Soviet Empire Flashcards
What was Stalin’s final years like?
At the close of the Second World War, the Soviet people, who had borne so many burdens during the conflict, now harbored the hope that their lives would improve. To Stalin’s mind, of course, such thinking presented a danger: if people began to long for something better, they might rebel. Thus he now began a drive to maintain control at all costs. His inner circle was shaken up: Lavrenti Beria remained in power as head of the secret police, but Molotov began to fade into the background, and Georgi Malenkov, who had enjoyed Stalin’s trust since the beginning of the war, was replaced by Andrei Hanoi, who led a renewed ideological offensive. Soldiers who had seen too much of the prosperous West were interned in camps to keep them from “infecting” the population with subversive ideas; there was a new purge of the military, in which even the great Zhukov was reduced a minor provincial command; and a new cultural offensive was launched against newspapers and other literature considered threatening to the regime. The Western Allies, now Soviet enemies in the fight for global influence, came under heavy attack in the press, where Stalinist writers invented imagined atrocities and attributed them to the Americans and the British. Meanwhile, “Praising American Democracy” received listing in secret police handbooks as grounds for arrest.
What was The Iron Curtain: Soviet satellites?
The Iron Curtain was a term coined by Winston Churchill to describe the secrecy taking place in communist countries in Europe, after 1945. It was significant in that it was an apt description for an uwillingness to allow freedom of movement to people, to state security and secrecy and foresaw the emergence of a Cold War between two blocks of peoples in mainland Europe.
What was the Challenges to Soviet authority within the Eastern European Empire?
Stalin and his sucessors encountered much more difficulty subjecting the people of Eastern Europe to totalitarian rule than the Russian people. The Soviets brutally supressed attempts by Eastern Europeans to overthrow Soviet imposed governments: East Germany (1953), Poland (1956), Hungary (1956), Czecheslovakia (1978), and other outbreaks–especially in Poland. The first revolt broke out in East Germany after the death of Stalin. Efforts to end the mass terror and liberalize the Soviet system were met in East Germany by demands for real democratic rule. Soviet officials concluded that reforms were dangerous and threatened the Soviet system. [Harrison] As a resuly, for three decades efforts at reform were brutally supressed. The Hungarian Revolution ocurred in the midst of Nikita Khruschev’s de-Stalinization program. One historian contends that Khruschev did not want to appear weak in the face of Western Operations in Suez, thus explaining the massive use of force in supressing the Hungarian rebellion. [Hitchcock] Finally it was in Eastern Europe that the whole Soviet system would begin unraveling. The Communist regime in Poland was brouhjt down by the very workers it claimed to represent. And it was in the Baltics, the most European area, that the Soviet Union itself began to implode.
What was the Khrushchev (1958-64): de-Stalinization and the thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw (or Khrushchev’s Thaw; Russian: Хрущёвская о́ттепель, tr. Khrushchovskaya Ottepel; IPA: [xrʊˈɕːofskəjə ˈotʲɪpʲɪlʲ] or simply Ottepel)[1] refers to the period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinization[2] and peaceful coexistence with other nations.
The Thaw became possible after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. Khrushchev denounced Stalin[3] in “The Secret Speech” at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party,[4][5] then ousted the pro-Stalinists during his power struggle in the Kremlin. The term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburg’s 1954 novel The Thaw, “Оттепель”,[6] sensational for its time. The Khrushchev Thaw was highlighted by Khrushchev’s 1954 visit to Beijing, People’s Republic of China, his 1955 visit to Belgrade, Yugoslavia and his subsequent meeting with Dwight Eisenhower later that year, culminating in Khrushchev’s 1959 visit to the United States.
The Thaw initiated irreversible transformation of the entire Soviet society by opening up for some economic reforms and international trade, educational and cultural contacts, festivals, books by foreign authors, foreign movies, art shows, popular music, dances and new fashions, massive involvement in international sport competitions; it was a chain of unprecedented steps to free people from fear and dictatorship that culminated in the removal of Stalin’s body from Lenin’s Mausoleum. Although the power struggle between liberals and conservative pro-Stalinists never stopped, it eventually weakened the Soviet Communist Party.
What was The Brezhnev Era (1964-81)
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Russian: Леони́д Ильи́ч Бре́жнев; IPA: [lʲɪɐˈnʲid ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈbrʲeʐnʲɪf] ( listen); Ukrainian: Леоні́д Іллі́ч Бре́жнєв, 19 December 1906 (O.S. 6 December) – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in length. During Brezhnev’s rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time, but his tenure as leader has often been criticised for marking the beginning of an era of economic stagnation in which serious problems were overlooked, eventually leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
What is the Gorbachev (1985-91)
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв, tr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈɡʲejəvʲɪtɕ ɡərbɐˈtɕof] ( listen); born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the first (and last) president of the Soviet Union from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the Soviet Union to have been born during Communist rule.
What was the Fall of the Soviet Union?
What led to this monumental historical event? In fact, the answer is a very complex one, and can only be arrived at with an understanding of the peculiar composition and history of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was built on approximately the same territory as the Russian Empire which it succeeded. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the newly-formed government developed a philosophy of socialism with the eventual and gradual transition to Communism. The state which the Bolsheviks created was intended to overcome national differences, and rather to create one monolithic state based on a centralized economical and political system. This state, which was built on a Communist ideology, was eventually transformed into a totalitarian state, in which the Communist leadership had complete control over the country.
