“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains”. Karl Marx put his faith in the belief that the working class of Germany was bound to revolt against the bourgeoisie. Communism is theory is a political system where there is collective ownership of means of production. Although his theory was not executed in Germany, it was in Russia and later Cambodia. Communism in Russia began after the collapse of the Provisional Government. Before Communism, Russia was under the rule of a Tsar, an absolute leader. Russian protesters pushed for representation and a higher standard of living until the Tsar abdicated his throne in February 1917. After the abdication, the dual government was made to stand as a temporary system. The the dual government …show more content…
Collectivization eliminated private property land reorganized land into farming collectives. Stalin seized the land from peasants, and primarily kulaks. Kulaks were wealthy peasant, who owned land and more means of production. In order to collect the land, Stalin deported, imprisoned, and killed kulaks. Stalin’s last economic policy was the command economy, which put the central government in command of industry. The application of these policies were disastrous. Cambodia also became a communist country under the Pol Pot regime. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, a Cambodian communist party. When Pol Pot came into power after the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil war, he began to model Cambodia after rural villages. Pol Pot moved Cambodia from the cities into the countryside. In the countryside, everyone was required to work on farming communes. Communism in Soviet Union and Cambodia has similar negative effects. Communist turned both the Soviet Union and Cambodia into totalitarian states that abused its citizens to reap benefits for a smaller …show more content…
As a part of Stalin’s communism, he focused heavily on industrializing and modernizing Russian cities. Under Stalin’s collectivization, land was forcefully taken away from landowners and put under state control. The state required all peasants to work on these farming communes and they collected what was produced to give to the cities. During the age of communism, more peasants were moving to the cities. With that being said, the cities became overpopulated. Overpopulated cities lead to unsanitary living conditions and a lack of food. Another consequence of this movement is that the countryside lost will power. The increasing amount of people leaving the countryside, left less people available to farm. As a result, both the cities and rural areas suffered starvation. In 1921, Russia underwent The Great Famine that ultimately killed 8.5 million people. Shortages of consumer goods was another cause of the decreased standard of living. Stalin’s 5- year plans made factories focus on producing heavy industries, like steel and iron. This caused shortages in clothes, food, and other manufactured goods. Communism had a similar effect in Cambodia. Pol Pot evacuated all citizens from Cambodian cities to rural areas where they lived in squalid farming communes. On these farming communes people were often underfed and doing laborious work for 10 or more hours a day. The number of deaths from
From 1928, when the plan started, to 1932 to its end, many factories, dams, power stations and even cities were being built. Despite there being harsh penalties implemented to workers for failure to meet their targets, there was still a significant increase in Russia’s industrial growth in a very short period of time. Just like the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, under Tsar Alexander II, in protest of Stalin’s policies, the peasants, in protest, refused to work harder than they needed too, causing them to destroy livestock and crops, which eventually lead to their unnecessary death. Stalin, just like the Tsarist autocratic regime, was not committed to collectivism but preferred capitalism in his ruling of the Soviet Union. This caused a lot of rebellion from the Kulaks who opposed collectivism.
The best way to answer any question is to be clear about what is being asked and to look only for the facts of that question. We are not being asked whether Joseph Stalin was a good person. The question is, what are the accomplishments of Joseph Stalin that improved his country and made it great? From this point, we can clearly identify what he did, as seen in the articles. Was Stalin beneficial to the USSR?
Steel production and the electricity generation increased. Another focus for Stalin was on agriculture. His plan was to use collective farming to produce more food by less people. The people working these farms objected the idea and often destroyed their crops and livestock rather than giving it to the government. Stalin’s response to this was to take the food by force and kill any protesters.
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 Stalin came into power after Lenin’s death in 1924, the government was struggling to control and unwieldy empire.
Their violent tactics to do this included forcing every citizen from their home into labour camps in the countryside. All sources of education, hospitals and factories were closed down and families were separated and children put into separate labour camps. Pol Pot’s harsh terms didn’t stop with the labour camps; people could be executed for talking another language and even for smiling. Pol Pot used mass propaganda to create extreme fear among Cambodian citizens. One of the slogans that illustrates Pol Pot’s ideas of his communist state said “To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss”.
In April of 1975, the Communist party had gained enough power to capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. Once capturing the city, the communists began emptying it of its inhabitants and replacing them with peasants. Along with the inhabitants, the communists destroyed Western consumer goods, burned books and libraries, severed most of its diplomatic relations, abolished money, and markets. Evidently, the ideology of total revolution could only be carried out through mass bloodshed and destruction; in the words of Franz Fanon: “true liberation cannot come without violence and that the only true revolutionaries are those who participate directly in the shedding of blood” (Jackson
The Gulag's(Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei), were a huge grid of labour camps that were dispersed across the Soviet Union. They kept the citizens of Russian in constant fear, if you spoke out against Stalin in any form, you could be sent to the Gulag's. Communism was enforced during Joseph Stalins reign, but this did nothing to speed up the USSR's industrialization. Then because of the communist policies, people started causing issues for the Soviet Government for political and religious reasons. As a result it provided the opportunity to maintain order by keeping the people in fear, this started with the Gulag's.
The Chinese communist party gained much power after going after and attacking the Kuomintang and its anti communist policies into Taiwan. With the growth of the communist party’s power, the peasant and lower class experienced major influence that would change the course of their lives forever. Chinese peasants and the Chinese communist party between circa 1925 and circa 1950 had a relationship in which the party fostered and cared the state of the people. This created a sense of nationalism and pride for the peasants, while they were advocating social equality, and showing anti-Japanese sentiment. First of all, the Chinese communist party greatly influenced the peasant class in sparking and igniting a sense of nationalistic unity into the
The author says that perhaps many citizens may be drawn to Communist ideology if the social injustices become more prevalent, and urges the readers to look into the problems of Communist civilizations. This article is an example of how many felt during the Red Scare and Cold War in regards to communism. It shows that people felt a collapse
Russian Revolution In 1922, as a result of the Russian Revolution, a new political party emerged: the USSR or the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was the world’s first communist state. Communism was a new political and economic model that was supposed to get rid of class distinction. From the beginning, communism opposed capitalism and capitalist countries like the United States. The Russian Revolution united the socialists against the capitalists, with the USSR, a communist country, siding with the socialists.
Not to mention, the bubonic plague made the population decrease by 25%. However, despite countless obstacles brought on by the Mongols, they later provided great economic opportunities. At first, people emigrated from the cities being targeted and moved to the countryside. Here, settlement and devastation prompted economic growth through the foundation of forty new towns and redistribution of population in new economic centers of Tver and Moscow. Craftsman were making more goods than ever and there were eventually finances to build churches and other construction projects.
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. The journey of Stalin begins now.
Andre Abi Haidar PSPA 210 INTRODUCTION It is always difficult to write about and discuss Karl Marx, or more importantly the applications of Marx’s theories, due to the fact that he inspired and gave rise to many movements and revolutionaries, not all of which follow his theories to the point. Although Marx tends to be equated with Communism, it might not seem righteous to blame him for whatever shortcomings occurred when his theories were put to the test; Marx passed away well before the revolution in Russia, and he played no role in the emergence of the totalitarian regime at the time. When discussing Marx, however, Vladimir Lenin is one of the biggest highlights when it comes to studying the outcomes of Marx’s theories.
Through the folds of history, the phrase “the end justifies the means” has appeared often in an attempt for leaders to degrade their terrible acts and exaggerate their achievements that resulted. In the late 1800s, during the repressive and absolute rule of Stalin, many Russian citizens argued however, that Stalin did not justify his end with his means. The death of tens of thousands of Russian citizens from both execution and starvation, which were a direct result from his goals of a perfect communist utopian society, is not an act that can be ignored when considering his ultimately ‘good’ goals of pulling Russia out of poverty and stagnant economic and political growth. Joseph Stalin was able to greatly boost the Soviet Unions economy by instituting the 5-year plans with a resulting goal of rapid industrialization, and by instituting collectivization. Joseph Stalin ruled with an iron fist.
Communism builds on the idea that everyone is the same and should earn the same amount of money regardless of their profession. The most important with communism is that there should not be any class distinctions. China, Laos, Cuba and Vietnam