Untitled spreadsheet - Sheet1 Flashcards
What was the main theme of jokes in the Soviet Union?
the hypocrisy of a communist system that promised equality and abundance for all but delivered a dismal and uncertain economic life for the many and great privileges for the few
A Frenchman, an Englishman, and a Soviet Russian are admiring a painting of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, what does the Russian reply?
No they are Russian communists of course. They have no house, nothing to wear, little to eat, and they think they are in Paradise
When a Soviet citizen entered a medical clinic one day and asked an ear-and-eye doctor, when asked about his problem, what did he say? Well, I keep hearing one thing and seeing another.”
Modern communism found its political and philosophical roots in the 19th century, in what?
socialism, inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx
What was socialism with they eye of a final goal of communism for how the world was run?
an intermediate stage
By the 1970s, what amount of the world’s population lived in societies governed by communist regimes?
one-third
What country came under communist rule in 1924 as a spillover of the Russian Revolution?
Mongolia
Vietnam a more locally based communist movement came under the leadership of what person who led Vietnam to embodied both a socialist vision and Vietnamese nationalism?
Ho Chi Minh
In Latin America, who led a revolutionary nationalist movement against a repressive, American-backed government in Cuba?
Fidel Castro
The victory of the Vietnamese communists spilled over into what neighboring countries?
Laos and Cambodia
A shaky communist regime took power where in 1979, propped up briefly by massive Soviet military support?
Afghanistan
Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, what colony of Japan was partitioned with the northern half coming under Soviet and therefore communist control?
Korea
Revolutionary communist movements threatened established governments where sometimes provoking brutal crackdowns by those governments?
Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bolivia, Peru, and elsewhere
In the aftermath of World War II, communist parties played an important role where?
Greece, France and Italy
In the 1950s, a small communist party in the United States became the focus of an intense wave of fear and political repression known as what?
McCarthyism
Through what organization, Soviet authorities also sought to control their policies and actions of the countries joining the communist party?
Comintern (Communist International)
During the cold war decades, what brought the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist states together in a military alliance designed to counter NATO alliances?
the Warsaw Pact
What parallel organization tied Eastern European economies tightly to the economy of the Soviet Union?
the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance
What joined the Soviet Union and China in an alliance in 1950 that caused many in the West to view communism as a unified international movement aimed at their destruction?
Treaty of Friendship
What was the rivalry between China and Russia or the split between them called?
Sino-Sov. Rivalry (Sino=China)(Sov.=Soviet Russia)
Communists also worried lest their revolutions end up in a military dictatorship like that of whom?
Napoleon following the French Revolution
The fight in Russia between the Middle class and working class is also known as a fight between whom?
bourgeoise=middle class vs. proletariat=working class
The fall of Tsar Nicholas II, ended what dynasty, originally started by Peter the Great?
the Romanov dynasty
In St. Petersburg, how many wives of soldiers demonstrated for bread, land, and peace?
100,000
By February 1917, who had lost almost all support and was forced to abdicate the throne, thus ending the Romanov dynasty?
Tsar Nicholas II
What small socialist party with a determined and charismatic leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more commonly known as Lenin, was the most effective of the radical groups who expressed their feelings to the Povisional Government?
Bolsheviks
Social revolution in Russia demonstrated the inadequacy of what government, which had come to power after the tsar abdicated?
Provisional Government
What were Bolshevik military forces known as, where lower-class men were forced into during the civil war in 1918?
the Red Army
What did the Bolsheviks rename their country to?
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union)
Where did Stalin act to install fully communist governments, loyal to himself?
Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria
Who was the leader of Yugoslavia who openly defied Soviet efforts to control Yugoslav communism, and who proclaimed, “Our goal is that everyone should be master in his own house?”
Josef Broz, known as Tito
Who was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP)?
Mao Zedong
Who was the opponent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Guomindang (Nationalist Party), which governed China after 1928
Who lead the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) who worked reforms for modern development?
Chiang Kai-shek
Chinese communists looked among who for support?
the country’s peasant villages (villages vs. cities)
Mao and his followers, early members of the Communist Party allowed Mao to rise to a position of dominant leadership during what in 1934-1935, when beleaguered communists from southeaster China trekked to a new base area in the north?
Long March
What gained the CCP a growing measure of respect and support among China’s peasants?
years of guerrilla warfare, experiments with land reform in areas under communist control, and the creation of a communist military force
What did communists do to recruit women for the revolution?
established a Marriage Law that outlawed arranged or “purchased” marriages, made divorce easier, and gave women the right to vote and own property
How many men did China’s communist-led People’s Liberation Army have?
900,000 men, supported by additional 2 million militia troops
The Communist Party in the Soviet Union, penetrated society in ways that Western scholars called what, for other parties were forbidden, the state controlled almost the entire economy, and political authorities ensured that arts, education, etc. approved ways of thinking?
totalitarian
In 1919, the Communist party set up what special organization (Women’s Department), whose radical leaders, all women, pushed a decidedly feminist agenda during the 1920s?
Zhenotdel
What former streetcar conductor who played an active role in the revolution, recalled the impact of participation in Zhenotdel?
Alexandra Rodionova
When the peasants went after the landlords in China after 1949, how many died?
approximately 1 to 2 million landlords were killed in the process
Stalin singled out the richer peasants known as what, for exclusion from the new collective farms?
kulaks
What marked Mao’s first response to these distortions of Chinese socialism and promoted small0scale industrialization in the rural areas, fostered widespread and pratical technological eductation, and it envisaged an immediate transition to full communism in the “people’s communes”?
The Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960
How did the Soviet Union and later the Chinese communist work towards industrialization?
state ownership of property, centralized planning embodied in successive five-year plans, priority to heavy industry, massive mobilization of humans and resources, and intrusive Communist Party control of everything
China and Soviet Union in addition to industrialization achieved what?
higher literacy rates and educational opportunities
What did the Mao’s Great Leap Forward of 1958-1960 do?
looked at the distortions of Chinese socialism, and promoted small-scale industrialization in the rural areas, foster widespread technological education for all
What campaign in the mid-1960s did Mao launch to combat the capitalist tendencies that he believed had penetrated even the highest ranks of the Communist Party?
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
What did the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution bring?
health care and education to the countryside, rejected feminism, male-oriented culture
Under the Cultural Revolution that rejected feminism, what did women do?
cut their hair short, wore army clothes, cursed, depicted as “iron girls”, strong, muscular
In the Soviet Union, huge industrial complexes such as what concentrated air and water pollution, it depleted and eroded the fragile soil also?
Magnitogorsk
By diverting the waters of several rivers feeding what Sea for irrigating cotton fields reduced the size of that huge inland sea by 90%?
Aral Sea
The Soviets gained the most environmental problems from a nuclear reactor explosion located where in 1986?
Chernobyl
The term “enemy” in the Soviet Union, culminated in what of the late 1930s, which enveloped tens of thousands of prominent communists, and millions of more ordinary people, where people were arrested, and then sentenced to death or to harsh labor camps known as the gulag?
Terror, or the Great Purges (“enemies of the people”)
In the Terror or Great Purge, how many people were executed between 1936 and 1941 and how many were sent to the labor camps; or gulags?
1 million people executed; 4 to 5 million were sent to the gulag
What book by Arthur Koestler, did he talk about the experience of the Great Purge/Terror?
Darkness at Noon
Mao convinced that capitalist values are within the Communist Party, he called for rebellion, with millions of young people organized into what set out to rid China of those, “taking the capitalist road”
Red Guards
What military alliances imposed a sphere of American influence in Western Europe, and Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe?
NATO and the Warsaw Pact
The heavily fortified border between Eastern and Western Europe became known as what?
the Iron Curtain
Intense American hostility to outposts of communism prompted the what Soviet leader, to secretly deploy nuclear-tipped Soviet missiles to Cuba?
Nikita Krushchev
The global arsenal of nuclear weapons, with the most in the Soviet Union and the U.S. numbered close to how many warheads?
60,00
What did Stalin observe about atomic weapons?
that the can hardly be used without spelling the end of the world, (for example: Cuban missile crisis, 1962)
