Behind The Urals : An American Worker

Within the realm of history, a source of evidence is essential in order to differentiate the fact from fiction. This is why a primary source is so vital! Because, a primary source provides the reader with direct evidence of an event or a speech; giving them a better understanding of the material. The only problem is: these sources do not provide the full facts, leaving the readers with a plethora of questions. Don’t get me wrong though, the readers should be asking a lot of questions! Because, with all of those questions, the reader can be engaged with the content in order to find some concrete evidence.

The late 1940′s were a time when much change happened to the American society. As a result to the expanding threat of the Soviet Union, or its Communistic ideals, America took a stand that lead it to the Cold War.  Although the war didn’t involve fighting directly with Russia, it still affected the American society and domestic policy. The war affected America so much that it lead to a fear of livelihood; precisely when Joseph McCarthy began his “witch hunt”. The Cold war lead to an enlarged fear of nuclear war; as well, it affected many of the domestic policies.

According to the Library of Illinois, “primary sources of information are those that provide first-hand accounts of the events, practices, or conditions you are researching.” There is no portion about reliability or the significance of truth within the explanation of a primary historical source. O’Brien’s recollection of his first-hand experience in the Vietnam war is a good primary source because highlights the collective consciousness of America during the war, the collective memory of the soldiers who fought, and the emotional things they had to carry with them through the remainder of their lives.

John Lewis Gaddis offers a different opinion of the one responsible for the Cold War. He believes that Stalin’s authoritarian vision was a minor issue; the big issue

Primary sources are used by people who have experienced specific events in their lives. They allow a reader to connect to them on a more relatable basis. Primary sources are also very reliable because the author of a book or newspaper article, for example, was actually there. So they have all the evidence they need for what is being documented. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a primary source because Jurgis actually went through the hard labor conditions that occurred in the Progressive Era (1900-1916). The Jungle puts a face to the issues of grueling work hours, poor working conditions, unbearable living arrangements, exploitation of the poor, and uneducated working class. Issues of Industrial Democracy, child labor, and the minimum wage became so important to Americans during this period. This Era saw a change in some of the main reasons that controlled American individualism after the unrestrained years of the late 19th century; arguments over labor, social conflict, and unstable economy.

Primary sources are sources of information or data that are not interpreted, evaluated, or analyzed, and secondary sources are sources that only interpret, evaluate, or analyze secondary sources.

If historians were to only use primary sources from one perspective, they would lose the chance to know different point of views. Take into consideration Joseph Galloway’s Speech to the Continental Congress. It is clear that he is trying to persuade the colonists not to go against Britain. Now, this speech is a primary source because is a document that provides explicit information about an event. But, a couple of years later, Thomas Paine writes the pamphlet “Common Sense”, where he advocates the country to be independent from Britain. If historians were only to use Joseph Galloway’s primary source, they would never be able to know that not everyone was thinking the same way of him. In order to fully understand what is the cause or the causes that lead to different events in history, it is important to be familiar to every kind of document regarding that period. Read and analyze every prime source of that period to have a complete and neat vision of the

This is a primary source because this article was written in History. It is the original article written by a former African slave. It is not written by a historian, it was written while slavery was current.

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

Solzhenitsyn envisioned and captured the persona of the Soviet prison labor camp system by describing as a chain of hidden islands amongst the USSR landscape. Solzhenitsyn sees himself lifting the shroud that the Soviet regime tried to hide the gulags behind by telling his story of his time in the gulags. Reading his book gave the reader the sense of reading a forbidden text, something surrounded in secrecy. Solzhenitsyn develops themes throughout the book. These fetid and morbid “islands” would see millions of unfortunate visitors forced to slave away at one of the world’s largest and fastest infrastructure and industrialization builds in the history of mankind perpetuated by the will of Stalin and his secret police the NKVD. In this beautifully and treacherously written story, Alexander Solzhenitsyn goes from his glory filled days as a distinguished officer to just an exhausted instrument of the Soviet state.

From Stalin’s Cult of Personality to Khrushchev’s period of De-Stalinization, the nation of the Soviet Union was in endless disarray of what to regard as true in the sense of a socialist direction. The short story, This is Moscow Speaking, written by Yuli Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) represents the ideology that the citizens of the USSR were constantly living in fear of the alternations of their nation’s political policies. Even more, the novella gives an explanation for the people’s desire to conform to the principles around them.

While this may be the case for the more information-limited Soviet historians, the more modern, revisionist historians such as Edward Acton, Robert Service, Harold Shukman and Steven Smith have had great exposure to much of the confidential literature, kept secret by the many Soviet Purges and the prolific ‘Iron Curtain’. In the view of Acton “Russia’s workers were

Set out to locate social revolution, the American reporter traveled the United States, Mexico, Western and Eastern Europe and witnessed the divid between class war. Frustrated, Reed determined social revolution a hopeless theory until he found Lenin’s revolutionary movement and became an active communist in the Soviet Union.”10 days that shook the world” was a result of this experience with Lenin. As well traveled to Baku, Speaking against capitalism and imperialism and saw land destroyed by war chiefly reversed his intense beliefs on Lenin’s revolutionary movement.

Aleksandr explains to us how society treated the people, it made people fear and suffer. It was a misery and hopeless to be in those camps but it was also ridiculous to be a normal Soviet citizen as you were constantly living under the Soviet regime after the

99 years has passed since the 1917 October Revolution - a time of chaos and uncertainty, an event that would shape the world for decades to come. In the midst of the “fog of revolution”, John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World navigates through this tumultuous time. Reed was an American journalist and socialist, coming to Russia on an assignment from a socialist magazine, The Masses - he was a man deeply involved with the socialist movement, and thus, with the revolution. As the historian A. J. P. Taylor puts it, “This was his revolution, not an obscure event in a foreign country.” Thus, his first-hand account, written in 1919, provides a “slice of intensified history”, attempting to capture the spirit of the revolution, rather than providing a dry text on it - sometimes forsaking historical accuracy, but genuinely attempting to be a fair account, despite its bias.