Fascism In Russia

During the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union, life was very difficult. The people who lived within the countries controlled by the Soviet government experienced levels of oppression akin to slavery. They could not express themselves through any means and had to conform both body and soul to the views of the Communist Party. People could be arrested, imprisoned, shipped off to exile or executed often without trial. Some twenty million people died while Joseph Stalin led the USSR and for many years after his death it was still dangerous to dare criticize his regime, although some scholars put that number closer to forty million people who died. Now that the Soviet Union has broken up and Russia is its own country there is more freedom, but the people still live under the yoke of an oppressive leader who does not tolerate political or social challenges. The people do nothing to stand up to this government because they have all been scarred by the decades they lived under Stalin. In the book The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin, author Adam Hochschild entered Russia an interviewed people who had survived Stalinism. What he found was that despite the fact that Stalin has been dead for decades, he still lives as a tangible presence within the country. His memory functions as a reminder to all those who dare to criticize President Putin or other members of the current government about how bad things could be and this fear pushes them into

In Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, Karen Dawisha relates Russian President Vladmir Putin’s rise to power. She overarchingly claims that Putin is an authoritarian leader who has obstructed and even reverted Russia’s path of democratization, citing, amongst many factors that enabled his ascension, his “interlocking web of personal connections in which he was the linchpin” (100), money-laundering to tax havens and personal projects, and the complicity of the West. With copious research, journalistic interviews, legal documents, and even sporadic informational diagrams, it is evident why her book is so popular amongst scholars and history enthusiasts. Unfortunately however, in spite of the grand yet oftentimes substantiated claims she generates, a more subtle yet noteworthy assumption is made: that the state is a protector, as Olson proffered. She employs this theoretical underpinning from the beginning, though is not representative of Putin’s actual authoritarian regime.

“Fascism has as an underlying economic purpose the preservation of Capitalism and the prevention of Socialism. To prevent even the discussion of Socialism or Communism all democratic liberties are destroyed. The most influential profit makes form a partnership with the Fascist politicians for the complete control of the state so that the power of police and soldiers may be used to punish all dissenters.” (Miller, p.74)

Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th century, influenced by national syndicalism. Its movement is based on nationalism and militaries, combining more typically right-wing positions with elements of left-wing politics. Also, it emphasizes the importance of the state and individual’s overriding duty to it. Fascism opposes to liberalism and communism and it seeks to regenerate social, cultural and economic life, by installing strong national identity and complete loyalty to the state and the leader. Secret police and propaganda were used to manipulate the citizens and the suppress opposition.

Although the states had a different ideology, where in Russian autocracy all the power and wealth was controlled by the Tsar, and Marxism-Leninism was based on an absolute truth for understanding social life, the governments of both regimes depended heavily on the central control from the absolute ruler. As defined by Dominic Lieven, an empire is measured by the scale of territory, the amount of absolute power held by the Tsar and the numerous ethnicities within the polity. By the law, religion and tradition, the Tsar was the absolute ruler and as Nicholas I in 1832 declared “The Emperor of all the Russias is an autocratic and unlimited monarch”. As Tsarist Russia was strongly Orthodox, it was believed that God himself gives the power to the

The most significant reason that Tsarism failed in 1917 was its failure to modernise in the centuries before. The Tsars ruled the largest empire on earth, with the same medieval muscovite ideas that Ivan ‘the terrible’ had brought in during the 16th century. The early rulers of Muscovy considered the entire Russian territory their collective property. Various semi-independent princes still claimed specific territories, but Ivan III forced the lesser princes to acknowledge the grand prince of Muscovy and his descendants as unquestioned rulers with control over military, judicial, and foreign affairs. Gradually, the Muscovite ruler emerged as a powerful, autocratic ruler, a tsar.

This essay will explore the various social, economic and political events and circumstances that arose in the early 20th century and together contributed to the emergence of fascism with reference to Germany specifically. The analysis will explore the impact of WW1, a change in social structures with ideologies and beliefs, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The continual crisis year after year in all aspects pushed German society to turn to fascism as a way off counteracting everything that had carried the state down.

During World War Two, the Axis powers were ran by two different kinds of government ideas.  In Germany the government was Nazism raised by their leader Adolf Hitler. In Italy there was Fascism ruled by their leader Benito Mussolini.  Fascism and Nazism appealed to the people because how they were living during the time the two came to power. The two main reasons that made them so appealing were the nationalistic feeling which rose in people and the feeling of a better lifestyle during economic troubles.  These different strategies of government presented false promises to desperate people.

Fascism, the more it reflects and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political concerns, it starts to believe that neither in the possibility of peace. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human beings in this world and puts the print of nobility upon the peoples who have valor to meet it. It gives and puts human beings - men into the position where they have to make the greatest decision, of life or death. (Halsall, 1997) Fascism is the complete opposite of; Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development. Fascism is now and will always, be dangerous; that

Through the USSR rule, a great number of imperial autocracy aspects of its forms of governance, social and economic reforms were reproduced such as central control and nationalism policies, for example, Russification. However, there is a debate if Stalinism was a continuation of Tsarist autocracy due to differences between two regimes as the Bolshevik government categorically refused to be defined as an empire; contrastingly, its leaders saw imperialism as the policy adopted in capitalist states which have been viewed as competitors and enemies which bring a contradictory argument. This essay will argue that although in theory, the differences between Imperialism and Communism were colossal, a leading argument about Russia, famously defended

Under a backdrop of systematic fear and terror, the Stalinist juggernaut flourished. Stalin’s purges, otherwise known as the “Great Terror”, grew from his obsession and desire for sole dictatorship, marking a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. “The purges did not merely remove potential enemies. They also raised up a new ruling elite which Stalin had reason to think he would find more dependable.” (Historian David Christian, 1994). While Stalin purged virtually all his potential enemies, he not only profited from removing his long-term opponents, but in doing so, also caused fear in future ones. This created a party that had virtually no opposition, a new ruling elite that would be

Fascism is a political movement which originated in Italy, deriving its name from fasces - bundles of sticks tied around an axe symbolizing authority of leadership and the unity of the people tied to it. It holds that the individual exists for the State, to whose good all his work and interests should be directed. It is an ideology of liberation, yet one which is constructed around direct subservience to leadership. This form of hierarchy within the state is the first key theme within fascism. Elitism entails a strong distrust of democracy, fearing that it manipulates law and society through influencing public opinion, they believe in the iron law of oligarchy, in a hero / leader, and in elite values. However, there are many paradoxes within fascism. It has characteristically been at opposition with democracy, yet fascism has also characteristically enacted the same system of oppression within its political regimes. It is similar to Marxism in the ways in which the victims of each system suffer under dictatorships, and expansionary practices. Fascism tends to completely glorify war however, deeming it an "outlet for heroic and grand passions". Following this, there is an irrationality which fascism follows. It is a very subjective ideology and expresses a diminished role of reason. Most Fascists were in agreement with Sorel on the grounds of justifying a proletarian war

Russia has endured a long and substantial history of political regime changes from being a tsarist state, to adopting communism, to a post-communist transition era, and today may be in the process of democratic transition. Russia’s extensive political history is key to understanding the ever-changing political processes within the state. To understand the regime structure in Russia today we must assess and understand their political history, look at critical junctures in Soviet and Russian political developments, explore the post-war settlements of the Russian state, and finally explain the political regime of Russia through this analysis. The premise of this paper will be based on Thomas Carothers thesis on gray zone states. Vis-à-vis the typology Carothers uses to describe syndromes of a gray zone state, I shall attempt to generate a new thesis on the present Russian political system. By the end of the paper it will be clear as to how and why the political regime of Russia is one that actually presents a completely new type of regime development that can be dubbed a quasi-democracy.

In this essay I will discuss how the stress of the First World War and Great Depression lead to and shape Soviet Communism, Italian Fascism and the German Nazism.

Fascist movements set out to create a new type of total culture in which values; politics, art, social norms and economic activity are all part of a single organic community. In this way fascism is directly opposed to consevatism. The fascist movements in Italy and Germany also represented attempts to create revolutionary new modern states. Even though fascist movements try to bring about revolutionary change, they emphasis the revival of a mythical ethnic, racial or national past. They revise conventional history to create a vision of an idealised past. The mythical histories claim that former greatness has been destroyed by such developments as the mixing of races, the rise of powerful buisness groups and a loss of a shared sense of the nation. A fascist movement always asserts that the nation faces a profound crisis. The fascists present the national crisis as resolvable only through a radical political transformation. They claim the nation has entered a dangerous age of mediocrity, weakness and decline. They are convinced that through their timely action they can save the nation from itself. Fascists promise that with their help the national crisis will end and a new age will begin that restores the people to a sense of belonging, purpose and greatness. They believe that the end result of a fascist revolution will be the emergence of a new man and woman. This