government and arrested tsar's ministers...ended imperial rule
 * Alexander Kerensky, Russian revolutionary leader; wanted genuine paliamentary rule, religious freedom, and political and legal changes
 * liberal leaders were eager to mantain war effort, linkied them with britain and france (democrats)
 * prolongation worsened economic conditions
 * revolution took place that expelled liberal leadership and brought into power the radical Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic Party, renamed the Communist Party and its leader, Lenin.
 * Lenin gained quickly a position among the urban workers' councils in the major cities
 * Lenin and the Bolsheviks signed a treaty with Germany, giving them huge chunks of western Russia in exchange for an end to hostility
 * Russia= ignored by treaty of versailles
 * early end of the war was vital to Lenin's consolidation of power
 * Council of People's Commissars- drawn from soviets accross the nation, headed by Lenin, to govern the state
 * Lenin shut down the government, handing it to the Bolsheviks and made the Social Revolutionaries desband...Bolshevik monopoly in the name of the true people's will
 * after the attack on France in 1792, Lenin decreed a redistribution of land for the peasantry and launched a nationalization (state takeover) of basic industry.
 * famine and unemployment created a more economic hardship than the war had generated, fueled civil war fires

Stabilization of Russia's Communist Regime
 * MI: Lenin and his Communist government regime were slowly restoring Russia as a powerful nation.
 * under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, the powerful **Red Army** was constructed.
 * Lenin reduced the economic disarray in 1921 with his **New Economic Policy**, which promised considerable freedom of action for small business owners and peasant landowners.
 * under Lenin's policy, food production began to recover and the regime gained time time to prepare the more durable structures of the communist system.
 * New capital: Moscow
 * The new system, which was called the **Union of Soviet Socialist Republics**, recognized the multinational character of the nation.
 * The **Supreme Soviet** had many of the characteristics of a parliament and was elected by universal suffrage.
 * Established a constitution in the 1930s which spoke about human rights.
 * The communist party also established an authoritarian system better than its tsarist predecessors.

Soviet Experimentation
 * MI: When Stalin took over for Lenin in 1924, he worked at establishing a collectivization program.
 * New social order: women gained equality, new education and work oppurtunities, and workers were able to influence their management practices.
 * Government promoted education, which led to a high literacy rate.
 * Education was aimed at putting focus on communist political analysis and science, and gearing away popular culture from peasant traditions and religion most importantly.
 * When Lenin died in 1924, there was a lot of debate from a number of key lieutenants who all wanted power, including Trotsky who had taken the name **Stalin**, which meant steel.
 * Joseph Stalin emerged as undisputed leader of the Soviet state.
 * Revolutionary leaders encouraged communist parties to set up in the West and to help guide this process, set up a **Comintern**, or Communist International office.
 * However, Stalin pulled back because he wanted to build "socialism in one country."
 * Established a **collectivization** program, which established large, state-run farms which enabled better control over the peasants, though it lowered the food production rate.
 * The Russian revolution was one of the most successful human risings in human history

Stalinism in the Soviet Union p698-703
 * MI: Stalin was extremely focused on the success of his own nation, rather than focusing on outside issues.
 * Soviet leaders made much of the nation's ongoing industrial growth.
 * Stalin was devoted to making the Soviet Union a fully industrial society and to do so under full control of the state instead of individual ownership of producing property.
 * Stalin wanted modernization

Economic Policies Toward an Industrial Society
 * MI: When the agricultural aspect of the economy failed, the Soviets turned towards industrialization.
 * Communist parties pressed peasants to join in collectives.
 * These collectives also offered a chance to mechanize agriculture by using equipment like tractors and harvesters.
 * Taxes were placed on the peasants in order to provide money for industrialization.
 * Some peasants welcome collectivization, but most kulaks hated the idea of collectivization and destroyed the livestock and other property rather than cooperating.
 * In response, many kulaks were sent to Siberia in the 1930s.
 * Eventually production began to increase again.
 * Collectivization was not a complete success, because the peasants that participated were still unmotivated. As a result, agriculture was still a major weakness in the Soviet economy that required a higher precentage of the labor force than was common under industrialization.
 * Massive flow in the 1920s and 1930s into the cities, which allowed industrialization to shift into high gear.
 * Stalin created a system of five-year plans under the state planning commission began to set clear priorities for industrial development.
 * Government established factories in metallurgy, mining, and electric power.
 * Stalin relied on centralized resource allocation to distribute equipment and supplies.
 * Soviet output of machinery and metal products grew 14-fold.
 * MI:The industrialization of Russia almost paralleled to that of the West's.
 * Industrialization in Russia was similar to that of the West, overcrowding in cities, factory discipline was strict, incentive procedures were introduced, and capable workers received bonuses and public awards.
 * Communists quickly established a network of welfare services.
 * Strikes were outlawed and the trade union movement was controlled by the Communist party.

Totalitarian Rule
 * The Soviet Union tried to side with the West to go against Hitler, however, the West grew suspicious of the Soviets and then they were forced to sign an agreement with Hitler.
 * Stalin placed restrictions on intellectual life.
 * Stalin viewed western culture as dangerous.
 * Socialist realism was the dominant school, emphasizing heroic idealizations of workers, soldiers, and peasants.
 * Science was also controlled by Stalin. He believed that evolutionary biology was wrong because it contradicted Marxism, ruining many scientists.
 * Executive committee called **Politburo** spread an atmosphere of terror.
 * Nation did not have a strong ability to respond to the rising threat of Hitler.
 * The Soviet Union participated in the Spanish Civil War in 1936-1937 in hopes to participate in a common response to German and Italian intervention.
 * They signed a historic agreement with Hitler in 1939 which enabled Soviet troops to attack eastern Poland and Finland in an effort to regain lost territories.

Eastern Europe After World War II: A Soviet Empire pg. 750-759 The Soviet Union as a Superpower The New Soviet Empire
 * MI: The Soviet Union was now a new world super power.
 * Since Germany's two invasions, it sparked the desire to set up buffer zones under Soviet control.
 * Soviet Union emerged as a new world power, due to their heavy concentration on industry and weapon development, alliances, and links to communist movements in various parts of the world.
 * The Soviets established communist regimes in North Korea to counteract the U.S. protectorate in South Korea.
 * Established alliances with communist Vietnam and in the Middle East, Africa, and even parts of Latin America; alliance with the new communist regime in Cuba was a key step during the 1960s.
 * Developed atomic and hydrogen bombs. They matched the expansion of the U.S. arsenals.

Evolution of Domestic Policies Soviet Culture: Promoting New Beliefs an Institutions Economy and Society De-Stalinization
 * MI: The Soviets were a large presence in Eastern Europe, controlling many of the states that Germany had once controlled, however they spread their communistic ideals through force.
 * By 1945, the Soviet Union was able to push back the Germans and recreate the map.
 * Opposition parties were crushed and non-communist regimes were forced out in 1948.
 * The Soviet power attacked the Roman Catholic church.
 * Development of mass education and propaganda. Spread collectivization, which helped end the large estate system. They pushed industrialization five year plans. Also established a new trading zone.
 * Tensions arose from the Soviet conquest.
 * The Soviets built the **Berlin Wall** in 1961 to stop the flow of immigration from East Berlin to West Berlin.This was guarded by armed patrols and barbed-wire fences.
 * Liberal leaders arose from Hungary and Poland, with massive popular backing, seeking to create communist states that would allow more freedom and diversity from the Soviet Union.
 * Soviets accepted a new leader in Poland that was well-liked by the Polish. Poland was allowed to halt agriculture collectivization, establishing widespread peasant ownership in its place. The Catholic Church gained more tolerance.
 * However, Hungary was not as fortunate, because the new regime was crushed by the Soviet army and a hard-line Stalinist leadership set up in its place.
 * Soviets eventually lightened control over eastern Europe. Eastern Europe governments were now allowed a freer hand in economic policy and were allowed limited room to experiment with greater cultural freedom. The communist political system remained in full force.
 * A more liberal regime came to power in Czechoslovakia, which resulted in the Soviet army to expel the reformers and set up a particularly rigid leader.
 * Poland challenged the Soviets again in the late 1970s in the form of widespread Catholic unrest and an independent labor movement called **Solidarity**, all against the backdrop of a stagnant economy and low morale.
 * The Polish army was able to take over the state under careful Soviet supervision.
 * Russian was the first foreign language formed.
 * The Soviets retained a large military presence deep in Europe, which reduced very real anxiety about yet another German threat.
 * MI: Stalin wanted to keep the Soviet Union from interacting with any other nations in fear of losing their loyalty.
 * Stalinist system remained intact during the initial postwar years in the Soviet Union.
 * News media blasted the United States as an evil power and a distorted society during the cold war.
 * Stalin wanted to shield the Soviets populations from too much contact with foreigners or foreign ideas.
 * The Soviet Union remained relatively isolated in the mid-20th century.
 * Opportunities were available to rise from low social classes to higher ones.
 * MI: The Soviet state had very strict standards as to exactly what they wanted their culture to be, which excluded, Western culture, the Orthodox and Jewish Churches, and traditional culture.
 * The regime declared war in 1917 against the Orthodox church and other religions. It did not completely abolish the Orthodox church, it just left it extremely limited.
 * Education was used to influence citizens to be loyal to the government.
 * Celebrated their loyalty through May Day parades which stimulated the citizen's devotion to communism.
 * The Orthodox church was restricted from preaching to anyone under the age of 18 and the state schools informed their children that this religion was a mere superstition.
 * A large elderly minority remained faithful to the church.
 * The Soviets did not only target the Orthodox church, but also the Jews. They often held up Jews as enemies of the state.
 * Muslims were not restricted as drastically as the Orthodox church and the Jews, but they had to remain loyal to the regime.
 * The Soviet state attacked modern Western styles of art, but maintained some earlier styles that were appropriated as Russian.
 * Literature was a huge part of their culture, it remained diverse and creative. Some writers wrote about World War II.
 * **Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn** was banished to the U.S. after he wrote books on the Siberian prison camps, The Gulag Archipelago. He wanted to find an alternative to communism and westernization.
 * Other than the arts, the Soviet state placed a great amount of emphasis on science and social science. Scientists made many fundamental discoveries in physics, chemistry, and mathematics.
 * Biologists and psychiatrists were urged to reject Western theories that called human rationality and social progress into question.
 * The soviet culture proved to be neither traditional nor Western.
 * MI: Even though the regime wanted to avoid western influences, they were starting to resemble each other. Like the West, they were now heavily industrialized and leisure activities were similar.
 * The Soviet state became a fully industrial society between the 1920s and the 1950s.
 * The Soviet Union did not place high priorities on automobiles, housing construction, and simple items, such as bathtub plugs. Consumer-goods were poorly funded
 * Industrialization in the Soviet Union was damaging the environment and people's health.
 * Problems with agriculture were not solved. Money that was originally supposed to go to agriculture was spent on heavy industry.
 * The pace of work increased and supervision was introduced.
 * Sports and vacations also became popular leisure activities.
 * Their social structure began to resemble that of the West's. There was a division between the workers and the better-educated, managerial middle class.
 * Birth Rates decreased.
 * Children were more disciplined in the Soviet state than in the West, both at home and in school.
 * Women acquired jobs and they sometimes performed heavy physical tasks. They dominated some professions, such as medicine.
 * When Khrushchev took power in 1956, the Soviet Union continued to prosper with all his major changes until the 1980s, when the economy began to deteriorate.
 * After Stalin's death, one would think that controversy on who would take charge would stir great problems, but the system managed to hold together, by dividing power between the army, the police, and the party apparatus.
 * **Nikita Khrushchev** emerged as the primary leader in 1956. He did not plan to take the same course as Stalin had, in fact, he looked down upon the concentration of power and arbitrary dictatorship.
 * Little institutional reform occurred; political trials became less common, and police repression eased. People were now less likely to be executed, banished to the West, or placed under house arrest.
 * Khrushchev opened up Siberian land to cultivate, but this failed and proved to be costly. He also antogonized Stalinist loyalists, which both led to his downfall.
 * The Soviet Union remained stable into the 1980s, their economy was rising steadily and changes in leadership were handled smoothly.
 * Khrushchev produced one of the most intense moments in the cold war with the U.S., when he planted missiles in Cuba.
 * Khrushchev had high hopes of beating out the West economically and expanded the Soviet space program; Sputnik, the first space satellite, which was sent up in 1957, way before the U.S had.This surprise and threatened the U.S and western Europe.
 * The Soviet leadership continued a steady military buildup, by creating rocketry and launching successful space programs.
 * From the 1950s onward, the Soviet Union experienced a growing rift with China, that was also a communist nation along its border.
 * Muslim awareness grew in the 1970s, upsetting the the Soviet Union, because they had their own large Muslim minority.
 * They invaded Afghanistan in 1979, hoping to promote a friendly puppet regime. The Soviet Union never directly participated in war, although they were always prepared.
 * Lack of motivation and discipline among workers in the Soviet Union.
 * Rise in the death rate due to the high rates of alcoholism, killing mostly adult males.
 * Even though many observers believed that the Soviet Union was stable, the economic conditions were deteriorating rapidly, and the whole Soviet system would soon come unglued.

The Explosion of the 1980s and 1990s pg. 841-847 The Age of Reform Dismantling the Soviet Empire Renewed Turmoil in the 1990s
 * MI: The deteriorating economy was effecting industrialization and creating health problems for the Soviet citizens
 * From 1985 onward, the Soviet Union entered a period of intensive reform, which occurred due to the deteriorating Soviet economic performance.
 * The forced industrialization caused environmental pollution throughout eastern Europe.
 * By the late 1980s, about half of the agricultural land was endangered, 20% of citizens lived in regions of ecological disaster.
 * Industrial production decreased because of health problems, rigid central planning, and poor worker morale.
 * MI: With Gorbachev in power, the Soviet Union was able to rise and prosper during his reforms, some of which included, decreasing Soviet isolation.
 * **Mikhail Gorbachev** was brought to power in 1985, he quickly brought back some of the earlier attacks on Stalinist rigidity and replaced some of the old-line party bureaucrats.
 * He dressed in Western style clothing, held open press conferences, and allowed the Soviet media to engage in active debate and report on problems as well as successes.
 * He ended the war in Afghanistan, negotiated a new agreement with the US that limited medium-range missiles in Europe, and altered their stance in the cold war.
 * He started a policy of **glasnost**, which allowed people to comment and criticize.
 * People questioned whether Gorbachev could balance reform and stability
 * Gorbachev reduced Soviet isolation and criticized aspects of Western political and social structure.
 * He wanted to open the Soviet Union to the world economy, recognizing that isolation in a separate empire had restricted access to new technology and limited motivation to change.
 * Economic changes, such as opening McDonald's restaurant in Moscow.
 * The key part of his reform was **perestroika**, or economic restructuring.
 * Farmers could now lease land for 50 years, wirht rights of inheritance, and industrial concerns were authorized to buy from either private or state operations.
 * He urged the reduction of drinking.
 * Encouraged a new constitution in 1988, giving a good deal of power to a new parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies, and abolishing the Communist monopoly on elections.
 * Gorbachev was elected to presidency of the Soviet Union in 1990.
 * Baltic nationalists wanted full independence.
 * He wanted women to stay in the house and not have to work, because it created too much of a burden for them.
 * MI: The Soviet Union was rapidly losing its powers in Eastern Europe as the nations were installing new noncommunist government.
 * Gorbachev wanted better relations with Western powers.
 * Soviets held back Bulgaria's move for economic liberalization in1987.
 * Hungary changed leadership in 1988, and elected a noncommunist president.
 * The Communist party renamed itself Socialist.
 * Poland installed a noncommunist government in 1988 and began to dismantle the state run economy.
 * East Germany also got rid of the communist government in 1989 and moved towards unification with West Germany.Therefore, the Berlin Wall was taken down and in 1990, noncommunists won a free election.
 * Germany unified in 1991.
 * Czechoslovakia installed a new government in 1989.
 * Most of these were nonviolent, except in Romania.
 * There were clashes among nationalities.
 * Like the Soviet Union, all the eastern European states suffered from sluggish production, massive pollution, and economic problems that might well lead to new political discontent.
 * MI: More problems began to arise with Gorbachev in power, and Boris Yeltsin took over and ended the Soviet Union.
 * Gorbachev's presidency and democratic decentralization were both threatened in the summer of 1991.
 * Gorbachev's authority weakened in the aftermath of the attempted coup.
 * The massive Russian republic became stronger.
 * Three Baltic states used this as an opportunity to gain independence.
 * **Boris Yeltsin**, leader of the major republics, proclaimed the end of the Soviet Union.
 * Gorbachev fell from power, and his leadership role was taken over by Boris Yeltsin.
 * By the late 1990s, the leadershiop of Boris Yeltsin diminished as the economy performed badly and Yeltsin's health worsened.
 * In 1999, a new president Vladimir Putin vowed to clean up corruption and install more effective government controls over separate provinces.

3. Complete a leadership analysis of //__either__// Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev (5 points)

4. Write a thesis statement for the following questions (10 points)** From 1914 to the present that Russian political structure went through several changes. Before the present Russia was still ruled by czars. Also they were still trying to be like the west through westernization but, that stop between the past and the present. However, one thing that stayed the same was failing of more politics in Russia, and how they were never truly successful.
 * Analyze the changes and continuities in Russian political structure from 1914 to the present

From 1914 to the present, the Russian centralized government remained strong, but it went throught several changes of being a czarist type government to communist then democratic which had growing influences on other nations such as China. The Russian Society in 1914 was drasticallyseperated between the serfs and the landowners but this changed after the Cold War, where the Russians did not want to be westernized anymore.
 * Analyze the changes in Russian Society from 1914 to the present