Stalin was trying to bring Russia into a modern age in terms of industry and economy with the installment of the First Five Year Plan. The incredibly optimistic goals set in place by the plan required a huge increase in production by workers in practically all fields of labor. In a capitalist economy, workers would … Continue reading Soviet Shock Workers and Stakhavonites →
Category: 4th Weekly Edition
The Not So Great Terror
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The red in the Soviet flag is supposed to symbolize the blood spilled by the peasants and workers in the 1917 revolution. Ironically, these same people continued to spill their blood through out the entire lifetime of the USSR through various purges, wars, and famines. The first of these numerous purges (and there will […]
Kirov and Killing
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On 1 December, 1934 Sergei Mironovich Kirov was murdered at the Smolnyi Institute in St. Petersburg by Leonid Nikolaev, a former party member. The 48-year-old First Secretary of the Leningrad party organization and longtime Bolshevik member was assassination only months after he had received a higher percentage of votes in the elections to the Politburo … Continue reading Kirov and Killing
The Use of Propaganda in Films
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If you love films that are devoid of artistic direction, filled with utterly non discreet propaganda, and that are made purely for enjoyment then Soviet films roughly from the 1930’s to the 1950’s are the films for you. (If any of those things do not appeal to you I highly recommend taking a look at …
Legislating Gender
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We hear discussions about gender a lot today, what it means to be masculine, to be feminine, the difference between … More
Open Up, Communism is Knocking on Your Door
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You are a peasant worker, just like your father before you. He had been granted land due to the serf reforms in the early 1900’s and was able to be successful. Then the civil war breaks out, you go and fight for the reds even though many of the other prosperous peasants fight for the …
Continue reading Open Up, Communism is Knocking on Your Door
Maksim Gorky
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The 1930s in the USSR was a period of great change on the cultural front, a period in which revolutionary values were replaced with Stalinist ideology and policies. A crucial part of this “Great Retreat”, as it is now called, was the re-unification of literature with Party values; thus making a move away from the … Continue reading Maksim Gorky →
Unsurprisingly, Stalinism Isn’t Everything It Was Cracked up to Be
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In a turn of events everyone should have seen coming, the progress promised by the revolution did not stick around. In the earlier days of the new government, progress had been made towards loosening restrictions on abortion and redefining what it meant to be a woman. Under the new regime, women were given the ability …
Continue reading “Unsurprisingly, Stalinism Isn’t Everything It Was Cracked up to Be”
Exploration of the Poles
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Setting up of North Pole-1 which was the first ever drifting station The exploration of the North and South Poles became a race between the Western States and the Soviet Union during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. The Soviet Union wanted to establish communities in the polar regions as well as conditions … Continue reading Exploration of the Poles
The Party Don’t Start Until Russia Walks In
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When you think of Russia and alcohol I would assume that most of you would automatically think vodka. What if I told you that you would be incorrect. “After the terrible famine that gripped Ukraine and southern Russia in the wake of collectivization, and only a few years before the terror and war scare … Continue reading “The Party Don’t Start Until Russia Walks In”
