With a feeling of distrust towards the educated and raised by a dysfunctional family, Joseph Stalin released his anger over all of Russia with mass amounts of power. Joseph Stalin, the leader of Russia from 1924 until his death, is remembered as a murderous dictators, creating the largest man-made famine in history, all as leader of the communist party of Russia. Born into a poor, dysfunctional family, Stalin had a feeling of distrust and anger toward those around him instilled in him from a young age. He quit his education as a priest, as he was drawn towards revolutionaries and the Bolshevik movement. His actions, however, were unlike Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik party; Stalin was reckless, and his actions drew Lenin’s attention, allowing
The Gulag was a government agency of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Many aspects of this were very different from how the US viewed labor camps and prisons. This impacted lives in various ways. Prisoners received harsh treatment which made this environment very hard to survive in. The combination of violence, hard labor, and unsanitary
One of the biggest questions people ask is how can one person influence hundreds of people to kill. Many people think of Joseph stalin, Adolf HItler, and Jim Jones. According to ibtimes.com, Joseph Stalin killed about 35-49 million people. Adolf HItler killed roughly 11 million people (historyrocket.com). And lastly, Jim Jones killed around 900 people (jonestown.sdsu.edu). But the real question is, how did they do it? Jim Jones influenced people through trust, Joseph Stalin influenced people through threat, and Adolf Hitler influenced people through manipulation.
Many a times people in power have resorted to violence to solve their problems. In the book Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury explains that this happens throughout. The government killed and innocent man when Montag was on the run. This man had caused no harm, all he was doing was taking a nights walk and because this was odd he was marked as a person of interest. The government would assume that he was probably a book owner and had the hound kill him instead of hunting down Montag. The government was not justified in this act of murder because it was not justified in fairness, it was falsely representing the government to society, and it was immoral.
The denial of human rights in Ukraine and Cambodia has had huge impacts on regional and international communities. Ukraine was very independent, and Stalin wanted to remove the threat that the Ukrainians were becoming. In Cambodia, Pol Pot attempted to create a utopian Communist agrarian society.
When the Holocaust began in 1933, people around the world did not know the full extent of the killing. After the Holocaust ended in 1945, the world finally saw how inhumane Non-Aryans in Germany and Poland were treated by the German Reich. The U.N made an agreement to never let an event like that happen again. This is when the term “Genocide” was officially established. It is the mass killing, sterilization, and annihilation of a specific group of people. The Holocaust is the most widely known mass killing in history and is widely looked down upon but that does not mean that it cannot happen again.
Joseph Stalin was and still is universally known for his harsh leadership in the Soviet Union. To examine the extent of his cruelness, World Civilization II: The Rise and Fall of Empires© 1500-present stated, "Stalin was not a communist; he was a sociopath. He enjoyed hurting people and ordering their deaths. In his time as dictator of the Soviet Union, he was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of his people, and the cruel torture and imprisonment of millions more" (Sattler, 71). However, this only scratches the surface of what Stalin put the Soviet Union through. Stalin was a very persuasive man, his writings make it seem as if he is in the right and is innocent. To support this statement, two pieces of Stalin's writings were
The Great Purge was from 1936 to 1938. It was a series of mass murders by the secret police. False accusations were made against people, and forged documents were used. People were numbed by fear. They were afraid that their lives were going to be taken from them. During this time, approximately 1,548,366 were detained, 681,962 were shot and over 1,000 executions per day. It is known that over four million people died during the great purge, but historians say this this number could easily be doubled. Survivors of the great purge claimed to have been threatened and tortured. Along with the Great Purge, Stalin also came up with a five-year plan. This was in place from 1928 to 1932. During the five years, the government took control of farms; whoever refused was shot or exiled. Since people had no control over their farms, they had no food. Famine led to many deaths. Stalin wanted a better industry so he was trying to turn the Soviet Union into an industrial superpower. They had agricultural needs, along with needing oil, coal, steel and
“We are in the presence of a crime without a name,” said British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Nazis were always remembered for the killing of over six million European Jews, but at the time, there was no name for this wicked act. After the war, many of these Nazi war criminals were convicted of an act called genocide, a word that did not exist before 1944. Genocide is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Genocide occurs because of many factors that trigger this cruelty. Although there are many reasons that can be considered to result in genocide, the three main reasons that result to this mass slaughter, are caused by: the authority that leads them, the ethnic tension between
Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953, established totalitarianism in Russia, and forever changed the nation. He used police force to gain power, and instilled fear in all of his followers. This reign of terror was known as the Blood Purges or the Great Terror. During the Blood Purges, Stalin blamed Russian citizens for crimes he committed, and imposed the worst of punishments on them. Death or being sent to a labor camp, such as Gulag, was the fate of most. From 1936 to 1938, people were being killed over paranoia and no actual evidence. The purges were aimed to efface the threat of political retaliation.
Post WWl, Russia was still not industrialized, suffering economically and politically and in no doubt in need of a leader after Lenin’s death. “His successor, Joseph Stalin, a ruthless dictator, seized power and turned Russia into a totalitarian state where the government controls all aspects of private and public life.” Stalin showed these traits by using methods of enforcement, state control of individuals and state control of society.
As seen in document 8, this poster of Joseph Stalin makes him appear as a dignified leader with the people of Russia in peace and order. However this is clearly synthesized to make him appear like a good leader because the truth of his rule can been seen in the high death toll and immediately after his death began the de-Stalinization process throughout Soviet society showing that Russia wished to be rid of his presence in history. The Great Purge was to remove dissenters from Stalin's rule and the public trails show that Stalin wished to be viewed as a justified leader. In document 7, a French ambassador to the Soviet Union describing the public trails states, “ I personally attended the second and third Moscow trials, those of 1937 and 1938…. Pyatakov arose… confessed to a number of crimes. Did these “confessions” carry any share of truth? It is possible that the accused were hostile to Stalin’s regime… But the lessons they recited must have been forced from them…. It is also probable that the accused gave in to some form of pressure…” This document describes the trails that occurred may have been fabricated so that the accused stood guilty of something which justified his execution by Stalin’s secret police. By justifying his killing, Stalin isn’t viewed as a murderous leader. This description is fairly credible because it is written by a French Ambassador so his job is to develop a good relationship between the two nations but it can also be unreliable since the French and the Soviet Union are at
Dictator Stalin ordered to execute anyone that opposed him. Him and his secret police raided houses and killed and tortured many who were being accused of going against him. Many had to confess for crimes they did not commit due to torture. He eve executed his own party officials and leaders which lead to fear across the country. People were dying for simply not agreeing or not acting a certain way. Everything was controlled and having an opinion was not allowed unless it was a good one about Stalin. Research says about “an average of 1,000 executions happened in a
In Document C Roy Medvedev wrote on how The Great Terror was and he describes it by saying “The most cruel tortures, interrogations, and the fearful abuse of human dignity.” He also claims that “If it was necessary to cut you to pieces,they would cut you into pieces.” Later on Richard Pipes tells us how many victims NKVD detained and how many were shot and killed. 1,548,366 were detained and 681,692 were shot and killed. If this isn’t important in the Soviet Union's timeline, then I don’t know what is because this Great Terror Stalin created was a massacre and seemed unreal if you heard it in person. This should be greatly emphasized in textbooks because it's valuable to the Soviet Union's
Today the Holocaust is one of the most studied historical events, yet it remains one of the most controversial and confusing topics in history. Following the revelations of the Nazi death camps at the end of World War Two (WWII) (1945), there began a focus on Hitler’s centrality in the Holocaust, which was fulfilling an apologetic function. To many Hitler embodied the violence and fanaticism of mythical anti-Semitism, while keeping the imperatives of modern bureaucratic functions. These ‘traditional views’ focus on anti-Semitism as the sole cause of the Holocaust and examine the irrational aspects of Nazi policy. More recent views show an overall policy of extermination while emphasizing the interaction between top Nazi officials and the