Communism And Marxist Ideologies And The Soviet Union

Stalin’s early promises compromised of socialism and a life free from exploitation in regards to his social policies. However, he soon realised his error and reverted to a more conservative form of rule, whereby the interest of the state was given priority. Many describe his soviet social policy during the 1930s as a ‘Great Retreat’, it was named this as his policies saw a return to earlier social policies under the Tsar and former leaders. It is debatable as to how far his actions were a retraction of previous decisions…and the areas impacted were women, family, and education. A common theme of the great retreat was the gender role in society.

It presented an obvious opposition to capitalism and illustrated no interest to change or backdown from their communist ways. To project an ideal image to other countries around the world the logo of the Warsaw Pact was the perfect example of the soviets projecting an image of camaraderie and equality with the symbolic “shaking of hands”. Their image to outside forces was crucial to their expansion as shown in document 6. They state “United by the common ideal …equality, respect of territorial integrity, state independence and sovereignty, and noninterference in one another's domestic affairs.” (Soviet Statement: Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and Other Socialist States”). These statements provide a view on the soviet’s spread that symbolizes relationships with countries built on trust and equality. As the years went on these countries begun to realize the they no longer wanted to be under Soviet power and like Hungary, extracted their countries out from Soviet

The concept of Stalinism, being the ideologies and policies adopted by Stalin, including centralization, totalitarianism and communism, impacted, to an extent, on the soviet state until 1941. After competing with prominent Bolshevik party members Stalin emerged as the sole leader of the party in 1929. From this moment, Stalinism pervaded every level of society. Despite the hindrance caused by the bureaucracy, the impact of Stalinism was achieved through the implementation of collectivization and the 5-year plans, Stalin’s Political domination and Cultural influence, including the ‘Cult of the Personality’. This therefore depicts the influence of Stalinism over the Soviet State in the period up to 1941.

The Soviet Union’s methods and intentions differed from that of Germany’s to the extent that they wanted to manipulate the Poles to go against one another in order to unify Poland and the Soviet Union instead of eradicate the Polish population. When the Red Army invaded from the east, they: “scattered leaflets designed to arouse class hatred towards the owners of the larger estates and factories, officers, judges, magistrates, priests, and politicians” (Garlinski 34). The country still included multiple ethnic minorities which did not yet learn to live harmoniously with each other. The Red Army used this lack of unity to their advantage and aimed disassembling the Polish underground movements. The Soviets subtly proclaimed misleading slogans

Communist rule was confined to the Soviet Union until the end of World War II.

“The worst thing about communism... is what comes after,” said Polish newspaper editor Adam Michnik. Over 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a wave of missed opportunities runs along in the countries to its east. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, expectations ran high; but over the years this hope has turned into disappointment. Many of the post communist states are seen as failures, with their economies occupied by struggling pensioners and arrogant oligarchs (Treisman and Shleifer, 2014). In The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Karl Marx summed communism up as the “abolition of private property”. Andrew Heywood takes the description further by splitting the theory in 3 different ways: as a political principle, social model based

After the Russian revolution, Marxist Intellectuals were amazed that the workers of Europe refused to embrace Communism. A study research centre was set up in Germany in 1923, commonly known as the ‘Frankfurt school’, but officially ‘The Institute for Social Research’, to disguise its links to Communism. If the proletariat

I researched the Communist Party of Russia, which was founded in 1903 by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. They were committed to democratic centralism, opposed capitalism, and were dedicated to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, or the rule of the economic and social class of industrial workers. The Bolsheviks seized power from the Russian imperial government in 1917 and changed their name to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1952. From 1918 through the 1980s, the CPSU was a monopolistic party with members consisting of high-ranking USSR government officials, which allowed them to make policy that was enforced by the government.

In his work Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of Communist Establishment Stephen Kotkin (with the aid of Jan T. Gross) closely examines the existence and downfall of the ‘uncivil societies’ and explains how social mobilisation was able to occur under these regimes without any social organisation. His view goes against popular opinion in the sense that the Communist regimes themselves were the cause of their own downfall, the ordinary citizen did play a role, however, the significance of that is given too much significance. He highlights this through three case studies: GDR, Romania and Poland.

The Soviets are aware of how to keep themselves in power and wish to expand their influence over all communist countries, treating them as subordinates, "The weakening of any of the links in the world system of socialism directly affects all the socialist countries, which cannot look indifferently upon this"

Karl Marx and Freidich Engels both raised the essential question of this study in the second chapter, “Proletarians and Communists.” Of the book, “Communist Manifesto” (1848) Karl Marx, he distinguished himself as a man of high caliber, and a philosopher of immense intellect. When Marx published his novel, “Communist Manifesto”, in the book, he underlined convincing ideas that detail theories of communism coexisting with multiple strategic solutions to capitalism. The author further distinguishes communism is the exceptional method of managing a government either politically and economically, in such a way no person is subjected to dealing

To properly understand the Marxist concept of communism, one must start where Marx himself does, with an understanding of the evolution and revolutions that created the current class system. Unlike Rousseau and Hobbes, Marx does not begin with a hypothetical human state of nature, but instead recounts the human history of hierarchy, saying, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx, 14). He then traces these struggles, from ancient Rome to the problems of his own age, proving that no matter the time period or circumstances, in all recorded history the upper and lower classes have constantly been at odds. This has resulted in an ever changing power structure, the oppressed toppling their

Ever since Poland became officially incorporated into the Soviet Bloc and the PZPR usurped power within the one-part political system, there were numerous instances of anti-communist opposition that invariably encountered repression and persecution at the hands of the pro-Soviet government. In the context of the present discussion, however, the roots of concerted effort to undermine or reform the state-regulated socialist economy can be traced back to the emergence of Solidarity, the first Polish trade union that was not under a direct

Moreover ,everything was under control of the Polish Government of Stalin, including a lot of spheres as culture, social aspects of life and economy. As government had all the power in their hands, people were absolutely deprived of power. That kind of period was strongly disliked by people and brought a lot of strikes, protections and even attacks. As the result, the Communism system had a bad influence on the development of Poland.

Following the revolutions of 1989, neoliberals were able to forge new alliances with Solidarity members through a participation in a new and democratically-elected government. In particular, Balerowicz played a central role in shaping the nation’s economic reform by assuming the Deputy Prime Minister post and putting forward the Balcerowicz Plan, which effectively outlined the agenda for transitioning from central planning to a market economy. As Bohle and Neunhöffer argue, neoliberals eventually succeeded in winning the support of not only the general public but also of the political elite associated with Solidarity (99). They were able to capture the public imagination by insisting on a new and concrete set of policies, which opposed European “normalcy” and freedom to the Soviet stagnation and authoritarianism.