History+of+Russia+by+KIS

   Roles 
 * "E**ternal peace lasts only until the next war**"** -Russian Proverb



 Russia, formally called the Russian Federation and its neighboring countries, resides just above China and is the largest part of Eurasia. Russia alone is twice the size of the United States, and with its neighboring countries it accounts for more than four times the Earth's land surface as the European world region. Their history unlike France's and England's history focus more on attaining closer territories near them rather than colonies land over seas. Russia and its neighboring countries also once formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics known as the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, established in 1922 by Lenin, was once the world's most powerful Communist country adapting Karl Marx's philosophy of "the revolution from below". Meaning that the lower class workers would realize that they were being used and rise up against the higher rich classes in a revolution. In this process, Leninism and Stalinist emerged as the Soviet Union struggled to stay together and spread communism during the Cold war. Though the Soviet Union disintegrated 1991, the countries that have separated from the Union still have the legacy and tension caused by the Union.







 During World War I  (1914-1918) also called the War to End all Wars, hurt Russia hard. Russia was on the with the allies of the Triple Entente: France, England, Italy and U.S.A. Though Russia had the most men, major food shortages and huge death tolls combined with long-standing opposition to the czartist room greatly weakened the nation. The monarchy or ctzar at that time Czar Nicholas II, was driven out by revolutionaries who set up provisional governments that proved to be weak. During this time many countries declared their independence such as Poland from the weakened nation.  Russia in 1917 underwent a series of violent and deafening assaults collectively known as the Russian Revolution. Russia's political duality between Stalin and Trotsky was the origin of this revolution. During the first set of revolutions, the Tsar was put down from power. During the second set of revolutions, the provisional government was forcibly removed and replaced by a Communist, Bolshevik government. Due to this commotion Russia withdrew from World War I leaving its allies furious. The communist parties detested the anticommunists called the whites because they tried to over throw the Bolsheviks from power. By 1922 the Reds prevailed and expelled the Whites reclaiming Belarus, Ukraine, the countries in Caucasus and Central Asia.

 Animal Farm  is an analogy that deals with the Russian Revolution. The main characters of Animal Farm represent the actual historical features. For instance, Old Major, an old pig that spreads the ideas of ideal Communism to the rest of the farm animals, effectively portray Karl Marx. Karl Marx is the founder and spreader of Communism in Russia. He did not have bad intentions at first because he thought Communism will be the ideal policy for the people of Russia. However, as Communism actually began to spread, it became more and more corrupted.

Next, Napoleon, the ruler who exhibits absolute power over all the animals, represents Stalin. Stalin effectively used propaganda and military force to indoctrinate the citizens and chase Trotsky out of power. Trotsky, a rivalry ruler of Stalin is represented by the character Snowball. At first, Snowball and Napoleon cooperated as leaders of Animal Farm, but as soon as the situation began to settle, Napoleon forcibly chased Snowball out of the farm and made him sound even like a traitor. Although this is definitely a fictional story, the character representations and the story line is actually rather factual. This novel accurately depicts the evens and people of the notorious Russian Revolution. [|(Read Animal Farm)]



 The pigs became corrupt :( media type="custom" key="5933103"





<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> World War II (1939-1945) In 1939, Stalin decided to sign a nonaggression pact with Hitler allowing the S.U to take control of territories that did belong to the empire such as the Baltic states, eastern Poland and Bessarabia. However there was backstabbing in the end. On June 22, 1941 Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in a operation called Operation Barbarossa. This. was. a. mistake. The Soviet Union survived because of its size and the harsh Russian winter. Soviet forces eventually defeated the Germans and the Red Army in 1945 went into their capital Berlin. After their victory in World War II the Soviet Union took many countries such as East Prussia, and areas of Poland under their power. Protecting themselves from Germany they wanted a "buffer" zone to act as a wall between them and the rest of Europe. They used the countries and converted them to Communism to achieve this "buffer wall". And to counter NATO and the Marshall plan Stalin created the Warsaw Pact and Concil for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). [|(Excerpt from CMEA)]



<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> In 1922 Lenin established the <span style="color: #ff4600; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 200%;">Union of Soviet Socialist Republics <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> (USSR) other wise known as the Soviet Union. Lenin abolished the monarchy and made common citizens workers and soldiers. The Bolsheviks hated capitalism, because they believed that it was centered on the idea of a only a small group can become wealthy. They tried to reverse these affects by making the working class in charge of factories and businesses. The hammer on the communist flag on the right represents communist movement they tried to enforce in Russia and in the rest of the world. After Lenin died in 1924 and within a few years Joseph Stalin came to power and changed government policy. Stalin's form of government became known as the Stalinism. He believed that the Soviet's economy should be changed to use communism based on industrialization to create a "workers paradise". This lead to Stalin's fiver year plan in 1928. So. The five-year plan was a plan for collectivization and industrialization. Stalin's plan was to change Russia's whole economy in five short years. Firstly the collectivization means that the small family farms were merged to create large farms with better designs for farm machinery. Command Economy was also emplied which means that the government now owns the industries. The plans also estaablished the centreal planing means that supply demand profit did not really influence the production rate. This means that the government can decide what to produce from the factories regardless of the situations in society.

media type="youtube" key="hH5atzhoyQ4" height="308" width="383" align="center"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The <span style="color: #5ecf07; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 160%;">Communist flag <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> on the left is probably a familiar sight. The hammer stands for the working class while the sickle represents the agriculture class; they are shown together in an attempt to unite these two classes. The hammer and sickle was first used in the Russian Revolution but because the symbol of the Soviet Union in 1924 and has come to represent various Communist Parties to this day. The Bolsheviks believing that religion was used as a told to oppress burned many churches converting them to scientific centers. Though a noble idea at first it ultimately failed.

The Soviet Union was a very powerful nation during the 1920s and 1930s and was feared by many Western nations as a group of people leading the way in new ideas. Later in the 1950s, the Soviet Union became a world power, and was perceived to be a much greater threat. This was not only a challenge to Western thoughts about personal freedom, but it also meant that the nation had become the center of spreading the ideas of Communism.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;">**COMMUNISM IS DISINTEGRATING**



media type="youtube" key="Bz3t4LcXwtE" height="385" width="480" align="center"

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The Cold War was a war of development of <span style="color: #00bfff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 160%;">missile technology <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">between two countries after WWII: Soviet Union and United States. These two countries kept on developing nuclear bombs and high-tech military weapons to show that their nation’s technology was superior from 1945 to 1980. It was called the Cold War because there weren’t any actual bombing and blowing going on between the two nations. It was merely two nations trying to prove that their nation’s technology was superior to the other. However, it gave some sense of anxiousness and fear to the citizens of these nations because the nation could fire the missiles at any time.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">

So what factors actually caused this Cold War? First of all, the United States was afraid of communist attack and so they started to develop nuclear weapons based on the studies carried out by German scientists that were under the Nazis who fled to the United States. The Soviet Union on the other hand, feared that the Americans would attack them with their atomic bomb and started to develop their own nuclear weapons when America refused to share the nuclear secrets. In addition, both nations disliked each other’s political state: United States, capitalism and Soviet Union, communism.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"><span style="color: #ff8b00; display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 240%; text-align: center;">How did the U.S react? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">

George K. Kennan was an American advisor, political advisor, and a historian, all in one. He was the major figure that implemented the American containment policy. The containment policy served in hopes of containing the spread of Communism within a couple of the Communist countries. The American government, came up with the “containment” strategy which was designed to limit the spread of communism by the Soviet Union. Thus they formed the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in 1949 between Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, France, Luxembourg, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Norway and the United States. They all signed a treaty saying that if the Soviet Union attacked one of these countries, it would go to war with all the members of the countries in the NATO. This significantly prevented the Soviet Union’s spread of communism. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Basically the containment emphasized that all costs communism should be prevented from spreading. Truman the president at that time tried to prevent it by investing money in poor countries in Europe. Because Europe was deeply traumatized by World War II the relative living standards were very low. The U.S helped the European countries financially to keep them from adopting Communism which is in favor of the poor. This is known as the Marshall Plan. A major example of the diving "curtain" between the Soviet Union and the non-communist countries was in Germany. Germany was still not untied by then and West Germany was leaned on capitalism and Eastern Germany was leaning on the Soviet's communism. The living conditions in West Germany was much better than the Eastern part of Germany, and the Soviets was outraged by Western forces wanting Western Germany to become independent and imposed the Berlin blockade, allowing nothing to go in or out of the blockade. Supplies got through however by use of airplanes until the Soviets lifted the blockade. [|(More Information)]





<span style="color: #fa0000; display: block; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; font-size: 200%; text-align: center;">Russian Aggression <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> It's cold. It's very cold. Due to constant warfare and violence such as the cold war, world wars, and revolutions, Russia has indeed become a gritty nation. The civil wars that happened naturally, have made them more aggressive. In terms of history, Russia was the last country to be industrialized, civilized and modernized compared to the rest of Europe. After the break up of the Soviet Union, the one ideology that kept them together and repressed them was gone, and therefore they all wanted to gain independents. Suddenly there is a surge of new countries and the fact that they have different region further induced them to go into wars. Other more obvious wars such as the Russian Civil war, which lasted for two years from 1918 - 1920, was a conflict between two opposing political parties in Russia which ultimately resulted in a catastrophic civil war. Due to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia lost a large portion of land to Germany. This resulted in a division between two political parties: the Bolsheviks (communists) and the Left Socialist Revolutionaires. Many groups were formed that went against the Bolsheviks which was led by Lenin. The groups that opposed the Bolsheviks included monarchists and militarists. These groups were known as the Whites, whereas the Bolsheviks were known as the Reds. With the fall of Nicholas II, many parts of the Russian empire took this opportunity to gain their independence. The Whites were seeking for Western support to defeat the Bolsheviks because that was what Finland did. As a result, the two different, opposing parties had war, eventually becoming the Russian Civil War. The aftermath of the civil war was horrifying. Russia had been at war for seven years, during which time some 20 million people were killed.<span style="font-family: Helvetica,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"> In addition, being that Russia has one of the highest mafia concentration in the world, it is rather obvious that Russian people are generally much more aggressive than people from other countries. (More info)

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; text-align: center;">Russia's History is very vast like its land. It has been through many harsh winters, many wars, many revolutions, civil wars, tension and crime in the nation. This is causes them to be seen as the most aggressive people on Earth. Russia has played a big part in history though it failed with its plan to practice Communism. We can see that Russia have lost much power and influence in the world today and we can see why by looking at the history of Russia.





<span style="color: #ff0023; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 170%;">__Power__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">: The Russian President has ultimate control over Russian legislature. He has the power to determine the fundamental directions of Russia’s domestic and foreign policies. Also, he is in charge of Russia’s foreign affairs, such as internatio <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">nal trading. He is the one that appoints Russia’s ambassadors when consulting the legislative policies, conduct international talks, and approves international treaties. Back in 1996, some people tried to reduce or even eliminate the presidential powers, claiming that it is rather dictatorial. However, this action was not actually implemented: the president of Russia still holds the supreme presence in Russia via legislature. For instance, under certain conditions, the President has the right to disapprove the <span style="color: #2952ff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 180%; letter-spacing: 0px;">State Duma <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">, now referred to as the Federal Assembly, the lower house represented parliament. Russia’s constitution does not provide a space for a vice president because there is no specific need or necessity for one. There is no specific procedure needed for the vice president to do. The president holds supreme power within the government politics, such as appointing or removing members of the government, including the deputy prime ministers.

__<span style="color: #009912; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%; letter-spacing: 0px;">Origins <span style="color: #00991a; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 140%;">: __ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Russia and many of its neighboring countries represent old cultures. Many of them lay next to crossroads of ancient migration and trade routes. Over the last two millennial the major invading influences are Christianity, Islam, and Mongol. Many tribal and ethnic groups moved in from all directs. The Silk Road which kept a steady supply of resources helped to keep these civilizations stable and build the European empires. Due to the Mountains separating the ancient civilizations and centuries of migration and imperial conquests created a region full of diversity. Around 1500 B.C a Proto-Slavic people occupied land between the Bistula and Dnieper Ribers and went to three main branches: western, southern, and eastern. Th Eastern goes north as it goes east which leads to development of culture as they exchange ideas and customs with the Baltic. As Vikings came and mingled with the Eastern Slavs Rus came into being and divides into Novgorod and Kiev. Moscow was established the trade route between the Baltic and Black Seas. As Muscovy grew in power Catherine the Great brought Russia closer to the modernization and received large territory expansions along with Alexander the Great, and Catherine the Great. Russia was a world power due to its <span style="color: #ff533d; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 160%;">sheer size <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> but inside it had many problems. The Czars were in total control continuing to claim to speak in the name of God and they were not very technological advanced as the rest of Europe. As people in Europe wanted independence from nationalism so did Russia. This created more inside problems for the large nation.

<span style="color: #00a34e; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 170%;">