Political+History

Political Traditions/History : (Sean Patrick Miller)
**Tsardom:** The princes of Moscow came to gather lands and slowly formed a unified Russia. The first ruler to name himself 'Tsar' was Ivan the Terrible, or Ivan IV, in 1547. The Tsars also headed the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia remained generally isolated until the reign of Peter the Great, who traveled widely in Europe and began the westernization of Russia. Catherine the Great expanded Russia's size and influence. She was regarded as an enlightened despot, or one who holds total control but rules with the people in mind. In the late 19th century , Tsar Alexander II changed Russia significantly when he freed all of the serfs. His reforms were reversed by his son, Alexander III.

USSR- Khrushchev and Gorbachev **: After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev became premier. He openly denounced many of Stalin's actions, including the purges. His reign ushered in a period of decentralization and loosened restrictions. He also tried to alleviate Cold War tensions. Khrushchev's reforms were not widely successful or popular, and he was replaced by Brezhnev and then Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a pro-western leader who tried to allow more freedoms, including the freedom to criticize the government. He was also famous for supporting a more democratic government, and for loosening the socialist restrictions on the economy. JFK Meeting with Khrushchev **1991-Present** : After the Soviet Union fell, a new constitution was set up creating a very western, almost american-styled democracy. There are three branches: the executive branch headed by the president, the legislative Duma, and a Constitutional Court. Although Yeltsin was now in power, he turned out to be ineffective and somewhat irrational. Vlamimir Putin was elected President in 2000, and he has a very large margin of popular support. Generally, he has encouraged a market economy and been pro-western, although under his leadership democracy is becoming something of an act. A survey testing confidence in Putin versus confidence in Bush in Russia and the US.
 * USSR- Lenin and Stalin Period **: In 1917, Tsar Nicholas was overthrown by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. At this point Russia was renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This new state soon signed a peace treaty with Germany to end its involvement in World War I. Stalin, after defeating Trotsky in a bid for power, soon replaced Lenin’s leadership with his own system of collectivism and industrialization. He is well known for his widespread purges of disloyal subjects and minorities.
 * [[image:http://flashyourstache.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/stalin.jpg width="339" height="361"]]
 * The Revolution of 1991 :** ** In 1991 anti-Gorbachev revolutionaries, in league with the KGB, tried to kick him out of office. The coup, which was led by Boris Yeltsin, a more hard-line supporter of the west and democracy, failed to remove Gorbachev for any length of time. However, the USSR was splitting apart at the seams and soon fifteen separate republics emerged- Yeltsin became president of the new Russian Federation. **

** CATHERINE THE GREAT (CATHERINE III) ** Biography from http://www.cityvision2000.com/history/catherine.htm :

(1729-1796) Born: April 21 (May 2), 1729 Szczecin, Pomerania (Prussian Kingdom) Died: November 6 (17), 1796 Tsarskoye Selo, Russia The future Catherine the Great was born a German princess in one of the tiny German states, but turned out to be a powerful and enlightened ruler of the vast Russian Empire. In 1745 she was married to prince Carl Peter Ulrich, the heir to the Russian throne (the future Emperor Peter III). Being a bright personality with a strong sense of determination she joined the Russian Orthodox Church, learned the Russian language and by doing a lot of reading acquired a brilliant education. She was proud to be a friend and an active correspondent of the best thinkers of the time, such as the prominent French Enlightenment personalities Rousseau and Diderot. In June 1762 Catherine took an active part in a coup against her husband Emperor Peter III. He was overthrown and soon killed "in an accident", while Catherine became Russia's autocratic ruler. Throughout her long reign many reforms were undertaken and the territory of Russia was further extended by acquiring the lands of Southern Ukraine and the Crimea. The rights of the Russian nobility were extended, which won Catherine popularity among the Russian social elite. Catherine's love affairs with different officers and politicians were widely publicized, though much of what was published was not true. Nevertheless, most of her lovers were promoted to the highest ranks and some of them proved to be extremely talented people (for instance prince Potiomkin, a very prominent general and politician). Catherine the Great, being the outsider of the Romanov dynasty, wanted to establish strong links with earlier Russian history and the Romanov tzars. She commissioned an impressive monument to Peter the Great - the [|Bronze Horseman]. Most experts agree that the St. Petersburg of Catherine the Great changed its appearance significantly and turned out to be one of the most impressive of European capitals. Catherine the Great died in 1796 at the age of 67, having lived longer than any other Romanov monarch. She was buried in the [|Peter and Paul Cathedral] in St. Petersburg.

** Lenin speaking at the Taurida Palace, in Petrograd, April 1917. **
"//The specific feature of the present situation in Russia,//" wrote Lenin in his "Theses", "//is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat, places power in the hands of the bourgeoisie-to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants..."// "//This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life..."// "//The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.//"

The following is an Interview with Mikhail Gorbachev. This interview took place in 2009. In it, he looks back on the fall of the Soviet Union, his own part in it, and some of its effects.
 * Gorbachev **

On the day after the elections, I met with the Politburo, and said, "I congratulate you!" They were very upset. Several replied, "For what?" I explained, "This is a victory for perestroika. We are touching the lives of people. Things are difficult for them now, but nonetheless they voted for Communists." Suddenly one Politburo member replied, "And what kind of Communists are they!" Those elections were very important. They meant that movement was under way toward democracy, glasnost and pluralism. Analogous processes were also under way in Eastern and Central Europe. On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985, I had a special meeting with the leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries, and told them: "You are independent, and we are independent. You are responsible for your policies, we are responsible for ours. We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you." And we did not intervene, not once, not even when they later asked us to. Under the influence of perestroika, their societies began to take action. Perestroika was a democratic transformation, which the Soviet Union needed. And my policy of nonintervention in Central and Eastern Europe was crucial. Just imagine, in East Germany alone there were more than 300,000 Soviet troops armed to the teeth--elite troops, specially selected! And yet, a process of change began there, and in the other countries, too. People began to make choices, which was their natural right. But the problem of a divided Germany remained. The German people perceived the situation as abnormal, and I shared their attitude. Both in West and East Germany new governments were formed and new relations between them established. I think if the East German leader Erich Honecker had not been so stubborn--we all suffer from this illness, including the person you are interviewing--he would have introduced democratic changes. But the East German leaders did not initiate their own perestroika. Thus a struggle broke out in their country. The Germans are a very capable nation. Even after what they had experienced under Hitler and later, they demonstrated that they could build a new democratic country. If Honecker had taken advantage of his people's capabilities, democratic and economic reforms could have been introduced that might have led to a different outcome. I saw this myself. On October 7, 1989, I was reviewing a parade in East Germany with Honecker and other representatives of the Warsaw Pact countries. Groups from twenty-eight different regions of East Germany were marching by with torches, slogans on banners, shouts and songs. The former prime minister of Poland, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, asked me if I understood German. "Enough to read what's written on the banners. They're talking about perestroika. They're talking about democracy and change. They're saying, 'Gorbachev, stay in our country!'" Then Rakowski remarked, "If it's true that these are representatives of people from twenty-eight regions of the country, it means the end." I said, "I think you're right." I also met with the East German Communist leaders, and told them again, "This is your affair and you have the responsibility to decide." But I also warned them, "What does experience teach us? He who is late loses." If they had taken the road of reform, of gradual change--if there had been some sort of agreement or treaty between the two parts of Germany, some sort of financial agreement, some confederation, a more gradual reunification would have been possible. But in 1989-90, all Germans, both in the East and the West, were saying, "Do it immediately." They were afraid the opportunity would be missed. Sometimes people ask me why I began perestroika. Were the causes basically domestic or foreign? The domestic reasons were undoubtedly the main ones, but the danger of nuclear war was so serious that it was a no less significant factor. Something had to be done before we destroyed each other. Therefore the big changes that occurred with me and Reagan had tremendous importance. But also that George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, decided to continue the process. And in December 1989, at our meeting in Malta, Bush and I declared that we were no longer enemies or adversaries. By the way, in 1987, after my first visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: "Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him." By telling you this, I simply want to give Reagan the credit he deserves. I found dealing with him very difficult. The first time we met, in 1985, after we had talked, my people asked me what I thought of him. "A real dinosaur," I replied. And about me Reagan, "Gorbachev is a diehard Bolshevik!" [|Click for a full history of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's current President.]
 * KVH/SFC:** Historic events quickly generate historical myths. In the United States it is said that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of a divided Europe was caused by a democratic revolution in Eastern Europe or by American power, or both. What is your response?
 * MG:** Those developments were the result of perestroika in the Soviet Union, where democratic changes had reached the point by March 1989 that for the first time in Russia's history democratic, competitive elections took place. You remember how enthusiastically people participated in those elections for a new Soviet Congress. And as a result thirty-five regional Communist Party secretaries were defeated. By the way, of the deputies elected, 84 percent were Communists, because there were a lot of ordinary people in the party--workers and intellectuals.
 * KVH/SFC:** That is, after the Soviet elections in March 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall was inevitable?
 * MG:** Absolutely!
 * KVH/SFC:** Did you already foresee the outcome?
 * MG:** Everyone claims to have foreseen things. In June 1989 I met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and we then held a press conference. Reporters asked if we had discussed the German question. My answer was, "History gave rise to this problem, and history will resolve it. That is my opinion. If you ask Chancellor Kohl, he will tell you it is a problem for the twenty-first century."
 * KVH/SFC:** A closely related question: when did the cold war actually end? In the United States, there are several answers: in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down; in 1990-91, after the reunification of Germany; and the most popular, even orthodox, answer, is that the cold war ended only when the Soviet Union ended, in December 1991.
 * MG:** No. If President Ronald Reagan and I had not succeeded in signing disarmament agreements and normalizing our relations in 1985-88, the later developments would have been unimaginable. But what happened between Reagan and me would also have been unimaginable if earlier we had not begun perestroika in the Soviet Union. Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.
 * KVH/SFC:** So the cold war ended in December 1989?
 * MG:** I think so.
 * KVH/SFC:** Many people disagree, including some American historians.
 * MG:** Let historians think what they want. But without what I have described, nothing would have resulted. Let me tell you something. George Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state, came to see me two or three years ago. We reminisced for a long time--like old soldiers recalling past battles. I have great respect for Shultz, and I asked him: "Tell me, George, if Reagan had not been president, who could have played his role?" Shultz thought for a while, then said: "At that time there was no one else. Reagan's strength was that he had devoted his whole first term to building up America, to getting rid of all the vacillation that had been sown like seeds. America's spirits had revived. But in order to take these steps toward normalizing relations with the Soviet Union and toward reducing nuclear armaments--there was no one else who could have done that then."
 * Medvedev **

A biography of Stalin from http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/bios/all_bio_joseph_stalin.htm
 * Stalin **

**Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)** The man who turned the Soviet Union from a backward country into a world superpower at unimaginable human cost. Stalin was born into a dysfunctional family in a poor village in Georgia. Permanently scarred from a childhood bout with smallpox and having a mildly deformed arm, Stalin always felt unfairly treated by life, and thus developed a strong, romanticized desire for greatness and respect, combined with a shrewd streak of calculating cold-heartedness towards those who had maligned him. He always felt a sense of inferiority before educated intellectuals, and particularly distrusted them. Sent by his mother to the seminary in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), the capital of Georgia, to study to become a priest, the young Stalin never completed his education, and was instead soon completely drawn into the city's active revolutionary circles. Never a fiery intellectual polemicist or orator like Lenin or Trotsky, Stalin specialized in the humdrum nuts and bolts of revolutionary activity, risking arrest every day by helping organize workers, distributing illegal literature, and robbing trains to support the cause, while Lenin and his bookish friends lived safely abroad and wrote clever articles about the plight of the Russian working class. Although Lenin found Stalin's boorishness offensive at times, he valued his loyalty, and appointed him after the Revolution to various low-priority leadership positions in the new Soviet government. In 1922, Stalin was appointed to another such post, as General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Stalin understood that "cadres are everything": if you control the personnel, you control the organization. He shrewdly used his new position to consolidate power in exactly this way--by controlling all appointments, setting agendas, and moving around Party staff in such a way that eventually everyone who counted for anything owed their position to him. By the time the Party's intellectual core realized what had happened, it was too late--Stalin had his (mostly mediocre) people in place, while Lenin, the only person with the moral authority to challenge him, was on his deathbed and incapable of speech after a series of strokes, and besides, Stalin even controlled who had access to the leader. The General Secretary of the Party became the de facto leader of the country right on up until Mikhail Gorbachev. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin methodically went about destroying all the old leaders of the Party, taking advantage of their weakness for standing on arcane intellectual principle to simply divide and conquer them. At first, these people were removed from their posts and exiled abroad. Later, when he realized that their sharp tongues and pens were still capable of inveighing against him even from far away, Stalin switched tactics, culminating in a vast reign of terror and spectacular show trials in the 1930s during which the founding fathers of the Soviet Union were one by one unmasked as "enemies of the people" who had supposedly always been in the employ of Capitalist intelligence services and summarily shot. The particularly pesky Leon Trotsky, who continued to badger Stalin from Mexico City after his exile in 1929, had to be silenced once and for all with an ice pick in 1940. The purges, or "repressions" as they are known in Russia, extended far beyond the Party elite, reaching down into every local Party cell and nearly all of the intellectual professions, since anyone with a higher education was suspected of being a potential counterrevolutionary. This depleted the Soviet Union of its brainpower, and left Stalin as the sole intellectual force in the country--an expert on virtually every human endeavor. Driven by his own sense of inferiority, which he projected onto his country as a whole, Stalin pursued an economic policy of mobilizing the entire country to achieve the goal of rapid industrialization, so that it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Capitalist powers. To this end, he forcefully collectivized agriculture (one of the Bolsheviks' key policy stances in 1917 was to give the land to the peasants; collectivization took it back from them and effectively reduced them to the status of serfs again), instituted the Five-Year Plans to coordinate all investment and production in the country, and undertook a massive program of building heavy industry. Although the Soviet Union boasted that its economy was booming while the Capitalist world was experiencing the Great Depression, and its industrialization drive did succeed in rapidly creating an industrial infrastructure where there once had been none, the fact is that all this was done at exorbitant cost in human lives. Measures such as the violent expropriation of the harvest by the government, the forced resettlement and murder of the most successful peasants as counterrevolutionary elements, and the discovery of a source of cheap labor through the arrest of millions of innocent citizens led to countless millions of deaths from the worst man-made famine in human history and in the camps of the Gulag. As war clouds were gathering on the horizon in 1939, Stalin felt that he had scored a coup by striking a non-aggression pact with Hitler, in which they agreed to divide up Poland and then leave each other alone. Stalin so strongly believed that he and Hitler had an understanding that he refused to listen to his military advisors' warnings in 1941 that the Wehrmacht was massing for an attack, and purged any one who dared utter such blasphemy. As a result, when the attack came, the Soviet army was completely unprepared and suffered horrible defeats, while Stalin spent the first several days after the attack holed up in his office in shock. Because the military had been purged of its best minds in the mid-1930s, it took some time, and many lives, before the Soviets were able to regroup and make a credible defense. By then, all of the Ukraine and Belarus were in German hands, Leningrad had been surrounded and besieged, and Nazi artillery was entrenched only a few miles from the Kremlin. After heroic efforts on the part of the whole country, the tide eventually turned at Stalingrad in 1943, and soon the victorious Red Army was liberating the countries of Eastern Europe--before the Americans had even begun to pose a serious challenge to Hitler from the west with the D-Day invasion. During the Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam Conferences, Stalin proved a worthy negotiator with the likes of Roosevelt and Churchill, and managed to arrange for the countries of Eastern Europe, which had been liberated by the Red Army to remain in the Soviet sphere of influence, as well as securing three seats for his country in the newly formed UN. The Soviet Union was now a recognized world superpower, with its own permanent seat on the Security Council, and the respect that Stalin had craved all his life. Still, he was not finished. Returning soldiers and refugees were arrested and either shot or sent to the labor camps as traitors, entire nationalities that had been deported during the War, also as traitors, were not allowed to return to their homes, and in 1953, a plot to kill Stalin was ostensibly uncovered in the Kremlin itself. A new purge seemed imminent, and was cut short only by Stalin's death. He remained a hero to his people until Khrushchev's well-known "secret" speech to a Party Congress in 1956, in which Stalin's excesses, at least as far as power grabbing in the Party itself, were denounced.