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Joseph Stalin's Impact On Russia

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It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. No! Forget that! It was Christmas Day, 1991 and the leader of the soviet union Mikhail Gorbachev sadly looked up at the red banner that was stained with a sickle, a hammer, and a star in gold for the last time. It was going to be lowered from the kremlin for the last time and to be replaced by the three striped, white, red and blue flag from pre-revolution Russia.

The Soviet state was born in 1917 after the Bolsheviks revolution. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and made a socialist state in the land that belonged to the Russian empire before. In 1922, Russia was joined by the far-flung republics in the union of soviet socialist republics. The first leader was the legendary marxist: …show more content…

About 1924, worldly dictator Joseph Stalin seized power and ruled with an iron fist for the next four decades. Individual liberties were curtailed and people had no freedom. People's daily were watched/monitored carefully by secret police, the economy was government controlled,

After the death of Stalin in 1953, his brutal policies were taken down a notch, but the power of the communists stayed in place. They were focused on the cold war using western powers so, this created an arms race with U.S. and tried to stop any anti communism.

In march of 1985, a young politician, Mikhail Gorbachev took a different approach to the USSR. He started two policies. The first was known as Glasnost, or political openness. This was used to eliminate any traces of Stalinist ideas i.e: secret police, book bans etc. The second idea was Perestroika. This idea was to start economist reconstruction. Gorbachev had the idea that these reforms would help people make good wages, and help with better living conditions.

However, perestroika was not successful. Though it was meant to boost the economic activity it was slow to kick-in. Meanwhile with the new liberties, people got disillusioned with the soviet communist

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