General Exam Info Flashcards
What are the external reasons for Communism?
Soviet presence and interference (esp in poland/hungary)
Internal reasons for communism
- destabilization and deconstruction of pre-war political, economic, and value systems
- radicalization - general poverty, violence, migrations
- propoganda, nationalism, campaigns
- police, blackmail, violence, persecution
How was communist propaganda one of the most developed propaganda systems?
Media, post, public opinion, ability to twist bad things into good
Which was the most important country?
Poland
Who is Stanislaw Mikolajczyk?
Former deputy prime minister of Poland from June 1945 – February 1947
Polish People’s Party
What was the Lublin Committee
Provisional government
What was the 1946 Referendum
3 questions asked
30%-60% falsifications
Communists take control
When was the Guerrilla War?
1947/1948
When were the Hungarian parliament elections?
January, 1947
40% - 80% falsifications
What percent of people supported soviet interference in 1947?
23%
Belá Kovács
Minister of Justice in Hungary from 1953-1954
Zdenek Fierlinger
Former Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1944-1946
What and when was the first crisis?
1953-1956
Gottwald’s death in March 1953
party reformers, dissatisfaction, general disagreement
When did Stalin die?
March 1953
What happened in Czechoslovakia in 1953?
President: Zapotocky
Prime Minister: Novotny
Offer/Demand crisis
June 1953: Monetary reform
Currency devalued: 50:1
Wages by 5:1
What happened in Hungary in 1953?
Imre Nagy replaces Rákosi
What happened in Poland in 1956?
February, March, June, October
- February: 20th CPSU Congress where Khrushchev gave secret speech
- March: Boleslaw Bierut dies
- June: Poznan Uprising
- Polish October
- Natolin (hardliner) vs Pulawa (Liberal)
Czechoslovakia in 1956
Harsh consequences against underground/dissidents
Post-1956 Development
-end of transformation
-compromise with the society
-status quo
What is collectivization
Everything becomes owned by the government
Hungary and Poland mainly affected
Surplus kept by soviet gov’t
Confiscated goods redistributed
What was the Iron Curtain?
Introduced by Churchill in Sinews of Peace Speech
Boundaries dividing Eastern and Western Bloc
Hungary in 1956
János Kádár replaces Nagy
Armistice
Suez Conflict
What is Goulash Communism?
Kádár wanted to create better standards of living
Parallels goulash to mixed ideology of communism
Who was Milada Horáková
Famous Czech female political prisoner
Opposed communist ideals
June, 1950: hanged after show trial
When and What was the Prague Spring?
Led by Dubček
Jan 5, 1968 - August 21, 1968
Era of political liberalization and protest, end of censorship
Who was Alexander Dubček?
First Secretary of the Presidium of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1968-1969
(Slovak version of JFK)
What and when was normalization?
August 1968 - November 1989
Restoration of conditions before the Prague Spring
Gustav Husak replaces Dubček
Samizdat
form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader
Name of a communist car
Trabant
What was the Charter 77
informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992
Listed complaints about communism
Co-Founded by Václav Havel and Jan Patočka
What was the year of Martial Law in Poland?
December 13th, 1981
Who was the leader of Poland under martial law?
Wojciech Jaruzelski
Leader during the Hungarian Civil War?
Mátyás Rákosi
(uprising against his government)
What is Solidarnosc / Solidarity
Self-Governing Trade Union founded in 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland
Helsinki Final Act
- signed in August 1975 in Finland
- rejected use of force or intervention in internal affairs and advocated for respect of human rights
- US, Soviet Union, Canada, and all European nations (except Albania)
Lech Walesa
Chair of trade union (Leader of Solidarity)
First elected President of Poland after Communism
Who was Karol Wojtyla
Polish Pope in 1978
(Pope John Paul II)
KOR
Committee for the Defense of Workers
Established in June, 1976
Anti-communist group
Vaclav Havel
(1936 - 2011)
Playwrite
Dissident
Political prisoner
President - December 1989
Velvet Revolution
November 17, 1989 - December 29. 1989
End of one-party power
Split of Czechoslovakia
January 1993
First Soviet Intervention in Hungary
October 23, 1956
Władysław Gomułka
De Facto leader of Poland in 1947-1948, then after Polish October from 1956-1970
Polish style communism
Second Soviet Intervention
November, 1956
When was the Hungarian Uprising against the People’s Republic
October - November 1956
When and What was the Plžen Riot?
May - June 1953
3 days of violent protest against regime
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1953 to 1964
