One of the most crucial events in the twentieth century was the fall of the Soviet Union also known

While modernizing the USSR, he portrayed western countries as enemies just waiting to invade the Soviet Union. He stuck to his “socialism in one country” theory that the focus should remain on improving the Soviet Union’s strength. [Socialist Alternative] To preserve Soviet security, Stalin signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 with Hitler. The Soviets sided with Britain and France before the signage of the pact, but Stalin didn’t think that they could resist Germany. This treaty was a promise that the two countries wouldn’t go to war with each other and if Germany invaded Poland, the two would split it equally. When the war between the Allied powers and Germany broke out, Stalin played both sides. The non-aggression pact allowed for the Germans to invade other countries, so it was inevitable that they would soon invade the Soviet Union. On December 18, 1940, “Operation Barbarossa” took place as German forces broke the pact and stormed the Soviet Union. Since the pact was broken, Stalin realigned himself with the Allied Forces and was determined to take Germany down. Stalin created a Department of Defense led by him and used propaganda and the Orthodox Church to gain support and boost nationalism. After taking down Germany in WWII, the United States and Soviet Union sought to influence their political ideologies to other nations. After WWII, United States Secretary of State George Marshall presented the Marshall

The era that preceded the formation of the Soviet Union was earmarked with social unrest, famine, and failed governments. After many struggles, many smaller soviet republics joined to form a large conglomerate nation, known as the Soviet Union in 1922. Vladimir Lenin, leader at the time, replaced the failing capitalist government with a communist government. . At the end of WWII, most of Eastern and Central Europe’s countries were being occupied by the soviet army. They came to be controlled by the Soviet government and pulled back behind an “iron Curtain”. Winston Churchill’s famed Iron curtain remark refers to the countries that fell under the spell of the Soviet Union and shut out the western world ways of capitalism. The countries of

Capitalist versus communist countries, i.e. the Western Bloc versus the Eastern Bloc were linking to the events dominating the politics of the world the Cold War. In the aftermath of World War II, the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union governed the tension surrounding communist growth and fears. These two nations had become the new superpowers, with the communist Soviet Union heading an ‘Eastern Bloc’ of countries and the capitalist United States heading a ‘Western Bloc’. In 1947, the United States declared a new policy to check the growing power of communism; ‘to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation [complete control] by armed minorities or by outside pressure’. The conflict between the Eastern and Western blocs became known as the Cold War. It centred

of Germany as if it belonged to Russia. He allowed only the communist party and

Soviet Union also called the USSR, emerged from World War I as one of the most powerful nations in the world. For 3 decades Joseph Stalin was in control and changed Soviet Union as a world superpower. After the 1920s they were becoming one of the most feared nations. There were many marks the Soviet Union did during the 20th century, but the textbooks should emphasize on economy/geography, militarism, and Joseph Stalin.

In 1917, Russia was crumbling into pieces. The World War I was draining all of Russia’s resources. There was shortage of food throughout the country, which left people starving. At the battlefront, millions of Russian soldiers were dying, they did not possess many of the powerful weapons that their opponents had. The government under Czar Nicholas II was disintegrating, and a provisional government had been set up. In November of 1917, Lenin and his communist followers known as the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and set a communist government in Russia. However, in 1924, Lenin died and Josef Stalin assumed leadership of the Soviet Union, which was the name for the communist Russia. Stalin was a ruthless leader who brought

Following World War II disputes between soviet and the Western democracies kicked up, particularly dealing with the fate of Eastern European states and the Soviets influential takeover. The communist takeover of Eastern Europe clashed with the democratic rebuilding of Western Europe forming what Winston Churchill described as a “Iron Curtain” a political, military and ideological barrier set by the Soviet Union served to set a metaphorical boundary between the Soviet expansion and the Western democracies. With the fall of the “Iron Curtain” “The Cold War was a period of East-West competition, tension, and conflict short of full-scale war, characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs.”

The cold War is over but the influence of the Soviet Union is not and soviet union was a communist. The Soviet Union grew out of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war in 1917. Therefore it started after the Russian revolution in the early 1920s and lasted until 1991. However, three areas are most necessary to understand its cultural achievements. Its military strength and its political oppression.

In the Second World War USA and its western allies like Britain, France and so forth needed the help of Soviet Union to combat Nazi Germany. “Indeed, the western democracies could not have defeated Germany except the unlimited support of those Soviet troops which in 1945 occupied all areas in dispute.”(Graebner, 1976) However, after the war, the Soviet-American unity collapsed following the Yalta Conference of February 1945, largely over the issue of Poland. As a result, USSR established what Churchill termed as ‘iron curtain’ from Stettin to Trieste.

The Cold War is over, but the influence of the Soviet Union is not. The Soviet Union grew out of the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War in 1917. Eight leaders and 74 years later the Soviet Union fell in 1991. The story of those 74 years leaves much to tell. However, three areas are most necessary to understand: its cultural achievements, its military strength, and its political oppression.

Historians argue that the 1917 Russian Revolution represents a major turning point in world history. Two specific pieces of evidence that support this argument is that the Revolution led to the spread of communism with the formation of the USSR and the emergence of Russia as a world power. Both of the pieces support the argument. The Revolution led to the formation of the USSR, otherwise known as the world’s first nation to base its government on the teachings and writings of Karl Marx. This event would not only be groundbreaking for Russia, but the entire globe. The formation of a communist nation meant a new battle was about to start -- the battle between communism and capitalism. The formation of the USSR would directly lead to the Cold

During the course of history, great leaders have coerced the world to the brink of war; this was the case for Joseph Stalin, who forced the world to the unprecedented Cold War. To a large extent, Stalin’s actions were responsible for the onset of the Cold War. Stalin displayed a lack of trustworthiness, evident in the Yalta conference during February 1945, and spread communism into eastern European states. This led to mutual distrust between the USSR and the United States. In 1948, Stalin further escalated tensions between himself and the United States, by enforcing the construction of the Berlin blockade, created to weaken the United States supplies in West Germany. Stalin was a strong believer in militarism, because of this Stalin ordered the creation and consolidation of the USSR’s nuclear arsenals in 1947, inflaming the arms race that could have potentially inflicted total devastation throughout the globe. Stalin’s impetuous actions caused great tensions between himself and other leaders, subsequently causing him to be responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War.

The origins of the Cold War started because of how World War II ended. The Yalta Conference in 1945 is when the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt discussed the organization of Europe. The first tension was caused in the Middle East. Soviet troops occupied parts of northern Iran during this time, and they hoped to pressure Iran, so Iran will grant them access to their oil fields. But the British and Americans pressured Stalin to remove their forces. Also during this same time, the Soviets installed pro-communist governments in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. They spread communism by claiming it was no different than the US dominating Latin American and Britian maintaining it’s own empire. However, Stalin was violating the promise of free elections in Poland that was agreed at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Another huge conflict that arises after the war was the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain was the name of the boundary between the free West and the communist East in Europe. During this postwar reconstruction, Stalin tightened his control, in fear of war with the West. He jailed or murdered millions of Soviet

Before the nation of Russia became the international powerhouse that we knew as the USSR, it was first the small backwater country, whose economy ran on the use of serfs, Czar 's ruled every aspect, and the chance of growth was limited; however, once the year 1917 came along, the entire aspect of what was to be the Russia nation changed into a very strange and new one, called the United of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Soviet Union was, at one point, second only to the United States of America and had the power to destroy the entire planet with the single acknowledgement of their leader, because of their nuclear capabilities and their political power. The Russian country became the great Communist powerhouse after a great revolution in

The most powerful entities of Russia (one of the main Soviet Union creators) took control when they began to spread the motto "all power to the soviets." It is at this time that the monarchy of Tsar Nicholas II was threatened and finally destroyed in 1917. From this year, began the establishment of a social state and free of exploiters was consolidated until more than a dozen countries were they joined him.