brittworstell

Chernobyl: The Worst Case Scenario

In April of 1986, the people of Chernobyl, Ukraine begun an era irreversible suffering. On the 26th of the month, the local nuclear power reactor experienced an extreme explosion as a result of a power surge. The event, to this day, is considered the worst nuclear accident to ever occur worldwide. As radioactive dust quickly spread […]

The Communist Code of Conduct

During the Krushchev era, there were many multifaceted concepts spreading throughout the Soviet Union as part of the De-Stalinization movement. Many of these theories and ideals penetrated not only political life, but economic and cultural life as well for the peoples of the USSR. One of these concepts was brought about by the “Moral Code of […]

The Soviet Super-Bomb

According to the subject essay by Lewis Siegelbaum, three years before the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, work on the “super-bomb” began. Differing from the recent atomic bomb the world had been experimenting with at the time, the hydrogen bomb was a nuclear weapon which used fusion in a 2-step chain reaction rather than fission. The […]

A Continent Divided

As the main focus for this post, I’d like to look at a subject essay by James von Geldern on the aftermath of the Holocaust in causing division among minorities who were targeted by the Nazi Party throughout World War II. Even though the post-war climate in the Soviet Union was generally upbeat as a result of the […]

The Kronstadt Rebellion

Kronstadt was a small island turned naval fortress, which had originally been allies of the Bolsheviks after the February Revolution of 1917. On the island, the sailors considered themselves to be loyal to the Soviet cause. Eventually though, anger arose as a result of the authoritarian regime the Bolsheviks were building. They began to deprive […]

Repression and the Russian Revolution

Considering recent actions taken by the Executive Branch of the US government, what stood out to me the most about analyzing the Russian Revolution of 1905 were the extensive issues revolving around religion and nationality that led to much violence and unrest in Russia during this time period. This ethnic repression and discrimination comes as […]

Guardians of the Russian Empire

Background & Photographer According to the World Digital Library (WDL), this image was taken by Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii in the fall of 1909. The original caption did not disclose the exact location, but it is suggested that the photo was taken north of Ekaterinburg while Prokudin-Gorskii visited certain mining territories. In the early […]