tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4019209341882977192024-03-21T18:30:27.832-07:00Peter's RussiaPeter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-71224129333857241832015-10-18T06:31:00.000-07:002015-10-19T09:30:34.507-07:00Consumerism and Design in Soviet Russia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">CONSUMERISM and DESIGN in SOVIET RUSSIA</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">MARXISM</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Friedrich Engels</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karl Marx</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Marxism is a political and economic philosophy based on materialist conception of history - initially created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is principally a theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society's mode of production (its way of producing and reproducing the means of human existence - in Marxist terms, the union of its productive capacity and social relations of production) fundamentally determine its organization and development.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the<i> necessities of life</i>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Social classes and the relationship between them, along with the political structures and ways of thinking in society, are founded on and reflect contemporary economic activity.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded by Marxist writers.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, production does not get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrary or random relations chosen at will.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Human beings collectively work on nature but do not do the same work; there is a division of labor in which people not only do different jobs, but according to Marxist theory, some people live off the fruits of others' labor by owning the means of production.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">How this is accomplished depends on the type of society.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Production is carried out through very definite relations between people. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And, in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces that are present at any given time in history. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For Marx, productive forces refer to the means of production such as the tools, instruments, technology, land, raw materials, and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using these means of production.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Historical materialism can be seen to rest on the following principles:</span></div>
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</span>
<br />
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<ul><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
<li>The basis of human society is how humans work on nature to produce the means of subsistence.</li>
<li>There is a division of labor into social classes (relations of production) based on property ownership where some people live from the labor of others.</li>
<li>The system of class division is dependent on the mode of production.</li>
<li>The mode of production is based on the level of the productive forces.</li>
</span>
<li><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Society moves from stage to stage when the dominant class is displaced by a new emerging class, by overthrowing the "political shell" that enforces the old relations of production no longer corresponding to the new productive forces. This takes place in the superstructure of society, the political arena in the form of revolution, whereby the underclass "liberates" the productive forces with new relations of production, and social relations, corresponding to it.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Marxists expected that socialism would bring material abundance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In real terms this meant not only enough food for everyone, but also clothes, medical care, education, the arts and entertainment, and above all homes, and all the things that go to make a home - consumer goods.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was therefore expected that the state would provide the best designers, and of course the best designs, with regard to consumer goods.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But in addition, while these designs should outshine and outperform the products from the West, and particularly America, they should also be imbued with, and project a sense of, ideologically correct, Soviet life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">SOVIET INDUSTRIAL DESIGN</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As Soviet-made products often follow the same design styles as many Western objects of the same period, it may seem difficult to find a certain design ideology behind them or to pinpoint the specifically Socialist qualities of such designs design.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The main characteristics of Soviet design ideology, however, are not located in the form of the objects, but rather in their mode of production.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Despite the different control mechanisms, there was no centralized organ responsible for industrial design and products were judged mostly on economic or technological grounds.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">While there were many books and articles on Soviet design and design ideology, none of them actually discuss the questions of form, but rather deal with economics and the purpose of design.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Therefore, designers had a certain degree of artistic freedom, and were able to follow what they considered to be 'modern trends'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The ideological qualities of design were hidden rather in the physical and ideological context of production, adding a Socialist quality to all Soviet-made objects.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If we look at items mass-produced in the Soviet Union during late Socialism, it can almost be surprising how similar some of them are to the Western-made objects.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Often, stylistically, they follow the same traditions, and occasionally even copy specific Western objects.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Therefore, the nature of Soviet design ideology and their accordance with Socialist ideals may seem unclear at a first glance.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The main aspect that was stressed in producing consumer goods was the rigorous control to which industrial design was subjected.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Each new product had to be mandated from above by a formal document called a prikaz (order), which announced a decision.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">No object could go into production without passing an evaluation by the Art Council, comprised of specialists.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Different standards were created to ensure that the quality of design throughout the Soviet Union would be on an equally high level, however, design was not properly centralized.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There was no bureaucratic institution directly responsible for design.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Therefore, bureaucracy related to industrial design was even more complicated than usual in the Soviet context, belonging to several spheres at once.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yet, the ideological factor was the existence of the system of control, not the control itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Most decisions were based on economic and aesthetic considerations, not ideological.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The reason why there was an ideological quality in Soviet design was not just the existence of texts considering it, but also the fact that the Soviet government tried to cover every aspect of life with ideology.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was unthinkable that any detail in everyday life would be ideologically neutral, as by Marxist-Leninist standards everything was ideologically charged.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As said by Herbert Dubin, a Latvian design ideologue:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“The object as a materialized representative of certain social relations does not exist outside of our contemporary ideological life. Therefore designer is also an active warrior in ideological front.”</i> </span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Designers were supposed to be the carriers of Soviet ideology: much like everyone else in the cultural field, they had to contribute to the making of a new Socialist environment. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Design was not just the object of control, but also actively used as an instrument for exercising control.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For example, furniture was often designed in a way that its arrangement, especially in new flats, was almost completely predetermined.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In this way, the state had another tool for controlling and shaping the Soviet citizens.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is important to stress that, in the Soviet context, design was viewed differently to the way it was viewed in the West.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To quote Dmitry Azrikan:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“Design, having an obvious Western face, nature, and genesis, could be accepted as only a tool and not as an autonomous phenomenon with its own place and role in Soviet culture.”</i></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Therefore, design was just a tool used for the ultimate goal, never the objective itself. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here, design in its broadest sense could be compared to technology, and the debates surrounding technology at the beginning of the 20th century.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In Lenin’s own words:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">“The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field.</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The possibility of building socialism depends exactly upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organization of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism.” </i>(Lenin 1918)</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This quote actually explains the readiness to adopt Western design influences.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Socialism was never intended to negate its capitalist past, but rather to take everything valuable from that experience and build a new system on that foundation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After all, the problem socialism had with capitalism was not based on technological grounds, but social.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Adopting Western design styles is merely an example of the same tendencies.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The idea and appearance of 'modernism' went very well with the Soviet ideology: 'modern' objects were simple, functional and easy to produce in factory conditions.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Some of the Soviet ideologues even claimed that, in fact, 'modernism' clashed with the capitalist ideology; for example, Karl Kantor argued that modernism was caused by a protest against private property and “bourgeois individualism”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Often, references were made to the Bauhaus, and its opposition to National Socialism, - however, these theories often seemed to be excuses.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As the designers were already influenced by Western trends, and aiming to keep up with the rest of the world, it was necessary to justify this behavior.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Design ideologies offered very few guidelines about the ideal Soviet form, or how exactly was it supposed to contribute to the aesthetic education. With reference to the book “<i>Artistic construction of industrial objects</i>”, written by the Russian design philosopher Yuri </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Somov - the book mostly discusses the importance of economic considerations.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Somov</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> preaches rationalism, even claiming that throughout the history, the objects of best artistic quality are created with the minimum use of decorative means.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Somov does not advocate Western design, instead he accuses functionalism of lacking a “<i>human factor</i>” without explaining its differences from the economic-rational approach he teaches.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Therefore, it is only logical that the “<i>human factor</i>” is added solely by the Socialist environment of production, and it is the surrounding ideology that somehow validates the design ideology.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It was officially maintained that in the West, people liked the <i>right</i> things, but for the <i>wrong</i> reasons (?).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This treatment is due to the complex nature of ideology as such.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It consisted not only of the object, but also of its production, reception and textual justification.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If some of the elements vary, the outcome of the ideology itself is different.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Citing Nicos Poulantzas:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i>“Ideology does not consist merely in a system of ideas or representations: it also involves a series of material practices, embracing the customs and life-style of the agents, and setting like cement in the totality of social (including political and economic) practices.” </i></span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Therefore, in order to fully understand design ideology, it is necessary to also look at ways design is produced and received.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In Soviet context these material practices differ greatly from those in the West, thus further adding to the different layers of ideology.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Design was already ideologically correct because of the way it was produced.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Art and craft were less subjected direct state control, and therefore include a certain moment of rebellion against the system.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Mass-produced design, however, already involves numerous people in its production; it is also produced in a factory that, in USSR, belongs to the state itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Maxim Gorky called the factory an “<i>organizer of the socialist consciousness.</i>”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The factory as an ideologically correct location, with the participation of a large number of people (especially as many of them were probably members of the Communist Party) validates the object itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The fact that something has been produced in a factory already shows accordance with the system.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Therefore, we can say that the defining Socialist factors of the Soviet design ideology are actually:</span></div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The general ideologically charged context</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dependency on the state</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The integration of artists within the Socialist factory environment and their</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">participation in the factory as “an organizer of the socialist consciousness”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Location within the system of control</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, the nature of Soviet design ideology remained unclear, as these factors were not enough to form a clear doctrine.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This problem was caused by several different factors: the complex status of design within the Soviet society, the lack of a consensus between different ideologues and, most importantly, a lack of a definite visually distinguishable 'aesthetic style'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For designers, it was naturally beneficial, as it meant less control, and more artistic freedom.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Most restrictions were technological and economic, leaving design aesthetics to evolve on their own.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The context and the environment 'ideologized' the industrial design, regardless of its form.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TFh6pRKGWaE/ViUXPeNGzBI/AAAAAAAANUY/TdZh04pSPls/s1600/Zorki%2BCamera%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TFh6pRKGWaE/ViUXPeNGzBI/AAAAAAAANUY/TdZh04pSPls/s200/Zorki%2BCamera%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zorki Range-finder Camera</td></tr>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wfkx4YxkX1o/ViUV0-l9BgI/AAAAAAAANUM/glnpMgp9UUA/s1600/Tupolev70-2%2BAirliner%2B-%2BInterior%2B-%2BZvezda%2Bluxe%2Bradio%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wfkx4YxkX1o/ViUV0-l9BgI/AAAAAAAANUM/glnpMgp9UUA/s200/Tupolev70-2%2BAirliner%2B-%2BInterior%2B-%2BZvezda%2Bluxe%2Bradio%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Soviet design often followed the same trends as Western design, although it was a few years behind and often tended to be technologically inferior.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In some cases designs were, to a great extent, actually copied.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Such examples are the Tupelev airliner, which was copied from the Boeing Stratocruiser, and many of the ZiL limosines, which were copied from American Packard automobile designs.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q9EuziMABqE/ViUXb4FUAvI/AAAAAAAANUg/HCRJoGren7o/s1600/Agat-4%2BComputer%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q9EuziMABqE/ViUXb4FUAvI/AAAAAAAANUg/HCRJoGren7o/s200/Agat-4%2BComputer%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="170" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agat 4 Computer</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Much later, other high tech items were 'lifted' or cloned,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">such as the Zorki camera, based on the West German Leica Range-finder Camera, which sold well in the West, due to its high quality and low price, and the Agat-4 Computer, based on early models of the American Apple Computer</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kzd23zVgSQA/ViPKvR5udUI/AAAAAAAANSw/2fDQejI0tTY/s1600/ZiL%2B4104%2BLimousine%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="117" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kzd23zVgSQA/ViPKvR5udUI/AAAAAAAANSw/2fDQejI0tTY/s200/ZiL%2B4104%2BLimousine%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> ЗиЛ 4104 Лимузин - ZiL 4104 Limousine</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #ea9999;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">An example of Soviet copying of Western style were the ZiL and the GAZ automobiles. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">AMO ZiL, (Russian "Zavod imeni Likhachova"), or the Moscow Joint-Stock Company "Likhachov Plant", and more commonly called ZiL Likhachov Plant, (literally "Plant named for Likhachov") is a major Russian automobile, manufacturer based in the city of Moscow, Russia.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYeePY8N_Jg/ViPOc3lPpoI/AAAAAAAANS8/fCFm00P3DvA/s1600/ZiL%2BLogo-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="84" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IYeePY8N_Jg/ViPOc3lPpoI/AAAAAAAANS8/fCFm00P3DvA/s200/ZiL%2BLogo-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ZiL Logo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SqILnbpChJQ/ViPKklfGhsI/AAAAAAAANSo/jU3fMsXq3aE/s1600/GAZ%2BChaika%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="124" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SqILnbpChJQ/ViPKklfGhsI/AAAAAAAANSo/jU3fMsXq3aE/s200/GAZ%2BChaika%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> ГАЗ Чайки - GAZ Seagull</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3V4BeSgXePA/ViPOnbNVjQI/AAAAAAAANTE/t9XQWLCdR9I/s1600/GAZ%2BLogo%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="194" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3V4BeSgXePA/ViPOnbNVjQI/AAAAAAAANTE/t9XQWLCdR9I/s200/GAZ%2BLogo%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GAZ Logo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #ea9999;">ZiL has also produced armored cars for most Soviet leaders moddlesd on the American Packard. ZiL passenger cars were priced at the equivalent of models by Maybach and Rolls-Royce, but are largely unknown outside the Commonwealth of Independent States, and production now rarely exceeds a dozen cars per year. It was standard practice for officials above a certain level to be driven to and from work by a chauffeur. Often these government cars and their drivers were also available for use outside working hours, though this was not officially sanctioned. The make of car varied according to the rank of the official</span>.</span></div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is important to stress that in the Soviet context, the Socialist ideas were hidden in the context and practices surrounding designs, rather than in the actual forms of designs. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Design was ultimately intended to be a tool for conveying a message.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In spite of the various control mechanisms, the Soviet system, however, lacked a specific centralized organ in charge of industrial design, and products were judged mostly on economic or technological grounds.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Therefore, designers had some artistic freedom and were able to follow modern traditions.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There were two reasons for accepting modernism in Soviet ideology: firstly, because modern objects were easy to produce in factory conditions, and secondly, because there was never a clear definition of Soviet form.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The main Socialist factor that makes design produced in the Soviet Union acceptable within Socialist ideology is the surrounding ideology.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Industrial design depended on the state, and was located within the general system of control, being both the agent and the subject of control.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Also the direct production environment of industrial design was the factory as the most ideologically charged context in the Socialist environment.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dMhYIhliJpM/ViTlGsfXRFI/AAAAAAAANT8/JgNnTFsoNsg/s1600/Life%2Bis%2Bgetting%2Bbetter%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dMhYIhliJpM/ViTlGsfXRFI/AAAAAAAANT8/JgNnTFsoNsg/s320/Life%2Bis%2Bgetting%2Bbetter%2B-%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="233" /></a></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span style="color: #f4cccc;">“Life has become better, comrades; life has become more cheerful.” </span></i><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So much for the theory.....</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In practice the degree to which ideology influenced or was reflected in design mattered very little.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">With regard to the impact of designed consumer goods in everyday life, things were complicated.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the towns, private trade and private businesses were closed down by the Soviet government.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The state then took over distribution, as part of a new system of centralized state economic planning, that was vastly ambitious but poorly thought out.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Planning was seen in 'heroic', terms as the conquest of hitherto uncontrollable economic forces.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The planning process had an immediate objective, which was to carry out rapid industrialization, particularly in underdeveloped regions of the country, according to the First Five-Year Plan (1929-32).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That involved massive investment in heavy industry, skimping in the area of consumer goods, and involving substantial involuntary sacrifices of living standards by the general population to pay for it all.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It had been the leaders’ hope that the peasantry could be made to pay most of the costs of industrialization; the collectivization of peasant agriculture that accompanied the First Five-Year Plan was intended to achieve this effect by forcing peasants to accept low state prices for their goods.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But that hope was disappointed, and the urban population ended up bearing a considerable part of the burden.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Marxists as we have pointed out before, had expected that socialism would bring abundance.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Under Soviet conditions, however, socialism and scarcity turned out to be inextricably linked.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For Soviet citizens, the state, of course, was a central and ubiquitous presence.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the first place, it was the formal distributor of goods, and the near-monopolistic producer of them, so that even the black market dealt largely in state products, and relied heavily on state connections.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the second place, all urban citizens worked for the state, whether they were workers or typists or teachers or shop assistants: there were virtually no alternative employers.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the third place, the state was a tireless regulator of life, issuing and demanding an endless stream of documents and permits without which even the simplest daily tasks could not be accomplished.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NuwkiL0LC8/ViUYIgMSG9I/AAAAAAAANUs/4Njpcwf6Cyo/s1600/Soviet%2BShortages%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_NuwkiL0LC8/ViUYIgMSG9I/AAAAAAAANUs/4Njpcwf6Cyo/s320/Soviet%2BShortages%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An Era of Scarcity</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is important to note here that Stalin’s revolution ushered in an era of scarcity, and distribution itself became a central bureaucratic task, and the dominant preoccupation of the party leaders.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The new importance of things and their distribution was reflected in everyday language. In the 1930s, people no longer talked about 'buying' something, - as consumers do in the West - but about 'getting hold of' it.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The phrase 'hard to get hold of' was in constant use; a newly popular term for all the things that were hard to get hold of was 'deficit goods'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">People went round with string bags in their pockets, on the off chance they were able to get hold of some 'deficit goods'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If they saw a queue, they quickly joined it, inquiring what goods were on offer after securing a place.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The way to formulate this question was not 'What are they selling ?', but 'What are they giving out ?'</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But public access to goods through regular distribution channels was so unreliable that a whole vocabulary sprung up to describe the alternatives.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It might be possible to get the goods informally or under the counter ('on the left') if one had 'acquaintances and connections', or 'pull' with the right people.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For some, however, there were ways round these problems - ways which became more common after the 'Great Patriotic War'. For those favopured by the party there was rationing and so-called 'closed distribution'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rationing meant distributing limited quantities of goods on presentation of ration cards along with money payment.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Closed distribution meant that goods were distributed at the workplace through closed stores to which only employees or persons on the list were admitted.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In a longer perspective, it can be seen that this was the beginning of a system of hierarchically differentiated access to consumer goods that became a permanent feature of Soviet trade, and a stratifier of Soviet society.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Both rationing and 'closed distribution' were improvisations in the face of economic crisis, - and not policies adopted for ideological reasons.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was true, some enthusiastic Marxist theorists revived the old Civil War arguments that rationing was precisely the form of distribution that was appropriate to socialism.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The party leaders, however, had little sympathy for this line of reasoning.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">They felt rationing was something to be ashamed of, an indication of state poverty, and economic crisis.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Despite the leaders’ lack of enthusiasm for rationing, it was so frequently practiced that it may be regarded as the default option of Stalinist distribution.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Closed distribution' , however, appealed to local officials and elites, but not the rest of the population, because it guaranteed those elites their own privileged access to scarce goods.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Closed distribution' was the distribution of rationed goods at the workplace through 'closed stores' and 'cafeterias' accessible only to certain registered workers at that enterprise.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It developed along with the rationing system, coexisting with the 'open distribution' network of state stores accessible to the public as a whole.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There was a total of about 40,000 stores at the beginning of 1932, constituting almost a third of all retail outlets in urban areas. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The concentration of supply at the workplace was increased by the expansion of 'enterprise cafeterias', where workers had their hot meal of the day. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By July 1933, two-thirds of the population of Moscow and 58 percent of the population of Leningrad were served by them. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Closed distribution' was meant to protect the working population from the worst consequences of shortages and link rations to employment.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But it also quickly developed another function, which was to provide privileged supply for certain categories of privileged people.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Special closed distributors were established for various elite categories of officials and professionals, supplying them with much higher-quality goods than were available in the normal closed stores and enterprise cafeterias.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Foreigners working in the Soviet Union had their own closed distribution system, known as 'Insnab'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These developments obviously affected the design of consumer goods.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As people did not have the option of choosing what goods to buy - and often bought goods simply because they were available - there was no 'feedback' to the manufacturers and designers from the consumers - as there was in the West.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the West it was often the case that a poor, unattractive or 'old-fashioned' design simply would not sell - and was subsequently withdrawn from the market.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the Soviet Union, however, consumers did not have the option to reject goods, and would usually buy whatever was on offer.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So the Russian people were faced with the promise that: 'in the future, there would be abundance' - but for their present, there was scarcity.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For the privileged, however, - high party member, government officials, intellectuals and the intelligentsia, there was a certain level of 'abundance'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Privilege, in Stalin’s Russia, had more to do with access - the ability to obtain goods, services, apartments, and so on - than it did with ownership.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The key factor in the emergence of an institutionalized hierarchy of access in the 1930s was scarcity, particularly the structures generated by extreme scarcity at the beginning of the decade.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This period not only saw the reintroduction of rationing (see above), which had its own internal differentiation, but also of various forms of 'closed distribution' of goods (previously referred to) to those in special categories.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The reason for this was not ideological (the ideology of the period tended to be egalitarian and militant) but practical: there was simply not enough to go round.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Food privileges took a number of forms: 'special rations', 'special elite closed stores', and 'special cafeterias' at the workplace.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was normal for senior party and government officials received (not buy) special rations. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">in a system that was internally differentiated.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Academic' rations, for the 'intelligentsia' were given out, with members of the Academy of Sciences the first beneficiaries</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Writers came next, being allocated 400 'academic rations', and later an additional 200 rations were allocated to artists.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The fact that the amenities of life - car, apartment, dacha - were not owned but were state issue was very important in enabling Communists of the 'nomenclatura' to see themselves as something different from simply a new nobility or ruling class.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On the contrary, they were people who owned nothing.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9f5OXsIoUzo/ViUZy2n90lI/AAAAAAAANU4/nIy8yqpWQ_w/s1600/Sofa%2Band%2BStorage%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9f5OXsIoUzo/ViUZy2n90lI/AAAAAAAANU4/nIy8yqpWQ_w/s320/Sofa%2Band%2BStorage%2B-%2B%2BIndistrial%2BDesign%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Combined Storage and Sofa</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Even their furniture was the state’s, not chosen by them but, simply issued, each piece with a small gold oval with a number attached with two nails.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was comparatively easy for elite members to see themselves as indifferent to material things when there was no personal property at stake.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What individuals were given they simply accepted, gratefully, without any consideration of the design, functionality or suitability of the consumer durables in question - and this, of course, meant that there was little to encourage designers and manufacturers to improve their products.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then there was the question of whether the consumer durables provided for the privileged were luxuries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The answer was no.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Luxury, as the 'Great Soviet Encyclopedia' “authoritatively explained,” was a relative concept.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“With the growth of productive forces, luxury items may become necessities,” and that was exactly what was happening in the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">for the privileged only - Combined Reel to Reel Tape<br />and Radio</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin made his contribution to this mis-recognition by appropriating the term “intelligentsia” to describe Soviet elites as a whole, thus implicitly conferring on Communist officials the cultural superiority of academicians and writers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This conflation of the elites of power and culture was not mere sleight of hand, but conveyed something important about the Soviet mindset.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It meant that the social hierarchy was conceptualized in cultural terms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Thus, the Soviet “intelligentsia”, in Stalin’s broad definition, was privileged not because it was a ruling class, or an elite status group, but because it was the most cultured, advanced group in society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was privileged as a cultural vanguard - and so were the Stakhanovites, whose share in privilege indicated that privilege was not a corollary of elite status.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Workers and peasants who had joined the 'intelligentsia' via affirmative action added another facet to the vanguard image, for they, like the Stakhanov</span>ites, <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">were forerunners in the masses’ upward march toward culture.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Алексе́й Григо́рьевич Стаха́нов - Alexey Stakhanov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Stakhanovite movement began during the Soviet second 5-year plan in 1935 as a new stage of socialist competition. The Stakhanovite movement took its name from Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, who had mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours (14 times his quota) on 31 August 1935. However, Stakhanovite followers would soon "break" his record. The Stakhanovite movement, supported and led by the Communist Party, soon spread over other industries of the Soviet Union. The press, literature and films praised Stakhanov and other "<i>model workers</i>", urging other workers to emulate their heroic examples. The achievements of Stakhanovites served as an argument in favor of increasing work quotas.</span><br />
<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To say Stakhanovites had privileges is almost a tautology. It was the function of Stakhanovites, as chosen representatives of ordinary people, to be the visible recipients of privilege. They received much the same range of privileges as the political and cultural elites (extra rations, housing, special resort places, priority access of all kinds, and even automobiles). In addition, however, Stakhanovites were often rewarded directly with consumer goods, from lengths of cloth and sewing machines to gramophones and cars. An important part of the ritual of Stakhanovite conferences, especially those for peasants, was for happy Stakhanovites to give a list of the goods they had been awarded. The function of these awards of material goods was not just to make the Stakhanovites richer and happier, but also to make them more cultured. Often the quality of culture was inherent in the gift itself. </span><br />
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-12100421540944584282015-10-15T15:00:00.000-07:002015-10-18T03:36:29.554-07:00ИСКУССТВО СССР - советский социалистический реализм<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2015</span></td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>ИСКУССТВО СССР</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">советский социалистический реализм</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(Soviet Socialist Realism)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in various other socialist countries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Socialist realism was the predominant form of art in the Soviet Union from its development in the early 1920s to its eventual fall from popularity in the late 1960s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Development of Soviet Social Realism</span><br /> </div>
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Socialist realism was developed by many thousands of artists, across a diverse empire, over several decades.</div>
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Early examples of realism in Russian art include the work of the Peredvizhnikis and Ilya Yefimovich Repin (see above).</div>
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While these works do not have the same political connotation, they exhibit the techniques exercised by their successors.</div>
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After the Bolsheviks took control of Russia on October 25, 1917 there was a marked shift in artistic styles.</div>
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There had been a short period of artistic exploration, in the time between the fall of the Tsar and the rise of the Bolsheviks.</div>
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In 1917 Russian artists began to return to more traditional forms of art and painting.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Анато́лий Васи́льевич Лунача́рский<br />
(Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky)</td></tr>
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Shortly after the Bolsheviks took control, Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed as head of Narkompros, the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment.</div>
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This put Lunacharsky in the position of deciding the direction of art in the newly created Soviet state.</div>
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Lunacharsky created a system of aesthetics, based on the human body, that would become the main component of socialist realism for decades to come.</div>
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He believed (correctly) that "<i>the sight of a healthy body, intelligent face or friendly smile was essentially life-enhancing.</i>"</div>
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He concluded that art had a <i>direct effect</i> on the human organism, and under the right circumstances that effect could be<i> positive</i>.</div>
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By depicting "<i>the perfect person</i>" (<a href="http://shortly%20after%20the%20bolsheviks%20took%20control%2C%20anatoly%20lunacharsky%20was%20appointed%20as%20head%20of%20narkompros%2C%20the%20people%27s%20commissariat%20for%20enlightenment.[5]%20this%20put%20lunacharsky%20in%20the%20position%20of%20deciding%20the%20direction%20of%20art%20in%20the%20newly%20created%20soviet%20state.%20lunacharsky%20created%20a%20system%20of%20aesthetics%20based%20on%20the%20human%20body%20that%20would%20become%20the%20main%20component%20of%20socialist%20realism%20for%20decades%20to%20come.%20he%20believed%20that%20%22the%20sight%20of%20a%20healthy%20body%2C%20intelligent%20face%20or%20friendly%20smile%20was%20essentially%20life-enhancing.%22[6]%20he%20concluded%20that%20art%20had%20a%20direct%20effect%20on%20the%20human%20organism%20and%20under%20the%20right%20circumstances%20that%20effect%20could%20be%20positive.%20by%20depicting%20%22the%20perfect%20person%22%20%28new%20soviet%20man%29%2C%20lunacharsky%20believed%20art%20could%20educate%20citizens%20on%20how%20to%20be%20the%20perfect%20soviets.[6]/" target="_blank">New Soviet Man</a>), Lunacharsky believed art could educate citizens on how to be the perfect Soviets.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Анато́лий Васи́льевич Лунача́рский, (Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky - November 23 [O.S. November 11] 1875 – December 26, 1933) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, and the first Soviet People's Commissar of Education, responsible for culture and education. He was active as an art critic and journalist throughout his career. Lunacharsky helped his former colleague, Alexander Bogdanov, found a semi-independent proletarian art movement, 'Proletkult'. Lunacharsky was known as an art connoisseur and a critic. He had been interested in philosophy (not only Marxist dialectics) since he was a student (for instance, he was fond of the ideas of Fichte, Nietzsche, Avenarius). He could read six modern languages and two dead ones. Lunacharsky corresponded with H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and Romain Rolland</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Debate within Soviet Art</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There were two main groups debating the fate of Soviet art - 'futurists' and 'traditionalists'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Russian Futurists, many of whom had been creating 'abstract' art before the Bolsheviks, believed communism required a complete rupture from the past, and therefore so did Soviet art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Traditionalists believed in the importance of realistic representations of everyday life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Under Lenin's rule, and the New Economic Policy, there was a certain amount of private commercial enterprise, allowing both the 'futurist' and the traditionalist to produce their art for individuals with capital.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By 1928, the Soviet government had enough strength and authority to end private enterprises, thus ending support for fringe groups such as the 'futurists'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At this point, although the term 'socialist realism' was not being used, its defining characteristics became the norm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The first time the term 'socialist realism' was officially used was in 1932.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-vissarionovich-stalin.html" target="_blank">Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин</a><br />
<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-vissarionovich-stalin.html" target="_blank">Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin</a><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright<i> Zac</i> Sawyer 2015</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в<br />
Maxim Gorky<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The term was settled upon in meetings that included the highest level politicians, including <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-vissarionovich-stalin.html" target="_blank">Stalin </a>himself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/society-and-culture-new-soviet-man.html" target="_blank">Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в (Maxim Gorky)</a>, a proponent of literary socialist realism, published a famous article titled 'Socialist Realism' in 1933, and by 1934 the term's etymology was traced (not surprisingly) back to <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-vissarionovich-stalin.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a></span>.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to Russia on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and died in June 1936.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">During the Congress of 1934, four guidelines were laid out for socialist realism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The work must be:</span></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Typical: scenes of everyday life of the people.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Realistic: in the representational sense.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Characteristics of 'Socialist Realism'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Socialist Realism' had its roots in 'Neoclassicism', and the traditions of realism in Russian literature of the 19th century that described the life of simple people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was exemplified by the aesthetic philosophy of Maxim Gorky. 'Socialist Realism' was a product of the Soviet system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whereas in market societies professional artists earned their living selling to, or being commissioned by rich individuals or the Church, in Soviet society not only was the market suppressed, there were few if any individuals able to patronize the arts and only one institution – the State itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hence artists became state employees.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As such the State set the parameters for what it employed them to do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What was expected of the artist was that he/she be formally qualified, and to reach a standard of competence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The State, after the Congress of 1934, laid down four rules for what became known as "Socialist Realism": The purpose of 'socialist realism' was to produce a popular culture that promoted Soviet ideals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The party was of the utmost importance, and was always to be favorably featured.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The key concepts that developed assured loyalty to the party, "partiinost'" (party-mindedness), "ideinost" (idea or ideological-content), "klassovost" (class content), "pravdivost" (truthfulness).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There was a prevailing sense of optimism; 'socialist realism's' function was to show the ideal Soviet society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Not only was the present gloried, but the future was also supposed to be depicted in an agreeable fashion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Because the present and the future were constantly idolized, socialist realism had a distinct sense of optimism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Tragedy and negativity were not permitted, unless they were shown in a different time or place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This sentiment created what would later be dubbed 'revolutionary romanticism'. 'Revolutionary romanticism' elevated the common worker, whether factory or agricultural, by presenting his life, work, and recreation as admirable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Its purpose was to show how much the standard of living had improved, thanks to the revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Art was used as educational information.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YdRcTgMcECc/VhvlYO5OUII/AAAAAAAANOY/hLhFHaaUguM/s1600/New%2BSoviet%2BMan%2B%2528and%2BWoman%2529%2B-%2B%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2B.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YdRcTgMcECc/VhvlYO5OUII/AAAAAAAANOY/hLhFHaaUguM/s200/New%2BSoviet%2BMan%2B%2528and%2BWoman%2529%2B-%2B%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2B.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'The New Soviet Man (and Woman)' </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">By illustrating the party's success, artists were showing their viewers that Sovietism was the best political system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Art was also used to show how Soviet citizens should be acting. The ultimate aim was to create what Lenin called "an entirely new type of human being": '<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/society-and-culture-new-soviet-man.html" target="_blank">The New Soviet Man</a>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Art (especially posters and murals) was a way to instill party values on a massive scale.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin described the socialist realist artists as "engineers of souls".</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WpJuWD6kwno/VhvdkH43zsI/AAAAAAAANNs/xIOxDcaw2yo/s1600/Aleksandr%2BDeineka%2B-%2BFuture%2BPilots%2B-%2B%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WpJuWD6kwno/VhvdkH43zsI/AAAAAAAANNs/xIOxDcaw2yo/s200/Aleksandr%2BDeineka%2B-%2BFuture%2BPilots%2B-%2B%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Flight and New Technology<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Aleksandr Deineka</span></td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pZdHfZ0BbPc/UVgIkevBWLI/AAAAAAAAEUo/wbhwVbPRqIg/s1600/Holiday%2Bof%2Bthe%2BConstitution%2B%25281930%2529%2B-%2BIsaak%2BIzrailevich%2BBrodsky%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="162" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pZdHfZ0BbPc/UVgIkevBWLI/AAAAAAAAEUo/wbhwVbPRqIg/s200/Holiday%2Bof%2Bthe%2BConstitution%2B%25281930%2529%2B-%2BIsaak%2BIzrailevich%2BBrodsky%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sunlight, the Body, and Youth</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Isaak Izrailevich Brodsky</span></span></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Common images used in 'Socialist Realism' were flowers (Stalin had a great love for flowers), sunlight, the body, youth, flight, industry, and new technology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These poetic images were used to show the utopianism of Communism and the Soviet State.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Art became more than an aesthetic pleasure, instead it served a very specific function. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Soviet ideals placed functionality and work above all else, therefore for art to be admired it must serve a purpose.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Georgi Plekhanov, a Marxist theoretician, states that art is only useful if it serves society</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"There can be no doubt that art acquired a social significance only in so far as it depicts, evokes, or conveys actions, emotions and events that are of significance to society."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The artist could not, however, portray life just as they saw it; because anything that reflected poorly on Communism had to be omitted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">People who could not be shown as either 'wholly good' or 'wholly evil' could not be used as characters.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This was reflective of the Soviet idea that morality is simple, things are either 'right' or 'wrong'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This view on morality called for idealism over realism.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Art was filled with health and happiness; paintings showed busy industrial and agricultural scenes, and sculptures depicted workers, sentries, and schoolchildren</span>.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2NZOeJWIzAI/VhvsbYRgv-I/AAAAAAAANO8/ppfGnCv5nm8/s1600/moscow%2Buniversity%2B-%2BSoviet%2BEmpire%2BStyle%2B-%2BGreat%2BRussian%2BArt%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2NZOeJWIzAI/VhvsbYRgv-I/AAAAAAAANO8/ppfGnCv5nm8/s320/moscow%2Buniversity%2B-%2BSoviet%2BEmpire%2BStyle%2B-%2BGreat%2BRussian%2BArt%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Soviet Socialist Classical Style of Architecture</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In conjunction with the 'Soviet Socialist Classical' style of architecture, 'Socialist Realism' was the officially approved type of art in the Soviet Union for nearly sixty years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">All material goods and means of production belonged to the community as a whole; this included means of producing art, which were also seen as powerful propaganda tools.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So called 'modern art' was rejected by members of the Communist Party, who did not appreciate modern styles such as Impressionism and Cubism, since these movements existed before the revolution, and were thus associated with "decadent bourgeois art".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Socialist Realism' was, to some extent, a reaction against the adoption of these "decadent" styles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The disdain for 'decadent art' is similar in many ways to the National Socialist view regarding 'Entartete Kunst'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was thought by Lenin (probably quiet correctly), that the non-representative forms of art were not understood by the proletariat, and could therefore not be used by the state for propaganda.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k-Cy56bT5Zc/Vhvp3_wfs3I/AAAAAAAANOk/kOQbeetUDk4/s1600/Andrei%2BAlexandrovich%2BZhdanov%2B-%2B%2BSoviet%2BSocial%2BRealism.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k-Cy56bT5Zc/Vhvp3_wfs3I/AAAAAAAANOk/kOQbeetUDk4/s200/Andrei%2BAlexandrovich%2BZhdanov%2B-%2B%2BSoviet%2BSocial%2BRealism.jpg" width="138" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Андре́й Алекса́ндрович Жда́нов</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Socialist Realism' became state policy in 1934, when the First Congress of Soviet Writers met, and Stalin's representative Andrei Zhdanov gave a speech strongly endorsing it as "the official style of Soviet culture".</span></div>
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Андре́й Алекса́ндрович Жда́нов (Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov - 26 February [O.S. 14 February] 1896 – 31 August 1948), was a Soviet politician. After World War II, he was thought to be the successor-in-waiting to Joseph Stalin, but Zhdanov predeceased Stalin.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Soviet Social Realism' was enforced ruthlessly in all spheres of artistic endeavor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Artists who strayed from the official line were severely punished.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Form and content were often limited, with erotic, religious, abstract, surrealist, and expressionist art being forbidden.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Formal experiments, including internal dialogue, stream of consciousness, nonsense, free-form association, and cut-up were also disallowed.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This was either because they were "decadent", unintelligible to the proletariat, or counter-revolutionary.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ck2ovsWQTQY/UWXhgkd5fWI/AAAAAAAAFCE/_sYj2jRA96s/s1600/The+Unity+of+the+Russian+People+(Mikhail+Khmelko,+1948)+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="193" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ck2ovsWQTQY/UWXhgkd5fWI/AAAAAAAAFCE/_sYj2jRA96s/s400/The+Unity+of+the+Russian+People+(Mikhail+Khmelko,+1948)+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'The Unity of the Russian People'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mikhail Khmelko</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mykhailo Ivanovych Khmelko (Ukrainian: Михайло Іванович Хмелько, 23 October 1919 - 15 January 1996) was a Ukrainian painter, People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, and double Stalin prize winner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mykhailo Khmelko was born in Kiev. In 1943-1946 he studied at the Kiev State Art Institute under Karp Trokhimenko. In 1948 - 1973 he was a faculty of the same institute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Khmelko is known for his Socialist Realism paintings: 'Unification of the Ukrainian Lands' (1939-1949), 'Drink A Toast for the Great Russian People' (1947), 'Triumph of the Victorious Motherland' (1949), 'Forever with Moscow. Forever with Russian people' (1951).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">MILITARY</span><br /></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fYlLsLW17Ss/UVq4myoZ3BI/AAAAAAAAEgo/s8T_qROe43Y/s1600/Storming+of+the+Winter+Palace+-+Petrograd+-+St+Petersburg+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fYlLsLW17Ss/UVq4myoZ3BI/AAAAAAAAEgo/s8T_qROe43Y/s400/Storming+of+the+Winter+Palace+-+Petrograd+-+St+Petersburg+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="270" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'The Storming of the Winter Palace'</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mNwsrp8yjyA/ViI_9krGYqI/AAAAAAAANQY/0EznUnyDYE8/s1600/Vladimir%2BSerov%2B-%2BThe%2BWinter%2BPalace%2Bis%2BCaptured%2B-Great%2BRussian%2BArt%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mNwsrp8yjyA/ViI_9krGYqI/AAAAAAAANQY/0EznUnyDYE8/s400/Vladimir%2BSerov%2B-%2BThe%2BWinter%2BPalace%2Bis%2BCaptured%2B-Great%2BRussian%2BArt%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Зимний дворец захвачен'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Владимир Серов</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'The Winter Palace is Captured'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Vladimir Serov</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Совет Партисанс'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Митрофан Греков</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Soviet Partisans'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mitrophan Grekov</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Military Parade in Red Square, 7th November 1941'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Konstantin Yuon</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fApEFBJhlwQ/UVq81Fo2yvI/AAAAAAAAEhc/ukmnRQhA2zs/s1600/Mikhail+Khmelko+-+The+Triumph+of+the+Conquering+People+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="324" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fApEFBJhlwQ/UVq81Fo2yvI/AAAAAAAAEhc/ukmnRQhA2zs/s640/Mikhail+Khmelko+-+The+Triumph+of+the+Conquering+People+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">''The Triumph of the Conquering People'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mikhail Khmelko</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mykhailo Ivanovych Khmelko (Ukrainian: Михайло Іванович Хмелько, 23 October 1919 - 15 January 1996) was a Ukrainian painter, People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, and double Stalin prize winner. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mykhailo Khmelko was born in Kiev. In 1943-1946 he studied at the Kiev State Art Institute under Karp Trokhimenko. In 1948 - 1973 he was a faculty of the same institute. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Khmelko is known for his Socialist Realism paintings: 'Unification of the Ukrainian Lands' (1939-1949), 'Drink A Toast for the Great Russian People' (1947), 'Triumph of the Victorious Motherland' (1949), 'Forever with Moscow. Forever with Russian people' (1951).</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3HrsaETu2Lc/UVrATqvkLcI/AAAAAAAAEiA/k-dxtNUO-JA/s1600/P.+Korin+-+Marshal+G.+Zhukov+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3HrsaETu2Lc/UVrATqvkLcI/AAAAAAAAEiA/k-dxtNUO-JA/s320/P.+Korin+-+Marshal+G.+Zhukov+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="276" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Marshal G. Zhukov'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">P. Korin</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-55B9HSjyNpI/UXQcCYffIzI/AAAAAAAAF1I/jomjZXkqeW0/s1600/Peter+Maltsev+-+Storming+the+Sapun+Mountain+in+Sebastopol+-+Russian+Revolution+-+culture+-+Soviet+Realism+-+Great+Art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-55B9HSjyNpI/UXQcCYffIzI/AAAAAAAAF1I/jomjZXkqeW0/s400/Peter+Maltsev+-+Storming+the+Sapun+Mountain+in+Sebastopol+-+Russian+Revolution+-+culture+-+Soviet+Realism+-+Great+Art.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Storming the Sapun Mountain in Sebastopol'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Peter Maltsev</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">LENIN</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xvyoJVX-26s/UWXYoDLylRI/AAAAAAAAFBA/dXJUl_Gld7o/s1600/Aleksandr+Lomykin+-+Lenin+at+the+Third+KomSoMol+Convention+1969++-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="297" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xvyoJVX-26s/UWXYoDLylRI/AAAAAAAAFBA/dXJUl_Gld7o/s400/Aleksandr+Lomykin+-+Lenin+at+the+Third+KomSoMol+Convention+1969++-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> 'Lenin at the Third KomSoMol Convention'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Aleksandr Lomykin</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NwbsFE8qQpY/ViI4DDpcd1I/AAAAAAAANP0/zm2NhMB8eiQ/s1600/Lenin%2Bin%2BSmolniy%2Bin%2B1917%2B-%2BIsaak%2BIzrailevich%2BBrodskiy%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NwbsFE8qQpY/ViI4DDpcd1I/AAAAAAAANP0/zm2NhMB8eiQ/s400/Lenin%2Bin%2BSmolniy%2Bin%2B1917%2B-%2BIsaak%2BIzrailevich%2BBrodskiy%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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'ленин ин смольный'</div>
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Исаак Израилевич Бродский</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Lenin in Smolny'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Isaak Izrailevich Brodskiy</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EIkGsR3b7PI/UWXYJLeoOLI/AAAAAAAAFA4/b5xfhB1b2CE/s1600/Grigori+Shegel+-+Leader,+Teacher,+Friend+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EIkGsR3b7PI/UWXYJLeoOLI/AAAAAAAAFA4/b5xfhB1b2CE/s400/Grigori+Shegel+-+Leader,+Teacher,+Friend+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="295" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Leader, Teacher, Friend'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Grigori Shegel</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DV3-WjDZVNA/UVq-EkbnzyI/AAAAAAAAEhs/4b0Vigkn4YQ/s1600/Pavel+Malkov+-+Politburo+of+the+Central+Committee+of+the+Bolshevik+Party+at+the+Eighth+Extraordinary+Congress+of+Soviets+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DV3-WjDZVNA/UVq-EkbnzyI/AAAAAAAAEhs/4b0Vigkn4YQ/s400/Pavel+Malkov+-+Politburo+of+the+Central+Committee+of+the+Bolshevik+Party+at+the+Eighth+Extraordinary+Congress+of+Soviets+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="353" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Politburo of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">at the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pavel Malkov</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Ew2JZav0X0/UWXo6Pr7vQI/AAAAAAAAFDU/IJl6CDtiliw/s1600/Aleksandr+Leonidovich+Korolev+-+Stalin+with+Foremost+Party+Members+-+At+Assembly+1948+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Ew2JZav0X0/UWXo6Pr7vQI/AAAAAAAAFDU/IJl6CDtiliw/s400/Aleksandr+Leonidovich+Korolev+-+Stalin+with+Foremost+Party+Members+-+At+Assembly+1948+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Сталин витх Форемость Партий Мемберс'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Леонидович Королев</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> 'Stalin with Foremost Party Members - 1948'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Aleksandr Leonidovich Korolev</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Bwjj7LdQUzM/UWXa-alB-mI/AAAAAAAAFBs/I81bkPzHC9M/s1600/Mikhail+Khmelko+-+To+the+Great+Russian+People+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Bwjj7LdQUzM/UWXa-alB-mI/AAAAAAAAFBs/I81bkPzHC9M/s400/Mikhail+Khmelko+-+To+the+Great+Russian+People+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; text-align: justify;">'Drink A Toast for the Great Russian People'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mikhail Khmelko</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mykhailo Ivanovych Khmelko (Ukrainian: Михайло Іванович Хмелько, 23 October 1919 - 15 January 1996) was a Ukrainian painter, People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, and double Stalin prize winner. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mykhailo Khmelko was born in Kiev. In 1943-1946 he studied at the Kiev State Art Institute under Karp Trokhimenko. In 1948 - 1973 he was a faculty of the same institute. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Khmelko is known for his Socialist Realism paintings: 'Unification of the Ukrainian Lands' (1939-1949), 'Drink A Toast for the Great Russian People' (1947), 'Triumph of the Victorious Motherland' (1949), 'Forever with Moscow. Forever with Russian people' (1951).</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lz4FwfzBl6E/UVrCZV43NCI/AAAAAAAAEiU/Flby43xsu1c/s1600/roses-for-stalin+-+Boris+Vladimirski+(1878+%E2%80%93+1950,+Ukrainian)+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="282" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lz4FwfzBl6E/UVrCZV43NCI/AAAAAAAAEiU/Flby43xsu1c/s400/roses-for-stalin+-+Boris+Vladimirski+(1878+%E2%80%93+1950,+Ukrainian)+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Roses for Stalin'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Boris Vladimirski</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Boris Eremeevich Vladimirski, (February 27, 1878 – February 12, 1950), was a Soviet painter of the 'Socialist Realism' school. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Vladimirski was born in Kiev, Ukraine. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He began his artistic studies at age 10, later attending (1906) the Kiev Art College. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He exhibited his first painting in 1906. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As an official Soviet artist, his work was well received and widely exhibited. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">His works were aimed at exemplifying the work ethic of the Soviet people; they were displayed in many homes and federal buildings. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He is also known for his paintings of prominent public officials.</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XVnVxgoze3M/UWXh3eDVgoI/AAAAAAAAFCM/GU1oAP8t9_w/s1600/Aleksandr+Korolev+-+Planning+a+Parade,+Communist+Party+Headquarters+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="280" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XVnVxgoze3M/UWXh3eDVgoI/AAAAAAAAFCM/GU1oAP8t9_w/s400/Aleksandr+Korolev+-+Planning+a+Parade,+Communist+Party+Headquarters+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Planning a Parade'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Aleksandr Korolev</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aj3mWDu_mno/UVq78XgZPtI/AAAAAAAAEhQ/sukgKptyDTI/s1600/Isaak+Izrailevich+Brodsky+-+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="323" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aj3mWDu_mno/UVq78XgZPtI/AAAAAAAAEhQ/sukgKptyDTI/s400/Isaak+Izrailevich+Brodsky+-+.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Holiday of the Constitution (1930)'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Isaak Izrailevich Brodsky</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MkE88iBGIcI/UVrA3ZEitwI/AAAAAAAAEiI/d-37U_96-c0/s1600/fighting+for+peace+-+1950+-+Jules+Perahim+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MkE88iBGIcI/UVrA3ZEitwI/AAAAAAAAEiI/d-37U_96-c0/s400/fighting+for+peace+-+1950+-+Jules+Perahim+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Fighting for Peace' - 1950</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jules Perahim</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">GENRE PAINTING</span><br /><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0aVN5eizu7o/ViI1-VWupjI/AAAAAAAANPo/JloM_-FLslU/s1600/Alexander%2BLaktionov%2B-%2BVisiting%2BMy%2BGrandmother%2B-%2B1930%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0aVN5eizu7o/ViI1-VWupjI/AAAAAAAANPo/JloM_-FLslU/s400/Alexander%2BLaktionov%2B-%2BVisiting%2BMy%2BGrandmother%2B-%2B1930%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="332" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Посещение моей бабушки'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Лактионов</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Visiting My Grandmother' - 1930</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Laktionov</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-q4B63gfynV8/UVq548teOnI/AAAAAAAAEg4/ZR-GhdOT3MU/s1600/arkady-plastov-haymaking.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-q4B63gfynV8/UVq548teOnI/AAAAAAAAEg4/ZR-GhdOT3MU/s400/arkady-plastov-haymaking.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Haymaking'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Аркадий Александрович Пластов;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Arkady Alexandrovich Plastov</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Arkady Alexandrovich Plastov (born 31 January [O.S. 19 January] 1893 in Prislonikha, Simbirsk Governorate; died 12 May 1972 in Prislonikha, Ulyanovsk Oblast) was a Russian socialist realist painter. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Plastov was born into a family of icon painters in the village Prislonikha in the Russian Governorate of Simbirsk. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He attended the sculpture department of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture beginning in 1914. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In 1917, he returned to his native village, where he occupied himself with painting, drawing from nature. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Starting in 1935, he steps introduces his category painting into the public. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">According to the strict political-artistic doctrine of the time, which only permits the style of socialist realism, Plastov pictures the life in the Soviet Union, the pervasive building up of socialism. His work is characterized by life in the villages of the Soviet Union, his love for his native land, strong, live pictures and his skills of painting. As the reaction to the events, which moved the population of the Soviet Union at that time, Plastov showed in his pictures, how the village life had changed by the collectivization. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As models of the Protagonists of his works Plastov chose characters of his homeland village. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The outbreak of World War II inspired new motives for the work of Plastov. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He depictured suffering of the Soviet people, work of the women, old people and children on the kolkhoz fields during the war. After the war Plastov kept the values of village life.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uAAZ_zb-zm8/UXQcauQs8YI/AAAAAAAAF1Q/UKJ1FeUWQB8/s1600/Vsevolod+Petrov-Maslakov+-+Lunch+in+the+Field+-+1899-1969+-++Russian+Revolution+-+culture+-+Soviet+Realism+-+Great+Art.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="308" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uAAZ_zb-zm8/UXQcauQs8YI/AAAAAAAAF1Q/UKJ1FeUWQB8/s400/Vsevolod+Petrov-Maslakov+-+Lunch+in+the+Field+-+1899-1969+-++Russian+Revolution+-+culture+-+Soviet+Realism+-+Great+Art.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> 'Lunch in the Field'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Vsevolod Petrov-Maslakov</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gvlMGoErPco/UXQdMSJRs8I/AAAAAAAAF1Y/xPhwfweC6g0/s1600/Vasili+Nechitailo+-+On+Kuban+Virgin+Land+-+Russian+Revolution+-+culture+-+Soviet+Realism+-+Great+Art.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gvlMGoErPco/UXQdMSJRs8I/AAAAAAAAF1Y/xPhwfweC6g0/s400/Vasili+Nechitailo+-+On+Kuban+Virgin+Land+-+Russian+Revolution+-+culture+-+Soviet+Realism+-+Great+Art.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">' On Kuban Virgin Land'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Vasili Nechitailo</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">NUDE and SEMI-NUDE</span><br /><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">While nudes (particularly female nudes) rarely appear in Soviet Socialist Realist Art - (Stalin had a horror of what he termed 'pornography' - female nudes) - the male nude, or semi-nude, was sometimes acceptable in appropriate circumstances.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f4SguTQJfWg/UWSCUfkR4nI/AAAAAAAAE7U/OXrX-2T--7k/s1600/Roman+Naumovich+Feller+-++Dreamers.+1956..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="222" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f4SguTQJfWg/UWSCUfkR4nI/AAAAAAAAE7U/OXrX-2T--7k/s400/Roman+Naumovich+Feller+-++Dreamers.+1956..jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Мечтатели - 1956</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Феллера Романа Наумовича</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Dreamers' 1956</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Roman Naumovich Feller</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VgUtq3NN6dA/ViJCLcFyXjI/AAAAAAAANQk/HTAcqec9R8M/s1600/Aleksandr%2BDeineka%2B1%2B-%2BFuture%2BPilots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VgUtq3NN6dA/ViJCLcFyXjI/AAAAAAAANQk/HTAcqec9R8M/s400/Aleksandr%2BDeineka%2B1%2B-%2BFuture%2BPilots.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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'Будущие пилоты'</div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Дейнека</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Future Pilots'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Alexander Deineka</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DCqtjX6u_74/ViNwa51uNwI/AAAAAAAANRw/15gYdMLQt6w/s1600/AlexeiPakhomov%2B-%2BRed%2BArmy%2BSailors%2BDiving%2Bfrom%2Ba%2BShip1933%2B-%2B%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DCqtjX6u_74/ViNwa51uNwI/AAAAAAAANRw/15gYdMLQt6w/s400/AlexeiPakhomov%2B-%2BRed%2BArmy%2BSailors%2BDiving%2Bfrom%2Ba%2BShip1933%2B-%2B%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Советские моряки Дайвинг с военного корабля' - 1933</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алексей Пахомов</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Soviet Sailors Diving from a Warship - 1933</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexei Pakhomov</span>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HCsyP9A8BG0/ViI5Pr1pV7I/AAAAAAAANQA/e6ZiHXJ-Wvo/s1600/After%2Bthe%2Bbattle.%2B1942.%2BAlexander%2BDeineka.%2BRussian.%2B1899-1969%2B-%2B%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HCsyP9A8BG0/ViI5Pr1pV7I/AAAAAAAANQA/e6ZiHXJ-Wvo/s400/After%2Bthe%2Bbattle.%2B1942.%2BAlexander%2BDeineka.%2BRussian.%2B1899-1969%2B-%2B%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">После битвы - 1942</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Дейнека</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'After the Battle - 1942'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Deineka</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sio-9NusIlM/ViI56almklI/AAAAAAAANQI/vZTJJDrBf1s/s1600/Aleksandr%2BDeineka%2B-%2BLunch%2BBreak%2Bin%2Bthe%2BDonbass%252C%2B1935%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sio-9NusIlM/ViI56almklI/AAAAAAAANQI/vZTJJDrBf1s/s400/Aleksandr%2BDeineka%2B-%2BLunch%2BBreak%2Bin%2Bthe%2BDonbass%252C%2B1935%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BSoviet%2BRealism%2B-%2BGreat%2BArt.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Перерыв на обед в Донбассе'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Дейнека</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Lunch-break in the Donbass'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Deineka</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wFtzP46xM2A/ViNqE2imeSI/AAAAAAAANRI/Elp-zdZancE/s1600/Bathers%2B-%2BAlexander%2BDeineka%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wFtzP46xM2A/ViNqE2imeSI/AAAAAAAANRI/Elp-zdZancE/s400/Bathers%2B-%2BAlexander%2BDeineka%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Купальщицы'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Дейнека</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Bathers'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Deineka</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yBNcPiswZ-Q/ViNoy4FM6JI/AAAAAAAANQ0/7BCZPvrOtYU/s1600/Good%2BMorning%2B-%2BAlexander%2BDeineka%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yBNcPiswZ-Q/ViNoy4FM6JI/AAAAAAAANQ0/7BCZPvrOtYU/s400/Good%2BMorning%2B-%2BAlexander%2BDeineka%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Доброе утро'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Дейнека</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Good Morning'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Deineka</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_-0wnDGmsmE/ViNpYSJqrkI/AAAAAAAANQ8/22ZIDrxO8rw/s1600/After%2BWork%2B-%2BAlexander%2BDeineka%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_-0wnDGmsmE/ViNpYSJqrkI/AAAAAAAANQ8/22ZIDrxO8rw/s400/After%2BWork%2B-%2BAlexander%2BDeineka%2B-%2BSoviet%2BCulture%2Band%2BSociety%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BUSSR%2B-%2BSoviet%2BUnion%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.png" width="255" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'После работы'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Александр Дейнека</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'After Work'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Deineka</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Михаил Барышников</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mikhail Baryshnikov</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">SOVIET ARCHITECTURE</span><br /></div>
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Могила Ленина</div>
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Lenin's Tomb - Moscow<br />
Алексе́й Ви́кторович Щу́сев</div>
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Aleksey Shchusev's 1930 monumental granite structure incorporates some elements from ancient mausoleums, such as the Step Pyramid and the Tomb of Cyrus the Great.<br />
Алексе́й Ви́кторович Щу́сев; (8 October [O.S. 26 September] 1894, 1873 – 24 May 1949) was an acclaimed Russian and Soviet architect, whose works may be regarded as a bridge connecting Revivalist architecture of Imperial Russia with Stalin's Empire Style.<br />
Shchusev was awarded the Stalin Prizes in 1941, 1946, 1948, and posthumously in 1952; the Order of Lenin and other orders and medals.<br />
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Мавзолей Ленина - Интерьер</div>
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Lenin's Mausoleum - Interior</div>
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Саркофаг Ленина</div>
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Lenin's Sarcophagus</div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-53588511751773084912015-09-30T02:17:00.002-07:002015-10-15T15:21:37.025-07:00 Никола́й Иванович Ежо́в - Yezhov<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Никола́й Иванович Ежо́в</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Нарком Ежов</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Мильонноголосое звонкое слово</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Летит от народов к батыру Ежову:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">- Спасибо, Ежов, что, тревогу будя,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Стоишь ты на страже страны и вождя!..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Здесь все тебя любят, товарищ Ежов!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">И вторит народ, собираясь вокруг:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">- Привет тебе, Сталина преданный друг!...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Никола́й Иванович Ежо́в, (</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov -</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> May 1, 1895 – February 4, 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the most deadly period of Stalin's Great Purge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His time in office is known as the Ежовщина (</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Yezhovshchina</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">), a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became a victim of it himself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political unperson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Early Life</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov was born in Saint Petersburg, according to his official Soviet biography.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In a form filled out in 1921, Yezhov claimed some ability to speak Polish and Lithuanian.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Like many of the Bolshevik leaders, e completed only his elementary education.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From 1909 to 1915, he worked as a tailor's assistant and factory worker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From 1915 until 1917, Yezhov served in the Imperial Russian Army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">He joined the Bolsheviks on May 5, 1917 in Vitebsk, six months before the October Revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">During the Russian Civil War, 1919–1921, he fought in the Red Army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">After February 1922, he worked in the political system, mostly as a secretary of various regional committees of the Communist Party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In 1927, he was transferred to the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Party, where he worked as an instructor and acting head of the department.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From 1929 to 1930, he was the Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In November 1930, he was appointed to the Head of several departments of the Communist Party: department of special affairs, department of personnel and department of industry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party; - in the next year he became a secretary of the Central Committee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">From February 1935 to March 1939, he was also the Chairman of the Central Commission for Party Control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the "Letter of an Old Bolshevik" (1936), written by Boris Nicolaevsky, there is this contemporary description of Yezhov:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>'In the whole of my long life, I have never met a more repellent personality than Yezhov's. When I look at him I am reminded irresistibly of the wicked urchins of the courts in Rasterayeva Street, whose favorite occupation was to tie a piece of paper dipped in kerosene to a cat's tail, set fire to it, and then watch with delight how the terrified animal would tear down the street, trying desperately but in vain to escape the approaching flames. I do not doubt that in his childhood Yezhov amused himself in just such a manner and that he is now continuing to do so in different forms.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nadezhda Mandelstam, in contrast, who met Yezhov at Sukhum in the early thirties, did not perceive anything ominous in his manner or appearance; her impression of him was that of a '<i>modest and rather agreeable person</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Physically, Yezhov was short in stature, standing five feet (151 cm), and that, combined with his sadistic personality, led to his nickname <i>'The Poison Dwarf</i>' or '<i>The Bloody Dwarf</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Personal Life</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Yezhov married educated and sincere Marxist Antonia Titova in 1919, but he later divorced her and married Yevgenia Feigenburg (Khautina-Ezhova).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov and Feigenburg had an adopted daughter, Natasha, an orphan from a children's home.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Head of the NKVD</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The turning point in Yezhov's life which led to his appointment as head of the NKVD, was the response by Stalin to the murder of the Bolshevik chief of Leningrad, Sergey Kirov. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin used the murder as a pretext for further purges; he chose Yezhov for this task. Yezhov oversaw falsified accusations in the Kirov murder case against opposition leaders Kamenev, Zinoviev and their supporters. Yezhov's success in this task led to his further promotion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He became People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD), and a member of the Central Committee on September 26, 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This appointment did not at first seem to suggest an intensification of the terror: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>"Unlike Yagoda, Yezhov did not come out of the 'organs,' which was considered an advantage."</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yagoda became a target because he had been too slow to eliminate the old Bolsheviks in the purges ordered by Stalin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Destruction of the old bolshevik cadres as well as Yagoda himself - all potential or imagined enemies of Stalin – was not a problem for Yezhov.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a devout Stalinist, and not a member of the organs of state security, Yezhov was just the man Stalin needed to intensify the terror and rid Stalin of potential opponents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov's first task from Stalin was to personally investigate and conduct the prosecution of his long-time Chekist mentor Yagoda, which he did with remorseless zeal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ordered by Stalin to create a suitably grandiose plot for Yagoda's show trial, Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism (!).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It's also claimed that he personally tortured both Yagoda and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky to extract their confessions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Yagoda was but the first of many to die by Yezhov's orders.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Under Yezhov, the Great Purge reached its height during 1937–1938.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">50-75% of the members of the Supreme Soviet and officers of the Soviet military were stripped of their positions and imprisoned, exiled to the GULAG's camps in Siberia or executed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">In addition, a much greater number of ordinary Soviet citizens were accused (usually on flimsy or nonexistent evidence) of disloyalty or "wrecking" by local Chekist troikas, and similarly punished to satisfy Stalin and Yezhov's arbitrary quotas for arrests and executions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Yezhov also conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and executing not only many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; text-align: justify;">He admitted that innocents were being falsely accused, but dismissed their lives as unimportant so long as the purge was successful:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>'There will be some innocent victims in this fight against Fascist agents.<br />We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow.<br />Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly.'</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1937 and 1938 alone at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were shot for 'crimes against the state'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps (or during transport to them).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Fall from Power</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport on April 6, 1938.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Though he retained his other posts, his role as grand inquisitor and extractor of confessions gradually diminished as Stalin retreated from the worst excesses of the Great Purge.<br />By saddling him with the extra job, Stalin killed two birds with one stone: Yezhov could correct the water transportation situation with tough Chekist methods, and his transfer to the 'terra incognita' of economic tasks would leave him less time for the NKVD and weaken his position there, thus creating the possibility that in due course he could be removed from the leadership of the punitive apparatus and replaced by fresh people.<br />Contrary to Stalin's expectations, the vast number of party officials and military officers lost during Yezhov's purges had been only partially made good by replacement with trusted Stalinist functionaries, and he eventually recognized that the disruption was severely affecting the country's ability to coordinate industrial production and defend its borders from the growing threat from Germany.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov had accomplished Stalin's intended task for the Great Purge: the public liquidation of the last of his Old Bolshevik political rivals and the elimination of any possibility of "disloyal elements" or "fifth columnists" within the Soviet military and government, prior to the onset of war with Germany. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">From Stalin's perspective, Yezhov (like Yagoda) had served his purpose, but had seen too much and wielded too much power for Stalin to allow him to live.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The defection to Japan of the Far Eastern NKVD chief, Genrikh Lyushkov on June 13, 1938, rightly worried Yezhov, who had protected Lyushkov from the purges and feared he would be blamed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On August 22, 1938, Georgian NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Beria had managed to survive the Great Purge and the "Yezhovshchina" during the years 1936–1938, even though he had almost become one of its victims.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Earlier in 1938, Yezhov had even ordered the arrest of Beria, who was party chief in Georgia, however, Georgian NKVD chief Sergei Goglidze warned Beria, who immediately flew to Moscow to see Stalin personally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Beria convinced Stalin to spare his life, and reminded Stalin how efficiently he had carried out party orders in Georgia and Transcaucasia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In an ironic twist of fate, it would be Yezhov who would eventually fall in the struggle for power, and Beria who would become the new NKVD chief.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began increasingly to usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As early as September 8, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yezhov's first deputy, was relocated from under his command into the Navy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin's penchant for periodically executing and replacing his primary lieutenants was well known to Yezhov, as he had previously been the man most directly responsible for orchestrating such actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Well acquainted with the typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, Yezhov recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as a sign that his downfall was imminent; and he plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Already a heavy drinker, in the last weeks of his service, he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As anticipated, Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in a report dated November 11, sharply criticized the work and methods of the NKVD during Yezhov's tenure as chief, thus creating the bureaucratic pretense necessary to remove him from power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On November 14, another of Yezhov’s protégés, the Ukrainian NKVD chief Alexander Ivanovich Uspensky, disappeared after being warned by Yezhov that he was in trouble. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin suspected that Yezhov was involved in the disappearance, and told Beria, not Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught (he was arrested on April 14, 1939).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov had told his wife Yevgenia on September 18 that he wanted a divorce, and she had begun writing increasingly despairing letters to Stalin, none of which were answered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">She was particularly vulnerable because of her many lovers, and people close to her were being arrested for months.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On November 19, 1938, Yevgenia committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At his own request, Yezhov was officially relieved of his post as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on November 25, succeeded by Beria, who had been in complete control of the NKVD since the departure of Frinovsky on 8 September.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He attended his last Politburo meeting on January 29, 1939.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stalin was evidently content to ignore Yezhov for several months, finally ordering Beria to denounce him at the annual Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On March 3, 1939, Yezhov was relieved of all his posts in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but retained his post as People's Commissar of Water Transportation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His last working day was April 9, at which time the "People’s Commissariat was simply abolished by splitting it into two, the People’s Commissariats of the River Fleet and the Sea Fleet, with two new People’s Commissars, Z. A. Shashkov and S. S. Dukel’skii."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On April 10, Yezhov was arrested and imprisoned at the Sukhanovka prison;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">the "arrest was painstakingly concealed, not only from the general public but also from most NKVD officers... It would not do to make a fuss about the arrest of 'the leader’s favourite,' and Stalin had no desire to arouse public interest in NKVD activity and the circumstances of the conduct of the Great Terror."</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yezhov broke quickly under torture, and confessed to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to mark him as an "<i>enemy of the people</i>" prior to execution, including "wrecking", official incompetence, theft of government funds, and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs, none of which were likely, or supported by evidence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Apart from these unlikely political crimes, he was also accused of, and confessed to, a humiliating history of sexual promiscuity, including homosexuality, that was (unusually, in contrast with other condemned Bolshevik officials) later corroborated by witness reports and deemed mostly true in post-Soviet examinations of the case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Among the many people dragged down in Yezhov's fall was Isaak Babel:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"In May 1939 Yezhov confessed that Babel had committed espionage together with [Yezhov's wife] Yevgenia. Within a week the writer was arrested; during interrogation he in his turn testified against the Yezhovs."</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, Yezhov's first wife, Antonina Titova, his sister, Evdokiya, and his mother all survived.</span></div>
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On February 2, 1940, Yezhov was tried by the Military Collegium chaired by Soviet judge Vasili Ulrikh behind closed doors.</div>
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Yezhov, like his predecessor Yagoda, maintained to the end his love for Stalin.</div>
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Yezhov denied being a spy, a terrorist, or a conspirator stating that he preferred "<i>death to telling lies</i>."</div>
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He maintained that his previous confession had been obtained under torture, admitted that he purged 14,000 of his fellow Chekists, but said that he was surrounded by "<i>enemies of the people</i>."</div>
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He also said that he would die with the name of Stalin on his lips.</div>
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After the secret trial, Yezhov was allowed to return to his cell; but, half an hour later, he was called back and told that he had been condemned to death.</div>
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On hearing the verdict, Yezhov became faint and began to collapse, but the guards caught him and removed him from the room.</div>
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An immediate appeal for clemency was declined, and Yezhov became hysterical and weeping.</div>
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This time he had to be dragged out of the room, struggling with the guards and screaming.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Execution</span></div>
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On February 4, he was shot by the future KGB chairman Ivan Serov (or by Blokhin, in the presence of N. P. Afanasev, according to one book source) in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane (Varsonofyevskiy pereulok) in Moscow.</div>
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The basement had a sloping floor, which was for hosing, and had been built according to Yezhov's own specifications near the Lubyanka.</div>
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The main NKVD execution chamber in the basement of the Lubyanka was deliberately avoided to ensure total secrecy.</div>
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His body was immediately cremated, and his ashes dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoi Cemetery.</div>
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The execution remained secret, and as late as 1948, Time reported: “<i>Some think he is still in an insane asylum</i>.″</div>
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Yezhov's refusal to admit to a conspiracy against Stalin's life and his long, verifiable history as Stalin's primary inquisitor during the Great Purge made him too dangerous to risk at a public show trial where he might betray Stalin's secrets or successfully expose Stalin's orchestration of the Purge.</div>
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Though his adoptive daughter Natalia Khayutina (whose birth parents were killed in the Yezhovshchina) has fought for a revision of the case, Yezhov has not been rehabilitated. </div>
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The Procuracy decided that because of the serious consequences of Yezhov’s activity as NKVD chief, and the casualties he inflicted upon the country, he was not subject to rehabilitation, and the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court concurred on June 4, 1998.</div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-49719786405313676782014-03-05T11:03:00.001-08:002015-10-15T15:22:50.802-07:00Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин - Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V0rwWKUIgKw/Uxd-MO1a0tI/AAAAAAAALpI/wculc1XAp-M/s1600/Russian+Eagle+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V0rwWKUIgKw/Uxd-MO1a0tI/AAAAAAAALpI/wculc1XAp-M/s1600/Russian+Eagle+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="193" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">(Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin)</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">born 7 October 1952) has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He previously served as President from 2000 to 2008, and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During that last term as Prime Minister, he was also the Chairman of the United Russia political party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For 16 years Putin served as an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin resigned unexpectedly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election and was re-elected in 2004.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election and appointed Putin as Prime Minister, beginning a period of so-called "tandemocracy".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In September 2011, following a change in the law extending the presidential term from four years to six, Putin announced that he would seek a third, non-consecutive term as President in the 2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to large-scale protests in many Russian cities. He won the election in March 2012 and is serving a six-year term.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many of Putin's actions are regarded by the domestic opposition and foreign observers as undemocratic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 2011 Democracy Index stated that Russia was in "<i>a long process of regression that culminated in a move from a hybrid to an authoritarian regime</i>" in view of Putin's candidacy and flawed parliamentary elections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During Putin's first premiership and presidency (1999–2008), real incomes increased by a factor of 2.5, real wages more than tripled; unemployment and poverty more than halved and the Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction rose significantly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Putin's first presidency was marked by high economic growth: the Russian economy grew for eight straight years, seeing GDP increase by 72% in PPP (sixfold in nominal).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Russia's president, Putin and the Federal Assembly passed into law a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Prime Minister, Putin oversaw large scale military and police reform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His energy policy has affirmed Russia's position as an energy superpower.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Putin supported high-tech industries such as the nuclear and defence industries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A rise in foreign investment contributed to a boom in such sectors as the automotive industry. Putin has cultivated a "<i>he-man</i>" and "<i>super hero</i>" image, and is a pop cultural icon in Russia with many commercial products named after him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Early Life</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin - with his Mother</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on 7 October 1952, in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (modern day Saint Petersburg, Russia), to parents Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna Putina (née Shelomova; 1911–1998).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His mother was a factory worker, and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, where he served in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s, and later served in the NKVD during World War II.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two elder brothers were born in the mid-1930s; one died within a few months of birth, while the second succumbed to diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad in World War II.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir Putin's paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich Putin (1879–1965), was employed at <i>Vladimir Lenin's dacha</i> at Gorki as a cook, and after Lenin's death in 1924, he continued to work for <i>Lenin's wife</i>, Nadezhda Krupskaya.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He would later cook for <i>Joseph Stalin,</i> when the Soviet leader visited one of his dachas in the Moscow region.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spiridon later was employed at a dacha belonging to the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which the young Putin would visit him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ancestry of Vladimir Putin has been described as a <i>mystery</i>, with <i>no </i>records surviving of any ancestors of any people with the surname "Putin" beyond his grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His autobiography, 'Ot Pervogo Litsa' (English: 'In the First Person'), which is based on Putin's interviews, speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a communal apartment in Leningrad.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 1 September 1960, he started at School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, just across from his house.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By fifth grade he was one of a few in a class of more than 45 pupils who was not yet a member of the Pioneers, largely because of his <i>rowdy behaviour</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In sixth grade he started taking sport seriously in the form of sambo and then judo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his youth, Putin was eager to emulate the <i>intelligence officer characters</i> played on the Soviet screen by actors such as Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Georgiy Zhzhonov.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Putin graduated from the International Law branch of the Law Department of the Leningrad State University in 1975, writing his final thesis on <i>international law</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His PhD thesis was titled "<i>The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations</i>", and it argued that Russian economic success would depend on creating national energy champions (?).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has been suggested that most of the thesis was <i>plagiarized</i> from a paper by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While at university he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and remained a member until the party was dissolved in December 1991.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also at the University he met Anatoly Sobchak who later played an important role in Putin's career.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anatoly Sobchak was at the time an Assistant Professor and lectured Putin's class on Business Law (khozyaystvennoye pravo).</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-47941236603672696032014-03-02T15:32:00.000-08:002014-03-17T17:20:16.186-07:00Украина - the Ukraine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Украина</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">(The Ukraine)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The territory of Ukraine has been inhabited for at least forty four thousand years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is where the horse was first domesticated and a candidate site of the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to a popular and well established theory, the medieval state of Kievan Rus was established by the Varangians in the 9th century as the first historically recorded East Slavic state.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages but disintegrated in the 12th century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the middle of the 14th century, present Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers: the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland, during the 15th century these lands came under the rule of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth (since 1569), and Crimean Khanate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1653 the greater portion of the population rebelled against dominantly Polish Catholic rule and in January 1654 an assembly of the people (rada) voted at Pereyaslav to turn to Moscow, effectively joining the southeastern portion of the Polish-Lithuanian empire east of the Dnieper River to Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Partitions of Poland (1772–1795) and conquest of Crimean Khanate, Ukraine was divided between Russia and Austria, thus the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire, with the rest under Austrian (known as Austro-Hungarian since 1849) control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A chaotic period of warfare ensued after the Russian Revolution, with internationally recognized establishment of an independent Ukrainian People's Republic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Independent Ukraine emerged from its own civil war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ukrainian–Soviet War followed, which resulted in the Soviet Army establishing control in late 1919 Soviet victory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The conquerors created the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which on 30 December 1922 became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet government was hostile to Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture; there were mass repressions of Ukrainian poets, historians and linguists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then there was a genocide of Ukrainians: millions of people starved to death in 1932 and 1933 in the Holodomor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the 1939 invasion of Poland by the Third Reich and Soviet Union, the Ukrainian SSR's territory was enlarged westward.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During World War II the Ukrainian Insurgent Army tried to reestablish Ukrainian independence and fought against both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But in 1941 Ukraine was occupied by the Third Reich, being liberated in 1944.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1954, it expanded to the south with the transfer of the Crimea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This dissolution started a period of transition to a market economy, in which Ukraine suffered an eight-year recession.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since then, however, the economy has experienced a high increase in GDP growth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ukraine was caught up in the worldwide economic crisis in 2008 and the economy plunged. GDP fell 20% from spring 2008 to spring 2009, then leveled off as analysts compared the magnitude of the downturn to the worst years of economic depression during the early 1990s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Kievan Rus</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The city of Kiev was established during the time when area around the mid- and low-Dnipro was the part of the Khazar state. He derived that information from local legends because no written chronicles from that period are left.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 882, Kiev was conquered from the Khazars by the Varangian noble Oleg who started the long period of rule of the Rurikid princes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During this time, several Slavic tribes were native to Ukraine, including the Polans, the Drevlyans, the Severians, the Ulichs, the Tiverians, the White Croats and the Dulebes. Situated on lucrative trade routes, Kiev among the Polanians quickly prospered as the center of the powerful Slavic state of Kievan Rus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In CE 941, the prince of Kiev invaded the Byzantine Empire but was defeated in the Rus'–Byzantine War (941).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 11th century, Kievan Rus' was, geographically, the largest state in Europe, becoming known in the rest of Europe as Ruthenia (the Latin name for Rus'), especially for western principalities of Rus' after the Mongol invasion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The name "Ukraine", meaning "in-land" or "native-land", usually interpreted as "border-land", first appears in historical documents of 12th century, and then on history maps of the 16th century period.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The meaning of this term seems to have been synonymous with the land of Rus' propria - the principalities of Kiev, Chernihiv and Pereyaslav.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term, "Greater Rus'" was used to apply to all the lands ruled by Kiev, including those that were not just Slavic, but also Uralic in the north-east portions of the state.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Local regional subdivisions of Rus' appeared in the Slavic heartland, including, "Belarus'" (White Ruthenia), "Chorna Rus'" (Black Ruthenia) and "Cherven' Rus'" (Red Ruthenia) in northwestern and western Ukraine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Christianization</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Christianity had made headway into the territory of Ukraine before the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (particularly along the Black Sea coast) and, in western Ukraine during the time of empire of Great Moravia, the formal governmental acceptance of Christianity in Rus' occurred at in 988.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The major cause of the Christianization of Kievan Rus' was the Grand-Duke, Vladimir the Great (Volodymyr).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His Christian interest was midwifed by his grandmother, Princess Olga. Later, an enduring part of the East-Slavic legal tradition was set down by the Kievan ruler, Yaroslav I, who promulgated the Russkaya Pravda (Truth of Rus') which endured through the Lithuanian period of Rus'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conflict among the various principalities of Rus', in spite of the efforts of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh, led to decline, beginning in the 12th century.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Rus' propria, the Kiev region, the nascent Rus' principalities of Halych and Volynia extended their rule.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the north, the name of Moscow appeared in the historical record in the principality of Suzdal, which gave rise to the nation of Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the north-west, the principality of Polotsk increasingly asserted the autonomy of Belarus'. Kiev was sacked by Vladimir principality (1169) in the power struggle between princes and later by Cumans and Mongol raiders in the 12th and 13th centuries, respectively.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Subsequently, all principalities of present-day Ukraine acknowledged dependence upon the Mongols (1239–1240). In 1240, the Mongols sacked Kiev, and many people fled to other countries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Galicia-Volhynia</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A successor state to Kievan Rus' on part of the territory of today's Ukraine was the principality of Galicia-Volhynia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Previously, Vladimir the Great had established the cities of Halych and Ladomir (later Volodimer) as regional capitals for the western Ukrainian heartland.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This new, more exclusively Ukrainian predecessor state was based upon the Dulebe, Tiverian and White Croat tribes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The state was ruled by the descendants of Yaroslav the Wise and Vladimir Monomakh.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a brief period, the country was ruled by a Hungarian nobleman. Battles with the neighboring states of Poland and Lithuania also occurred, as well as internecine warfare with the independent Ruthenian principality of Chernigov to the east.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The nation reached its peak with the extension of rule to neighboring Wallachia/Bessarabia, all the way to the shores of the Black Sea.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During this period (around 1200–1400), each principality was independent of the other for a period of time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The state of Halych-Volynia eventually became a vassal to the Mongolian Empire, but efforts to gain European support for opposition to the Mongols continued.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This period marked the first "King of Rus'"; previously, the rulers of Rus' were termed, "Grand Dukes" or "Princes."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">14th Century</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the 14th century, Poland and Lithuania fought wars against the Mongol invaders, and eventually most of Ukraine passed to the rule of Poland and Lithuania.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More particularly, the lands of Volynia in the north and north-west passed to the rule of Lithuanian princes, while the south-west passed to the control of Poland (Galicia) and Hungary (Zakarpattya).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also the Genoese founded some colonies in Crimean coasts until Ottoman conquest in 1470s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of Ukraine bordered parts of Lithuania, and some say that the name, "Ukraine" comes from the local word for "border," although the name "Ukraine" was also used centuries earlier. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lithuania took control of the state of Volynia in northern and northwestern Ukraine, including the region around Kiev (Rus'), and the rulers of Lithuania then adopted the title of ruler of Rus'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Poland took control of the region of Galicia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following the union between Poland and Lithuania, Poles, Germans, Lithuanians and Jews migrated to the region.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 15th century decline of 'Golden Horde' enabled foundation of Crimean Khanate, which occupied present Black Sea shores and southern steppes of Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Until the late 18th century, Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Ukraine over the period 1500–1700.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was vassal state of Ottoman Empire till 1774.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was finally dissolved by Russian Empire in 1783.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Union of Lublin in 1569 and the formation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Ukraine fell under Polish administration, becoming part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. </span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nyeP4vmkymA/UxT_7Ky3pWI/AAAAAAAALnU/KR1y7Yz5jkQ/s1600/Coat+of+Arms+of+the+Polish-Lithuanian+Commonwealth+-++Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nyeP4vmkymA/UxT_7Ky3pWI/AAAAAAAALnU/KR1y7Yz5jkQ/s1600/Coat+of+Arms+of+the+Polish-Lithuanian+Commonwealth+-++Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="197" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Herb polsko-litewskiej Rzeczypospolitej<br />
Coat of Arms of the<br />
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The period immediately following the creation of the Commonwealth saw a huge revitalisation in colonisation efforts. Many new cities and villages were founded.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">New schools spread the ideas of the Renaissance; Polish peasants arrived in great numbers and quickly became mixed with the local population; during this time, most of Ukrainian nobles became polonised and converted to Catholicism, and while most Ruthenian-speaking peasants remained within the Eastern Orthodox Church, social tension rose.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ruthenian peasants (Ukrainians and some from other nations) who fled efforts to force them into serfdom came to be known as Cossacks and earned a reputation for their fierce martial spirit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some Cossacks were hired by the Commonwealth (became 'register Cossacks') as soldiers to protect the south-eastern borders of Poland from Tatars or took part in campaigns abroad (like Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny in the battle of Khotyn 1621).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cossack units were also active in wars between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Tsardom of Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Cossack Era</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Uj7VeXjBlmY/UxT8f4ETG1I/AAAAAAAALnI/6KsbULLzB0Q/s1600/Ukranian+Cossacks+-+Repin+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Uj7VeXjBlmY/UxT8f4ETG1I/AAAAAAAALnI/6KsbULLzB0Q/s1600/Ukranian+Cossacks+-+Repin+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ukranian Cossacks<br />
Ilya Yefimovich Repin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 1648 Ukrainian Cossack (Kozak) rebellion and war of independence (Khmelnytsky Uprising), which started an era known as the Ruin (in Polish history as The Deluge), undermined the foundations and stability of the Commonwealth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The nascent Cossack state, the Cossack Hetmanate, usually viewed as precursor of Ukraine, found itself in a three-sided military and diplomatic rivalry with the Ottoman Turks, who controlled the Tatars to the south, the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, and the rising Russia to the East.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reconstituted Ukrainian state, having recently fought a bitter war with Poland, sought a treaty of protection with Russia in 1654.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This agreement was known as the Treaty of Pereyaslav.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commonwealth authorities then sought compromise with the Ukrainian Cossack state by signing the Treaty of Hadiach in 1658, but - after thirteen years of incessant warfare - the agreement was later superseded by 1667 Polish-Russian Treaty of Andrusovo, which divided Ukrainian territory between the Commonwealth and Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under Russia, the Cossacks initially retained official autonomy in the Hetmanate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a time, they also maintained a semi-independent republic in Zaporozhia, and a colony on the Russian frontier in Sloboda Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tsarist rule over central Ukraine gradually replaced '<i>protection</i>' over the subsequent decades. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the extreme west of Ukraine fell under the control of the Austrians, with the rest as part of the Russian Empire.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iSTAop1P2Mo/Tn9jsW76VgI/AAAAAAAAAAg/1PvLWDwN24U/s1600/greater_coat_of_arms_of_the_russian_empire+-+Art+of+heraldry+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iSTAop1P2Mo/Tn9jsW76VgI/AAAAAAAAAAg/1PvLWDwN24U/s1600/greater_coat_of_arms_of_the_russian_empire+-+Art+of+heraldry+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="320" width="289" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Великий Герб Российской империи<br />
(Great Coat of Arms of the Russian Empire)<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result of Russo-Turkish Wars the Ottoman Empire's control receded from south-central Ukraine, while the rule of Hungary over the Transcarpathian region continued.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ukrainian writers and intellectuals were inspired by the <i>nationalistic spirit</i> stirring other European peoples existing under other imperial governments, and became determined to revive the Ukrainian linguistic and cultural traditions, and re-establish a Ukrainian nation-state, a movement that became known as <i>Ukrainophilism</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Russia, fearing separatism, imposed strict limits on attempts to elevate the Ukrainian language and culture, even banning its use and study.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This led to an exodus of a number of Ukrainian intellectuals into Western Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, many Ukrainians accepted their fate in the Russian Empire and some were to achieve a great success there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many Russian writers, composers, painters and architects of the 19th century were of Ukrainian descent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Probably the most notable were Nikolai Gogol, one of the greatest writers in the history of Russian literature, and <i>Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky</i>, one of the greatest composers in the history of Russian music, whose father came of Ukrainian Cossack stock.</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jn_u6Nv-I6M/UxT5j5l-TXI/AAAAAAAALm0/xahi6i3aBRU/s1600/Lesser_Coat_of_Arms_of_Russian_Empire+-+Art+of+Heraldry+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jn_u6Nv-I6M/UxT5j5l-TXI/AAAAAAAALm0/xahi6i3aBRU/s1600/Lesser_Coat_of_Arms_of_Russian_Empire+-+Art+of+Heraldry+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="165" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Kleines Wappen des Kaisertums Österreich</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">(Lesser Coat of Arms of the Austrian Empire)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fate of the Ukrainians was far different under the Austrian Empire where they found themselves in the pawn position of the Russian-Austrian power struggle for the Central and Southern Europe.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unlike in Russia, most of the elite that ruled Galicia were of <i>Austrian</i> or <i>Polish </i>descent, with the Ruthenians being almost exclusively kept in peasantry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the 19th century, <i>Russophilia</i> was a common occurrence among the Slavic population, but the mass exodus of Ukrainian intellectuals escaping from Russian repression in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the intervention of Austrian authorities, caused the movement to be replaced by <i>Ukrainophilia</i>, which would then cross-over into the Russian Empire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the start of World War I, all those supporting Russia were rounded up by Austrian forces and held in a <i>concentration camp</i> at Talerhof where many died.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">First World War, the Revolutions and Aftermath</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When World War I, and series of revolutions across Europe, including the<i> October Revolution</i> in Russia, shattered many existing empires such as the Austrian and Russian ones, people of Ukraine were caught in the middle.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NiwK5VeIt50/UxT3xUZXPKI/AAAAAAAALmo/_MC3MfgrnV8/s1600/Coat+of+Arms+of+Ukrainian+People's+Republic+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NiwK5VeIt50/UxT3xUZXPKI/AAAAAAAALmo/_MC3MfgrnV8/s1600/Coat+of+Arms+of+Ukrainian+People's+Republic+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="176" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emblem of the Ukrainian People's Republic<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Between 1917 and 1919, several separate Ukrainian republics manifested independence, the anarchist Free Territory, the Ukrainian People's Republic, the West Ukrainian People's Republic, and numerous Bolshevik revkoms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the area of Ukraine fell into warfare and anarchy, it was also fought over by German and Austrian forces, the Red Army of Bolshevik Russia, the White Forces of General Denikin, the Polish Army, anarchists led by Nestor Makhno.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kiev itself was occupied by many different armies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The city was captured by the Bolsheviks on 9 February 1918, by the Germans on 2 March 1918, by the Bolsheviks a second time on 5 February 1919, by the White Army on 31 August 1919, by Bolsheviks for a third time on 15 December 1919, by the Polish Army on 6 May 1920, and finally by the Bolsheviks for the fourth time on 12 June 1920.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War and then the failure of the Piłsudski's and Petliura's Warsaw agreement of 1920 to oust the Bolsheviks during the Kiev Operation led almost to the occupation of Poland itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In course of the new Polish-Soviet War purpose of which changed from the 1920 led to the signing of the Peace of Riga in March 1921, and after which the part of Ukraine west of Zbruch had been incorporated into Poland, and the east became part of the Soviet Union as the <i>Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Soviet Ukraine</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pIN2yIvC3sE/UxT05UFb6BI/AAAAAAAALmM/U-BJrm79CN8/s1600/Emblem+of+the+Ukrainian+Soviet+Socialist+Republic+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pIN2yIvC3sE/UxT05UFb6BI/AAAAAAAALmM/U-BJrm79CN8/s1600/Emblem+of+the+Ukrainian+Soviet+Socialist+Republic+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="179" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Emblem of the Ukrainian<br />Soviet Socialist Republic</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ukrainian national idea lived on during the inter-war years, and was even spread to a large territory with traditionally mixed population in the east and south that became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ukrainian culture even enjoyed a revival due to Bolshevik concessions in the early Soviet years (until early-1930s) known as the policy of Korenization ("<i>indigenisation</i>").</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In these years, an impressive Ukrainization program was implemented throughout the republic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rapidly developed Ukrainian language based education system dramatically raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone rural population.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simultaneously, the newly-literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianised - in both population and in education.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Similarly expansive was an increase in Ukrainian language publishing and overall eruption of Ukrainian cultural life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the same time, the usage of Ukrainian was continuously encouraged in the workplace and in the government affairs as the recruitment of indigenous cadre was implemented as part of the korenisation policies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While initially, the party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking, by the end of 1920s the ethnic Ukrainians composed <i>over one half</i> of the membership in the Ukrainian communist party, the number strengthened by accession of Borotbists, a formerly indigenously Ukrainian "<i>independentist</i>" and non-Bolshevik communist party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the ongoing Soviet Union-wide anti-religious campaign, the Ukrainian national Orthodox church was created called the <i>Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolshevik government initially saw the national church as a<i> tool</i> in their goal to suppress the Russian Orthodox Church, always viewed with the great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition it took towards the regime change.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Therefore, the government tolerated the new Ukrainian national church for some time, and the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> gained a wide following among the Ukrainian peasantry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The change in the Soviet economic policies towards the fast-pace industrialisation was marked by the 1928 introduction of Joseph Stalin's first <i>piatiletka</i> (a five-year plan).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The industrialisation brought about a dramatic <i>economic and social transformation</i> in traditionally agricultural Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the first <i>piatiletkas</i> the industrial output of Ukraine <i>quadrupled</i> as the republic underwent a <i>record industrial development</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The massive influx of the rural population to the industrial centres increased the urban population from 19% to 34%.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ukraine in World War II</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lSNfoXTheEM/UxUCp-gTYTI/AAAAAAAALnw/NoTzmKKVrYk/s1600/Arms+of+Poland.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lSNfoXTheEM/UxUCp-gTYTI/AAAAAAAALnw/NoTzmKKVrYk/s1600/Arms+of+Poland.png" height="200" width="169" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coat of Arms of Poland<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vq5CBb0Dp0A/UxUCUxcjgnI/AAAAAAAALno/5p_kSC4-SM8/s1600/Molotov+Ribbentrop+Stalin+-+Non+Agression+Pact+-+Soviet+Union+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vq5CBb0Dp0A/UxUCUxcjgnI/AAAAAAAALno/5p_kSC4-SM8/s1600/Molotov+Ribbentrop+Stalin+-+Non+Agression+Pact+-+Soviet+Union+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="280" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact - 1939</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland, including Galicia with its Ukrainian population.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next, after France surrendered to Germany, Romania ceded Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to Soviet demands.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ukrainian SSR incorporated northern and southern districts of Bessarabia, the northern Bukovina, and additionally the Soviet-occupied Hertsa region, but ceded the western part of the Moldavian ASSR to the newly created Moldavian SSR.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All these territorial gains were internationally recognized by the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V4s1AkrO-zc/UxUHJY2VwiI/AAAAAAAALoE/nl76ptdZF5w/s1600/Reich+Adler+6.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V4s1AkrO-zc/UxUHJY2VwiI/AAAAAAAALoE/nl76ptdZF5w/s1600/Reich+Adler+6.png" height="227" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Third Reich<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the Third Reich, with its allies, invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, many Ukrainians and Polish people, particularly in the west where they had experienced two years of harsh Soviet rule, initially regarded the Wehrmacht soldiers as liberators.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some Ukrainian activist of the national movement hoped for a momentum to establish an <i>independent state </i>of Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">German policies initially gave some encouragement to such hopes through the vague promises of sovereign '<i>Greater Ukraine</i>' as the Germans were trying to take advantage of anti-Soviet, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Polish, and anti-Jewish sentiments.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e9LwOMmovm8/UxUGPjK8HII/AAAAAAAALn8/01CHhFQ8vpI/s1600/Divisional+insignia+of+the+14th+Waffen+Grenadier+Division+of+the+SS+-+1st+Ukrainian+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e9LwOMmovm8/UxUGPjK8HII/AAAAAAAALn8/01CHhFQ8vpI/s1600/Divisional+insignia+of+the+14th+Waffen+Grenadier+Division+of+the+SS+-+1st+Ukrainian+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">14th Waffen Grenadier Division<br />
of the SS (1st Ukrainian)<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A local Ukrainian auxiliary police was formed as well as Ukrainian SS division, 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Galicia (1st Ukrainian).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, after the initial period of a limited tolerance, the German policies soon abruptly changed and the Ukrainian national movement was brutally crushed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some Ukrainians, however, utterly resisted the Nazi onslaught from its start and a partisan movement immediately spread over the occupied territory. Some elements of the Ukrainian nationalist underground formed a Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought both Soviet and Nazi forces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In some western regions of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army survived underground and continued the resistance against the Soviet authorities well into the 1950s, though many Ukrainian civilians were murdered in this conflict by both sides.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Geramn administrators of conquered Soviet territories made little attempt to exploit the population's possible dissatisfaction with Soviet political and economic policies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead, the Germans preserved the collective-farm system, and deported many Ukrainians to forced labour in Germany.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In their active resistance to the Third Reich, the Ukrainians comprised a significant share of the Red Army and its leadership as well as the underground and resistance movements.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Total civilian losses during the War and German occupation in Ukraine are estimated at seven million.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of the estimated eleven million Soviet troops who fell in battle against the Third Reich, about 16% (1.7 million) were ethnic Ukrainians.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, Ukraine saw some of the biggest battles of the war starting with the encirclement of Kiev (the city itself fell to the Germans on 19 September 1941 and was later acclaimed as a Hero City) where more than 660,000 Russian troops were taken captive, to the fierce defence of Odessa, and on to the victorious storming across the Dnieper river.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On June 28, 1941 the town of Rivne (Równe) was captured by the Germans, who later established the city as the administrative centre of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kiev was recaptured by the Soviet Red Army on 6 November 1943.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During a period of March 1943 to the end of 1944 Ukrainian Insurgent Army committed several massacres on Polish civilian population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia having every signs of genocide (Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The death toll numbered up to 100 000, mostly children and women.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Crimea in the 20th and 21st Centuries</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the Russian Civil War following the overthrow of the Russian Empire, Crimea changed hands a number of times and was a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was in Crimea that the White Russians led by General Wrangel made their last stand against the Anarchist forces of Nestor Makhno and the Red Army in 1920.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Approximately 50,000 White prisoners of war and civilians were summarily executed by shooting or hanging after the defeat of General Wrangel at the end of 1920.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is considered one of the largest massacres in the Civil War.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 18 October 1921, the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) was created as part of the Russian SFSR, which then became part of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crimea experienced two severe famines in the 20th century, the Famine of 1921–1922 and the Holodomor of 1932–1933.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During World War II, Crimea was the scene of several bloody battles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Axis forces under the command of Germany suffered heavy casualties in the summer of 1941 as they tried to advance through the narrow Isthmus of Perekop linking Crimea to the Soviet mainland.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once the Axis forces broke through, they occupied most of Crimea, with the exception of the city of Sevastopol, which held out from October 1941 until 4 July 1942 when the Germans finally captured the city.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 1 September 1942, the peninsula was administered as the Generalbezirk Krim (general district of Crimea) und Teilbezirk (and sub-district) Taurien.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In spite of heavy-handed tactics by the Germans and their allies, the Crimean mountains remained an unconquered stronghold of the native resistance until the day when the peninsula was freed from the occupying force in 1944.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 18 May 1944, the entire population of the Crimean Tatars was forcibly deported in the "Sürgün" (Turkish (Crimean Tatar) for exile) to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin's Soviet government as a form of collective punishment, on the grounds that they had collaborated with the German occupation forces, and formed anti-Soviet Tatar Legions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An estimated 46% of the deportees died from hunger and disease.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 26 June of the same year, the Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek population was also deported to Central Asia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of summer of 1944, the <i>ethnic cleansing </i>of Crimea was complete.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1967, the Crimean Tatars were rehabilitated, but they were banned from legally returning to their homeland until the last days of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Crimean ASSR was abolished on 30 June 1945 and transformed into the Crimean Oblast (province) of the Russian SFSR.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 19 February 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued a decree transferring the Crimean Oblast from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The transfer of the Crimean Oblast to Ukraine has been described as a "<i>symbolic gesture</i>," marking the 300th anniversary of Ukraine becoming a part of the Russian Empire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The General Secretary of the Communist Party in Soviet Union was at the time the Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In post-war years, Crimea thrived as a prime tourist destination, built with new attractions and spas for tourists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tourists came from all over the Soviet Union and neighbouring countries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crimea's infrastructure and manufacturing was also developed, particularly around the sea ports at Kerch and Sevastopol and in the oblast's landlocked capital of Simferopol.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following a referendum on 20 January 1991, the Crimean Oblast was upgraded to that of an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on 12 February 1991 by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine, which led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crimean Tatars began returning from exile and resettling in Crimea.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
'Украинский Пасха'<br />
'Ukranian Easter'<br />
Pimonenko</td></tr>
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'Пастушка и ее овец - Украина'<br />
'Shepherdess and her Flock - Ukraine'<br />
Vladimir Orlovsky</td></tr>
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'Весенний день в Украине'<br />
'A Spring Day in Ukraine'<br />
Vladimir Orlovsky</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Пейзаж в Украине'<br />
'Landscape in the Ukraine'<br />
Vladimir Orlovsky</td></tr>
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'Посмотреть вблизи Лубны - Украина'<br />
View near Lubni, Ukraine<br />
Iosif Krachkovsky</td></tr>
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'Весенний день в Украине'<br />
'Spring Day in the Ukraine'<br />
Sergey Vasilkovsky</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-87604333276348550712013-04-24T15:15:00.000-07:002014-02-28T16:50:09.117-08:00ленинизм - Leninism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>ленинизм</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #b45f06; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">LENINISM</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HufRCQ9QQFI/UXhj_AJ7pYI/AAAAAAAAF98/_aC_QpRkgIs/s1600/Vladimir+Lenin+-+Bolshevik+-+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HufRCQ9QQFI/UXhj_AJ7pYI/AAAAAAAAF98/_aC_QpRkgIs/s200/Vladimir+Lenin+-+Bolshevik+-+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="136" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Владимир Ильич Ульянов<br />
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov<br />
Ленина<br />
Lenin</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karl Marx</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist philosophy</a>, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary <i>vanguard party</i>, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Developed by, and named for, the Russian revolutionary <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 1870–1924), Leninism comprises political and socialist economic theories, developed from <i>Marxism</i>, and Lenin’s interpretations of <i>Marxist Theory,</i> for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the <i>agrarian Russian Empire</i> (1721–1917) of the early 20th century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In February 1917, for five years, Leninism was the Russian application of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank"><i>Marxist economics</i> </a>and political philosophy, effected and realised by the <i>Bolshevik party</i>, the <i>vanguard party</i> who led the fight for the political independence of the working class.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Functionally, the Leninist <i>vanguard party</i> provided to the working class the <i>political consciousness</i> (education and organisation), and the <i>revolutionary leadership </i>necessary to depose <i>capitalism</i> in Imperial Russia.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">October Revolution 1917</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">October Revolution of 1917</a></i>, Leninism was the dominant version of <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxism</a></i> in Russia, and then the <i>official state ideology</i> of Soviet democracy (by workers’ council) in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), before its unitary amalgamation into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in 1922.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, in post–Lenin Russia, in the 1925–29 period, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin </a>integrated Leninism to Marxist economics, and developed<i> Marxism–Leninism</i>, which then became the state ideology of the USSR.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922, only after infirmity ended Lenin’s participation in governing the Russian Communist Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two years later, in July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International (Comintern), Grigory Zinoviev popularized the use of the term Leninism to denote <i>vanguard-party revolution</i>. Leninism was composed as and for revolutionary <i>praxis</i>, and originally was neither rigorously proper philosophy nor discrete political theory.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Григо́рий Евсе́евич Зино́вье<br />
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Григо́рий Евсе́евич Зино́вьев - Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev (September 23 [O.S. September 11] 1883 – August 25, 1936), born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum (Russian: Радомысльский), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. Zinoviev is best remembered as the longtime head of the Communist International and the architect of the several failed attempts to transform Germany into a communist country during the early 1920s. He was in competition against <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin </a>who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership. He was the chief defendant in a 1936 show trial, the Trial of the Sixteen that marked the start of the so-called Great Terror in the USSR and resulted in his execution the day after his conviction in August 1936.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Russian Revolution (1917), in 'History and Class Consciousness' (1923), György Lukács ideologically developed and organised Lenin’s pragmatic revolutionary practices into the formal philosophy of <i>vanguard-party revolution</i> (Leninism).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Historical Background</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels</td></tr>
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In the 19th century, '<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">The Communist Manifesto</a>' (1848), by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Karl Marx</a> and <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Friedrich Engels</a>, called for the international political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve a Communist revolution; and proposed that, because the socio-economic organization of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers’ revolution would first occur in the economically advanced, industrialized countries.</div>
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Yet, in the early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/tsar-nicholas-ii.html" target="_blank">Imperial Russia</a> (uneven and combined economic development) facilitated rapid and intensive industrialization, which produced a united, working-class proletariat in a predominantly rural, agrarian peasant society.</div>
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Moreover, because the industrialization was financed mostly with foreign capital, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/tsar-nicholas-ii.html" target="_blank">Imperial Russia</a> (1721–1917) did not possess a revolutionary bourgeoisie with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants (as occurred in the French Revolution, 1789).</div>
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So, although Russia's political economy principally was <i>agrarian</i> and <i>semi-feudal</i>, the task of democratic revolution therefore fell to the<i> urban, industrial working class,</i> as the only social class capable of effecting land reform and democratization, in view that the Russian propertied classes would attempt to suppress any revolution, in town and country.</div>
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In April 1917, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> published the 'April Theses', the strategy of the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">October Revolution</a>, which proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated national event, but a fundamentally international event — the first world socialist revolution.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">апрельские тезисы, - The 'April Theses' were a series of directives issued by the Bolshevik leader <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Lenin</a> upon his return to Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), Russia from his exile in Switzerland. The Theses were mostly aimed at fellow <i>Bolsheviks</i> in Russia and returning to Russia from exile. He called for <i>soviets</i> (workers' councils) to take power (as seen in the slogan "<i>all power to the soviets</i>"), denounced liberals and social democrats in the Provisional Government, called for Bolsheviks not to cooperate with the government, and called for new communist policies. The 'April Theses' influenced the July Days and October Revolution in the next months and are identified with Leninism.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, Lenin's practical application of </span><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Marxism</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">working-class urban revolution</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to the social, political, and economic conditions of the </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">agrarian peasant society</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that was </span><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/tsar-nicholas-ii.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Tsarist Russia</a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> sparked the “</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">revolutionary nationalism of the poor</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">” to depose the absolute monarchy of the three-hundred-year </span><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/tsar-nicholas-ii.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Romanov dynasty </a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(1613–1917)/</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Imperialism</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the course of developing the Russian application of Marxism, the pamphlet 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism' (1916) presented Lenin’s analysis of an economic development predicted by Karl Marx: that capitalism would become a global financial system, wherein advanced industrial countries export financial capital to their colonial countries, to finance the exploitation of their natural resources and the labour of the native populations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such super-exploitation of the poor (undeveloped) countries allows the wealthy (developed) countries to maintain some homeland workers politically content with a slightly higher standard of living, and so ensure peaceful labour–capital relations in the capitalist homeland, hence, a proletarian revolution of workers and peasants could not occur in the developed capitalist countries, while the imperialist global-finance system remained intact; thus an underdeveloped country would feature the first proletarian revolution; and, in the early 20th century, Imperial Russia was the politically weakest country in the capitalist global-finance system.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Vanguard Party</span><br />
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In Chapter II: “Proletarians and Communists” of 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848), Engels and Marx presented the idea of the '<i>vanguard party</i>' as <i>solely qualified</i> to politically lead the proletariat in revolution:</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat</i>.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence, the purpose of the Leninist '<i>vanguard party'</i> is to establish a democratic <i>dictatorship of the proletariat</i>; supported by the working class, the '<i>vanguard party'</i> would lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and then transfer power of government to the working class, which change of ruling class — from bourgeoisie to proletariat — makes possible the <i>full development</i> of socialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the pamphlet 'What is to be Done ?' (1902), Lenin proposed that a <i>revolutionary vanguard party</i>, mostly recruited from the <i>working class</i>, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade-union-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties; and later by the anarcho-syndicalists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the "<i>economic campaign</i>" (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused plural leadership; and the "<i>political campaign</i>" (socialist changes to society), which required the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.</span><br />
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Before the Revolution, despite supporting political reform (including Bolsheviks elected to the Duma, when opportune), Lenin proposed that capitalism could ultimately only be overthrown with <i>revolution</i>, not with gradual reforms — from within (<i>Fabianism</i>) and from without (<i>social democracy</i>) — which would fail, because the ruling capitalist social class, who hold economic power (the means of production), determine the nature of political power in a bourgeois society.</div>
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As epitomised in the slogan, “<i>For a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry</i>”, a revolution in underdeveloped <i>Tsarist Russia</i> required an <i>allied proletariat</i> of town and country (<i>urban workers and peasants</i>), because the urban workers would be <i>too few</i> to successfully assume power in the cities on their own.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, owing to the </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">middle-class aspirations</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of much of the peasantry, </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leon Trotsky</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> proposed that the proletariat should lead the revolution, as the only way for it to be truly socialist and democratic; although Lenin initially </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">disagreed</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> with Trotsky’s formulation, he adopted it before the Russian Revolution in October 1917.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Russian socialist society, government by direct democracy was effected by elected <i>soviets</i> (workers’ councils), which "<i>soviet government</i>" form Lenin described as the manifestation of the <i>Marxist ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat</i>’.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As political organisations, the soviets would comprise representatives of factory workers’ and trade union committees, but would <i>exclude</i> capitalists, as a social class, in order to ensure the establishment of a proletarian government, by and for the working class and the peasants. About the political <i>disenfranchisement</i> of the Russian capitalist social classes, Lenin said that ‘depriving the exploiters of the franchise is a <i>purely Russian question</i>, and not a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in general.... In which countries... democracy for the exploiters will be, in one or another form, restricted... is a question of the specific national features of this or that capitalism’.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In chapter five of 'The State and Revolution' (1917) Lenin describes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'...the dictatorship of the proletariat — i.e. the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors.... An immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich:... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people — this is the change which democracy undergoes during the ‘transition’ from capitalism to communism</i>.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soviet constitutionalism was the collective government form of the Russian dictatorship of the proletariat, the opposite of the government form of the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the soviet political system, the (Leninist) <i>vanguard party</i> would be one of many political parties competing for elected power.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless, the circumstances of the'Red' vs. 'White' Russian Civil War, and terrorism by the opposing political parties, and in aid of the White Armies' counter-revolution, led to the Bolshevik government <i>banning</i> other parties; thus, the <i>vanguard party</i> became the <i>sole</i>, legal political party in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin did not regard such political suppression as philosophically inherent to the dictatorship of the proletariat; yet the Stalinists retrospectively claimed that such <i>factional suppression</i> was original to Leninism</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Economics</span><br />
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Soviet democracy<i> nationalised industry</i> and established a <i>foreign-trade monopoly</i> to allow the productive co-ordination of the national economy, and so <i>prevent</i> Russian national industries from competing against each other.</div>
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To feed the populaces of town and country, Lenin instituted '<i>War Communism</i>' (1918–21) as a necessary condition — adequate supplies of food and weapons — for fighting the Russian Civil War (1917–23).</div>
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Later, in March 1921, he established the '<i>New Economic Policy</i>' (NEP, 1921–29), which allowed measures of <i>private commerce</i>, <i>internal free trade</i>, and replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax, under the management of State banks.</div>
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The purpose of the NEP was to resolve food-shortage riots among the peasantry, and allowed measures of <i>private enterprise</i>, wherein the <i>profit motive</i> encouraged the peasants to harvest the crops required to feed the people of town and country; and to economically re-establish the urban working class, who had lost many men (workers) to the counter-revolutionary Civil War.</div>
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With the NEP, the socialist nationalisation of the economy could then be developed to industrialise Russia, <i>strengthen</i> the working class, and raise standards of living; thus the NEP would <i>advance</i> socialism against capitalism.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin regarded the appearance of new socialist states in the developed countries as </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">necessary</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to the strengthening Russia's economy, and the eventual development of socialism. In that, he was encouraged by the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Italian insurrection and general strikes of 1920, and industrial unrest in Britain, France, and the U.S.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Lenin recognized and accepted the existence of <i>nationalism </i>among oppressed peoples, advocated their national rights to <i>self-determination</i>, and <i>opposed</i> the ethnic chauvinism of “<i>Greater Russia</i>” because such ethnocentrism was a cultural obstacle to establishing the <i>proletarian dictatorship</i> in the territories of the deposed Tsarist Russian Empire (1721–1917).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 'The Right of Nations to Self-determination' (1914), Lenin said:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the oppressed nation.... The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support. At the same time, we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness.... Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations ? It cannot.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i>The internationalist philosophies of Bolshevism and of<i> Marxism</i> are based upon <i>class struggle</i> <i>transcending</i> nationalism, ethnocentrism, and religion, which are intellectual obstacles to class consciousness, because the bourgeois ruling classes manipulated said cultural status quo to politically divide the proletarian working classes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To overcome the political barrier of nationalism, Lenin said it was necessary to acknowledge the existence of nationalism among oppressed peoples, and to <i>guarantee</i> their national independence, as the right of secession; and that, based upon national self-determination, it was natural for socialist states to<i> transcend nationalism</i> and form a <i>federation</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 'The Question of Nationalities', or “Autonomisation” (1923), Lenin said:<br /><br /><i>'...nothing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice; “offended” nationals are not sensitive to anything, so much as to the feeling of equality, and the violation of this equality, if only through negligence or jest — to the violation of that equality by their proletarian comrades.'</i></span><br />
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-28033409592927106722013-04-24T01:39:00.005-07:002013-04-24T16:37:12.538-07:00сталинизм - Stalinism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>сталинизм</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">STALINISM</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinism is a theory and practice of communism conceived and implemented by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin</a> in the Soviet Union whilst officially adhering to Marxist–Leninism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term came into prominence during the mid-1930s, when Lazar Kaganovich, a Soviet politician and associate of Stalin, reportedly declared, "<i>Let's replace Long Live Leninism with Long Live Stalinism!</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> initially met this usage with hesitancy, dismissing it as excessive, and contributing to a cult of personality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some criticize Stalinist practical measures, such as repression and economic policy, as a deviation from both Marxist and Leninist philosophy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinist policies in the Soviet Union included: rapid industrialization, socialism in one country, a centralized state, collectivization of agriculture, and subordination of interests of other communist parties to those of the Soviet party - deemed to be the most forefront <i>vanguard party</i> of socialist revolution at the time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinist rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union was officially designed to accelerate the development towards communism, stressing that such rapid industrialization was needed because the country was previously economically backward in comparison with other countries; and that it was needed in order to challenge internal and external enemies of communism. Rapid industrialization was accompanied with mass collectivization of agriculture and rapid urbanization.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rapid urbanization converted many small villages into industrial cities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To accelerate the development of industrialization, Stalin pragmatically created joint venture contracts with major American private enterprises, such as Ford Motor Company, that under state supervision assisted in developing the basis of industry of the Soviet economy from the late 1920s to 1930s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the American private enterprises completed their tasks, Soviet state enterprises took over.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinism took an aggressive stance on class conflict, utilizing <i>state violence </i>to <i>forcibly purge</i> society of the bourgeoisie.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">State violence against the affluent peasant <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Kulaks</a></i> was initiated in response to CPSU workers who were sent to enforce the collectivization of farms, being subjected to gunfire, riots, and mass protests by peasants; Stalin believed that the <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Kulaks</a></i> incited the violence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin responded by committing classicide against the <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Kulaks</a></i> for being class enemies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinism may be used in a negative or pejorative manner due to the known extremely repressive political actions undertaken by Stalin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reasons for Stalin's repressive actions have been debated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One perspective claims that Stalin's<i> repressive</i> actions were calculated, and that he was mentally sane in his execution of repressive measures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another, and probably legitimate </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">perspective</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, states that Stalin's </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">repressive</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> political actions were the result of him having </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">mental illness</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This states that Stalin likely had the mental disorder of <i>psychopathy,</i> and that its traits such as<i> paranoia</i> and <i>manipulative behaviour</i> influenced his political decisions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Concurrent with the previous scenario, a</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> third perspective suggests that Stalinism's repressive actions were an </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">extension</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of the prevailing </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">authoritarian political culture</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that originated in <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/tsar-nicholas-ii.html" target="_blank">Tsarist Russia</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalinist Policies</span><br />
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Stalinism usually denotes a style of a government, and an ideology.</div>
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While he claimed to be a <i>perfect adherent</i> to the ideas of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Lenin</a> and Karl Marx, and hence claimed that it was merely a<i> style of government,</i> many of his policies and beliefs were different or in <i>direct opposition</i> to those of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> and Marx.</div>
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Stalin's ideas of Socialism in one country, his adoption of many aspects of capitalism, and his turn to complete, permanent dictatorship were all in stark contradiction to the ideologies put forth by Lenin or Marx.</div>
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Stalinism is a certain political regime claiming to apply the ideas of Marx or <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> in ways fitting the changing needs of society, as with the transition from "<i>socialism at a snail's pace</i>" in the mid-1920s to the rapid industrialization of the Five-Year Plans.</div>
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Simultaneously, however, some people who profess Marxism or Leninism view Stalinism as a <i>perversion</i> of their ideas; Trotskyists, in particular, are <i>virulently anti-Stalinist</i>, considering Stalinism a <i>counter-revolutionary</i> style of governance that used <i>vaguely Marxist</i>-sounding rhetoric to achieve power.</div>
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From 1917 to 1924, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a>, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a>, and Stalin often <i>appeared</i> united, but their ideological differences never disappeared.</div>
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In his dispute with <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Leon Trotsky</a>, Stalin <i>de-emphasized</i> the role of workers in advanced capitalist countries (for example, he considered the U.S. working class as <i>bourgeoisified labour aristocracy</i>).</div>
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Also, Stalin polemicized <i>against</i> Trotsky on the role of peasants, as in China, whereas Trotsky's position was in favor of<i> urban insurrection </i>over peasant-based guerrilla warfare.</div>
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The main contributions of Stalin to socialist theory were:</div>
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The groundwork for the Soviet policy concerning nationalities, laid in Stalin's 1913 work Marxism and the National Question, praised by Lenin.</div>
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'Socialism in One Country'</div>
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The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, a theoretical base supporting the repression of political opponents as necessary.<br />
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Stalin argued that the state must become <i>stronger</i> before it can "<i>wither away</i>" in favor of creating the utopian <i>classless Communist society (</i>which has<i> never</i> been achieved<i>)</i>.</div>
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In Stalin's view, the state must be <i>powerful </i>enough to <i>defeat</i> counterrevolutionary elements.</div>
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For this reason, Communist regimes influenced by Stalin have been widely described as <i>totalitarian</i>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalinist Economic Policy</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the start of the 1930s Stalin launched a wave of radical economic policies, which completely overhauled the industrial and agricultural face of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This came to be known as the '<i>Great Turn</i>' as Russia turned away from the near-capitalist '<i>New Economic Policy'</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NEP had been implemented by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> in order to ensure the survival of the Socialist state following seven years of war (1914–1921, World War I from 1914 to 1917, and the subsequent Civil War) and had rebuilt Soviet production to its 1913 levels, however, Russia still lagged far behind the West, and the NEP was felt by Stalin, and the majority of the party, not only to be compromising Communist ideals, but also not delivering sufficient economic performance, as well as not creating the envisaged Socialist society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was therefore felt necessary to <i>increase </i>the pace of industrialisation in order to catch up with the West.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to many historians, Stalinist agricultural policies were a key factor in causing the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, which the Ukrainian government now calls the 'Holodomor', recognizing it as an act of genocide.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Soviet (Council) Socialism</span><br />
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Although worker's councils were politically significant in the earliest stages of the Soviet Union, they soon lost their power and significance as political power became more <i>centralised</i> and was concentrated in the hands of the <i>higher levels</i> of a developing hierarchy within the All-Union Communist Party.</div>
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The operation of the Soviet Union under Stalinism was almost entirely <i>undemocratic</i>, vesting absolute power into <i>unelected</i> bureaucrats.</div>
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This was<i> abhorrent</i> to soviet (council) communists, and more orthodox Leninists, who believe that workers' councils, or communes, embody the fundamental principles of socialism, such as workers' control over production and distribution, indeed, some have described '<i>council</i>' communism as "<i>socialism from below</i>," which they counterpose against what they see as the "<i>socialism from above</i>" that was endorsed by Stalinism.</div>
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According to this view, <i>socialism from above</i> is carried out by a <i>centralized state</i> run by an <i>elite bureaucratic apparatus</i>, whereas <i>socialism from below</i> represents the self-administration and <i>self-rule of the working class</i>.</div>
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Council communists described the Soviet Union as a <i>pseudo-capitalist state</i>, believing that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia became a "<i>bourgeois revolution</i>" when a party bureaucracy replaced the old <i>feudal aristocracy</i>.</div>
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Although most council communists felt the Russian Revolution was <i>working class</i> in character, they believed that the Soviet Union was a '<i>state capitalist country'</i>, with the state <i>replacing </i>the <i>individual capitalists</i> (an additional argument in favour of that was the continued existence of capitalist relations, as manifested e.g. in the 'New Economic Policy' - NEP).</div>
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The <i>core principle</i> of council communism is that the government and the economy should be managed by workers' councils composed of delegates elected at workplaces, and recallable at any moment.</div>
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As such, council communists oppose the idea of an authoritarian "<i>State socialist"/"State capitalis</i>t" planned economy, such as in the Soviet Union.</div>
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They also oppose the idea of a "<i>revolutionary party</i>", since council communists believe that a revolution led by a party will necessarily produce a <i>party dictatorship</i>.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Council communists support a </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">worker's democracy</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, which they want to produce through a </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">federation of workers' councils</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Relationship to Leninism</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The historiography of Stalin is diverse, with many different aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the regimes of Stalin and Lenin proposed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinism <i>may</i> be seen as the natural consequence of Leninism, that Stalin "f<i>aithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programmes</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More nuanced versions of this general view are to be found in the works of other historians, who suggests that "<i>institutionally and ideologically, Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin... but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Proponents of continuity cite a variety of contributory factors: it is argued that it was Lenin, rather than Stalin, whose civil war measures introduced the '<i>Red Terror</i>', with its hostage taking and internment camps, that it was <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> who developed the infamous Article 58, and who established the <i>autocratic</i> system within the Communist Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They also note that <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> put a <i>ban on factions</i> within the Russian Communist Party and introduced the <i>one-party state</i> in 1921 - a move that enabled Stalin to get rid of his rivals easily after Lenin's death, and cite Felix Dzerzhinsky, who, during the Bolshevik struggle against opponents in the Russian Civil War, exclaimed "<i>We stand for organised terror – this should be frankly stated</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Opponents of this view include revisionist historians and a number of post–Cold War and otherwise dissident Soviet historians including Roy Medvedev, who argues that although "one could list the various measures carried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under Lenin... in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with Lenin's clear instructions, but in defiance of them".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In doing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinism from Leninism in order to undermine the Totalitarian view that the negative facets of Stalin (terror, etc.) were inherent in Communism from the start.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Critics of this kind include anti-Stalinist communists such as <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Leon Trotsky</a>, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade the CPSU to remove Stalin from his post as its General Secretary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin's Testament, the document which contained this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is suggested that on being faced with the evidence "<i>only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has also been argued that "<i>Stalinism was not a natural flow-on of earlier developments; it formed a sharp break resulting from conscious decisions by leading political actors</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalinism as "Red Fascism"</span><br />
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Stalinism has been considered by some reviewers as a "Red fascism".</div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the 20th century, the comparison of Stalinism and </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">National Socialism</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was made on the topics of totalitarianism, ideology, and personality.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both regimes were seen in <i>contrast</i> to the liberal West, however it was also</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> argued that the National Socialist regime was far too disorganized to be considered totalitarian (alhough this is disputed).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalinism and National Socialism mutually emphasized the importance of <i>utopian biopolitics</i>, especially in regards to <i>reproduction</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This emphasis alone was not unique, as many other European states practiced <i>eugenics</i> at this time, and the Stalinist and National Socialist ideals were vastly different.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The key similarity was the connection of reproduction policies with the ideological goals of the state.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were nevertheless substantial differences between the two regimes' approaches, - Stalin's Soviet Union never officially supported <i>eugenics</i> as the Nazis did - the Soviet government 'officially' called <i>eugenics</i> a "<i>fascist science</i>", however there were in fact Soviet <i>eugenicists</i>; also the two regimes had different approaches to the relationship between family and paid labour - National Socialism promoted the <i>male single-breadwinner family</i> while Stalinism promoted the <i>dual-wageearner househould</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and Fascist Italy were all highly concerned over low fertility rates.</span><br />
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Reproductive policies in the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany were administered through their health care systems - both regimes saw health care as a key pillar to their designs to develop a <i>new society</i>.</div>
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While the Soviet Union had to design a public health care system from scratch, the Third Reich built upon the pre-existing public health care system in Germany that had been developed since 1883 by Otto von Bismarck's legislation that had developed the world's first national public health care program, and since then public health care had dramatically increased in scope.</div>
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The National Socialists centralized the German health care system in order to enforce Volkisch ideological components upon it, the National Socialists replaced existing voluntary and government welfare agencies with new ones that were devoted to racial hygiene and other components of Volkisch ideology.[16]</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Communist Party in the RSFSR </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">embraced eugenics</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> in 1920 with the founding of the '</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Russian Eugenics Society'</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, followed the next year with the founding of the '</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bureau of Eugenics</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">' in the </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soviet Academy of Sciences</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Creating the 'New Man'</span><br />
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Both Stalinism and National Socialism share an <i>ideological vision</i> of creating an ideal '<i>new man'</i>, both identified the "<i>bourgeois</i>" world as the<i> old world</i> that was <i>obsolete</i>, and both involved a<i> total rejection</i> of <i>liberalism</i> as well as individual rights and freedoms, in which they sought to create a <i>new, illiberal modern society.</i></div>
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This vision of the '<i>New Man</i>' differed between them, the Stalinists conceived of the '<i>New Man</i>' as necessarily involving the <i>liberation of all of humanity</i> - a global and non-ethnic goal, while the National Socialists conceived of the '<i>New Man</i>' as a '<i>new creation</i>' and a '<i>master race</i>' that would organize a<i> new racial hierarchy</i> in Europe.</div>
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Though fascist regimes were ideologically opposed to the Soviet Union, some of them positively regarded Stalinism as evolving Bolshevism into a form of fascism.</div>
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Benito Mussolini positively reviewed Stalinism as having transformed Soviet Bolshevism into a Slavic fascism.</div>
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Despite ideological differences and holding territorial claims on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler admired Stalin and his politics, and believed that Stalin was in effect transforming Soviet Bolshevism into a form of National Socialism.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Socialism</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both ideologies (National Socialism and Stalinism) were about building a form of socialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The National Sociaists were undoubtedly sincere in their use of the adjective <i>socialist</i>, which they saw as inseparable from the adjective<i> national</i>, and meant it as a<i> socialism of the master race,</i> rather than the socialism of the "<i>underprivileged and oppressed seeking justice and equal rights</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Further, while Hitler for <i>"tactical</i>" reasons had rhetorically declared a 1920 party platform with socialist platitudes "<i>unshakable</i>," actually "<i>many paragraphs of the party program were obviously merely a demagogic appeal to the mood of the lower classes at a time when they were in bad straits and were sympathetic to radical and even socialist slogans...Point 11, for example...Point 12...nationalization...Point 16...communalization.... put in at the insistence of Drexler and Feder, who apparently really believed in the 'socialism' of National Socialism.</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In actual practice, such points were mere slogans, "<i>most of them forgotten by the time the party came to power.... the Nazi leader himself was later to be embarrassed when reminded of some of them.</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the same time <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> was consistent in his implementation of <i>complete</i> nationalization and <i>communalization</i> of the country.</span><br />
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-35820469502663049662013-04-20T13:39:00.001-07:002013-04-24T00:12:40.778-07:00Trotskyism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>троцкизма</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trotskyism</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-73tMvWRgQJo/UXRZVHCZluI/AAAAAAAAF2g/cPNSKnj7h_Y/s1600/Karl+Marx+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-73tMvWRgQJo/UXRZVHCZluI/AAAAAAAAF2g/cPNSKnj7h_Y/s200/Karl+Marx+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karl Marx</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZncfUnnOKfE/UXRXThwOVCI/AAAAAAAAF2Y/d2vJ6eD6cWw/s1600/Leon+Trotsky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZncfUnnOKfE/UXRXThwOVCI/AAAAAAAAF2Y/d2vJ6eD6cWw/s200/Leon+Trotsky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="159" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leon Trotsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotskyism is the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Theory of Marxism</a> as advocated by<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank"> Leon Trotsky</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> identified as an orthodox <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist</a> and Bolshevik-Leninist, and supported founding a <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">vanguard party</a> of the working-class.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His politics differed sharply from those of Stalinism, as he opposed the idea of Socialism in One Country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> still supported proletarian internationalism, and an authentic dictatorship of the proletariat based on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He believed that a bureaucracy developed under Stalin after Lenin's death.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vladimir Lenin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">V. I. Lenin</a> and <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> were close both ideologically and personally during the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">Russian Revolution of 1917</a> and its aftermath, and some call <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> its "<i>co-leader</i>", however, Lenin criticized Trotsky's ideas and intra-Party political habits.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trotsky Reviewing the Red Army</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> was the <i>paramount leader</i> of the Soviet Red Army in the direct aftermath of the Revolutionary period.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> originally opposed some aspects of Leninism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later, he concluded that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible, and joined the Bolsheviks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> played a leading role with Lenin in the revolution.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c-HusBthvMM/UW2_ptUPzOI/AAAAAAAAFgY/-TrnQ40-65M/s1600/Logo+of+the+Fourth+International+-++Trotsky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c-HusBthvMM/UW2_ptUPzOI/AAAAAAAAFgY/-TrnQ40-65M/s200/Logo+of+the+Fourth+International+-++Trotsky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emblem of the Fourth International </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote, "T<i>rotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's Fourth International was established in France in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably "<i>lost to Stalinism"</i> and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In contemporary English language, an advocate of Trotsky's ideas is often called a "<i>Trotskyist</i>"; a Trotskyist can be called a "<i>Trotskyite</i>" or "Trot", especially by a critic of Trotskyism.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Definition</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HIioZ_57EPY/UXRdWgcIi5I/AAAAAAAAF20/5EtbNaLV8Do/s1600/Marx+Engles+lenin+Trotsky+-+Fourth+International+-+++Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="109" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HIioZ_57EPY/UXRdWgcIi5I/AAAAAAAAF20/5EtbNaLV8Do/s200/Marx+Engles+lenin+Trotsky+-+Fourth+International+-+++Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marx, Engles, Lenin, Trotsky</td></tr>
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Supporters of Trotsky would contend that Trotskyism is <i>not</i> a <i>new movement</i>, a new doctrine, but the <i>restoration</i>, the revival of <i>genuine <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxism</a></i> as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International."</div>
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According to <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a>, his thought could be distinguished from other <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist theories</a> by five key elements:</div>
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Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the 'Two Stage Theory' of his opponents;</div>
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Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its features and after 1933, support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers' states;</div>
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Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action;</div>
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Support for proletarian internationalism; and</div>
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Use of a 'transitional' programme of demands that bridge between daily struggles of the working class and the 'maximal' ideas of the socialist transformation of society.</div>
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On the political spectrum of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxism</a>, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left.</div>
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They supported democratic rights in the USSR, opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and Asia.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Origins</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PVUDu4bYpAQ/UXRebSK0nOI/AAAAAAAAF28/I4PlL7_rm58/s1600/Pavel+Milyukov+-+Kadets+-+Fourth+International+-+++Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PVUDu4bYpAQ/UXRebSK0nOI/AAAAAAAAF28/I4PlL7_rm58/s200/Pavel+Milyukov+-+Kadets+-+Fourth+International+-+++Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Па́вел Никола́евич Милюко́<br />
Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a>, the term '<i>Trotskyism</i>' was coined by <i>Pavel Milyukov</i>, (sometimes transliterated as 'Paul Miliukoff'), the ideological leader of the Constitutional Democratic party (<i>Kadets</i>) in Russia.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Па́вел Никола́евич Милюко́в - Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov (27 January [O.S. 15 January] 1859 – 31 March 1943), a Russian politician, was the founder, leader, and the most prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic party (known as the Kadets). His name is sometimes rendered in English as Paul Miliukov or Paul Milukoff.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Конституционная Демократическая партия - The Constitutional Democratic Party (Constitutional Democrats, formally Party of People's Freedom, informally 'Kadets') was a liberal political party in the Russian Empire. Party members were called Kadets, from the abbreviation K-D of the party name in Russian. This name should not be confused with the term 'cadets', which referred to students at military schools in the Imperial Russia. Konstantin Kavelin's, and Boris Chicherin's writings formed the theoretical basis of the party's platform. Historian Pavel Miliukov was the party's leader throughout its existence. The Kadets were mainly supported by professionals—university professors and lawyers were particularly prominent within the party, members of the zemstvo (a form of local government) and some industrialists.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sRL70UuVyTY/Tn9RhkKGECI/AAAAAAAAAAc/NBikq41a3ZA/s1600/Coat+of+Armsof+the+Russian+Federation+-+Art+of+Heraldry+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sRL70UuVyTY/Tn9RhkKGECI/AAAAAAAAAAc/NBikq41a3ZA/s200/Coat+of+Armsof+the+Russian+Federation+-+Art+of+Heraldry+-+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="197" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emblem of the Romanov State</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Milyukov waged a bitter war against '<i>Trotskyism'</i> "as early as 1905".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet during the 1905 <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">Russian Revolution</a>. He pursued a policy of <i>proletarian revolution </i>at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "<i>bourgeois</i>" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ONF2_lS0kXM/UXRoMGXNazI/AAAAAAAAF5A/AZk5-ExbpLo/s1600/Imperial+Duma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="143" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ONF2_lS0kXM/UXRoMGXNazI/AAAAAAAAF5A/AZk5-ExbpLo/s200/Imperial+Duma.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">State Duma</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was during this year that <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> developed the 'Theory of Permanent Revolution' (see below), as it later became known</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a book by<i> Milyukov</i>, 'The elections to the second State Duma, published no later than May 1907:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Those who reproach the Kadets with failure to protest at that time, by organising meetings, against the 'revolutionary illusions' of Trotskyism, and the relapse into Blanquism, simply do not understand… the mood of the democratic public at meetings during that period.'</i> – 'The elections to the second state Duma' by Pavel Milyukov</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Milyukov</i> suggests that the mood of the "<i>democratic public</i>" was in <i>support </i>of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow of the Romanov regime alongside a workers' revolution to overthrow the capitalist owners of industry, support for strike action and the establishment of democratically elected workers' councils or "<i>soviets</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Theory of Permanent Revolution - I</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1905, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> formulated a theory that became known as the '<i>Theory of Permanent Revolution</i>'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is one of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Until 1905, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxism</a> only claimed that a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kRhjgU9TLpI/UXRpiP6IDjI/AAAAAAAAF5I/cxFC4VDtrPA/s1600/Feudal+Russia+-++Fourth+International+-+++Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="185" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kRhjgU9TLpI/UXRpiP6IDjI/AAAAAAAAF5I/cxFC4VDtrPA/s200/Feudal+Russia+-++Fourth+International+-+++Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Feudal Russia</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the original theory it was impossible for such to occur in more backward countries such as early 20th century Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have <i>not ye</i>t established a capitalist society, but was instead largely<i> feudal </i>with a small, weak and almost powerless capitalist class.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>Theory of Permanent Revolution</i> addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued that in Russia <i>only</i> the working class could overthrow feudalism, and win the support of the peasantry;furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They would win its own revolution against the <i>weak</i> capitalist class, establish a<i> workers' state</i> in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the <i>global </i>working class would come to Russia's aid, and socialism could develop worldwide.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Capitalist or Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in 1789 <i>abolished feudalism</i> and established the basic requisites for the development of capitalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued that these revolutions would <i>not</i> be repeated in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In '<i>Results and Prospects</i>', written in 1906, Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, arguing: "<i>History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank"> Russian Revolution</a> with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter.</i>"</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OzJdqhtDfzA/UXRqrXoaYJI/AAAAAAAAF5Q/jY8joOrlxTo/s1600/The+Lictors+Bring+to+Brutus+the+Bodies+of+His+Sons+-David+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OzJdqhtDfzA/UXRqrXoaYJI/AAAAAAAAF5Q/jY8joOrlxTo/s320/The+Lictors+Bring+to+Brutus+the+Bodies+of+His+Sons+-David+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford+.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting Inspired by the 1789 French Revolution<br />
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Son - David</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxists</a> called a "<i>bourgeois-democratic revolution</i>" – a regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie overthrew the existing French feudalistic system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bourgeoisie then moved towards establishing a regime of democratic parliamentary institutions, however, while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they were <i>not</i> generally extended to a universal franchise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The freedom for workers to organise unions or to strike was not achieved without considerable struggle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "<i>enlightened, active</i>" revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a very small minority.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the time of the European revolutions of 1848, "<i>the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Theory of Permanent Revolution - II</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries which are thought under Trotskyism to have not yet completed a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class opposes the creation of any revolutionary situation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They fear stirring the working class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class, and into large working class districts.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jL0HnRv_oAg/UXRt_UI_4bI/AAAAAAAAF5Y/IJReFUZH5B0/s1600/Russian+Revolution+of+1905+-+Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jL0HnRv_oAg/UXRt_UI_4bI/AAAAAAAAF5Y/IJReFUZH5B0/s320/Russian+Revolution+of+1905+-+Trotsky+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russian Revolution of 1905</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially <i>feudal</i> landlords, and ultimately the existing <i>Czarist</i> Russian state forces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was to protect their ownership of their property—factories, banks, etc.—from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Therefore, according to the <i>Theory of Permanent Revolution</i>, the capitalist classes of economically backward countries are <i>weak,</i> and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result, they are linked to and <i>rely </i>on the feudal landowners in many ways.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, Trotsky argues, because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia were originated under the direct influence of government measures—sometimes with the help of government subsidies—the capitalist class was again<i> tied </i>to the ruling elite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The capitalist class were<i> subservient</i> to European capital.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Role of the Proletariat</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued, only the '<i>proletariat</i>' or 'working class' were capable of achieving the tasks of that 'bourgeois' revolution.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BD8fMpvhKq4/UXRwVIY27NI/AAAAAAAAF5g/n1HQ_6Pn6xU/s1600/Russian+Industrial+Workers+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BD8fMpvhKq4/UXRwVIY27NI/AAAAAAAAF5g/n1HQ_6Pn6xU/s320/Russian+Industrial+Workers+-+Trotskyism+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russian Industrial Workers</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort, and the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort also, forming workers councils (<i>soviets</i>), in the course of the revolution of that year.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1906, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'The factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground... The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses, while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the 'people', half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the greed for gain</i>.' – Trotsky, 'Results and Prospects'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Putilov Factory, for instance, numbered 12,000 workers in 1900, and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole <i>cannot </i>take on this task, because it is <i>dispersed</i> in small holdings throughout the country, and forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers, and aspire to landlordism, as well as the poor peasants who aspire to own more land.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argues: "<i>All historical experience... shows that the peasantry are absolutely </i>incapable <i>of taking up an independent political role</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today, but even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the rural poor, the self-organising struggles of the landless, and many other struggles which in some ways reflect the militant united organised struggles of the working class, and which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, <i>orthodox</i> Trotskyists still argue that the town and city based working class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution, linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that the working class learns of necessity to conduct a collective struggle, for instance in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces, and that the collective consciousness it achieves as a result is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although only a small minority in Russian society, the proletariat, would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus "<i>secure the support of the peasantry</i>" as part of that revolution, on whose support it will rely, but the working class, in order to improve their own conditions, will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois revolution and then establish a <i>workers' state</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">International Revolution</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russia - A Peasant Based Country<br />
Ilya Repin 'Volga Barge Haulers' - 1873</td></tr>
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According to <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">classical Marxism</a>,</i> revolution in peasant-based countries, such as Russia, prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism, since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers and traders, which leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges.</div>
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Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism.</div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world, as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy.</div>
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The revolution, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued, must quickly <i>spread</i> to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which must <i>spread worldwide</i>.</div>
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In this way the revolution is "<i>permanent</i>", moving out of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers’ revolution, and from there uninterruptedly to European and <i>worldwide revolutions</i>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8CTz5bvNZCE/UXRx9ylee1I/AAAAAAAAF54/lZsPYqIQmlw/s1600/Lev+Kamenev+reading+Pravda+-+Trotsky+-++Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8CTz5bvNZCE/UXRx9ylee1I/AAAAAAAAF54/lZsPYqIQmlw/s320/Lev+Kamenev+reading+Pravda+-+Trotsky+-++Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Лев Бори́сович Ка́менев<br />
Lev Borisovich Kamenev</td></tr>
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This was the position, contrary to that of "<i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Classical Marxism</a></i>" which by that time had been further illuminated by active life, shared by Trotsky and Lenin, and the Bolsheviks, until 1924 when Joseph Stalin, who along with Kamenev in February 1917 had taken the <i>Menshevik </i>position of first the bourgeois revolution, only to be confronted by Lenin and his famous '<i>April Thesis</i>' on Lenin's return to Russia, after the death of Lenin and seeking to consolidate his growing bureaucratic control of the Bolshevik Party began to put forward the slogan of "<i>Socialism in one country</i>".</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Лев Бори́сович Ка́менев - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lev Borisovich Kamenev (18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1883 – 25 August 1936), born Rozenfeld (Russian: Ро́зенфельд), was a Jewish Bolshevik revolutionary, and a prominent Soviet politician. He served briefly as the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Vladimir Lenin's life.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin Kamenev fell out of favor and, following a show trial, was executed.</span><br />
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An internationalist outlook of <i>permanent revolution</i> is found in the works of <i>Karl Marx</i>.</div>
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The term "<i>permanent revolution</i>" is taken from a remark of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marx</a> from his March 1850 Address: "<i>it is our task</i>", <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marx</a> said,</div>
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<i>'To make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers'. – </i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Karl<i> </i></a><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marx</a>, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trotskyism and the 1917 <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">Russian Revolution</a></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Russian revolution of 1905</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the state in as good an order as possible.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fSnQmKYUyNQ/UWXqK3tIlII/AAAAAAAAFDo/iDSr6KWQtBo/s1600/Vasili+Vasilevich+Sokolov+-+Storming+the+Winter+Palace+1962+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="121" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fSnQmKYUyNQ/UWXqK3tIlII/AAAAAAAAFDo/iDSr6KWQtBo/s200/Vasili+Vasilevich+Sokolov+-+Storming+the+Winter+Palace+1962+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1917, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky </a>was again elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, but this time soon came to lead the Military Revolutionary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison, and carried through the October 1917 insurrection.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin wrote:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized.</i>' – Stalin, Pravda, November 6, 1918</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result of his role in the<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank"> Russian Revolution of 1917</a>, the <i>Theory of Permanent Revolution </i>was embraced by the young Soviet state <i>until </i>1924.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">Russian revolution of 1917</a> was marked by <i>two</i> revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution, and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before the February <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">1917 Russian revolution</a>, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> had formulated a slogan calling for the '<i>democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry</i>', but after the February revolution, through his April theses, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> instead called for "<i>all power to the Soviets</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> nevertheless continued to emphasise, (as did Trotsky also), the<i> classical Marxist</i> position that the peasantry formed a<i> basis </i>for the development of capitalism, not socialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But also before February 1917, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> had not accepted the importance of a Bolshevik style organisation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once the February <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">1917 Russian Revolution</a> had broken out <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation, and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the fact that many, like <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">Russian Revolution</a> as central, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> says that<i> without</i> Lenin, and the Bolshevik party, the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism, as a political theory, is fully committed to a <i>Leninist</i> style of democratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must <i>not</i> be confused with the party organisation, as it later developed under Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a <i>dictatorship</i>, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the Soviet Union was caused by the<i> failure </i>of the revolution to successfully <i>spread internationally</i>, and the consequent wars, isolation and imperialist intervention, and <i>not</i> the Bolshevik style of organisation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a>'s outlook had always been that the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">Russian Revolution</a> would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in western Europe in order that this European socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin stated:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our statements in the press that… the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries</i>.' – <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a>, Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This outlook matched<i> precisely</i> Trotsky's <i>Theory of Permanent Revolution</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's Permanent Revolution had foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution, but proceed towards a <i>workers' state</i>, as happened in 1917.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1917, Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky's <i>Theory of Permanent Revolution</i> and after the October revolution it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> was met with initial disbelief in April 1917.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsk</a>y argues that:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>Up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which "possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody’s head).</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>It is not surprising, then, that the 'April Theses' of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist</i>.' – <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Leon Trotsky</a>, 'History of the Russian Revolution'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The 'Legend of Trotskyism'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 'The Stalin School of Falsification', <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argues that what he calls the "l<i>egend of Trotskyism</i>" was formulated by <i>Grigory Zinoviev</i> and<i> Lev Kamenev,</i> in collaboration with <i>Stalin</i> in 1924, in response to the criticisms <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> raised of Politburo policy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The urge to silence <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a>, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>'s rise to power.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During 1922–24, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a>, while describing <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> as "<i>distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities – personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee</i>", and also maintaining that "<i>his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him</i>", criticized him for "<i>showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work</i>", and also requested that <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> be<i> removed</i> from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained <i>suppressed </i>until 1956.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zinoviev and Kamenev<i> broke</i> with Stalin in 1925, and joined <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> in 1926, in what was known as the <i>United Opposition</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1926, Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin, who then led the campaign against "<i>Trotskyism</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 'The Stalin School of Falsification', <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet, 'From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie', which was re-printed by the party publishing house, 'Proletari', in 1923.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and <i>embraces</i> Trotsky's 'Theory of Permanent Revolution', writing:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution … The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution." Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later, in 1926, "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution.</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> wrote that the <i>Left Opposition</i> grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to <i>reform</i> the Communist Party, but in 1927 <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> declared "<i>civil war</i>" against them:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the first ten years of its struggle, the <i>Left Opposition</i> did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its slogan was: reform, not revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“<i>Those cadres can be removed only by civil war !</i>”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was a<i> threat</i> in <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>’s words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a <i>historic fact</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Defeat of the European working class led to further <i>isolation</i> in Russia, and further <i>suppression</i> of the <i>Opposition</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky argued that the "<i>so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He responded to the one sided civil war with his' Letter to the Bureau of Party History', (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the <i>falsification of history</i> with the official history of just a few years before.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>“All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky…”</i> (<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>, Pravda, Nov. 6, 1918)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the General Strike of 1926, and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin'</i>. – Trotsky, Leon, 'The Stalin School of Falsification', p87.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> was sent into<i> internal exile,</i> and his supporters were<i> jailed</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Victor Serge, for instance, first "<i>spent six weeks in a cell</i>" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He details the jailings of the<i> Left Opposition</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>Left Opposition</i>, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> was eventually exiled to Turkey.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He moved from there to France, Norway, and finally to Mexico.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world <i>expelled</i> Trotskyists from their ranks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "<i>misleadership</i>" of the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism, had been <i>destroyed</i> within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a <i>Trotskyist </i>and even a <i>fascist</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1937, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a <i>political terror </i>against their <i>Left Opposition,</i> and many of the remaining <i>'Old Bolsheviks</i>' (those who had played<i> key</i> roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trotskyism vs. Stalinism</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotskyists argue that the "Stalinist USSR" was not socialist (and not communist), but a bureaucratised <i>degenerated</i> workers' state — that is, a <i>non-capitalist</i> state in which exploitation is controlled by a <i>ruling caste </i>which, although <i>not</i> owning the means of production and <i>not</i> constituting a social class in its own right, accrued benefits and privileges at the <i>expense</i> of the working class.</span><br />
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After Lenin’s death (21 January 1924), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party (with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, then with Nikolai Bukharin, and then by himself) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards.</div>
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The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin’s opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the Party — thus, the re-instatement of democratic centralism and free speech within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, and the later Joint Opposition.</div>
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In the course of instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of '<i>Socialism in One Country'</i> (adopted 1925), wherein the USSR would establish socialism upon Russia’s economic foundations (<i>and support socialist revolutions elsewhere</i>).</div>
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Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would <i>economically constrain</i> the industrial development of the USSR, and thus required assistance from the new socialist countries that had arisen in the developed world, which was essential for maintaining Soviet democracy, in 1924 much undermined by civil war and counter-revolution.</div>
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Furthermore, Trotsky’s <i>Theory of Permanent Revolution</i> proposed that socialist revolutions in underdeveloped countries would go further towards dismantling feudal régimes, and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist stage of development and government, hence, revolutionary workers should politically ally with <i>peasant</i> political organisations, but <i>not</i> with capitalist political parties.</div>
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In contrast, Stalin and allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were <i>essential</i> to realising a revolution where Communists were too few.</div>
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Stalin’s policy of mixed-ideology political alliances, became Comintern policy.</div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> founded the International Left Opposition in 1930.</div>
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It was meant to be an opposition group within the <i>Comintern,</i> but anyone who joined, or was suspected of joining, the ILO, was immediately expelled from the Comintern.</div>
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The ILO therefore concluded that <i>opposing</i> Stalinism from within the Communist organizations controlled by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>'s supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed.</div>
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In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of the Fourth International, founded in Paris in 1938.</div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on Lenin's theory of the <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">vanguard party</a></i>, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.</div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a> argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the Third Period policy of the Communist International and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform, and a new international organisation of the working class must be organised.</div>
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The Transitional demand tactic had to be a key element.</div>
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At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia.<br />
There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese Communist movement, Chen Duxiu, amongst its number.<br />
Wherever Stalinists gained power, they made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.</div>
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The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other, and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the Soviet Union no longer could be called a degenerated workers state and withdrew from the Fourth International.<br />
After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries.</div>
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The International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946, and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War, and the tasks for revolutionaries.</div>
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The Eastern European Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies.</div>
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By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states."</div>
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As the Cold War intensified, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war.</div>
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Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under pressure by the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.</div>
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The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties which were followed by the majority of the working class.</div>
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However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged.</div>
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The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II, and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.</div>
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Pablo began expelling large numbers of people who did not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties.</div>
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For instance, he expelled the majority of the French section and replaced its leadership.</div>
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As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.</div>
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The Fourth International split in 1953 into <i>two</i> public factions.</div>
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The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power.</div>
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From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS.</div>
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After the 1963 reunification congress, the French and British sections maintained the ICFI. Other groups took different paths and originated the present complex map of Trotskyist groupings.</div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-85007338152540277992013-04-19T12:51:00.005-07:002015-10-18T14:01:13.471-07:00Stalin and the Great Patriotic War<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Великая Отечественная война</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">The Great Patriotic War</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term 'Great Patriotic War' - Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́ - (acronym "ВОВ"), Velíkaya Otéchestvennaya voyná, is used in Russia and former republics of the Soviet Union to describe the period from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 in the many fronts of the eastern campaign of World War II between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich with its allies.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emblème de Napoléon I<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term 'Patriotic War' refers to the Russian resistance of the French invasion of Russia under <i>Napoleon I,</i> which became known as the 'Patriotic War of 1812'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Russian, the term отечественная война originally referred to a war on one's own territory (inside otechestvo, "the fatherland"), as opposed to a campaign abroad (заграничная война), and later was reinterpreted as a war for the fatherland, i.e. a defensive war for one's homeland. Sometimes the war of 1812 was also referred to as 'Great Patriotic War' (Великая отечественная война); the phrase first appeared not later than in 1844 and became popular on the eve of the centenary of Patriotic War of 1812.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since 1914, the phrase was applied to World War I - often referred to in the West as the 'Great War'.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HdHjIBTa2ys/UXGonXx-3YI/AAAAAAAAFrM/44XpppJkDDk/s1600/Wappen+Kaisertum+%C3%96sterreich+-+Heraldry+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HdHjIBTa2ys/UXGonXx-3YI/AAAAAAAAFrM/44XpppJkDDk/s200/Wappen+Kaisertum+%C3%96sterreich+-+Heraldry+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="155" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wappen von Österreich-Ungarn<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was the name of a special war-time appendix to the magazine 'Theater and Life' (Театр и жизнь) in Saint Petersburg, and referred to the Eastern Front of World War I, where Russia fought against the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The phrases 'Second Patriotic War' (Вторая отечественная война) and 'Great World Patriotic War' (Великая всемирная отечественная война) were also used during World War I in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term Great Patriotic War re-appeared in the Soviet newspaper 'Pravda' on 23 June 1941, just a day after the Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> "Правда" - 23 июня 1941<br />
'Pravda' - 23 June 1941</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kz40P4bGEG4/UXGvFolmrCI/AAAAAAAAFrs/8rupXtFnics/s1600/Order+of+the+Patriotic+War+-+Pravda+-+23+June+1941+-+Great+Patriotic+War+-+logo+2+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Soviet+Union+-+Third+Reich+-+Stalin+Hitler+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kz40P4bGEG4/UXGvFolmrCI/AAAAAAAAFrs/8rupXtFnics/s200/Order+of+the+Patriotic+War+-+Pravda+-+23+June+1941+-+Great+Patriotic+War+-+logo+2+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Soviet+Union+-+Third+Reich+-+Stalin+Hitler+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Орден Отечественной войны<br />
'Order of the Patriotic War'<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was found in the title of "The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People" (Velikaya Otechestvennaya voyna sovetskogo naroda), a long article by <i>Yemelyan Yaroslavsky</i>, a member of Pravda editors' collegium.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The phrase was intended to motivate the population to defend the Soviet fatherland and to expel the invader, and a reference to the 'Patriotic War of 1812' was seen as a great morale booster.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term Отечественная война (Patriotic War or Fatherland War) was officially recognized by establishment of the 'Order of the Patriotic War' on 20 May 1942, awarded for heroic deeds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term is <i>not</i> used outside the former Soviet Union. It is a <i>patriotic</i> and <i>symbolic </i>term.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite their<i> ideological antipathy,</i> both Germany and the Soviet Union shared a mutual dislike for the <i>outcome</i> of World War I.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Брест-Литовске<br />
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - 1918</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet Union had <i>lost</i> substantial territory in eastern Europe as a result of the treaty of <i>Brest-Litovsk</i>, where it gave in to German demands and ceded control of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland, among others, to the "Central Powers".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Subsequently, when Germany in its turn surrendered to the Allies, these territories were liberated under the terms of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Russia was in a civil war condition, the Allies did not recognize the Bolshevik government, and the Soviet Union would not be formed for another four years so no Russian representation was present.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3jTfCf8LY6s/UWyRvsPRo1I/AAAAAAAAFb0/XyuogVtRyZ8/s1600/Molotov+Ribbentrop+Stalin+-+Non+Agression+Pact+-+Soviet+Union+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3jTfCf8LY6s/UWyRvsPRo1I/AAAAAAAAFb0/XyuogVtRyZ8/s200/Molotov+Ribbentrop+Stalin+-+Non+Agression+Pact+-+Soviet+Union+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Treaty of Non-Aggression<br />
between Germany and the Soviet Union</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact</i> signed in August 1939 was a non-aggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that contained a secret protocol that aimed to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status-quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would return to Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided between them.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adolf Hitler<br />
Führer und Reichskanzler</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adolf Hitler had declared his intention to invade the USSR on 11 August 1939 to Carl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations Commissioner by saying, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine so that they can't starve us out, as happened in the last war</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The two powers invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Finland refused the terms of a Soviet pact of mutual assistance, the USSR invaded Finland in November 1939 in what became known as the '<i>Winter War</i>' – a bitter conflict that only resulted in partial Soviet victory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In June 1940, the USSR occupied and<i> illegally </i>annexed the three Baltic states - an action in <i>violation</i> of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) and numerous bi-lateral conventions and treaties signed between the USSR and Baltics - and never recognized by most Western states.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The '<i>Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact</i>' ostensibly provided <i>security</i> to Soviets in the occupation of both the Baltics and the north and northeastern regions of Romania (Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia) - although Hitler, in announcing invasion of the USSR, cited the Soviet annexations of Baltic and Romanian territory as having <i>violated</i> Germany's understanding of the Pact.</span></div>
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The annexed Romanian territory was divided between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">LEADERSHIP</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Union of Soviet Socialist Republics<br />
Советских Социалистических Республик<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-51aUKlvTV2E/UXHFJCTl43I/AAAAAAAAFws/y2ZqNu3dxg4/s1600/Reich+Adler+6.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="141" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-51aUKlvTV2E/UXHFJCTl43I/AAAAAAAAFws/y2ZqNu3dxg4/s200/Reich+Adler+6.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
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Emblem des Dritten Reiches<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were both<i> ideologically driven</i> states (Soviet Dictatorship and National Socialism respectively), in which the leader had near-absolute power.</div>
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The character of the war was thus determined by the leaders and their ideology to a much greater extent than in any other theatre of World War II.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">ADOLF HITLER</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adolf Hitler<br />
Führer und Reichskanzler</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adolf Hitler exercised a <i>tight control </i>over the war, spending much of his time in his command bunkers (most notably at Rastenburg in East Prussia, at Vinnitsa in Ukraine, and under the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin).</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adolf Hitler - Military Conference</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At crucial periods in the war he held <i>daily</i> situation conferences, at which he used his remarkable talent for public speaking to overwhelm opposition from his generals and the OKW staff with rhetoric.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In part because of the unexpected success of the 'Battle of France', despite the warnings of the professional military, Hitler believed himself a military genius, with a grasp of the total war effort that eluded his generals.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Feldmarschall<br />
Walther von Brauchitsch<br />
and Adolf Hitler</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In August 1941, when Walther von Brauchitsch (commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht) and Fedor von Bock were appealing for an attack on Moscow, Hitler instead ordered the encirclement and capture of the Ukraine, in order to acquire the farmland, industry, and natural resources of that country. This decision was possibly a missed opportunity to win the war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the winter of 1941–1942 Hitler believed that his refusal to allow the German armies to retreat had saved Army Group Centre from collapse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Heinrich Alfred Hermann Walther von Brauchitsch (4 October 1881 – 18 October 1948) was a German field marshal and the Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres (Commander of the Heer (Army)) in the early years of World War II.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Feldmarschall Erhard Milch</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He later told Feldmarschall </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Erhard Milch:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'I had to act ruthlessly. I had to send even my closest generals packing, two army generals, for example ... I could only tell these gentlemen, Get yourself back to Germany as rapidly as you can – but leave the army in my charge. And the army is staying at the front.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Erhard Milch (30 March 1892 – 25 January 1972) was a German field marshal who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as part of the re-armament of Germany following World War I, and served as founding Director of Deutsche Luft Hansa. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The success of this '<i>hedgehog defence</i>' outside Moscow led Hitler to insist on the holding of territory when it made no military sense, and to sack generals who retreated without orders. The disastrous encirclements later in the war – at Stalingrad, Korsun and many other places – were the direct result of Hitler's orders.</i></span></div>
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Emblem of the SS<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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Emblem of the German Army<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This idea of holding territory led to another failed plan, dubbed "Heaven-bound Missions", which involved fortifying even the most unimportant or insignificant of cities and the holding of these "fortresses" at all costs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many divisions became cut off in "fortress" cities, or wasted uselessly in secondary theatres, because Hitler would not sanction retreat or abandon voluntarily any of his conquests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Frustration at Hitler's leadership of the war was one of the factors in the attempted coup d'etat of 1944, but after the failure of the 20th July Plot Hitler considered the army and its officer corps suspect and came to rely on the Schutzstaffel (SS) and party members to prosecute the war.Hitler's direction of the war was disastrous for the German Army, though the skill, loyalty, professionalism and endurance of officers and soldiers enabled him to keep Germany fighting to the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">JOSEPH STALIN</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joseph Stalin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joseph Stalin bore the greatest responsibility for the disasters at the beginning of the war (for example, the Battle of Kiev), but can be equally praised for the subsequent success of the Soviet Army, which would have been impossible without the unprecedentedly rapid <i>industrialization</i> of the Soviet Union, which was the first priority of Stalin's internal policy throughout the 1930s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin's '<i>Great Purge</i>' of the Red Army in the late 1930s consisted of the legal prosecution of many of the senior command, many of whom were convicted and sentenced to death or imprisonment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The executed included Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a proponent of armoured blitzkrieg.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский<br />
Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский - Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (February 16 [O.S. February 4] 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander in chief of the Red Army (1925–1928), and one of the most prominent victims of Joseph Stalin's '<i>Great Purge'</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His theory of deep operations, where combined arms formations strike deep behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy's rear and logistics, were opposed by some in the military establishment, but were largely adopted by the Red Army in the mid-1930s. They were expressed as a concept in the Red Army's Field Regulations of 1929, and more fully developed in 1935's Instructions on Deep Battle. The concept was finally codified into the army in 1936 in the Provisional Field Regulations of 1936. An early example of the potential effectiveness of deep operations can be found in the Soviet victory over Japan at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan), where a Soviet Corps under the command of Georgy Zhukov defeated a substantial Japanese force in August–September, 1939.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Due to the widespread purges of the Red Army officer corps in 1937–1939 "deep operations" briefly fell from favour, only later being gradually re-adopted following the embarrassment of the Red Army during the Winter War of 1939-40 when the Soviet Union tried to invade Finland. They were used to great success during World War II in Eastern Front, in such victories as the Battle of Stalingrad and Operation Bagration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin promoted some obscurantists like Grigory Kulik (who <i>opposed</i> the mechanization of the army and the production of tanks), but on the other hand <i>purged</i> the older commanders who had had their positions since the Russian Civil War, and had <i>experience</i>, but were deemed "<i>politically unreliable</i>".</span></div>
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Marshal Grigory Kulik</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Григо́рий Ива́нович Кули́к - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Grigory Ivanovich Kulik (November 9, 1890 - August 24, 1950) was a Soviet military commander and was born into a peasant family near Poltava in Ukraine.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A soldier in the army of the Russian Empire in World War I, he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and the Red Army in 1918. During the Russian Civil War he become a commander in the Soviet artillery at Tsaritsyn and other battles.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1937 Kulik became head of the Red Army's Main Artillery Directorate, and remained commander of the Soviet artillery forces until 1941. He was both a <i>sycophantic Stalinist </i>and a radical <i>military conservative</i>, strongly opposed to the reforms proposed by Mikhail Tukhachevsky during the 1930s. For this reason he survived Stalin's<i> 'Great Purge'</i> of the Red Army in 1937-38, and in 1939 he became Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, also taking part in the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland in September. He led the Soviet's artillery attack on Finland at the start of the Winter War, which quickly foundered under his poor leadership. He was awarded the title of "<i>Hero of the Soviet Union</i>" in recognition of "<i>outstanding services to the country and personal courage</i>," </span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On May 8, 1940, Kulik was named a <i>Marshal of the Soviet Union</i>, along with Semyon Timoshenko and Boris Shaposhnikov. He had a reputation as an<i> incompetent</i> officer, a "<i>murderous buffoon</i>", and a<i> bully,</i> but his closeness to Stalin put him beyond criticism. He could not protect his wife though, Kira Simonich, who two days before Kulik's promotion had been kidnapped on Stalin's orders. She was subsequently executed by Vasili Blokhin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This opened up those places to the promotion of many younger officers that Stalin and the </span><i>NKVD</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> thought were in line with Stalinist politics, - many of whom proved to be terribly </span><i>inexperienced</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, but some were later very successful.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soviet tank output remained the largest in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Distrust of the military led, since the foundation of the Red Army in 1918, to a system of "<i>dual command</i>", in which every commander was paired with a <i>political commissar</i>, a member of the <i>Communist Party of the Soviet Union</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Larger units had <i>military councils</i> consisting of the commander, <i>commissar</i> and chief of staff, who ensured that the commanding officer was<i> loyal</i> and implemented Party orders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, the Baltic states and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in 1939–40, Stalin insisted that every fold of the new territories should be occupied; this move westward left troops far from their depots in salients that left them vulnerable to encirclement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was an assumption that, in the event of a German invasion, the Red Army would take the strategic offensive and fight the war mostly outside the borders of the Soviet Union; thus few plans were made for strategic defensive operations, however, fortifications were built.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As tension heightened in spring 1941, Stalin was desperate not to give Hitler any provocation that could be used as an excuse for an attack; this caused him to refuse to allow the military to go onto the alert even as German troops gathered on the borders and German reconnaissance planes overflew installations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This refusal to take the necessary action was instrumental in the destruction of major portions of the Red Air Force, lined up on its airfields, in the first days of the war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin's insistence on repeated counterattacks<i> without </i>adequate preparation led to the loss of almost the whole of the Red Army's tank corps in 1941 – many tanks simply ran out of fuel on their way to the battlefield through<i> faulty planning</i> or <i>ignorance</i> of the location of fuel dumps. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin was able to learn lessons and improve his conduct of the war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He gradually came to realise the dangers of <i>inadequate</i> preparation and built up a competent command and control organization – the <i>Stavka</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ставка - Stavka was the term used to refer to a command element of the armed forces from the time of the Kievan Rus′, more formally during the history of Imperial Russia as administrative staff and General Headquarters during late 19th Century Imperial Russian armed forces and those of the Soviet Union. </span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During the entire war Stavka was located in Moscow. However, when the bombardment began, it was transferred from Kremlin to a small mansion near Kirov Gates. A month later at the platform of ‘Kirovskaya’ metro station was organized the underground Center of strategic management of the Armed Forces. There were arranged the offices for Stalin and. Shaposhnikov; the operations section of the General Staff and the People’s Commissariat for Defense Department.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On August 8, 1941 Stalin was assigned the Supreme Commander in Chief. From that time on Stavka was called the Supreme General Headquarters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Incompetent commanders were gradually but ruthlessly weeded out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the crisis of the war, in autumn 1942, Stalin made many concessions to the army: <i>unitary command</i> was <i>restored</i> by removing the <i>Commissars</i> from the chain of command.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under order 25 of January 15th, 1943, <i>shoulder-boards</i> were introduced for all ranks; this was a significant <i>symbolic</i> step, since they had been seen as a <i>symbol of the old regime</i> after the Russian Revolution of 1917.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beginning in autumn 1941, units that had proved themselves by superior performance in combat were given the traditional <i>"Guards"</i> title.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But these concessions were combined with <i>ruthless discipline</i>: Order No. 227, issued on 28 July 1942, threatened commanders who retreated without orders with punishment by court-martial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Infractions by military and politruks were punished with transferral to <i>penal battalions</i> and <i>penal companies</i>, and the NKVD's barrier troops would<i> shoot soldiers who fled</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As it became clear that the Soviet Union would win the war, Stalin ensured that propaganda always mentioned<i> his</i> leadership of the war; the victorious generals were <i>sidelined </i>and <i>never </i>allowed to develop into political rivals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the war the Red Army was once again <i>purged</i> : many successful officers were demoted to unimportant positions (including Zhukov, Malinovsky and Koniev).</span><br />
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-26198433348065157462013-04-15T13:28:00.002-07:002014-02-28T16:53:28.603-08:00Trotsky - Power and Beyond<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-large;">Лев Троцкий</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Power and Beyond</span></span></div>
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Герб России империей<br />
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Wappen des österreichisch-ungarischen Reiches<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of<i> World War I</i>, in which Austria-Hungary fought against the Russian empire, Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian émigré.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The outbreak of World War I caused a sudden realignment within the RSDLP and other European social democratic parties over the issues of war, revolution, pacifism and internationalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within the RSDLP, <i>Lenin</i>, Trotsky and Martov advocated various internationalist anti-war positions, while Plekhanov and other social democrats (both <i>Bolsheviks</i> and <i>Mensheviks</i>) supported the Russian government to some extent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Switzerland, Trotsky briefly worked within the 'Swiss Socialist Party', prompting it to adopt an internationalist resolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He wrote a book opposing the war, 'The War and the International', and the pro-war position taken by the European social democratic parties, primarily the German party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a war correspondent for the 'Kievskaya Mysl', Trotsky moved to France on 19 November 1914.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 1915 in Paris, he began editing (at first with Martov, who soon resigned as the paper moved to the left) 'Nashe Slovo' ("Our Word"), an internationalist socialist newspaper.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He adopted the slogan of "<i>peace without indemnities or annexations, peace without conquerors or conquered</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin advocated Russia's <i>defeat</i> in the war, and demanded a complete break with the Second International.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky attended the 'Zimmerwald Conference' of anti-war socialists in September 1915 and advocated a middle course between those who, like Martov, would stay within the Second International at any cost and those who, like <i>Lenin</i>, would break with the Second International and form a Third International.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The conference adopted the middle line proposed by Trotsky.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first opposed, in the end Lenin voted for Trotsky's resolution to avoid a split among anti-war socialists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 31 March Trotsky was deported from France to Spain for his anti-war activities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spanish authorities did not want him, and deported him to the United States on 25 December 1916.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He arrived in New York City on 13 January 1917.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He stayed for nearly three months at 1522 Vyse Avenue in The Bronx.</span><br />
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Novy Mir</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In New York he wrote articles for the local Russian language socialist newspaper, 'Novy Mir', and the <i>Yiddish-language</i> daily, 'Der Forverts' (The Forward), in translation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Но́вый Ми́р Novy Mir (New World) was a magazine published by Russian social democratic émigrés in New York City in 1916–1917 until their return to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It was edited by Nikolai Bukharin and Alexandra Kollontai, who were briefly joined by Leon Trotsky when he arrived in New York in January 1917. V. Volodarsky, then living in Philadelphia, was one of the contributors.</span><br />
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Nikolai Bukharin</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин - Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (9 October [O.S. 27 September] 1888 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo (1924–1929) and Central Committee (1917–1937), chairman of the Communist International (Comintern, 1926–1929), and the editor in chief of Pravda (1918–1929), the journal Bolshevik (1924–1929), Izvestia (1934–1936), and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He authored Imperialism and World Economy (1918), The ABC of Communism (1919. co-authored with Yevgeni Preobrazhensky), and Historical Materialism (1921) among others. Initially a supporter of Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin's death, he came to oppose a large number of Stalin's policies and was one of Stalin's most prominent victims during the "Moscow Trials" and purges of the Old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алекса́ндра Миха́йловна Коллонта́й - Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (née Domontovich, Домонто́вич) (March 31 [O.S. March 19] 1872 – March 9, 1952) was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1923, Kollontai was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At the time of the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party into the Mensheviks under Julius Martov and the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin in 1903, Kollontai did not side with either faction. It wasn't until 1915 that Kollontai officially joined the Bolshevik party.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 Kollontai's political career began. She became People's Commissar for Social Welfare. She was the most prominent woman in the Soviet administration and was best known for founding the Zhenotdel or "Women's Department" in 1919 . This organization worked to improve the conditions of women's lives in the Soviet Union, fighting illiteracy and educating women about the new marriage, education, and working laws put in place by the Revolution. As a foremost champion of women's equality like the other Marxists of her time, she opposed the ideology of liberal feminism, which she saw as bourgeois;[17][18] though later feminists have claimed her legacy. The Zhenotdel was eventually closed in 1930. Kollontai also married Pavel Dybenko in 1917.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the government, Kollontai increasingly became an internal critic of the Communist Party and joined with her friend, Alexander Shlyapnikov, to form a left-wing faction of the party that became known as the Workers' Opposition. However, Lenin managed to dissolve the Workers' Opposition, after which Kollontai was more or less politically sidelined.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kollontai lacked political influence and was appointed by the Party to various diplomatic positions from the early 1920s, keeping her from playing a leading role in the politics of women's policy in the USSR. In 1923, she was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway, becoming the world's first female ambassador in modern times. She later served as Ambassador to Mexico (1926–27) and Sweden (1930–1945). When she was in Stockholm, the Winter War between Russia and Finland broke out; it has been said that it was largely due to her influence that Sweden remained neutral</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky also made speeches to Russian émigrés.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was officially earning some $15 a week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was living in New York City when the '<i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">February Revolution of 1917</a></i>' overthrew <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/tsar-nicholas-ii.html" target="_blank">Tsar Nicholas II</a>.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'SS Kristianiafjord'</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He left New York on 27 March, but his ship, the 'SS Kristianiafjord', was intercepted by British naval officials in Canada at Halifax, Nova Scotia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was detained for a month at Amherst Internment Camp in Nova Scotia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After initial hesitation, the Russian foreign minister Pavel Milyukov demanded the release of Trotsky as a Russian citizen, and the British government freed him on 29 April.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He reached Russia on 4 May.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After his return, Trotsky substantively <i>agreed </i>with the <i>Bolshevik</i> position, but did not join them right away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Russian social democrats were split into at least six groups, and the <i>Bolsheviks</i> were waiting for the next party Congress to determine which factions to merge with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky temporarily joined the Mezhraiontsy, a regional social democratic organization in St. Petersburg, and became one of its leaders.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">межрайонцы - Mezhraiontsy or Mezhraionka, usually translated as the interdistrictites (from the Russian "mezh-", i.e. "inter-", and "raion", i.e. "district"), officially RSDRP (Internationalists), was a small Petrograd-based group within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which existed between 1913 and 1917. It merged with the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of 1917.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Mezhraiontsy group was founded in November 1913 by three Bolsheviks (Konstantin Yurenev, A. M. Novosyolov and E. M. Adamovich) and one Menshevik, N. M. Yegorov. Yurenev was the informal leader of the organization until May 1917 except for one year between February 1915 and February 1916, which he spent in jail on charges of subversive activities.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With the return of many anti-war social democratic emigres from European exile in April-June 1917, the Mezhraionka was a natural place for them to join. A number of prominent social democrats like Leon Trotsky, Adolf Joffe, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Moisei Uritsky, David Riazanov, V. Volodarsky, Lev Karakhan, Dmitry Manuilsky, and Sergey Ezhov (Tsederbaum) joined it at that time. At the elections to the Petrograd district councils in May-June 1917, the IDO and Bolsheviks formed a bloc.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Mezhraionka (membership about 4,000) merged with the Bolsheviks at the 6th Congress of the RSDLP in late July-early August 1917 in which both the groups formed a party that was formally independent of the Mensheviks. Many of its former members played an important role during the October Revolution later in the year and the subsequent Russian Civil War.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the 'First Congress of Soviets' in June, he was elected a member of the first All-Russian Central Executive Committee ("VTsIK") from the Mezhraiontsy faction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After an unsuccessful pro-Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd, Trotsky was arrested on 7 August 1917.</span><br />
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Лавр Георгиевич Корнилов<br />
Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was released 40 days later in the aftermath of the failed counter-revolutionary uprising by Lavr Kornilov.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Лавр Георгиевич Корнилов - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov (18 August 1870–13 April 1918) was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War. He is today best remembered for the 'Kornilov Affair', an unsuccessful endeavor in August/September 1917 that purported to strengthen Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government, but which led to Kerensky eventually having Kornilov arrested and charged with attempting a coup d'état, and ultimately undermined the rule of Kerensky; strengthening the claims and power of the soviets, and the Bolshevik party.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the <i>Bolsheviks</i> gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, Trotsky was elected Chairman on 8 October.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He sided with <i>Lenin</i> against Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev when the Bolshevik Central Committee discussed staging an armed uprising, and he led the efforts to overthrow the Provisional Government headed by Aleksandr Kerensky.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following summary of Trotsky's role in 1917 was written by <i>Stalin</i> in 'Pravda', 10 November 1918. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the success of the uprising on 7–8 November, Trotsky led the efforts to repel a counter-attack by Cossacks under General Pyotr Krasnov and other troops still loyal to the overthrown Provisional Government at Gatchina.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Allied with<i> Lenin</i>, he defeated attempts by other <i>Bolshevik</i> Central Committee members (Zinoviev, Kamenev, Alexey Rykov, etc.) to share power with other socialist parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of 1917, Trotsky was unquestionably the <i>second man</i> in the <i>Bolshevik Party</i> after <i>Lenin</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He overshadowed the ambitious Zinoviev, who had been Lenin's top lieutenant over the previous decade, but whose star appeared to be fading.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This reversal of position contributed to continuing competition and enmity between the two men, which lasted until 1926 and did much to destroy them both.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Brest-Litovsk (1917–1918)</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trotsky and German Officers - Brest-Litovsk</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the <i>Bolsheviks</i> came to power, Trotsky became the '<i>People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs</i>' and published the secret treaties previously signed by the 'Triple Entente' that detailed plans for post-war reallocation of colonies and redrawing state borders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky led the Soviet delegation during the peace negotiations in <i>Brest-Litovsk</i> from 22 December 1917 to 10 February 1918.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At that time the Soviet government was split on the issue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Left Communists, led by <i>Nikolai Bukharin</i>, continued to believe that there could be no peace between a Soviet republic and a capitalist country and that only a revolutionary war leading to a pan-European Soviet republic would bring a durable peace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They cited the successes of the newly formed (15 January 1918) voluntary Red Army against Polish forces of Gen. Józef Dowbor-Muśnicki in Belarus, White forces in the Don region, and newly independent Ukrainian forces as proof that the Red Army could repel German forces, especially if propaganda and asymmetrical warfare were used.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Брест-Литовске<br />
Negotions for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They did not mind holding talks with the Germans as a means of exposing German imperial ambitions (territorial gains, reparations, etc.) in the hope of accelerating the hoped−for Soviet revolution in the West, but they were dead set against signing any peace treaty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In case of a German ultimatum, they advocated proclaiming a revolutionary war against Germany in order to inspire Russian and European workers to fight for socialism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This opinion was shared by Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who were then the Bolsheviks' junior partners in a coalition government.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin, who had earlier hoped for a speedy Soviet revolution in Germany and other parts of Europe, quickly decided that the imperial government of Germany was still firmly in control and that, without a strong Russian military, an armed conflict with Germany would lead to a collapse of the Soviet government in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He agreed with the Left Communists that ultimately a pan-European Soviet revolution would solve all problems, but until then the Bolsheviks had to stay in power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin did not mind prolonging the negotiating process for maximum propaganda effect, but, from January 1918 on, advocated signing a separate peace treaty if faced with a German ultimatum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's position was between these two Bolshevik factions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like <i>Lenin</i>, he admitted that the old Russian military, inherited from the monarchy and the Provisional Government and in advanced stages of decomposition, was unable to fight:</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Брест-Литовске<br />
Brest-Litovsk</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'That we could no longer fight was perfectly clear to me and that the newly formed Red Guard and Red Army detachments were too small and poorly trained to resist the Germans.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he agreed with the Left Communists that a separate peace treaty with an imperialist power would be a terrible morale and material blow to the Soviet government, negate all its military and political successes of 1917 and 1918, resurrect the notion that the Bolsheviks secretly allied with the German government, and cause an upsurge of internal resistance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He argued that any German ultimatum should be refused, and that this might well lead to an uprising in Germany, or at least inspire German soldiers to disobey their officers since any German offensive would be a naked grab for territories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He wrote in 1925:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'We began peace negotiations in the hope of arousing the workmen's party of Germany and Austria-Hungary as well as of the Entente countries. For this reason we were obliged to delay the negotiations as long as possible to give the European workman time to understand the main fact of the Soviet revolution itself and particularly its peace policy. But there was the other question: Can the Germans still fight ? Are they in a position to begin an attack on the revolution that will explain the cessation of the war ? How can we find out the state of mind of the German soldiers, how to fathom it ?'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Throughout January and February 1918, Lenin's position was supported by 7 members of the Bolshevik Central Committee and Bukharin's by 4.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eastern Europe 1914-1918</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky had 4 votes (his own, Felix Dzerzhinsky's, Nikolai Krestinsky's and Adolph Joffe's) and, since he held the balance of power, he was able to pursue his policy in Brest-Litovsk. When he could no longer delay the negotiations, he withdrew from the talks on 10 February 1918, refusing to sign on Germany's harsh terms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After a brief hiatus, the Central Powers notified the Soviet government that they would no longer observe the truce after 17 February.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At this point Lenin again argued that the Soviet government had done all it could to explain its position to Western workers and that it was time to accept the terms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky refused to support <i>Lenin </i>since he was waiting to see whether German workers would rebel and whether German soldiers would refuse to follow orders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Germany resumed military operations on 18 February.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within a day, it became clear that the German army was capable of conducting offensive operations and that Red Army detachments, which were relatively small, poorly organized and poorly led, were no match for it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the evening of 18 February 1918, Trotsky and his supporters in the committee abstained and <i>Lenin's</i> proposal was accepted 7–4.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Брест-Литовске<br />
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - 1918</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet government sent a telegram to the German side accepting the final <i>Brest-Litovsk </i>peace terms.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Germany did not respond for three days, and continued its offensive encountering little resistance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The response arrived on 21 February, but the proposed terms were so harsh that even Lenin briefly thought that the Soviet government had no choice but to fight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But in the end, the committee again voted 7–4 on 23 February 1918; the <i>Treaty of Brest-Litovsk </i>was signed on 3 March and ratified on 15 March 1918.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since Trotsky was so closely associated with the policy previously followed by the Soviet delegation at <i>Brest-Litovsk</i>, he resigned from his position as Commissar for Foreign Affairs in order to remove a potential obstacle to the new policy.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty that the Soviet government was forced to sign on March 3, 1918 after almost </span><i style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">six-month-long</i><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and the Central Powers marking Russia's exit from World War I. Signing of the treaty </span><i style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">defaulted</i><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Russia's commitments on the Triple Entente alliance.</span></div>
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year, it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, who were tied up in fighting the <i>Russian Civil War</i>, by renouncing all territorial claims on Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. Also Poland got a piece of new territory (which included Warsaw), but by no means covered all the areas where Polish speaking people were in the majority. A territorial dispute between Poland, Belarus and Lithuania concerning Wilno (now Vilnius) also occurred.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> In all, the treaty took away territory that included a quarter of the Russian Empire's population, a quarter of its industry and nine-tenths of its coal mines</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk lasted only eight and a half months. Russia's post-1991 western border bears a marked similarity to that imposed by the Brest-Litovsk treaty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Head of the Red Army (Spring 1918)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The failure of the recently formed Red Army to resist the German offensive in February 1918 revealed its weaknesses: insufficient numbers, lack of knowledgeable officers, and near absence of coordination and subordination.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Celebrated and feared Baltic Fleet sailors, one of the bastions of the new regime led by Pavel Dybenko, shamefully fled from the German army at Narva.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Павел Ефимович Дыбенко<br />
Pavel Efimovich Dybenko</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Павел Ефимович Дыбенко - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pavlo Dybenko or Pavel Efimovich Dybenko - (February 16, 1889 – July 29, 1938) was a Russian revolutionary and a leading Soviet officer of enslaved Ukrainian cossack origin. He is descendant of Ukrainian cossack family Dyba, known from registries of Russian empire of XVII-XIX centuries, but his direct forefathers were made enslaved peasants as many other free, cossack people of Ukraine of that cruel times. As many other people supported the idea of "red democracy" so he can be classified as '<i>red cossack</i>'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The notion that the Soviet state could have an effective voluntary or militia type military was seriously undermined.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was one of the first <i>Bolshevik</i> leaders to recognize the problem and he pushed for the formation of a military council of former Russian generals that would function as an advisory body.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee agreed on 4 March to create the <i>Supreme Military Council</i>, headed by former chief of the imperial General Staff Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, but the entire<i> Bolshevik</i> leadership of the Red Army, including People's Commissar (defense minister) Nikolai Podvoisky and commander-in-chief Nikolai Krylenko, protested vigorously and eventually resigned.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Михаи́л Дми́триевич Бонч-Бруе́вич<br />
Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Михаи́л Дми́триевич Бонч-Бруе́вич - Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (24 February [O.S. 12 February] 1870 – 3 August 1956) was an Imperial Russian and Soviet military commander, Lieutenant General (1944). His family was of Polish descent - surname written in Polish: Boncz-Brujewicz.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">From 1892-1895, Bonch-Bruyevich served as an officer with the Lithuanian Guards Regiment, posted at Warsaw.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At the outbreak of World War I Bonch-Bruyevich was in command of the 176th Perevolochensky Regiment, based at Chernigov.[2] He was an eye witness to the aerial ramming attack in which the Russian aviator Pyotr Nesterov died.[3]</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He later became chief of staff and deputy commander of the Russian Northern Front. He was commander of the Northern Front from 29 August 1917 to 9 September 1917.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After the October Revolution, he was chief of staff of the Supreme Commander (1917–1918), the military director of the Supreme Military Council, and chief of field staff of the Revolutionary Military Council. He survived the Stalinist purge, in a large part because of his brother, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, who was Vladimir Lenin's personal secretary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They believed that the Red Army should consist only of dedicated revolutionaries, rely on propaganda and force, and have elected officers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They viewed former imperial officers and generals as potential traitors who should be kept out of the new military, much less put in charge of it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their views continued to be popular with many <i>Bolsheviks</i> throughout most of the Russian Civil War and their supporters, including Podvoisky, who became one of Trotsky's deputies, were a constant thorn in Trotsky's side.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Николай Ильич Подвойский<br />
Nikolai Ilyich Podvoisky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Николай Ильич Подвойский - Nikolai Ilyich Podvoisky (February 4 (16), 1880 - July 28, 1948) was a Russian revolutionary. He played a large role in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and wrote many articles for the Soviet newspaper Krasnaya Gazeta. He also wrote a history of the Bolshevik Revolution, which describes the progress of the Russian Revolution <i>without</i> mentioning Leon Trotsky or Joseph Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was chair-person of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and one of the troika who led the <i>storming of the Winter Palace</i>, and commissioned <i>Sergei Eisenstein </i>to create a film version of the 1920 re-enactment. Immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, he served as the first Commissar of Defense of Russia until March 1918.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The discontent with Trotsky's policies of strict discipline, conscription and reliance on carefully supervised non-Communist military experts eventually led to the Military Opposition (Russian: Военная оппозиция)), which was active within the Communist Party in late 1918–1919.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 13 March 1918, Trotsky's resignation as Commissar for Foreign Affairs was officially accepted and he was appointed People's Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs – in place of Podvoisky – and chairman of the Supreme Military Council.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The post of commander-in-chief was abolished, and Trotsky gained <i>full control</i> of the Red Army, responsible only to the Communist Party leadership, whose Left Socialist Revolutionary allies had left the government over Brest-Litovsk.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the help of his faithful deputy Ephraim Sklyansky, Trotsky spent the rest of the Civil War transforming the Red Army from a ragtag network of small and fiercely independent detachments into a large and disciplined military machine, through forced conscription, party-controlled blocking squads, compulsory obedience and officers chosen by the leadership instead of the rank and file.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He defended these positions throughout his life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Эфраим Маркович Склянский - Ephraim Markovich Sklyansky (August 12 [O.S. July 31] 1892 - August 27, 1925) was a Soviet statesman. He joined the Bolsheviks during his years as a student in the medical faculty of Kiev University, from which he graduated in 1916; he was immediately drafted into the army, where he served as a doctor and became prominent in the clandestine military organizations of the Bolsheviks. At the time of the October Revolution he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet; on meeting him in November, <i>Leon Trotsky </i>was so impressed with his "<i>great creative élan combined with concentrated attention to detail</i>" that he appointed him his deputy on the <i>Revolutionary Military Council</i>, where he served with distinction during the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) and helped improve the fighting condition of the Red Army—Trotsky called him the <i>Carnot of the Russian Revolution.</i> In 1924 he was made chairman of the Mossukno state textile trust, and the following May he left on a tour of Germany, France, and the United States to acquire technical information. On August 27, 1925 he died in a boating accident along with Isai Yakovlevich Khurgin, the first head of Amtorg Trading Corporation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">1919</span><br />
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Throughout late 1918 and early 1919, there were a number of attacks on Trotsky's leadership of the Red Army, including veiled accusations in newspaper articles inspired by <i>Stalin</i> and a direct attack by the Military Opposition at the VIIIth Party Congress in March 1919.</div>
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On the surface, he weathered them successfully and was elected one of only five full members of the first Politburo after the Congress. But he later wrote:</div>
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<i>'It is no wonder that my military work created so many enemies for me. I did not look to the side, I elbowed away those who interfered with military success, or in the haste of the work trod on the toes of the unheeding and was too busy even to apologize. Some people remember such things. The dissatisfied and those whose feelings had been hurt found their way to Stalin or Zinoviev, for these two also nourished hurts.'</i></div>
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In mid-1919 the dissatisfied had an opportunity to mount a serious challenge to Trotsky's leadership: the Red Army grew from 800,000 to 3,000,000, and fought simultaneously on sixteen fronts.</div>
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The Red Army had defeated the White Army's spring offensive in the east and was about to cross the Ural Mountains and enter Siberia in pursuit of Admiral Alexander Kolchak's forces.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Колча́к<br />
Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Колча́к - Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (16 November [O.S. 4 November] 1874 – 7 February 1920) was a polar explorer and commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, who fought in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. During the Russian Civil War, he established a <i>reactionary (White) government</i> in Siberia—later the 'Provisional All-Russian Government' - and was recognised as the "<i>Supreme Ruler and Commander-in-Chief of All Russian Land and Sea Forces</i>" by the other leaders of the White movement (1918–1920).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kolchak was a prominent expert on naval mines and a member of the Russian Geographical Society.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Among his awards are the Saint George Gold Sword for Bravery, given for his actions in the battle of Port Arthur and the Great Gold Constantine Medal from the Russian Geographic Society.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kolchak was interrogated by a commission of five men representing the Revolutionary Committee (REVKOM) during nine days between 21 January and 6 February. Despite the arrival of a contrary order from Moscow, Admiral Kolchak was condemned to death along with his Prime Minister, Viktor Pepelyayev.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Both prisoners were brought before a firing squad in the early morning of 7 February 1920.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But in the south, General Anton Denikin's White Russian forces advanced, and the situation deteriorated rapidly. On 6 June commander-in-chief Vatsetis ordered the Eastern Front to stop the offensive so that he could use its forces in the south.</span></div>
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But the leadership of the Eastern Front, including its commander Sergey Kamenev (a former colonel of the Imperial army), and Eastern Front Revolutionary Military Council members Ivar Smilga, Mikhail Lashevich and Sergey Gusev vigorously protested and wanted to keep the emphasis on the Eastern Front.</div>
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They insisted that it was vital to capture Siberia before the onset of winter and that once Kolchak's forces were broken, many more divisions would be freed up for the Southern Front. Trotsky, who had earlier had conflicts with the leadership of the Eastern Front, including a temporary removal of Kamenev in May 1919, supported Vatsetis.</div>
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At the 3–4 July Central Committee meeting, after a heated exchange the majority supported Kamenev and Smilga against Vatsetis and Trotsky.</div>
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Trotsky's plan was rejected and he was much criticized for various alleged shortcomings in his leadership style, much of it of a personal nature.</div>
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Stalin used this opportunity to pressure Lenin to dismiss Trotsky from his post. But when Trotsky offered his resignation on five July, the Politburo and the Orgburo of the Central Committee unanimously rejected it.</div>
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However, some significant changes to the leadership of the Red Army were made.</div>
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Trotsky was temporarily sent to the Southern Front, while the work in Moscow was informally coordinated by Smilga.</div>
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Most members of the bloated Revolutionary Military Council who were not involved in its day-to-day operations were relieved of their duties on 8 July, and new members, including Smilga, were added.</div>
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The same day, while Trotsky was in the south, Vatsetis was suddenly arrested by the Cheka on suspicion of involvement in an anti-Soviet plot, and replaced by Sergey Kamenev.</div>
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After a few weeks in the south, Trotsky returned to Moscow and resumed control of the Red Army. A year later, Smilga and Tukhachevsky were defeated during the Battle of Warsaw, but Trotsky refused this opportunity to pay Smilga back, which earned him Smilga's friendship and later support during the intra-Party battles of the 1920s.</div>
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By October 1919, the government was in the worst crisis of the Civil War: Denikin's troops approached Tula and Moscow from the south, and General Nikolay Yudenich's troops approached Petrograd from the west.</div>
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<i>Lenin</i> decided that since it was more important to defend Moscow, Petrograd would have to be abandoned.</div>
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Trotsky argued that Petrograd needed to be defended, at least in part to prevent Estonia and Finland from intervening.</div>
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In a rare reversal, Trotsky was supported by <i>Stalin </i>and Zinoviev and prevailed against <i>Lenin</i> in the Central Committee.</div>
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He immediately went to Petrograd, whose leadership headed by Zinoviev he found demoralized, and organized its defense, sometimes personally stopping fleeing soldiers.</div>
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By 22 October the Red Army was on the offensive and in early November, Yudenich's troops were driven back to Estonia, where they were disarmed and interned.</div>
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Trotsky was awarded the <i>Order of the Red Banner</i> for his actions in Petrograd.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the defeat of Denikin and Yudenich in late 1919, the Soviet government's emphasis shifted to the economy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky spent the winter of 1919–1920 in the Urals region trying to restart its economy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on his experiences, he proposed abandoning the policies of War Communism, which included confiscating grain from peasants, and partially restoring the grain market.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still committed to War Communism, <i>Lenin</i> rejected his proposal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He put Trotsky in charge of the country's railroads (while retaining overall control of the Red Army), which he directed should be militarized in the spirit of War Communism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was not until early 1921, due to economic collapse and social uprisings, that <i>Lenin</i> and the rest of the Bolshevik leadership abandoned War Communism in favor of the New Economic Policy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In early 1920, Soviet–Polish tensions eventually led to the Polish–Soviet War. In the run-up and during the war, Trotsky argued that the Red Army was exhausted and the Soviet government should sign a peace treaty with Poland as soon as possible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He did not believe that the Red Army would find much support in Poland proper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Lenin</i> later wrote that he and other Bolshevik leaders believed the Red Army's successes in the Russian Civil War and against the Poles meant "<i>The defensive period of the war with worldwide imperialism was over, and we could, and had the obligation to, exploit the military situation to launch an offensive war</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Red Army offensive was turned back during the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920, in part because of Stalin's failure to obey Trotsky's orders in the run-up to the decisive engagements. Back in Moscow, Trotsky again argued for a peace treaty and this time prevailed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trade Union Debate (1920–1921)</span><br />
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In late 1920, after the Bolsheviks won the Civil War and before the Eighth and Ninth Congress of Soviets, the Communist Party had a heated and increasingly acrimonious debate over the role of trade unions in the Soviet state.</div>
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The discussion split the party into many factions, including <i>Lenin's</i>, Trotsky's and Bukharin's; Bukharin eventually merged his with Trotsky's.</div>
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Smaller, more radical factions like the Workers' Opposition (headed by Alexander Shlyapnikov) and the Group of Democratic Centralism were particularly active.</div>
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Trotsky's position formed while he led a special commission on the Soviet transportation system, Tsektran.</div>
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He was appointed there to rebuild the rail system ruined by the Civil War.</div>
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Being the Commissar of War and a revolutionary military leader, he saw a need to create a militarized "<i>production atmosphere</i>" by <i>incorporating</i> trade unions directly into the State apparatus.</div>
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His unyielding stance was that in a worker's state the workers should have nothing to fear from the state, and the State should <i>fully</i> control the unions.</div>
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In the Ninth Party Congress he argued for "<i>such a regime under which each worker feels himself to be a soldier of labor who cannot freely dispose of himself; if he is ordered transferred, he must execute that order; if he does not do so, he will be a deserter who should be punished. Who will execute this? The trade union. It will create a new regime. That is the militarization of the working class.</i>"</div>
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Lenin sharply criticised Trotsky and accused him of "<i>bureaucratically nagging the trade unions</i>" and of staging "<i>factional attacks</i>".</div>
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His view did not focus on State control as much as the concern that a new relationship was needed between the State and the rank-and-file workers.</div>
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He said, "<i>Introduction of genuine labor discipline is conceived only if the whole mass of participants in productions take a conscious part in the fulfillment of these tasks. This cannot be achieved by bureaucratic methods and orders from above</i>."</div>
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This was a debate that <i>Lenin </i>thought the party could not afford.</div>
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His frustration with Trotsky was used by <i>Stalin</i> and Zinoviev with their support for Lenin's position, to improve their standing within the Bolshevik leadership at Trotsky's expense.</div>
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Disagreements threatened to get out of hand and many <i>Bolsheviks</i>, including <i>Lenin</i>, feared that the party would <i>splinter</i>.</div>
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The Central Committee was split almost evenly between <i>Lenin's</i> and Trotsky's supporters, with all three Secretaries of the Central Committee (Krestinky, Yevgeny Preobrazhensky and Leonid Serebryakov) supporting Trotsky.</div>
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At a meeting of his faction at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, <i>Lenin's</i> faction won a decisive victory and a number of Trotsky's supporters (including all three secretaries of the Central Committee) lost their leadership positions. Krestinsky was replaced as a member of the Politburo by Zinoviev, who had supported <i>Lenin</i>.</div>
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Krestinsky's place in the secretariat was taken by Vyacheslav Molotov.</div>
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The congress also adopted a secret resolution on "<i>Party unity</i>", which banned factions within the Party except during pre-Congress discussions. The resolution was later published and used by Stalin against Trotsky and other opponents.</div>
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At the end of the Tenth Congress, after peace negotiations had failed, Trotsky gave the order for the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion, the last major revolt against Bolshevik rule.</div>
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Years later, anarchist Emma Goldman and others criticized Trotsky's actions as Commissar for War for his role in the suppression of the rebellion, and argued that he ordered unjustified incarcerations and executions of political opponents such as anarchists, although Trotsky did not participate in the actual suppression.</div>
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Some Trotskyists, most notably Abbie Bakan, have argued that the claim that the Kronstadt rebels were "<i>counterrevolutionary</i>" has been supported by evidence of White Army and French government support for the Kronstadt sailors' March rebellion.</div>
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Other historians, most notably Paul Avrich, claimed the evidence did not point towards this conclusion, and that the Kronstadt Rebellion was spontaneous.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Illness (1922–1923)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In late 1921 <i>Lenin's</i> health deteriorated, he was absent from Moscow for even longer periods, and eventually had three strokes between 26 May 1922 and 10 March 1923, which caused paralysis, loss of speech and finally death on 21 January 1924.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With <i>Lenin</i> increasingly sidelined throughout 1922, Stalin (elevated to the newly created position of the Central Committee General Secretary earlier in the year), Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev formed a troika (triumvirate) to ensure that Trotsky, publicly the number-two man in the country and Lenin's heir presumptive, would not succeed Lenin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The rest of the recently expanded Politburo (Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, Bukharin) was at first uncommitted, but eventually joined the troika.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Stalin's</i> power of patronage in his capacity as General Secretary clearly played a role, but Trotsky and his supporters later concluded that a more fundamental reason was the process of slow bureaucratization of the Soviet regime once the extreme conditions of the Civil War were over: much of the <i>Bolshevik</i> elite wanted 'normalcy' while Trotsky was personally and politically personified as representing a turbulent revolutionary period that they would much rather leave behind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the exact sequence of events is unclear, evidence suggests that at first the troika nominated Trotsky to head second rate government departments (e.g., Gokhran, the State Depository for Valuables[71]) and then, when Trotsky predictably refused, tried using it as an excuse to oust him. At this time there was speculation about Trotsky's health and whether he had epilepsy.[72]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When, in mid-July 1922, Kamenev wrote a letter to the recovering <i>Lenin</i> to the effect that "<i>(the Central Committee) is throwing or is ready to throw a good cannon overboard</i>", Lenin was shocked and responded:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Throwing Trotsky overboard – surely you are hinting at that, it is impossible to interpret it otherwise – is the height of stupidity. If you do not consider me already hopelessly foolish, how can you think of that ?'</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From then until his final stroke, <i>Lenin </i>spent much of his time trying to devise a way to prevent a split within the Communist Party leadership, which was reflected in<i> Lenin's Testament</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As part of this effort, on 11 September 1922 <i>Lenin</i> proposed that Trotsky become his deputy at the Council of People's Commissars (<i>Sovnarkom</i>).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Politburo approved the proposal, but Trotsky "<i>categorically refused</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In late 1922, <i>Lenin's</i> relationship with <i>Stalin</i> deteriorated over <i>Stalin's</i> heavy-handed and chauvinistic handling of the issue of merging Soviet republics into one federal state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At that point <i>Lenin</i> offered Trotsky an alliance against Soviet bureaucracy in general and <i>Stalin</i> in particular.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The alliance proved effective on the issue of foreign trade, but it was complicated by <i>Lenin's</i> progressing illness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 1923 the relationship between <i>Lenin</i> and <i>Stalin</i> completely broke down when <i>Stalin</i> rudely insulted <i>Lenin's</i> wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At that point <i>Lenin</i> amended his <i>Testament</i> suggesting that <i>Stalin</i> should be replaced as the party's General Secretary, although the thrust of his argument was somewhat weakened by the fact that he also mildly criticized other <i>Bolshevik</i> leaders, including Trotsky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In March 1923, days before his third stroke, <i>Lenin</i> prepared a frontal assault on <i>Stalin's</i> "<i>Great-Russian nationalistic campaign</i>" against the Georgian Communist Party (the so-called 'Georgian Affair') and asked Trotsky to deliver the blow at the XIIth Party Congress.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With <i>Lenin</i> no longer active, Trotsky did not raise the issue at the Congress.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the XIIth Party Congress in April 1923, just after <i>Lenin's</i> final stroke, the key Central Committee reports on organizational and nationalities questions were delivered by <i>Stalin</i> and not by Trotsky, while Zinoviev delivered the political report of the Central Committee, traditionally <i>Lenin's</i> prerogative.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Stalin's</i> power of appointment had allowed him to gradually replace local party secretaries with loyal functionaries and thus control most regional delegations at the congress, which enabled him to pack the Central Committee with his supporters, mostly at the expense of Zinoviev and Kamenev's backers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the congress, Trotsky made a speech about intra-party democracy, among other things, but avoided a direct confrontation with the troika.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The delegates, most of whom were unaware of the divisions within the Politburo, gave Trotsky a standing ovation, which couldn't help but upset the troika.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The troika was further infuriated by Karl Radek's article Leon Trotsky – 'Organizer of Victory' published in 'Pravda' on 14 March 1923.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The resolutions adopted by the XIIth Congress called, in general terms, for greater democracy within the Party, but were vague and remained unimplemented. In an important test of strength in mid-1923, the troika was able to neutralize Trotsky's friend and supporter Christian Rakovsky by removing him from his post as head of the Ukrainian government (<i>Sovnarkom</i>) and sending him to London as Soviet ambassador.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When regional Party secretaries in Ukraine protested against Rakovsky's reassignment, they too were reassigned to various posts all over the Soviet Union.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Left Opposition (1923–1924)</span><br />
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Starting in mid-1923, the Soviet economy ran into significant difficulties, which led to numerous strikes countrywide.</div>
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Two secret groups within the Communist Party, “Workers' Truth” and “Workers' Group”, were uncovered and suppressed by the Cheka.</div>
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On 8 October 1923 Trotsky sent a letter to the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, attributing these difficulties to lack of intra-Party democracy.</div>
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Trotsky wrote:</div>
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'<i>In the fiercest moment of War Communism, the system of appointment within the party did not have one tenth of the extent that it has now. Appointment of the secretaries of provincial committees is now the rule. That creates for the secretary a position essentially independent of the local organization.The bureaucratization of the party apparatus has developed to unheard-of proportions by means of the method of secretarial selection.There has been created a very broad stratum of party workers, entering into the apparatus of the government of the party, who completely renounce their own party opinion, at least the open expression of it, as though assuming that the secretarial hierarchy is the apparatus which creates party opinion and party decisions. Beneath this stratum, abstaining from their own opinions, there lays the broad mass of the party, before whom every decision stands in the form of a summons or a command.'</i></div>
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Other senior communists who had similar concerns sent 'The Declaration of 46' to the Central Committee on 15 October in which they wrote:</div>
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'<i>We observe an ever progressing, barely disguised division of the party into a secretarial hierarchy and into "laymen", into professional party functionaries, chosen from above, and the other party masses, who take no part in social life... free discussion within the party has virtually disappeared, party public opinion has been stifled.... it is the secretarial hierarchy, the party hierarchy which to an ever greater degree chooses the delegates to the conferences and congresses, which to an ever greater degree are becoming the executive conferences of this hierarchy.</i>'</div>
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Although the text of these letters remained secret at the time, they had a significant effect on the Party leadership and prompted a partial retreat by the troika and its supporters on the issue of intra-Party democracy, notably in Zinoviev's Pravda article published on 7 November. Throughout November, the troika tried to come up with a compromise to placate, or at least temporarily neutralize, Trotsky and his supporters.</div>
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(Their task was made easier by the fact that Trotsky was sick in November and December.) The first draft of the resolution was rejected by Trotsky, which led to the formation of a special group consisting of Stalin, Trotsky and Kamenev, which was charged with drafting a mutually acceptable compromise.</div>
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On 5 December, the Politburo and the Central Control Commission unanimously adopted the group's final draft as its resolution.</div>
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On 8 December Trotsky published an open letter, in which he expounded on the recently adopted resolution's ideas.</div>
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The troika used his letter as an excuse to launch a campaign against Trotsky, accusing him of factionalism, setting "the youth against the fundamental generation of old revolutionary Bolsheviks" and other sins.</div>
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Trotsky defended his position in a series of seven letters which were collected as 'The New Course' in January 1924.</div>
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The illusion of a "<i>monolithic Bolshevik leadership</i>" was thus shattered and a lively intra-Party discussion ensued, both in local Party organizations and in the pages of Pravda.</div>
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The discussion lasted most of December and January until the XIIIth Party Conference of 16–18 January 1924.</div>
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Those who opposed the Central Committee's position in the debate were thereafter referred to as members of the Left Opposition.</div>
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Since the troika controlled the Party apparatus through <i>Stalin's</i> Secretariat and Pravda through its editor Bukharin, it was able to direct the discussion and the process of delegate selection. Although Trotsky's position prevailed within the Red Army and Moscow universities and received about half the votes in the Moscow Party organization, it was defeated elsewhere, and the Conference was packed with pro-troika delegates.</div>
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In the end, only three delegates voted for Trotsky's position and the Conference denounced "<i>Trotskyism</i>" as a "<i>petty bourgeois deviation</i>".</div>
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After the Conference, a number of Trotsky's supporters, especially in the Red Army's Political Directorate, were removed from leading positions or reassigned.</div>
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Nonetheless, Trotsky kept all of his posts and the troika was careful to emphasize that the debate was limited to Trotsky's <i>"mistakes</i>" and that removing Trotsky from the leadership was out of the question.</div>
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In reality, Trotsky had already been cut off from the decision making process.</div>
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Immediately after the Conference, Trotsky left for a Caucasian resort to recover from his prolonged illness.</div>
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On his way, he learned about<i> Lenin's</i> death on 21 January 1924.</div>
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He was about to return when a follow up telegram from <i>Stalin</i> arrived, giving an <i>incorrect date</i> of the scheduled funeral, which would have made it impossible for Trotsky to return in time. Many commentators speculated after the fact that Trotsky's absence from Moscow in the days following Lenin's death contributed to his eventual loss to <i>Stalin</i>, although Trotsky generally discounted the significance of his absence.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">After Lenin's death (1924)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2010)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was little overt political disagreement within the Soviet leadership throughout most of 1924. On the surface, Trotsky remained the most prominent and popular Bolshevik leader, although his "mistakes" were often alluded to by troika partisans. Behind the scenes, he was completely cut off from the decision making process. Politburo meetings were pure formalities since all key decisions were made ahead of time by the troika and its supporters. Trotsky's control over the military was undermined by reassigning his deputy, Ephraim Sklyansky, and appointing Mikhail Frunze, who was being groomed to take Trotsky's place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the thirteenth Party Congress in May, Trotsky delivered a conciliatory speech:[85]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right.... We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right. The English have a saying, "My country, right or wrong", whether it is in the right or in the wrong, it is my country. We have much better historical justification in saying whether it is right or wrong in certain individual concrete cases, it is my party.... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.[86]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The attempt at reconciliation, however, did not stop troika supporters from taking potshots at him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, the Left Opposition, which had coagulated somewhat unexpectedly in late 1923 and lacked a definite platform aside from general dissatisfaction with the intra-Party "regime", began to crystallize. It lost some less dedicated members to the harassment by the troika, but it also began formulating a program. Economically, the Left Opposition and its theoretician Yevgeny Preobrazhensky came out against further development of capitalist elements in the Soviet economy and in favor of faster industrialization. That put them at odds with Bukharin and Rykov, the "Right" group within the Party, who supported troika at the time. On the question of world revolution, Trotsky and Karl Radek saw a period of stability in Europe while Stalin and Zinoviev confidently predicted an "acceleration" of revolution in Western Europe in 1924. On the theoretical plane, Trotsky remained committed to the Bolshevik idea that the Soviet Union could not create a true socialist society in the absence of the world revolution, while Stalin gradually came up with a policy of building 'Socialism in One Country'. These ideological divisions provided much of the intellectual basis for the political divide between Trotsky and the Left Opposition on the one hand and Stalin and his allies on the other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the thirteenth Congress Kamenev and Zinoviev helped Stalin defuse Lenin's Testament, which belatedly came to the surface. But just after the congress, the troika, always an alliance of convenience, showed signs of weakness. Stalin began making poorly veiled accusations about Zinoviev and Kamenev. Yet in October 1924, Trotsky published The Lessons of October,[87] an extensive summary of the events of the 1917 revolution. In it, he described Zinoviev's and Kamenev's opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, something that the two would have preferred left unmentioned. This started a new round of intra-party struggle, which became known as the Literary Discussion, with Zinoviev and Kamenev again allied with Stalin against Trotsky. Their criticism of Trotsky was concentrated in three areas:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's disagreements and conflicts with Lenin and the Bolsheviks prior to 1917.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's alleged distortion of the events of 1917 in order to emphasize his role and diminish the roles played by other Bolsheviks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's harsh treatment of his subordinates and other alleged mistakes during the Russian Civil War.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was again sick and unable to respond while his opponents mobilized all of their resources to denounce him. They succeeded in damaging his military reputation so much that he was forced to resign as People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council on 6 January 1925. Zinoviev demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party, but Stalin refused to go along and skillfully played the role of a moderate. Trotsky kept his Politburo seat, but was effectively put on probation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In the Wilderness (1925)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1925 was a difficult year for Trotsky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the bruising 'Literary Discussion' and losing his Red Army posts, he was effectively unemployed throughout the winter and spring.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 1925, he was given three posts: chairman of the Concessions Committee, head of the electro-technical board, and chairman of the scientific-technical board of industry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky wrote in 'My Life' that he "<i>was taking a rest from politics</i>" and "<i>naturally plunged into the new line of work up to my ears</i>" but some contemporary accounts paint a picture of a remote and distracted man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later in the year, Trotsky resigned his two technical positions (claiming Stalin-instigated interference and sabotage) and concentrated on his work in the Concessions Committee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, the troika finally broke up.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin and Rykov sided with <i>Stalin,</i> while Krupskaya and Soviet Commissar of Finance Grigory Sokolnikov aligned with Zinoviev and Kamenev.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The struggle became open at the September 1925 meeting of the Central Committee and came to a head at the XIVth Party Congress in December 1925.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With only the Leningrad Party organization behind them, Zinoviev and Kamenev, dubbed '<i>The New Opposition'</i>, were thoroughly defeated, while Trotsky refused to get involved in the fight and didn't speak at the Congress.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">United Opposition (1926–1927)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During a lull in the intra-party fighting in the spring of 1926, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their supporters in the “<i>New Opposition</i>” gravitated closer to Trotsky's supporters and the two groups soon formed an alliance, which also incorporated some smaller opposition groups within the Communist Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The alliance became known as the “<i>United Opposition</i>”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>United Opposition</i> was repeatedly threatened with sanctions by the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party, and Trotsky had to agree to tactical retreats, mostly to preserve his alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The opposition remained united against <i>Stalin</i> throughout 1926 and 1927, especially on the issue of the Chinese Revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The methods used by the Stalinists against the Opposition became more and more extreme. At the XVth Party Conference in October 1926 Trotsky could barely speak because of interruptions and catcalls, and at the end of the Conference he lost his Politburo seat.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1927 <i>Stalin</i> started using the GPU (Soviet secret police) to infiltrate and discredit the opposition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rank and file oppositionists were increasingly harassed, sometimes expelled from the Party and even arrested.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As noted above, Soviet policy toward the Chinese Revolution became the ideological line of demarcation between Stalin and the '<i>United Opposition'</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Chinese Revolution began on October 10, 1911, resulting in the abdication of the Chinese Emperor February 12, 1912.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sun Yat-sen established the Republic of China.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In reality, however, the Republic controlled very little of the country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Much of China was divided between various regional warlords.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Republican government established a new "nationalist people's army and a national people's party—the <i>Kuomintang</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1920, the<i> Kuomintang</i> opened relations with Soviet Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Soviet help, the Republic of China built up the nationalist people's army.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the development of the nationalist army, a Northern Expedition was planned to smash the power of the warlords of the northern part of the country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This Northern Expedition became a point of contention over foreign policy by <i>Stalin</i> and Trotsky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Stalin</i> tried to persuade the small Chinese Communist Party to merge with the <i>Kuomintang</i> (KMT) Nationalists to bring about a bourgeois revolution before attempting to bring about a Soviet-style working class revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Stalin</i>, like <i>Lenin</i>, believed that the KMT <i>bourgeoisie</i>, together with all patriotic national liberation forces in the country, would defeat the western imperialists in China.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky wanted the Communist party to complete an orthodox proletarian revolution and opposed the KMT.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Stalin</i> funded the KMT during the expedition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Stalin</i> countered Trotskyist criticism by making a secret speech in which he said that Chiang's right wing <i>Kuomintang</i> were the only ones capable of defeating the imperialists, that Chiang Kai-shek had funding from the rich merchants, and that his forces were to be utilized until squeezed for all usefulness like a lemon before being discarded, however, Chiang quickly reversed the tables in the Shanghai massacre of 1927 by massacring the Communist party in Shanghai midway in the Northern Expedition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Defeat and Exile (1927–1928)</span><br />
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In October 1927, Trotsky and Zinoviev were <i>expelled</i> from the Central Committee.</div>
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When the '<i>United Opposition</i>' tried to organize independent demonstrations commemorating the 10th anniversary of the <i>Bolshevik</i> seizure of power in November 1927, the demonstrators were dispersed by force and Trotsky and Zinoviev were <i>expelled </i>from the Communist Party on 12 November.</div>
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Their leading supporters, from Kamenev down, were expelled in December 1927 by the XVth Party Congress, which paved the way for mass expulsions of rank and file '<i>oppositionists</i>' as well as internal exile of opposition leaders in early 1928.</div>
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When the XVth Party Congress made Opposition views incompatible with membership in the Communist Party, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their supporters capitulated and renounced their alliance with the Left Opposition.</div>
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Trotsky and most of his followers, on the other hand, refused to surrender and stayed the course.</div>
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Trotsky was <i>exiled</i> to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan on 31 January 1928.</div>
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He was <i>expelled</i> from the Soviet Union to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and his son Lev Sedov.</div>
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After Trotsky's expulsion from the country, exiled Trotskyists began to waver.</div>
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Between 1929 and 1934, most of the leading members of the '<i>Opposition</i>' surrendered to Stalin, "<i>admitted their mistakes</i>" and were reinstated in the Communist Party.</div>
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Christian Rakovsky, who had inspired Trotsky between 1929 and 1934 from his Siberian exile, was the last prominent Trotskyist to capitulate.</div>
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Almost all of them were <i>executed</i> in the '<i>Great Purges</i>' of 1937-1938.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Exile (1929–1940)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was deported from the Soviet Union in February 1929.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His first station in exile was at Büyükada off the coast of Istanbul, Turkey, where he stayed for the next four years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was at risk from the many former White Army officers in the city, who had opposed the Bolshevik Revolution, but Trotsky's European supporters volunteered to serve as bodyguards and assured his safety.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1933 Trotsky was offered asylum in France by Prime Minister Édouard Daladier.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He stayed first at Royan, then at Barbizon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was not allowed in Paris, though he did visit the city in secret during December 1933, to meet with various political allies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The philosopher and activist Simone Weil arranged for Trotsky and his bodyguards to stay for a few days at her parents house.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1935 he was told he was no longer welcome in France.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After weighing alternatives, he moved to Norway.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having obtained permission from then Justice Minister Trygve Lie to enter the country, Trotsky became a guest of Konrad Knudsen near Oslo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After two years he was put under house arrest, allegedly because of Soviet influence on the government.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His transfer to Mexico by freighter was arranged after consultations with Norwegian officials. The Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed Trotsky and arranged for a special train to bring him to Mexico City from the port of Tampico.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky lived in the Coyoacán area of Mexico City at the home (The Blue House) of the painter Diego Rivera and Rivera's wife and fellow painter, Frida Kahlo, with whom Trotsky had an affair.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His final move was a few blocks away to a residence on Avenida Viena in May 1939, following a break with Rivera.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He wrote prolifically in exile, penning several key works, including his 'History of the Russian Revolution' (1930) and 'The Revolution Betrayed' (1936), a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalinism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky argued that the Soviet state had become a “<i>degenerated workers' state</i>” controlled by an <i>undemocratic bureaucracy</i>, which would eventually either be overthrown via a political revolution establishing a workers' democracy, or degenerate into a capitalist class (which is what eventually happened).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While in Mexico, Trotsky also worked closely with James P. Cannon, Joseph Hansen, and Farrell Dobbs of the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and other supporters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cannon, a long-time leading member of the American communist movement, had supported Trotsky in the struggle against Stalinism since he first read Trotsky's criticisms of the Soviet Union in 1928.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's critique of the Stalinist regime, though banned, was distributed to leaders of the Comintern.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among his other supporters was Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Moscow Show Trials</span><br />
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"<i>The Moscow trials are perpetuated under the banner of socialism. We will not concede this banner to the masters of falsehood! If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind. It will be severe, it will be lengthy. Whoever seeks physical comfort and spiritual calm let him step aside. In time of reaction it is more convenient to lean on the bureaucracy than on the truth. But all those for whom the word ‘Socialism’ is not a hollow sound but the content of their moral life – forward! Neither threats nor persecutions nor violations can stop us! Be it even over our bleaching bones the future will triumph! We will blaze the trail for it. It will conquer! Under all the severe blows of fate, I shall be happy as in the best days of my youth; because, my friends, the highest human happiness is not the exploitation of the present but the preparation of the future</i>."</div>
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— Leon Trotsky, '<i>I Stake My Life</i>', opening address to the Dewey Commission, 9 February 1937</div>
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In August 1936, the first Moscow show trial of the so-called "T<i>rotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center</i>" was staged in front of an international audience.</div>
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During the trial, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 other accused, most of them prominent Old Bolsheviks, confessed to having plotted with Trotsky to kill <i>Stalin</i> and other members of the Soviet leadership.</div>
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The court found everybody guilty and sentenced the defendants to death, Trotsky in absentia. The second show trial, of Karl Radek, Grigory Sokolnikov, Yuri Pyatakov and 14 others, took place in January 1937, during which more alleged conspiracies and crimes were linked to Trotsky.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Fourth International</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For fear of splitting the Communist movement, Trotsky initially opposed the idea of establishing parallel Communist parties, or a parallel international Communist organization that would compete with the Third International.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In mid-1933, he changed his mind after the National Socialist takeover in Germany and the Comintern's response to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He said,</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it.... In all our subsequent work it is necessary to take as our point of departure the historical collapse of the official Communist International</i>.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1938, Trotsky and his supporters founded the<i> 'Fourth International'</i>, which was intended to be a revolutionary and internationalist <i>alternative</i> to the Stalinist Comintern.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Final Months</span><br />
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After quarreling with Diego Rivera, Trotsky moved to his final residence on Avenida Viena.</div>
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He was ill, suffering from high blood pressure, and feared that he would suffer a cerebral hemorrhage.</div>
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He even prepared himself for the possibility of ending his life through suicide.</div>
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On 27 February 1940, Trotsky wrote a document known as "<i>Trotsky's Testament</i>", in which he expressed his final thoughts and feelings for posterity.</div>
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<i>'After forcefully denying Stalin's accusations that he had betrayed the working class, he thanked his friends, and above all his wife and dear companion, Natalia Sedova, for their loyal support:</i></div>
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<i>In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.</i></div>
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<i>For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.</i></div>
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<i>Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.'</i></div>
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L. Trotsky</div>
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27 February 1940</div>
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Coyoacan.<br />
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On 24 May 1940, Trotsky survived a raid on his home by armed Stalinist assassins led by GPU agent Iosif Grigulevich, Mexican painter and Stalinist David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Vittorio Vidale.</div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's young grandson, Vsievolod Platonovich "Esteban" Volkov (born 1926), was shot in the foot and a young assistant and bodyguard of Trotsky, Robert Sheldon Harte, was abducted and later murdered, but other guards saw off the attack.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked in his home in Mexico with an ice axe by undercover NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The blow to Trotsky's head was poorly delivered and failed to kill Trotsky instantly, as Mercader had intended.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Witnesses stated that Trotsky spat on Mercader and began struggling fiercely with him. Hearing the commotion, Trotsky's bodyguards burst into the room and nearly killed Mercader, but Trotsky stopped them, laboriously stating that the assassin should be made to answer questions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was taken to a hospital, operated on, and survived for more than a day, dying at the age of 60 on 21 August 1940 as a result of blood loss and shock.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mercader later testified at his trial:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head.'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Epilogue</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's house in Coyoacán was preserved in much the same condition as it was on the day of the assassination, and is now a museum run by a board which includes his grandson Esteban Volkov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The current director of the museum is Carlos Ramirez Sandoval.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's grave is located on its grounds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A new foundation (International Friends of the Leon Trotsky Museum) has been organized to raise funds to further improve the Museum.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky considered himself a "<i>Bolshevik-Leninist</i>", arguing for the establishment of a '<i>vanguard party'</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He considered himself an advocate of<i> orthodox Marxism</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His politics differed in many respects from those of <i>Stalin</i>, most importantly in his rejection of the theory of 'Socialism in One Country' and his declaring the need for an international "<i>Permanent Revolution</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Numerous Fourth Internationalist groups around the world continue to describe themselves as '<i>Trotskyis</i>t', and see themselves as standing in this tradition, although they have different interpretations of the conclusions to be drawn from this.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Supporters of the '<i>Fourth International</i>' echo Trotsky's opposition to Stalinist <i>totalitarianism,</i> advocating <i>political revolution</i>, arguing that socialism cannot sustain itself without democracy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Permanent Revolution</span><br />
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<i>Permanent Revolution</i> is a term within <i>Marxist theory</i>, established in usage by <i>Karl Marx</i> and <i>Friedrich Engels</i> by at least 1850, but which has since become most closely associated with Leon Trotsky.</div>
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The use of the term by different theorists is not identical.</div>
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Marx used it to describe the strategy of a revolutionary class to continue to pursue its class interests independently and without compromise, despite overtures for political alliances, and despite the political dominance of opposing sections of society.</div>
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Trotsky put forward his conception of '<i>permanent revolution</i>' as an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism.</div>
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Part of his theory is the <i>impossibility</i> of '<i>socialism in one country</i>' – a view also held by <i>Marx</i>.</div>
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Trotsky's theory also argues, first, that the<i> bourgeoisie</i> in<i> late-developing</i> capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat.</div>
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Second, that the proletariat can and must, therefore, seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trotsky's Conception of Permanent Revolution</span><br />
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Trotsky's conception of '<i>Permanent Revolution</i>' is based on his understanding, drawing on the work of fellow Russian Alexander Parvus, that in '<i>backward</i>' countries the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution could not be achieved by the bourgeoisie itself.<br />
This conception was first developed in the essays later collected in his book 1905 and in his essay 'Results and Prospects', and later developed in his 1929 book, 'The Permanent Revolution'.<br />
The basic idea of Trotsky's theory is that in Russia the bourgeoisie would not carry out a thorough revolution which would institute political democracy and solve the land question. These measures were assumed to be essential to develop Russia economically, therefore it was argued the future revolution must be led by the proletariat who would not only carry through the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, but would commence a struggle to <i>surpass </i>the bourgeois democratic revolution.<br />
How far the proletariat would be able to travel upon that road would depend upon the further course of events and not upon the designation of the revolution as "Bourgeois Democratic".<br />
In this sense the revolution would be made permanent.<br />
Trotsky believed that a new workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well.<br />
This theory was advanced in opposition to the position held by the Stalinist faction within the Bolshevik Party that "<i>socialism in one country</i>" could be built in the Soviet Union.<br />
Trotsky's theory was developed as an alternative to the Social Democratic theory that undeveloped countries must pass through two distinct revolutions.<br />
First the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, which socialists would assist, and at a later stage, the Socialist Revolution with an evolutionary period of capitalist development separating those stages.<br />
This is often referred to as the <i>Theory of Stages</i>, the Two Stage Theory or Stagism.<br />
<i>Vladimir Lenin</i> and the <i>Bolsheviks</i> initially held to a version of the Stagist theory, since they were still connected to the Social Democrats at the time.<br />
<i>Lenin's</i> earlier theory shared Trotsky's premise that the bourgeoisie would not complete a bourgeois revolution.<br />
<i>Lenin</i> thought that a '<i>Democratic Dictatorship</i>' of the workers and peasants could complete the tasks of the bourgeoisie.<br />
<i>Lenin</i> was arguing by 1917 not only that the Russian bourgeoisie would not be able to carry through the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and therefore the proletariat had to take state power, but also that it should take economic power via a Soviet<br />
This position was put forward to the <i>Bolsheviks</i> on his return to Russia, in his April Theses. The first reaction of the majority of <i>Bolsheviks</i> was one of rejection of the Theses.<br />
Initially, only Alexandra Kollontai rallied to <i>Lenin's</i> position within the <i>Bolshevik</i> party.<br />
After the October Revolution, the <i>Bolsheviks</i>, now including Trotsky, did not discuss the theory of <i>Permanent Revolution</i> as such, however, its basic theses can be found in such popular outlines of Communist theory as 'The ABC's of Communism', which sought to explain the program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, by Yevgeni Preobrazhensky and Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938).<br />
Later on, after <i>Lenin's</i> death, in the 1920s, the theory did assume importance in the internal debates within the Communist Party and was a bone of contention within the opposition to Joseph Stalin.<br />
In essence a section of the Communist Party leadership, whose views were voiced at the theoretical level by Nikolai Bukharin, argued that socialism could be built in a single country, even an underdeveloped one like Russia.<br />
This meant that there would be less need to encourage revolutions in advanced Western countries in the hope that a Socialist Germany (for example) would later give Russia the economic base needed to construct a socialist society.<br />
Bukharin argued that Russia's pre-existing economic base was sufficient for the task at hand, provided the USSR could be militarily defended.<br />
Acting on these ideas, the Communist International became less revolutionary and more willing to compromise with "<i>reactionary</i>" forces, for example by advising its Chinese section to back the Kuomintang's efforts to unify China.<br />
This effort was seen as being the Chinese Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, and the fact that communists supported it meant a return to a Stagist position.<br />
The question of the Chinese revolution and the subjection of the Communist Party of China to control by the Kuomintang at the behest of the Russian Communist Party was a topic of argument within the opposition to <i>Stalin</i> in the Russian Communist Party.<br />
On the one hand, figures such as Karl Radek argued that a Stagist strategy was correct for China, although their writings are only known to us now second hand, having perished in the 1930s (if original copies exist in the archives, they have not been located since the fall of the USSR in 1989).<br />
Trotsky, on the other hand, generalised his '<i>Theory of Permanent Revolution'</i>, which had only been applied in the case of Russia previously, and argued that the proletariat needed to take power in a process of uninterrupted and Permanent Revolution in order to carry out the tasks of the Bourgeois Democratic revolution.<br />
His position was put forward in his essay entitled '<i>The Permanent Revolution'</i>, which can be found today in a single book together with 'Results and Prospects'.<br />
Not only did Trotsky generalise his '<i>Theory of Permanent Revolution'</i> in this essay but he also grounded it in the idea of uneven and combined development.<br />
This argument goes, again in contrast to the conceptions inherent within Stagist theory, that capitalist nations, indeed all class-based societies, develop unevenly and that some parts will develop more swiftly than others, however, it is also argued that this development is combined and that each part of the world economy is increasingly bound together with all other parts.<br />
The conception of uneven and combined development also recognises that some areas may even regress further economically and socially as a result of their integration into a world economy.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The United Front</span><br />
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Trotsky was a central figure in the Comintern during its first four congresses.<br />
During this time he helped to generalise the strategy and tactics of the <i>Bolsheviks</i> to newly formed Communist parties across Europe and further afield.<br />
From 1921 onwards the united front, a method of uniting revolutionaries and reformists in common struggle while winning some of the workers to revolution, was the central tactic put forward by the Comintern after the defeat of the German revolution.<br />
After he was exiled and politically marginalised by Stalinism, Trotsky continued to argue for a united front against fascism in Germany and Spain.<br />
His articles on the united front represent an important part of his political legacy.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotskyism.html" target="_blank">троцкизма</a></span></b></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-31040742864728870022013-04-15T11:45:00.000-07:002013-04-21T10:42:39.479-07:00Trotsky - the Early Years<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Лев Троцкий</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Early Years</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leon Trotsky, [born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein; 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940) was a Jewish Russian <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist</a> revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">1917 October Revolution</a>, and eventually became an important leader within the Party.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trotsky Reviewing Soldiers of the Red Army</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Лев Троцкий<br />
Leon Trotsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army as People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–20).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was also among the first members of the Politburo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was successively removed from power (1927), expelled from the Communist Party, and finally deported from the Soviet Union (1929).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile in Mexico to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism, in the late 1930s, Trotsky opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, officially the 'Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union', and also known as the 'Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact', was a non-aggression pact signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Pact assured a non-involvement of the Soviet Union in a European War, as well as separating Germany and Japan from forming a military alliance, thus allowing Stalin to concentrate on Japan in the battles of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan).The pact remained in effect until 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was eventually assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico, by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent in August 1940.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Most of his family members were also killed in separate attacks.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's ideas were the basis of 'Trotskyism', a major school of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist thought</a> that is opposed to the theories of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalinism</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Childhood (1879–1895)</span><br />
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Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (Лев Давидович Бронштейн) on 7 November 1879, in Yanovka (Яновка), in the Kherson guberniya of the Russian Empire (today's Bereslavka (Береславка) in the Bobrynets Raion, Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine).</div>
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He was the fifth child of eight of well-to-do <i>Jewish</i> farmers, David Leontyevich Bronshtein (1847–1922) and his wife Anna Bronshtein (1850–1910).</div>
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The family was Jewish but reportedly not religious.<br />
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The language spoken at home was a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian.</div>
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Trotsky's younger sister, Olga, married<i> Lev Kamenev</i>, a leading Bolshevik.<br />
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When Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated.</div>
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He was enrolled in an historically German school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa, consequent to the Imperial government's policy of Russification.</div>
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Odessa was then a bustling cosmopolitan port city, very <i>unlike</i> the typical Russian city of the time.<br />
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Потёмкинская лестница - Odessa Steps</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The most celebrated scene in Eisenstein's film 'The Battleship Potemkin' is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps. In the scene, the Tsar's soldiers in their white summer tunics march down a seemingly endless flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing volleys into a crowd. A separate detachment of mounted Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. The victims include an older woman wearing Pince-nez, a young boy with his mother, a student in uniform and a teenage schoolgirl. A mother pushing an infant in a baby carriage falls to the ground dying and the carriage rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd.</span></div>
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This environment contributed to the development of the young man's <i>international</i> outlook.</div>
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Although Trotsky stated in his autobiography 'My Life' that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, it is reported that Trotsky spoke fluent French.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Revolutionary Activity and Exile (1896–1902)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to Nikolayev (now Mykolaiv).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first a <i>narodnik</i> (revolutionary populist), he was introduced to <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxism</a></i> later that year, which he originally opposed.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Лев Троцкий<br />
Leon Trotsky - 1897</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During periods of exile and imprisonment, he gradually became a Marxist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev in early 1897.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Using the name 'Lvov', he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, and popularized socialist ideas among industrial workers and revolutionary students.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He spent the next two years in prison awaiting trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two months into his imprisonment, on March 1-March 3, 1898, the first Congress of the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was held.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aleksandra Sokolovskaya<br />
Trotsky and Friends</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From then on Trotsky identified as a member of the party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While in prison, he married <i>Aleksandra Sokolovskaya</i> (or Sokolovskaia) (1872–1938), a fellow Marxist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While serving his sentence, he studied <i>philosophy</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1900 he was sentenced to four years in exile in Ust-Kut and Verkholensk, in the Irkutsk region of Siberia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His wife was also sent there to join him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their two daughters, Zinaida (1901 – 5 January 1933) and Nina (1902 – 9 June 1928), were born in Siberia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were raised by Trotsky's parents after Leon and Alexandra soon separated and divorced.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both daughters married and Zinaida had children, but the daughters died before their parents.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nina Nevelson died from tuberculosis (TB), cared for in her last months by her older sister.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zinaida Volkova died after following her father into exile in Berlin with her son by her second marriage, leaving her daughter in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suffering also from TB, then a fatal disease, and depression, Volkova committed suicide.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Siberia, Trotsky became aware of the differences within the party, which had been decimated by arrests in 1898 and 1899.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> 'Iskra'</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some social democrats known as "<i>economists</i>" argued that the party should focus on helping industrial workers improve their lot in life, and were not so worried about changing the government, or thought that these societal reforms would grow out of the worker's struggle for higher pay and better working conditions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Others argued that overthrowing the monarchy was more important, and that a well-organized and disciplined revolutionary party was essential.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The latter was led by the London-based newspaper 'Iskra', or in English, 'The Spark', which was founded in 1900.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky quickly sided with the 'Iskra' position and began writing for 'Iskra'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">First Emigration and Second Marriage (1902–1903)</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Development of Capitalism in Russia'<br />
Lenin</td></tr>
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In early, 1898, Trotsky was arrested for subversive activities while working to unionize workers in the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast with the Black Sea.</div>
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Imprisoned in Nikolayev, then Kherson, and then Odessa, Trotsky was transferred to a Moscow prison.</div>
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In the prison in Moscow, Trotsky came into contact with other revolutionaries.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lennin - 1900</td></tr>
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Here he first heard about <i>Lenin</i> and read Lenin's book, the '<i>Development of Capitalism in Russia</i>'.</div>
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While in the prison in Moscow in the summer of 1900, Trotsky met and married Alexandra Sokolovskaya.</div>
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The wedding ceremony was performed by a <i>Jewish</i> chaplain.</div>
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Because of the marriage, Trosky and his new wife were allowed to be exiled to the same location in Siberia.</div>
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Accordingly, the couple was exiled to Ust-Kut and the Verkholensk in the Baikal Lake region of Siberia.</div>
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Here Trotsky remained until the summer of 1902, when he escaped from Siberia hidden in a load of hay on a wagon.</div>
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He escaped from Siberia at the urging of his wife.</div>
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There were two children as result of this marriage who later escaped from Siberia with their mother.</div>
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Until this point in his life Trotsky had used his real name - Lev or Leon Bronstein.</div>
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It was at this time that he changed his name to "<i>Trotsky</i>"—the name he would use for the rest of his life.</div>
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It is said he adopted the name of a jailer of the Odessa prison in which he had earlier been held, which became his primary revolutionary pseudonym.<br />
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Once abroad, he moved to<i> London</i> to join Georgi Plekhanov, <i>Vladimir Lenin</i>, Julius Martov and other editors of 'Iskra'.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Гео́ргий Валенти́нович Плеха́нов<br />
Georgi Plekhanov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Гео́ргий Валенти́нович Плеха́нов - Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (November 29, 1856 – May 30, 1918) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist." Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia. During World War I Plekhanov rallied to the cause of the Entente powers against Germany and he returned home to Russia following the 1917 February Revolution. Plekhanov was hostile to the Bolshevik party headed by Vladimir Lenin, however, and was an opponent of the Soviet regime which came to power in the autumn of 1917. He died the following year.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Ю́лий О́сипович Цедерба́ум<br />
Julius Martov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Ю́лий О́сипович Цедерба́ум - Julius Martov ( real name Yuliy Osipovich Tsederbaum) (November 24, 1873 – April 4, 1923) was a Russian politician who became the leader of the Mensheviks in early twentieth century Russia.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Both Martov and Lenin based their ideas for party organization on those prevailing in the European social democratic parties, in particular that of Germany. When the vote was taken on the disputed question, the group led by Lenin lost and split. However, they were referred to as Bolsheviks throughout the Congress and subsequently as they had won a vote to determine the composition of the Iskra editorial board, hence their adoption of the name Bolshevik which literally means 'person of the majority'. The minority or Menshevik faction adopted that title. Ironically, the vote on the editorial board was not seen as important by any of the disputants at the time, and in fact the Bolsheviks were generally in a minority but some delegates had not been present for the crucial vote who would otherwise have voted for the Mensheviks.</span><br />
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Under the pen name Pero ("feather" or "pen" in Russian), Trotsky soon became one of the paper's leading authors.</div>
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Unknown to Trotsky, the six editors of 'Iskra' were evenly split between the "<i>old guard</i>" led by Plekhanov and the "<i>new guard</i>" led by Lenin and Martov.</div>
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Not only were Plekhanov's supporters older (in their 40s and 50s), but they had spent the previous 20 years together in exile in Europe.</div>
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Members of the new guard were in their early 30s and had only recently come from Russia. Lenin, who was trying to establish a permanent majority against Plekhanov within 'Iskra', expected Trotsky, then 23, to side with the new guard and wrote in March 1903:</div>
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'<i>I suggest to all the members of the editorial board that they co-opt 'Pero' as a member of the board on the same basis as other members. ... We very much need a seventh member, both as a convenience in voting (six being an even number), and as an addition to our forces. 'Pero' has been contributing to every issue for several months now; he works in general most energetically for the Iskra; he gives lectures (in which he has been very successful). In the section of articles and notes on the events of the day, he will not only be very useful, but absolutely necessary. Unquestionably a man of rare abilities, he has conviction and energy, and he will go much farther</i>.'</div>
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Because of Plekhanov's opposition, Trotsky did not become a full member of the board, but, from then on he participated in its meetings in an advisory capacity, which earned him Plekhanov's enmity.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ната́лья Ива́новна Седо́ва<br />
Natalia Ivanovna Sedova</td></tr>
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In late 1902, Trotsky met Natalia Ivanovna Sedova, who soon became his companion and, from 1903 until his death, his wife.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ната́лья Ива́новна Седо́ва - Natalia Ivanovna Sedova (April 5, 1882, Romny – January 23, 1962, Corbeil) is best known as the second wife of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. She was, however, also an active revolutionary in her own right and wrote on cultural matters pertaining to Marxism. Her father was Ivan Sedov, a famous explorer of the Arctic.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Her life was marked by the same tragedy as that of her lover, as she accompanied him into his final exile from Russia. Her son, Lev Sedov, was an active and leading member of the Bolshevik-Leninist movement that his father led and was almost certainly assassinated as a result of that. Her other son, Sergei Sedov, who was not politically active and remained in Russia, was almost certainly murdered by agents of Joseph Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After her husband's assassination in 1940, Natalia Sedova remained in Mexico and maintained contact with many exiled revolutionaries. Her best known work in these last years was a biography of Trotsky, which she co-authored with fellow Russian revolutionary Victor Serge. She was also close to the Spanish revolutionary Grandizo Munis who had led the tiny Spanish 'Sección Bolchevique-Leninista' during the revolutionary events in the 1930s. Under his influence, she came to adopt the position that the USSR was a state capitalist society and that the Fourth International founded by Trotsky no longer held to the revolutionary programme of Communism. Therefore, she broke from the FI in 1951.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They had two children together, Lev Sedov (1906 – 16 February 1938) and Sergei Sedov (21 March 1908 – 29 October 1937), both of whom would predecease their parents.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Лев Львович Седов<br />
Lev Lvovich Sedov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Лев Львович Седов - Lev Lvovich Sedov (also known as Leon Sedov; 1906, Saint Petersburg – February 16, 1938, Paris) was the son of the Russian Communist leader Leon Trotsky and his second wife Natalia Sedova. He was born when his father was in prison facing life imprisonment for having led the first Soviet Revolution of 1905.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lev Sedov's major political work is 'The Red Book on the Moscow Trials' (1936). At a time when a wide consensus accepted the verdicts of the Moscow trials, this book analyzed them with the aim of discrediting them. It was the first thorough-going exposé of the frame-ups upon which the trials were based. Trotsky himself described it as a "<i>priceless gift... the first crushing reply to the Kremlin falsifier</i>s."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sergei Lvovich Sedov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sergei Lvovich Sedov (1908–1937) was Leon Trotsky's younger son by his second wife, Natalia Sedova, and an engineer. He was allegedly killed in the '<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Great Purges</a>'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sedov was a Moscow-based engineer who published works on thermodynamics and diesel engines. He became a professor at the Moscow Institute of Technology while still in his twenties.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unlike his parents and his older brother Lev Sedov, Sergei Sedov was not active in politics, nevertheless, he was caught up in the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Great Purges</a> as Trotsky's son. He was arrested in Moscow in early 1935 and sentenced to 5 years in exile in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in August 1935. After unsuccessfully searching for work in Krasnoyarsk, he was re-arrested in 1936 and sent to a labor camp.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sedov was killed in the next round of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin's</a> purges in 1937, although the exact details of his death are unknown. The Soviet secret police, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nkvd.html" target="_blank">NKVD,</a> announced in early 1937 that Sedov had been charged with trying to poison factory workers and the date of his final death sentence is believed to be October 29, 1937, but there have also been unconfirmed reports that he died in a prison uprising. His wife and her relatives were also arrested and spent years in exile and prisons.</span><br />
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Regarding his sons' surnames, Trotsky later explained that after the 1917 revolution:</div>
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<i>'In order not to oblige my sons to change their name, I, for "citizenship" requirements, took on the name of my wife</i>.'</div>
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Trotsky never used the name "<i>Sedov</i>" either privately or publicly.</div>
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Natalia Sedova sometimes signed her name "Sedova-Trotskaya".</div>
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Trotsky and his first wife Aleksandra maintained a friendly relationship after their divorce.</div>
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She disappeared in 1935 during the <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Great Purges</a></i>, and was murdered by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalinist </a>forces three years later.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Split with Lenin (1903–1904)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the meantime, after a period of secret police repression and internal confusion that followed the first party Congress in 1898, 'Iskra' succeeded in convening the party's 2nd congress in London in August 1903.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky and other 'Iskra' editors attended.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first congress went as planned, with 'Iskra' supporters handily defeating the few "economist" delegates.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jewish Bund</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then the congress discussed the position of the '<i>Jewish Bund</i>', which had co-founded the RSDLP in 1898 but wanted to remain autonomous within the party.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Bundism' is a Jewish socialist and secular movement that originated with the General Jewish Labour Bund, founded in the Russian Empire in 1897. Bundism was an important component of the social democratic movement in the Russian empire until the Russian Revolution of 1917; the Bundists initially opposed the October Revolution, but ended up supporting it due to the anti-Jewish pogroms by the White Army during the Russian Civil War. Split along communist and social democratic lines throughout the Civil War, each faction eventually disbanded.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shortly thereafter, the pro-Iskra delegates split into two factions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin and his supporters, the <i>Bolsheviks</i>, argued for a smaller but highly organized party while Martov and his supporters, the <i>Mensheviks</i>, argued for a larger and less disciplined party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a surprise development, Trotsky and most of the 'Iskra' editors supported Martov and the <i>Mensheviks</i>, while Plekhanov supported Lenin and the <i>Bolsheviks</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During 1903 and 1904, many members changed sides in the factions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Plekhanov soon parted ways with the <i>Bolsheviks</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky <i>left</i> the <i>Mensheviks</i> in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with <i>Russian liberals</i> and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and the <i>Bolsheviks</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 1904 until 1917, he described himself as a "<i>non-factional social democrat</i>".</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Льво́вич Па́рвус<br />
Alexander Lvovich Parvus</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky spent much of his time between 1904 and 1917 trying to<i> reconcile</i> different groups within the party, which resulted in many <i>clashes</i> with Lenin and other prominent party members. Trotsky later maintained that he had been <i>wrong</i> in opposing Lenin on the issue of the party. During these years Trotsky began developing his<i> 'Theory of Permanent Revolution'</i>, which led to a close working relationship with Alexander Parvus in 1904–1907.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алекса́ндр Льво́вич Па́рвус - Alexander Lvovich Parvus, born Israel Lazarevich Gelfand (1867-1924), was a Marxist theoretician, revolutionary, and a controversial activist in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He also is said to have acted as a <i>German intelligence agent</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin later denounced Trotsky as a "<i>Judas</i>", a "<i>scoundrel</i>" and a "<i>swine</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">1905 Revolution and Trial (1905–1906)</span><br />
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The unrest an agitation against the Russian government came to a head in St. Petersbrg on January 3, 1905 (old style calandar), when a strike broke at the Putilov Works in St. Petersburg.</div>
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This single strike grew into a general and by January 7, 1905 there were 140,000 strikers in St. Petersburg.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Father Georgi Gapon<br />
at the Winter Palace</td></tr>
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On Sunday, January 9, 1905, Father Georgi Gapon led a peaceful procession of citizens through the streets to the Winter Palace to beseech the Czar for food and relief from the oppressive government.</div>
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The peaceful demonstration was fired upon by the Palace Guard resulting in the death of 1,000 demonstrators, thus, Sunday January 9, 1905 became known as '<i>Bloody Sunday</i>'.</div>
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Following the events of '<i>Bloody Sunday</i>', Trotsky secretly returned to Russia in February 1905, by way of Kiev.</div>
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At first he wrote leaflets for an underground printing press in Kiev, but soon moved to the capital, Saint Petersburg, where he worked with both Bolsheviks, such as Central Committee member Leonid Krasin, and the local <i>Menshevik</i> committee, which he pushed in a more radical direction.</div>
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The latter, however, were betrayed by a secret police agent in May, and Trotsky had to flee to rural Finland.</div>
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There he worked on fleshing out his '<i>Theory of Permanent Revolution'</i>.</div>
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On September 19, 1905, the typesetters at the Sytin Print Works in Moscow went out on strike for shorter hours and higher pay.</div>
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By the evening of September 24, the workers at fifty (50) other printing shops in Moscow were also on strike.</div>
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On October 2, 1905, the typesetters in printing shops in St. Petersburg, decided to strike in support of the Moscow strikers.</div>
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On October 7, 1905, the railway workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway went out on strike.</div>
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The confusion engendered by these strikes made it possible for Trotsky to return from Finland to St. Petersburg on October 15, 1905.</div>
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On the same day that he returned to St. Petersburg, Trotsky appeared before the St. Petersburg Soviet Council of Workers Deputies which was meeting at Technological Institute in St. Petersburg.</div>
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Not only were the elected Deputies present a this meeting, but also attending were some 200,000 people—about 50% of all workers in St. Petersburg.</div>
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After returning to the capital, Trotsky and Parvus took over the newspaper Russian Gazette and increased its circulation to 500,000.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c4_ANHZl9_4/UW3c1CNp6mI/AAAAAAAAFiM/wSRLLBzl3Ko/s1600/Nachalo+-+The+Beginning+-++trotsky+-++Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c4_ANHZl9_4/UW3c1CNp6mI/AAAAAAAAFiM/wSRLLBzl3Ko/s320/Nachalo+-+The+Beginning+-++trotsky+-++Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nachalo - (The Beginning)</td></tr>
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Trotsky also co-founded, together with Parvus and Julius Martov and other <i>Mensheviks</i>, Nachalo ("<i>The Beginning</i>"), which also proved to be a very successful newspaper in the revolutionary atomosphere of St. Petersburg in 1905.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nachalo's editorial board consisted of Peter Struve, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, V. G. Veresayev, V. Ya. Bogucharsky, and A. M. Kalmykova. Contributors included Legal Marxists as well as revolutionary Marxists living in exile or abroad like Georgy Plekhanov, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Vera Zasulich. In all, there were five issues published between January and May 1899, although the April issue was confiscated by the censors. Starting with issue 2, the magazine was supportive of Eduard Bernstein's revision of Marxism, which caused frictions with Plekhanov, an opponent of Bernstein's and the leader of orthodox Marxism in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The editors also made an attempt to build up a literary section in collaboration with Anton Chekhov and Russian Symbolists, but were unsuccessful, which made them turn to Maxim Gorky and early Russian Modernists. The magazine was closed down by the government in June 1899, and the Legal Marxists were forced to join Posse's Zhizn as originally planned.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Khrustalyov-Nosar</td></tr>
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Just before Trotsky's return, the<i> Mensheviks</i> had independently come up with the same idea that Trotsky had: an elected non-party revolutionary organization representing the capital's workers, the first Soviet ("<i>Council</i>") of Workers.</div>
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By the time of Trotsky's arrival, the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers Deputies was already functioning headed by Khrustalyev-Nosar (Georgy Nosar, alias Pyotr Khrustalyov).</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Khrustalyov-Nosar or Georgy Nosar ( 1877 - 1918 ), also known as Pyotr Khrustalyov (as in Russian : Хрусталев Петр Алексеевич or Носарь Георгий Степанович ) was the president of the first Soviet of the Russian Revolution of 1905 .</span><br />
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Khrustalyev-Nosar had been a compromise figure when elected as the <i>head</i> of the St. Petersburg Soviet.</div>
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Khrustalev-Nosar was a lawyer that stood above the political factions contained in the Soviet, however, since his election, he proved to be very popular with the workers in spite of the <i>Bolsheviks'</i> original opposition to him.</div>
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Khrustalev-Nosar became famous in his position as spokesman for the St. Petersburg Soviet, indeed to the outside world, Khrustalev-Nosar was the embodiment of the St. Petersburg Soviet.</div>
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Trotsky joined the Soviet under the name "<i>Yanovsky</i>" (after the village he was born in, Yanovka) and was elected vice-Chairman.</div>
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He did much of the actual work at the Soviet and, after Khrustalev-Nosar's <i>arrest</i> on 26 November 1905, was elected its chairman.</div>
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On 2 December, the Soviet issued a proclamation which included the following statement about the Tsarist government and its foreign debts:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emblem of the Imperial Autocracy</td></tr>
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<i>'The autocracy never enjoyed the confidence of the people and was never granted any authority by the people. We have therefore decided not to allow the repayment of such loans as have been made by the Tsarist government when openly engaged in a war with the entire people.'</i></div>
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The following day, the Soviet was surrounded by troops loyal to the government and the deputies were arrested.</div>
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Trotsky and other Soviet leaders were tried in 1906 on charges of supporting an armed rebellion.</div>
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At the trial on October 4, 1906, Trotsky delivered one of the best speeches of his life.</div>
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It was this speech that solidified his reputation as an effective public speaker.</div>
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He was convicted and sentenced to deportation.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Second Emigration (1907–1914)</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lenin at the<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While en-route to exile in Obdorsk, Siberia, in January 1907, Trotsky escaped at Berezov, and once again made his way to London, where he attended the 5th Congress of the RSDLP.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In October, he moved to Vienna where he often took part in the activities of the 'Austrian Social Democratic Party' and, occasionally, of the 'German Social Democratic Party', for seven years.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Адо́льф Абра́мович Ио́ффе<br />
Adolph Joffe</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Vienna, Trotsky became close to <i>Adolph Joffe</i>, his friend for the next 20 years, who introduced him to <i>psychoanalysis</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adolph Abramovich Joffe (alternative transliterations Adolf Ioffe or, rarely, Yoffe) (October 10, 1883, Simferopol – November 16, 1927, Moscow) was a Jewish Communist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and a Soviet diplomat of Karaite descent.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In Russia, Joffe was close to the Menshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Party. However, after moving to Vienna in May 1906, he became close to Leon Trotsky's position and helped Trotsky edit Pravda from 1908 to 1912 while studying medicine and psychoanalysis. He also used his family's <i>fortune</i> to support 'Pravda' financially.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1912 Joffe was arrested while visiting Odessa, imprisoned for 10 months and then exiled to Siberia.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">From November 30, 1917 until January 1918, Joffe was the head of the Soviet delegation that was sent to Brest-Litovsk to negotiate an end to the hostilities with Germany.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Joffe remained a friend and loyal supporter of Leon Trotsky through the 1920s, joining him in the Left Opposition. By late 1927, he was gravely ill, in extreme pain and confined to his bed. After a refusal by the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party to send him abroad for treatment and Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party on November 12, 1927, he committed suicide.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Правда - 'Pravda'</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In October 1908 he started 'Pravda' ("<i>Truth</i>"), a bi-weekly, Russian-language social democratic paper for Russian workers, which he co-edited with Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and Victor Kopp.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was smuggled into Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The paper appeared very irregularly, only five issues appeared in the first year of publication, however, the paper avoided factional politics, and proved popular with Russian industrial workers.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Правда - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pravda ("Truth") is a Russian political newspaper associated with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The newspaper was started by the Russian Revolutionaries during the pre-World War I days and emerged as a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution. The newspaper also served as a central organ of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and the CPSU between 1912 and 1991.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Matvey Skobelev<br />
Матве́й Ива́нович Ско́белев</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Матве́й Ива́нович Ско́белев - Matvey Ivanovich Skobelev (November 9, 1885, Baku – July 29, 1938, Moscow) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and politician.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Skobelev was born in the family of a wealthy Baku oilman. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903. After the Russian Revolution of 1905 he went abroad to study at a polytechnic in Vienna. While in Vienna, he became a friend and supporter of <i>Leon Trotsky</i>, whose bi-weekly <i>Pravda</i> he helped edit in 1908–1912. Skobelev and another editor,<i> Adolph Joffe</i>, both scions of <i>wealthy families</i>, also helped Trotsky finance the paper.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Opposed to the Bolshevik regime, Skobelev moved to his home city of Baku in then-independent Azerbaidjan ca. 1919. After the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War and re-annexation of Azerbaidjan in 1920, he fled to Paris. Once the Bolshevik government instituted the NEP policy of partial liberalization, Skobelev became reconciled with the new regime and eventually joined the Bolshevik party in 1922 (<i>over Trotsky's objections</i>). In late 1922, he worked on facilitating trade relations between France and Russia and then returned to Russia, where he continued working in the Soviet foreign trade system until his arrest and execution in 1938 during the <i>Great Purge</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both the <i>Bolsheviks</i> and the <i>Mensheviks</i> split multiple times after the failure of the 1905–1907 revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Money was very scarce for publication of 'Pravda'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky approached the 'Russian Central Committee' to seek financial backing for the newspaper throughout 1909.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'Central Committee' was controlled by a majority of <i>Bolsheviks</i> at this time in 1910.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, <i>Lenin</i> agreed to the financing of 'Pravda', but required a <i>Bolshevik</i> be appointed as co-editor of the paper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When various<i> Bolshevik</i> and <i>Menshevik</i> factions tried to re-unite at the January 1910 RSDLP Central Committee meeting in Paris over Lenin's objections, Trotsky's 'Pravda' was made a party-financed '<i>central organ</i>'.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Лев Бори́сович Ка́мене<br />
Lev Borisovich Kamenev</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lev Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, was added to the editorial board from the Bolsheviks, but the unification attempts failed in August 1910 when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kamenev and Lenin</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Лев Бори́сович Ка́менев - Lev Borisovich Kamenev (18 July [O.S. 6 July] 1883 – 25 August 1936), born Rozenfeld (Russian: Ро́зенфельд), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He served briefly as the first <i>head of state</i> of Soviet Russia in 1917, and from 1923-24 the<i> acting Premier</i> in the last year of Vladimir Lenin's life.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Kamenev fell out of favor and, following a show trial, was executed.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After Kamenev's execution, his relatives suffered a similar fate. Kamenev's second son, Yu. L. Kamenev, was executed on 30 January 1938, at the age of 17. His eldest son, air force officer A.L. Kamenev, was executed on 15 July 1939, at the age of 33. His first wife, Olga, was shot on 11 September 1941 on Stalin's and Beria's orders, in the Medvedev forest outside Oryol, together with Christian Rakovsky, Maria Spiridonova and 160 other prominent political prisoners. Only his youngest son, Vladimir Glebov, survived Stalin's prisons and labor camps, and died in 1994.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky continued publishing 'Pravda' for another two years until it finally folded in April 1912.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>Bolsheviks</i> started a new workers-oriented newspaper in St. Petersburg on 22 April 1912, and also called it 'Pravda'.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Никола́й Семёнович Чхеи́дз<br />
Nikolay Chkheidze</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky was so upset by what he saw as a usurpation of his newspaper's name that in April 1913 he wrote a letter to Nikolay Chkheidze, a <i>Menshevik</i> leader, bitterly denouncing <i>Lenin</i> and the <i>Bolsheviks</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though he quickly got over the disagreement, the letter was intercepted by the police, and a copy was put into their archives.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Никола́й Семёнович Чхеи́дз - Nikoloz Chkheidze (commonly known as Karlo Chkheidze; 1864, Kutaisi – June 13, 1926, Île-de-France) was a Georgian Menshevik politician who helped to introduce Marxism to Georgia in the 1890s and played a prominent role in the Russian and Georgian revolutions of 1917 and 1918.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Chkheidze was one of the authors of the Republic's first constitution in early 1921, but, like others, he was forced into exile when the Bolsheviks took control of the country in March. He escaped to France, where he lived until committing suicide on June 13, 1926.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shortly after <i>Lenin's</i> death in 1924, the letter was pulled out of the archives and made public by Trotsky's opponents within the Communist Party to portray him as <i>Lenin's</i> enemy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was a period of heightened tension within the RSDLP, leading to numerous frictions between Trotsky, the <i>Bolsheviks </i>and the <i>Mensheviks</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">большевики - Bolsheviks - derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coat of Arms of the<br />
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Bolsheviks were the majority faction in a crucial vote, hence their name. They ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the <i>Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic </i>which would later in 1922 become the chief constituent of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vladimir Lenin</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Bolsheviks, founded by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov, were by 1905 a mass organization consisting primarily of workers under a democratic internal hierarchy governed by the principle of democratic centralism, who considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary working class of Russia. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky commonly used the terms "Bolshevism" and "Bolshevist" after his exile from the Soviet Union to differentiate between what he saw as true Leninism and the state and party as they existed under Joseph Stalin's leadership.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Богда́нов<br />
lexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Богда́нов - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (born Alyaksandr Malinovsky, (22 August 1873 [O.S. 10 August] –7 April 1928) was a Russian physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and revolutionary of Belarusian ethnicity.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was a key figure in the early history of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, being one of its co-founders and a rival to Vladimir Lenin until being expelled in 1909. In the first decade of the Soviet Union, he was an influential <i>opponent</i> of the government from a Marxist perspective. The polymath Bogdanov received training in medicine and psychiatry. His scientific interests ranged from the universal systems theory to the possibility of human rejuvenation through blood transfusion. He invented an original philosophy called “<i>tectology</i>,” now regarded as a forerunner of systems theory. He was also an economist, culture theorist, <i>science fiction writer</i>, and political activist.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1924, Bogdanov started his blood transfusion experiments, apparently hoping to achieve eternal youth or at least partial rejuvenation. Lenin's sister <i>Maria Ulianova</i> was among many who volunteered to take part in Bogdanov's experiments. The fellow revolutionary Leonid Krasin wrote to his wife that "Bogdanov seems to have become 7, no, 10 years younger after the operation". In 1925-1926, Bogdanov founded the Institute for Haemotology and Blood Transfusions, which was later named after him. But a later transfusion cost him life, when he took the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis. (Bogdanov died, but the student injected with his blood made a complete recovery.) Some scholars (e.g. Loren Graham) have speculated that his death may have been a suicide, because Bogdanov wrote a highly nervous political letter shortly beforehand. Others, however, attribute his death to blood type incompatibility, which was poorly understood at the time.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Julius Martov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">меньшевик - Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The dispute originated at the Second Congress of that party, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization. Martov's supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called "Mensheviks", derived from the Russian word меньшинство (men'shinstvo, "minority"), whereas Lenin's adherents were known as "Bolsheviks", from bol'shinstvo ("majority").</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress. The split proved to be long-standing and had to do both with pragmatic issues based in history such as the failed revolution of 1905, and theoretical issues of class leadership, class alliances, and bourgeois democracy. While both factions believed that a "bourgeois democratic" revolution was necessary, the Mensheviks generally tended to be more moderate and were more positive towards the "mainstream" liberal opposition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most serious disagreement that Trotsky and the <i>Mensheviks</i> had with<i> Lenin</i> at the time was over the issue of "<i>expropriations</i>", i.e., <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-vissarionovich-stalin.html" target="_blank">armed robberies of banks</a> and other companies by <i>Bolshevik</i> groups to procure money for the Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These actions had been banned by the 5th Congress, but were continued by the <i>Bolsheviks</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 1912, the majority of the <i>Bolshevik</i> faction, led by <i>Lenin </i>and a few <i>Mensheviks</i>, held a conference in Prague and expelled their opponents from the party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In response, Trotsky organized a "<i>unification</i>" conference of social democratic factions in Vienna in August 1912 (a.k.a. "<i>The August Bloc</i>") and tried to re-unite the party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The attempt was generally unsuccessful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Vienna, Trotsky continuously published articles in radical Russian and Ukrainian newspapers, such as 'Kievskaya Mysl', under a variety of pseudonyms, often using "<i>Antid Oto</i>". In September 1912, Kievskaya Mysl sent him to the Balkans as its war correspondent, where he covered the two 'Balkan Wars' for the next year, and became a close friend of Christian Rakovsky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The latter was later a leading Soviet politician and Trotsky's ally in the Soviet Communist Party.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Christian Rakovsky (August 13 [O.S. August 1] 1873 – September 11, 1941) was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romanian citizen.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A lifelong collaborator of Leon Trotsky, he was a prominent activist of the Second International, involved in politics with the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union, Romanian Social Democratic Party, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Rakovsky was expelled at different times from various countries as a result of his activities, and, during World War I, became a founding member of the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation while helping to organize the Zimmerwald Conference. Imprisoned by Romanian authorities, he made his way to Russia, where he joined the Bolshevik Party after the October Revolution, and, as head of the Rumcherod, unsuccessfully attempted to generate a communist revolution in the Kingdom of Romania. Subsequently, he was a founding member of the Comintern, served as head of government in the Ukrainian SSR, and took part in negotiations at the Genoa Conference.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He came to oppose Joseph Stalin and rallied with the Left Opposition, being marginalized inside the government and sent as Soviet ambassador to London and Paris, where he was involved in renegotiating financial settlements. He was ultimately recalled from France in autumn 1927, after signing his name to a controversial Trotskyist platform which endorsed world revolution. Credited with having developed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism as "bureaucratic centrism", Rakovsky was subject to internal exile. Submitting to Stalin's leadership in 1934 and being briefly reinstated, he was nonetheless implicated in the Trial of the Twenty One (part of the Moscow Trials), imprisoned, and executed by the NKVD during World War II.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Лев Троцкий</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Trotsky - Power and Beyond</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotskyism.html" target="_blank">троцкизма</a></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotskyism.html" target="_blank">TROTSKYISM</a></b></span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-81452509246197515172013-04-14T14:58:00.002-07:002014-02-28T16:55:34.146-08:00George Orwell and Soviet Russia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>1 9 8 4</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">An English Perspective on the Bolsheviks</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eric Arthur Blair<br />
George Orwell</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name 'George Orwell', was an English novelist and journalist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His work is marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social injustice, opposition to <i>totalitarianism</i>, and commitment to democratic socialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He is best known for the <i>dystopian</i> novel '<i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>' (1949) and the allegorical novella 'Animal Farm' (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term '<i>Orwellian'</i> — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including 'Cold War', 'doublethink', 'thoughtcrime', 'Big Brother' and 'thought police'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Brief Biography</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bihar, in India.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His great-grandfather Charles Blair was a wealthy country gentleman in Dorset who married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland, and had income as an absentee landlord of plantations in Jamaica.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not; Eric Blair described his family as "lower-upper-middle class".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (née Limouzin), grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Blair Family Home</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in the summer of 1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The family moved to Shiplake before the First World War.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family could not afford the fees, and he needed to earn a scholarship. Ida Blair's brother recommended St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, East Sussex.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win the scholarship, and made a private financial arrangement that allowed Blair's parents to pay only half the normal fees.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Cyprian's</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprian's, and boarded at the school for the next five years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At St Cyprian's his work praised by the school's external examiner, and earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton Colleges. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January, Blair took up the place at Wellington, where he spent the Spring term.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 1917 a place became available as a King's Scholar at Eton.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He studied at Eton until December 1921, when he left at age 18½.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blair was briefly taught French by Aldous Huxley.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eton School</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blair's academic performance reports suggest that he neglected his academic studies, but during his time at Eton he worked with Roger Mynors to produce a College magazine, The Election Times, joined in the production of other publications—College Days and Bubble and Squeak—and participated in the Eton Wall Game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His parents could not afford to send him to university without another scholarship, and they concluded from his poor results that he would not be able to win one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blair had a romantic idea about the East and the family decided that he should join the Imperial Police, the precursor of the Indian Police Service.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For this he had to pass an entrance examination.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blair passed the exam, coming seventh out of the 26 candidates who exceeded the pass mark.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Indian Imperial Police</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Working as an imperial policeman gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When he was posted farther east in the Delta to Twante as a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the end of 1924, he was promoted to Assistant District Superintendent and posted to Syriam.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blair resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He drew on his experiences in the Burma police for the novel 'Burmese Days' (1934) and the essays 'A Hanging' (1931) and "Shooting an Elephant" (1936).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blair wrote a number of books in support of the Socialist views, and fought in the Spanish Civil War in support of the Communist against Franco's Falange.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the Second World War Orwell was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He supervised cultural broadcasts to India to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine Imperial links.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was Orwell's first experience of the rigid conformity of life in an office (reflected in Winston Smiths work in the Ministry of Truth in 1984).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However it gave him an opportunity to create cultural programmes with contributions from T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, E. M. Forster, Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, and William Empson among others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Late in 1942, he started writing regularly for the left-wing weekly 'Tribune', directed by Labour MPs Aneurin Bevan and George Strauss.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the late forties Orwell mixed journalistic work – mainly for 'Tribune', 'The Observer' and the 'Manchester Evening News', though he also contributed to many small-circulation political and literary magazines – with writing his best-known work, 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', which was published in 1949.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although initially being enamored with Soviet Russia, Orwell, as a result of his political experiences in Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War, became disenchanted with Stalinism - and '1984' is in fact a detailed and negative critique of the Russian Soviet System.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The significance of Orwell lies in the fact that he was one of the first people of influence to publicize the negative aspects of the Bolshevik revolution, and in particular Stalinism, and in this way began to bring to an end the error of the Western democracies, which had seen Russia as an ally in the war against the Third Reich.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">1984 - The ORIGINS of INSOC</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">English Socialism is the political ideology of the totalitarian, and supposedly Socialist government of Oceania.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ingsoc (“English Socialism”) originated after the socialist party took over, but, because The Party continually <i>rewrites history</i>, it is impossible to establish the precise origin of English Socialism.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TXCmcK34Kl8/TqSI5M7VZ8I/AAAAAAAADpM/_ICJVeOwjOA/s1600/Emmanuel+Goldstein+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TXCmcK34Kl8/TqSI5M7VZ8I/AAAAAAAADpM/_ICJVeOwjOA/s200/Emmanuel+Goldstein+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="146" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emmanuel Goldstein<br />
(Trotsky ?)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HQLs054xJDY/TqSJyyvASvI/AAAAAAAADpU/-NZJBnB1J94/s1600/Big+Brother+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HQLs054xJDY/TqSJyyvASvI/AAAAAAAADpU/-NZJBnB1J94/s200/Big+Brother+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="141" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big Brother<br />
(Joseph Stalin ?)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The state known as Oceania originated from the union of the Americas with the British Empire.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Big Brother (<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>), and the Jew, Emmanuel Goldstein (<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/trotsky-power-and-beyond.html" target="_blank">Trotsky</a>) led the Party’s <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">socialist revolution</a>, yet Goldstein and Big Brother became enemies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although set in the relatively distant future, this scenario almost faithfully duplicates the Bolshevik rise to power in Russia, and the subsequent fracturing of the relationship between <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> and Trotsky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9f7OVizqJ1o/UWs4Yp9GWNI/AAAAAAAAFTw/-nGDne02uVQ/s1600/London+Langham+Place+-+Broadcasting+House+-+BBC+-+1984+-+George+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9f7OVizqJ1o/UWs4Yp9GWNI/AAAAAAAAFTw/-nGDne02uVQ/s200/London+Langham+Place+-+Broadcasting+House+-+BBC+-+1984+-+George+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="185" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BBC Broadcasting House</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The inspiration for the depressing atmosphere of the Oceania, however, derives from the conditions prevalent in the United Kingdom directly after the Second World War, with shortages, rationing, and the bitterly cold winter of 1947.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Evidence of this can be found in one of the early scenes in the book, set in the canteen of the Ministry of Truth (Propaganda), which is, in fact, directly taken from Blair's experience in the BBC canteen in Broadcasting House - (Blair worked in Broadcasting House for the BBC during the war).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the book, 'the Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism', by Emmanuel Goldstein, describes the Party’s ideology as an '<i>Oligarchical Collectivism</i>', that “rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Big Brother personifies the Party, as the ubiquitous face constantly depicted in posters and the tele-screen, thus, Big Brother is constantly watching.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ingsoc, (English Socialism - similar to the numerous Soviet acronyms), demands the complete submission – mental, moral and physical – of the people, and will torture to achieve it.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ingsoc is a masterfully<i> complex</i> system of psychological control, like <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist</a> <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Leninism</a></i>, that <i>compels confession </i>to imagined crimes, and the forgetting of rebellious thought in order to love Big Brother and 'The Party' over oneself.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vW9pMnbIFkY/TqamN2ZN3II/AAAAAAAADqE/si366Dwf5CY/s1600/Ingsoc+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vW9pMnbIFkY/TqamN2ZN3II/AAAAAAAADqE/si366Dwf5CY/s200/Ingsoc+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="133" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The purpose of Ingsoc is <i>political control</i>, power per se; - glibly, O'Brien, who would have been a leading <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/cheka.html" target="_blank">Chekist</a> in the Soviet system, explains to Smith:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The German Nazis and others came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are not like that.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We know that<i> no one</i> ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Power is not a means, it is an <i>end</i>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'object' of persecution is <i>persecution</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'object' of torture is<i> torture</i>.</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'object' of power is <i>power</i>.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These 'objects' quoted above are identical to the <i>eventual</i> 'object's espoused by the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/cheka.html" target="_blank">Cheka</a> and <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a>, and <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> and the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nkvd.html" target="_blank">NKVD</a>.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SiYzn2egKV0/TqSRHe7cqpI/AAAAAAAADpc/ekfK_9jewQw/s1600/Slogans+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SiYzn2egKV0/TqSRHe7cqpI/AAAAAAAADpc/ekfK_9jewQw/s640/Slogans+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="246" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">OCEANIA ANTHEM</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Strong and peaceful, wise and brave,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Fighting the fight for the whole world to save,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We the people will ceaselessly strive,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To keep our great revolution alive.</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unfurl the banners, fight for the dream,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Never before has such glory been seen !</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An analysis of the 'Oceania Hymn' indicates it's affinity with the internationalist aims of the original Bolshevik party in Russia, with regard to the references to the '<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-russian-revolution.html" target="_blank">great revolution</a>', and the aim of 'saving the whole world'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The final line, <i>'</i><span style="text-align: left;"><i>Never before has such glory been seen !</i>', however, is in stark contrast to the daily lives of the citizens of Oceania, and the horrors of 'Room 101'.</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The PHILOSOPHY of INGSOC</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Metaphysically, Ingsoc (English Socialism) posits that <i>all knowledge</i> rests in the<i> collective mind</i> of the Party; reality is what the Party says, the justification for its historical revisionism.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With doublethink, the people believe what they otherwise know is false; in believing the revised (new) past, the new past is what was, hence "he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past".</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ingsoc's thematic references to <i>solipsism</i> imply that the universe exists only in the mind.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Solipsism (from Latin solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self") is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is <i>unsure</i>. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is irrefutable.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ministry of Love (MiniLuv) - the equivelent of the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/cheka.html" target="_blank">Cheka</a> or <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nkvd.html" target="_blank">NKVD</a> - ,via brainwashing and torture, and the Ministry of Truth (MiniTrue), with propaganda, ensure that perpetual loyalty to the Party is instilled to the mind of each Oceanian.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The person exists only as part of the collective, hence, for the collective, nothing exists beyond the goodness of the Party and the evil of other nations and the Party's power.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">SOCIAL CLASS</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ingsoc divides society into three social classes, the Inner Party, (the political elite) the Outer Party (nomenklatura)</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> , and the Proles (proletariat - workers):</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OlamuU8QtSc/TqaneM3A47I/AAAAAAAADqk/SX3vD_68688/s1600/Inner+Party+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OlamuU8QtSc/TqaneM3A47I/AAAAAAAADqk/SX3vD_68688/s320/Inner+Party+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="169" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inner Party Member</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Inner Party</b></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> make policy, affect decisions, and govern; they are known as “The Party”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of their upper-class privileges is (temporarily) shutting off their telescreens, for time alone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They live in spacious, comfortable homes, have good food and drink, personal servants, and speedy transportation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No Outer Party member or Prole may enter an Inner party neighbourhood without a good pretext.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Outer Party</b></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> - the nomenklatura - </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">work the state’s administrative jobs; they are the middle class, whose “</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">members are allowed no vices other than cigarettes and Victory Gin</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">”, and who are the citizens most spied upon, via telescreens and surveillance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The nomenklatura (Latin: nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the party.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Vladimir Lenin wrote that appointments were to take the following criteria into account: 'reliability, political attitude, qualifications, and administrative ability'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is because, according to history, <i>the middle class is the most dangerous</i>; they are the ones to incite revolution, the one thing The Party does not want.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They live in rundown neighbourhoods, use crowded subways as transportation, have poorer food and drink, and are denied sex for any other purpose than having children within marriage, and are expected to look at it as a duty, rather than pleasure.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The Proles</b></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> are the lower class of workers .</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They live in the poorest conditions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The proletariat (Latin proletarius, a citizen of the lowest class) is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian. </span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The term proletariat is used in Marxist theory to name the social class that does not have ownership of the means of production and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour power for a wage or salary</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Party keeps them happy and sedates them with alcohol, gambling, sport, sexual promiscuity, and prolefeed (Fabricated books, pornography).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They are not constantly watched by The Party.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A few agents of the Thought Police mark down and eliminate any individuals deemed capable of becoming dangerous and spread false rumours.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Proletariat are 85 percent of Oceania’s populace.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the social classes of Oceania interact little, the protagonist, Winston Smith, attends an evening at the cinema, where proles and members of the Party view the same film programme; he patronises a proletarian pub without attracting notice (<i>he thinks</i>); and visits the flat of Inner Party man O'Brien, on pretext of borrowing the newest edition of the 'Newspeak Dictionary'. Ingsoc’s propaganda proclaims its <i>egalitarianism</i>, yet the Proles and (some) members of the Outer Party are hideously exploited and live in poverty, while the ruling élite, the Inner Party, work little and live well and comfortably; yet consumer goods are more scarce and expensive than under capitalism - <i>which is the problem which always dogged the Soviet System.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is suggested that this is not a result of a deficit of actual produce, but rather, a <i>surplus</i>:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This surplus is more than taken up by ever-present warfare between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the Party chose, all its people could live in luxury, but they instead choose to lower the quality of living.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">NEWSPEAK</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TIQIAA6zQNE/UXHJdVJevbI/AAAAAAAAFxE/vSXB18Z7gVA/s1600/george-orwell+-+1984+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TIQIAA6zQNE/UXHJdVJevbI/AAAAAAAAFxE/vSXB18Z7gVA/s200/george-orwell+-+1984+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Orwell</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being a professional writer, Orwell is particularly concerned with the relationship between language and politics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was a tenancy in Soviet Russia for language to become impoverished to some extent under the Socialist system, for the benefit of encouraging revolutionary thought patterns, - but not to the extent that is portrayed in '1984'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Newspeak is the language of Ingsoc, and refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking—"thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak—impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One character, Syme, says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Newspeak term for the English language is Oldspeak.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oldspeak is intended to have been completely supplanted by Newspeak before 2050 (with the exception of the Proles, who are not trained in Newspeak and whom the Party barely regards as human).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is, at present, a strong relationship between Newspeak and the current tendency towards 'Political Correctness', which tries to eliminate 'inappropriate' words and phrases.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">BASIC PRINCIPLES of NEWSPEAK</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all <i>shades</i> of meaning from language, leaving simple <i>dichotomies</i> (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforce the total dominance of the State.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Similarly, Newspeak root words served as <i>both</i> nouns and verbs, which allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served as both noun and verb, so the word thought was not required and could be abolished.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the need for deep thinking about language.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Successful Newspeak meant that there would be fewer and fewer words – dictionaries would get thinner and thinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition, words with negative meanings were removed as redundant, so "bad" became "ungood".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Words with comparative and superlative meanings were also simplified, so "better" became "gooder", and "best" likewise became "goodest".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intensifiers could be added, so "great" became "plusgood", and "excellent" and "splendid" likewise became "doubleplusgood".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix "-ful" to a root word (e.g., "goodthinkful", orthodox in thought), and adverbs by adding "-wise" ("goodthinkwise", in an orthodox manner).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this manner, as many words as possible were removed from the language.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ultimate aim of Newspeak was to reduce even the dichotomies to a single word that was a "yes" of some sort: an obedient word with which everyone answered affirmatively to what was asked of them.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The MINISTRIES OF OCEANIA</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In London, the Airstrip One capital city, Oceania's four government ministries are in pyramids (300 metres high).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ministries' names are antonymous doublethink to their true functions: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation". (Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ministry of Peace (Newspeak: Minipax)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Minipax reports Oceania's perpetual war.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ministry of Plenty (Newspeak: Miniplenty)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ministry of Plenty rations and controls food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, the Miniplenty publishes false claims of having raised the standard of living, when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Minitrue substantiates the Miniplenty claims by revising historical records to report numbers supporting the current, "increased rations".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ministry of Truth (Newspeak: Minitrue)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ministry of Truth controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Winston Smith works in the Minitrue RecDep (Records Department), "rectifying" historical records to concord with Big Brother's current pronouncements, thus everything the Party says is true.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ministry of Love (Newspeak: Miniluv)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ministry of Love (the equivalent of the Soviet <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/cheka.html" target="_blank">Cheka</a> or <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nkvd.html" target="_blank">NKVD</a>) identifies, monitors, arrests, and converts real and imagined dissidents.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Winston's experience, the dissident is beaten and tortured, then, when near-broken, is sent to Room 101 to face "the worst thing in the world" — until love for Big Brother and the Party replaces dissension.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">THOUGHT CONTROL</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wM0COxc7NiM/TqanKzGJBGI/AAAAAAAADqc/eDWYV6xD1S0/s1600/Thought+Control+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wM0COxc7NiM/TqanKzGJBGI/AAAAAAAADqc/eDWYV6xD1S0/s320/Thought+Control+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="144" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared.</i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even the literature of the Party will change.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even the slogans will change.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished?</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness</i>.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some examples of Newspeak include 'crimethink', 'doublethink', and 'Ingsoc'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They mean, respectively, "thought-crime", "accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs", and "English socialism" (the official political philosophy of the Party).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the word Newspeak itself also comes from the language.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of these words would be obsolete and should be removed in the "final" version of Newspeak, except for 'doubleplusungood' in certain contexts.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">THOUGHTCRIME</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thoughtcrime is an<i> illegal</i> type of thought - this has corollaries in the Soviet system.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Party attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, <i>labelling </i>disapproved thought as thoughtcrime or, in Newspeak, "crimethink".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">THOUGHT POLICE</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73cA8BbK8jhSuid8VTNcYFPcgdGn50X9gcBo8Qk7fJ8Jk9t4-mmylsLv_WPXbMyXrKgZ9n4YHU5sBHFDCxwB35TwI3AOPJ_PVNf3BYuryibLiPufbMn2Ig2cK6hkHONgE0IhAlbTmHHc/s1600/Thinkpol+Emblem+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73cA8BbK8jhSuid8VTNcYFPcgdGn50X9gcBo8Qk7fJ8Jk9t4-mmylsLv_WPXbMyXrKgZ9n4YHU5sBHFDCxwB35TwI3AOPJ_PVNf3BYuryibLiPufbMn2Ig2cK6hkHONgE0IhAlbTmHHc/s200/Thinkpol+Emblem+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Orwell+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5-RhG7C2wts/TqcWYEb8HcI/AAAAAAAADsg/XZq_Eg0uwnk/s1600/Thought+Police+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5-RhG7C2wts/TqcWYEb8HcI/AAAAAAAADsg/XZq_Eg0uwnk/s200/Thought+Police+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="170" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'Thought Police' (almost identical to the Checka or NKVD) (thinkpol in Newspeak) are the secret police of the Party, whose job it is to uncover and punish 'thoughtcrime'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Thought Police use <i>psychological surveillance</i> to find and eliminate members of society who are capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technology plays a significant part in the detection of thoughtcrime - with the ubiquitous telescreens which could inform the government, misinform and monitor the population.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The citizens of Oceania are watched by the Thought Police through the telescreens.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oghqbqc9e-0/Tqam4UMWpcI/AAAAAAAADqU/lqihjCC208M/s1600/Telescreen+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oghqbqc9e-0/Tqam4UMWpcI/AAAAAAAADqU/lqihjCC208M/s320/Telescreen+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="176" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bEUkubkjt7k/TqcWkg4wrCI/AAAAAAAADso/JZekACSb-5k/s1600/Thinkpol+Helicopter+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bEUkubkjt7k/TqcWkg4wrCI/AAAAAAAADso/JZekACSb-5k/s200/Thinkpol+Helicopter+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every movement, reflex, facial expression, and reaction is measured by this system, monitored by the Ministry of Love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At times, it seems as if the telescreen is constantly watching each citizen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of this system of surveillance, the Thought Police and the Ministry of Love become universally feared by any member of the Outer Party or any one of the 'Proles' who is <i>capable</i> (or felt by the Party to be capable) of thoughtcrime.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">'NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nineteen Eighty-Four (first published in 1949) by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life in the Oceanian province of 'Airstrip One' is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control, accomplished with a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc), which is administrated by a privileged Inner Party élite.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet they too are subordinated to the totalitarian cult of personality of Big Brother, the <i>deified</i> Party leader who rules with a philosophy that decries individuality and reason as thought-crimes; thus the people of Oceania are subordinated to a supposed collective greater good.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As in Soviet Russia, no one is safe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a complex and pervasive political orthodox philosophy, (in the case of Russia, <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/marxist-socialism.html" target="_blank">Marxist Leninism</a> and Stalinism), which is so complex that no one can completely master its intricacies As a result anyone can make an error, and make an apparently heretical statement which will result in arrest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Therefore everyone in Oceania (and Soviet Russia) is trapped in a metaphysical, or more properly a meta-political prison, and fears the knock on the door at night, and the bullet in the head - apart, that is, from 'Big Brother', <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/lenin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> or Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record is congruent with the current party doctrine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of the childhood trauma of the destruction of his family — the disappearances of his parents and sister — Winston Smith secretly hates the Party, and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As literary political fiction and as dystopian science-fiction, 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is a classic novel in content, plot, and style, because many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and memory hole, have become contemporary vernacular since its publication in 1949.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which refers to official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past in service to a totalitarian political agenda.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">BACKGROUND to the NOVEL</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nineteen Eighty-Four occurs in Oceania, one of three intercontinental super-states who divided the world among themselves after a global war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of the action takes place in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", the Oceanic province that "had once been called England or Britain".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Posters of the Party leader, Big Brother, bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU adorn the landscape, while the ubiquitous telescreen (a transceiving television set) monitors the private and public lives of the populace.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the government, the Party controls the population with four ministries: the Ministry of Peace (Minipax), Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty), Ministry of Love (Miniluv), and the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), where protagonist Winston Smith (a member of the Outer Party) works as an editor revising historical records to concord the past to the contemporary party line orthodoxy — that changes daily — and deletes the official existence of people identified as unpersons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story of Winston Smith begins on 4 April 1984: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen"; yet he is uncertain of the true date, given the régime’s continual historical revisionism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His memories and his reading of the proscribed book, 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism', by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after the Second World War, the United Kingdom fell to civil war and then was integrated to Oceania.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simultaneously, the USSR annexed continental Europe and established the second superstate of Eurasia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third superstate, Eastasia comprises the regions of East Asia and Southeast Asia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The three superstates fight a perpetual war for the remaining unconquered lands of the world, in pursuit of which they form and break alliances as convenient.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From his childhood (1949–53), Winston remembers the Atomic Wars fought in Europe, western Russia, and North America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is unclear to him what occurred first — either the Party's civil war ascendance, or the US's annexation of the British Empire, or the war wherein Colchester was bombed — however, the increasing clarity of his memory and the story of his family's dissolution suggest that the atomic bombings occurred first (the Smiths took refuge in a tube station) followed by civil war featuring "confused street fighting in London itself", and the societal postwar reorganisation, which the Party retrospectively call "the Revolution".</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">THE PLOT</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story of Winston Smith presents the world in the year 1984, after a global atomic war, via his perception of life in Airstrip One (England or Britain), a province of Oceania, one of the world's three superstates; his intellectual rebellion against the Party and illicit romance with Julia; and his consequent imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education by the Thinkpol in the Miniluv.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Winston Smith is an intellectual, a member of the Outer Party, who lives in the ruins of London, and who grew up in some long post-World War II England, during the revolution and the civil war after which the Party assumed power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At some point his parents and sister disappeared, and the Ingsoc movement placed him in an orphanage for training and subsequent employment as an Outer Party civil servant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet his squalid existence consists of living in a one-room flat on a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vL7OIR1gMEg/Tqan8zErINI/AAAAAAAADqs/HzDmbvPejlQ/s1600/Winston%2527s+Diary+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vL7OIR1gMEg/Tqan8zErINI/AAAAAAAADqs/HzDmbvPejlQ/s200/Winston%2527s+Diary+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="108" width="200" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He keeps a journal of negative thoughts and opinions about the Party and Big Brother, which, if uncovered by the Thought Police, would warrant death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The flat has an alcove, beside the telescreen, where he apparently cannot be seen, and thus believes he has some privacy, while writing in his journal: "<i>Thoughtcrime does not entail death - thoughtcrime IS death"</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The telescreens (in every public area, and the quarters of the Party's members), hidden microphones, and informers permit the Thought Police to spy upon everyone and so identify anyone who might endanger the Party's régime; children, most of all, are indoctrinated to spy and inform on suspected thought-criminals — especially their parents.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-07g6xcyqlhw/TqalTkzilEI/AAAAAAAADps/ZRHUCJtgu0c/s1600/Mintru+Ingsoc+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-07g6xcyqlhw/TqalTkzilEI/AAAAAAAADps/ZRHUCJtgu0c/s200/Mintru+Ingsoc+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></span></a></div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-THmCp0D0GLI/TqcV4A_od5I/AAAAAAAADsY/qYOtH-yb-tk/s1600/Winston+Mintru+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-THmCp0D0GLI/TqcV4A_od5I/AAAAAAAADsY/qYOtH-yb-tk/s320/Winston+Mintru+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="176" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the Minitrue, Winston is an editor responsible for the historical revisionism concording the past to the Party's contemporary official version of the past; thus making the government of Oceania seem omniscient. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As such, he perpetually rewrites records and alters photographs, rendering the deleted people as "<i>unpersons</i>"; the original documents are incinerated in a "<i>memory hole</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(This constant manipulation of the past and the concept of '<i>unpersons</i>' is taken directly from the Soviet System)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite enjoying the intellectual challenges of historical revisionism, he becomes increasingly fascinated by the true past and tries to learn more about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One day, at the Minitrue, as Winston assisted a woman who had fallen, she surreptitiously handed him a folded paper note; later, at his desk he covertly reads the message: <i>I LOVE YOU</i>. The name of the woman is "<i>Julia</i>", a young dark haired mechanic who repairs the Minitrue novel-writing machines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before that occasion, Winston had loathed the sight of her, presuming she was a member of the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League, because she wore the red sash of the League, and because she was the type of woman he believed he could not attract: young, beautiful, and puritanical; nonetheless, his hostility towards her vanishes upon reading the message.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cautiously, Winston and Julia begin a love affair, at first meeting in the country, at a clearing in the woods, then at the belfry of a ruined church, and afterwards in a rented room atop an antiques shop in a proletarian neighbourhood of London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There, they think themselves safe and unobserved, because the rented bedroom has no telescreen, but, unknown to Winston and Julia, the Thought Police were aware of their love affair.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later, when the Inner Party member O'Brien approaches him, Winston believes he is an agent of the Brotherhood, a secret, counter-revolutionary organisation meant to destroy The Party.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BSNtOMUQs0Q/TqcUyiuCnQI/AAAAAAAADr4/qgcd5393gPo/s1600/O%2527Brien+and+Winston+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BSNtOMUQs0Q/TqcUyiuCnQI/AAAAAAAADr4/qgcd5393gPo/s320/O%2527Brien+and+Winston+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The approach opened a secret communication between them; and, on pretext of giving him a copy of the latest edition of the Dictionary of Newspeak, O'Brien gives Winston 'The Book', 'The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism', by <i>Emmanuel Goldstein</i>, the infamous and publicly reviled leader of the Brotherhood. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Book explains the concept of perpetual war, the true meanings of the slogans <i>WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY</i>, and <i>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH</i>, and how the régime of The Party can be overthrown by means of the political awareness of the Proles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their bedroom, to be delivered to the Ministry of Love for interrogation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Charrington, the shop keeper who rented the room to them, reveals himself as an officer in the Thought Police.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After a prolonged regimen of systematic beatings and psychologically draining interrogation, O'Brien, who is revealed to be a Thought Police leader and becomes Smith's inquisitor, tortures Winston with electroshock, showing him how, through controlled manipulation of perception (e.g.: seeing whatever number of fingers held up that the Party demands one should see, whatever the "<i>apparent"</i> reality, i.e. 2+2=5), Winston can "<i>cure</i>" himself of his "<i>insanity"</i> — his manifest hatred for the Party. In long, complex conversations, he explains the Inner Party's motivation: complete and absolute power, mocking Winston's assumption that it was somehow altruistic and "<i>for the greater good</i>".</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OovPydpW_EM/TqcUOpmc6-I/AAAAAAAADro/zcF3ojg_V6I/s1600/Surrounded+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OovPydpW_EM/TqcUOpmc6-I/AAAAAAAADro/zcF3ojg_V6I/s200/Surrounded+-+1984+-++Ingsoc+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Asked if the Brotherhood exists, O'Brien replies that this is something Winston will never know; it will remain an unsolvable quandary in his mind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During a torture session, his imprisonment in the Ministry of Love is explained: "<i>There are three stages in your reintegration . . . There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance</i>", i.e. of the Party's assertion of reality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the first stage of political re-education, Winston Smith admits to and confesses to crimes he did and did not commit, implicating anyone and everyone, including Julia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the second stage of re-education for reintegration to the society of Oceania, O'Brien makes Winston understand that he is rotting away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Winston counters that: <i>"I have not betrayed Julia</i>"; O'Brien agrees, Winston had not betrayed Julia because he "had not stopped loving her; his feelings toward her had remained the same".</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuUTSM7e4gcDndqdj3l75IJiU8yAjOw_V5zbO_E81zbQRp-h6AK-URCgiZBGEfONzC_zdh56W8vTnvqz9qrogik3l28KieeG9Eeere-DVrvJvPBvoHXRpaUDSNfOaRtbpu0kp_exhkpY/s1600/+Room+101+-+Rats+-+Ingsoc+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuUTSM7e4gcDndqdj3l75IJiU8yAjOw_V5zbO_E81zbQRp-h6AK-URCgiZBGEfONzC_zdh56W8vTnvqz9qrogik3l28KieeG9Eeere-DVrvJvPBvoHXRpaUDSNfOaRtbpu0kp_exhkpY/s320/+Room+101+-+Rats+-+Ingsoc+-+1984+-+Spirit+of+England+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="209" width="320" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One night, in his cell, Winston awakens, screaming: "<i>Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!</i>" O'Brien rushes in to the cell, but not to interrogate Winston, but to send him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love, where resides each prisoner's worst fear, which is forced upon him or her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Room 101 is Acceptance, the final stage of the political re-education of Winston Smith, whose primal fear of rats is invoked when a wire cage holding hungry rats is fitted onto his face.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the rats are about to reach Winston’s face, he shouts: "<i>Do it to Julia !</i>", thus betraying her, and relinquishing his love for her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Julia, also, betrayed Winston, in what O'Brien described as "<i>a text book case</i>" of betrayal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At torture’s end, upon accepting the doctrine of The Party, Winston Smith is reintegrated to the society of Oceania, because he loved Big Brother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Smith has accepted the Party's depiction of life, and sincerely celebrates a news bulletin reporting Oceania's decisive victory over Eurasia for control of Africa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He then realises that "<i>he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother</i>".</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-31451053943774112002013-04-05T15:07:00.002-07:002014-02-28T16:56:20.624-08:00Marxist Socialism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">MARXIST SOCIALISM</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 19th century, 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848), by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, called for the international political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve a Communist revolution; and proposed that, because the socio-economic organization of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers’ revolution would first occur in the economically advanced, industrialized countries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Karl Heinrich Marx, (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a<i> Prussian-German</i> Jewish philosopher of history and economist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His ideas played a significant role in the establishment of the social sciences and the development of the socialist movement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marx's work in economics laid the basis for our understanding of labor and its relation to capital, and has influenced much of subsequent economic thought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848) and 'Capital' (1867–1894).</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Karl Heinrich Marx</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie' (Capital: Critique of Political Economy), by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of political economy, meant to reveal the <i>economic laws</i> of the capitalist mode of production - in three volumes.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The purpose of 'Capital: Critique of Political Economy' (1867) was a scientific foundation for the politics of the modern socialist movement; the analyses were meant "t<i>o bring a science, by criticism, to the point where it can be <b>dialectically</b> represented</i>" and so "<i>reveal the law of motion of modern societ</i>y" to describe how the capitalist mode of production was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The argument is a <i>critique</i> of the <i>classical economics</i> of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Benjamin Franklin, drawing on the dialectical method that <b><i>G.W.F. Hegel</i> </b>developed in ('<i>Wissenschaft der Logik</i>' ('<i>The Science of Logic')</i> and <i>'Phänomenologie des Geistes'</i> (</span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'</span><i style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>The Phenomenology of Spirit</b></i><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'); other intellectual influences upon Capital Comte de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; and the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At university, Marx wrote a dissertation comparing the philosophy of nature in the works of the <i>pre-Socratic</i> philosophers Democritus (ca. 460–370 BC) and Epicurus (341–270 BC).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The logical architecture of Capital: Critique of Political Economy is derived in part from the 'Politics' and the 'Nicomachean Ethics' of Aristotle, including the fundamental distinction between <i>use value</i> and <i>exchange value</i>, and the circulation of value as capital.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Moreover, the description of machinery, under capitalist relations of production, as "<i>self-acting automata</i>" derives from Aristotle’s speculations about inanimate instruments capable of obeying commands as the condition for the abolition of slavery.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx’s research of the available politico-economic literature required twelve years, usually in the<i> British Library, London.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The results were the creation o<i>f 'Dialectical Materialism' </i>and what is now known as<i> 'Marxism' - </i>which prophesied the eventual emergence of an eschatological state, which Marx described as '<i>Communism</i>'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is, therefore a misnomer to refer to '<i>Communist Russia</i>', the '<i>Communist Party'</i> etc, as <i>Communism</i>, as described by Marx has, so far, never been achieved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Born into a wealthy middle-class family in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland, Marx studied at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the '<i>Young Hegelians'</i></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Georg Wilhelm Hegel</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://peterandphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hege.html" target="_blank">Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel</a> (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher, and a major figure in German Idealism.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His historicist and <i>idealist</i> account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and <i>Marxism</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Hegel developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", of<i> <a href="http://peterandphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hege.html" target="_blank">Absolute Idealism</a></i> to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In particular, he developed the concept that S<i>pirit</i> manifested itself in a set of<i> contradictions</i> and <i>oppositions</i> that it ultimately <i>integrated</i> and <i>united</i>, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Examples of such contradictions include those between nature and freedom, and between immanence and transcendence.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Hegel influenced writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (Feuerbach, T. H. Green, Baur, Marx, Engels, F. H. Bradley) and his detractors (Schopenhauer, Herbart, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His influential conceptions are of speculative logic or "<i><b>dialectic</b></i>", "<i>absolute idealism"</i>, "<i><b>Spirit</b></i>", negativity, sublation (Aufhebung in German), the "<i>Master/Slave"</i> dialectic, and the importance of history.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The </span><i style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Young Hegelians</i><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, were a group of German intellectuals who, in the decade or so after the death of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his legacy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The <i>Young Hegelians</i> drew on his idea that the <i>purpose</i> and <i>promise</i> of history was the total negation of everything conducive to restriction of freedom and irrationality to mount radical critiques of first religion and then the Prussian political system.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">They ignored anti-utopian aspects of his thought that suggested the world has already essentially reached perfection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After his studies, he wrote for a radical newspaper in Cologne, and began to work out his theory of dialectical materialism.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Fredrick Engels</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He moved to Paris in 1843, where he began writing for other radical newspapers and met <i>Fredrick Engels</i>, who would become his life-long friend and collaborator.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of 'Marxist Theory', alongside Karl Marx.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1845 he published '<i>The Condition of the Working Class in England</i>', based on personal observations and research.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1848 he co-authored '<i>The Communist Manifesto</i>' with Karl Marx, and later he supported Marx financially to do research and write '<i>Das Kapital</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Marx's death Engels edited the second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organized Marx's notes on the "<i>Theories of Surplus Value</i>" and this was later published as the "fourth volume" of '<i>Kapital</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He has also made important </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engels was born on November 28, 1820 in Barmen, Prussia (now Wuppertal, Germany).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time, Barmen was an expanding industrial metropole, and Frederick was the eldest son of a<i> wealthy</i> German cotton manufacturer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His father, Friederich, Sr., was an evangelical.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Accordingly, Engels was raised 'Christian Pietist'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As he grew up, his relationship with his parents became strained because of his atheist beliefs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a teenager Engels began reading the philosophy of <a href="http://peterandphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hege.html" target="_blank">Hegel</a>, whose teachings had dominated German philosophy at the time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In September 1838, he published his first work, a poem entitled '<i>The Bedouin</i>', in the 'Bremisches Conversationsblatt' No. 40.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1841, Engels joined the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This position moved him to Berlin where he attended university lectures and began to associate with groups of <i>Young Hegelians</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Throughout his lifetime, Engels would point out that he was <i>indebted to <a href="http://peterandphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hege.html" target="_blank">German philosophy</a> </i>because of its effect on his intellectual development.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1842, the 22-year-old Engels was sent by his parents to Manchester, England, to work for the "Ermen and Engels' Victoria Mill" in Weaste which made sewing threads.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While in Manchester, Engels wrote his first economic work called "<i>Outline of a Critique of Political Economy</i>", written between October and November 1843.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engels sent the article to Paris, where <i>Marx</i> published it in the 'Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engels also wrote a three part series of articles called "<i>The Condition of England</i>" in January, February and March 1844.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After a productive stay in Britain, Engels decided to return to Germany in 1844.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the way, he stopped in Paris to meet <i>Karl Marx</i>, with whom he had an earlier correspondence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marx had been living in Paris since late October 1843 following the banning of the 'Rheinische Zeitung' by Prussian governmental authorities in March 1843.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prior to meeting Marx, Engels had established himself as a fully developed <i>materialist</i> and <i>scientific socialist </i>in his own right independent of Marx's philosophical development.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Paris, Marx was now publishing the 'Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engels first met Marx at the Café de la Régence on the Place du Palais, 28 August 1844.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The two immediately became close friends and would remain so their entire lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marx was expelled from Paris by French authorities on February 3, 1845 and settled in Brussels with his wife and one daughter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having left Paris on September 6, 1844, Engels returned to his home in Barmen, Germany, to work on his 'The Condition of the English Working Class', which was published in late May 1845.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even before the publication of his book, Engels moved to Brussels in late April 1845, to collaborate with Marx on another book, 'German Ideology'.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Engles Speaking</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While living in Barmen, Engels began making contact with Socialists in the Rhineland to raise money for Marx's publication efforts in Brussels, however, these contacts became more important as both Marx and Engels began political organizing for the '<i>German Workers Party</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">'Die Deutsche Ideologie</i><span style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">' - (German Ideology) is a book written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels around April or early May 1846. The work was only published for the first time in 1932 by David Riazanov through the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The work is a restatement of the '<i>theory of history</i>' Marx was beginning to call the "<i>materialist conception of history</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Since its first publication, Marxist scholars have found the work particularly valuable since it is perhaps the <i>most comprehensive </i>statement of Marx's '<i>Theory of History</i>' stated at such length and detail.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To illustrate his theoretical framework, Marx draws on his formulation of '<i>base and superstructure</i>'. Historical development is the reflection of changes in the economic and material relations of the base. When the base changes, a revolutionary class becomes the new ruling class that forms the superstructure. During revolution, the revolutionary class makes certain that its ideas appeal to humanity in general so that after a successful revolution these ideas appear natural and universal. These ideas, which the superstructural elements of society propagate, then become the governing ideology of the historical period. Furthermore, the governing ideology mystifies the economic relations of society and therefore places the proletariat in a state of false consciousness that serves to reproduce the working class.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 1845 to 1848, Engels and Marx lived in Brussels, spending much of their time organizing the city's German workers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shortly after their arrival, they contacted and joined the underground 'German Communist League'.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">'Communist Manifesto'.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'Communist League' commissioned Marx and Engels to write a pamphlet explaining the principles of communism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This became '<i>The Manifesto of the Communist Party</i>', better known as the '<i>Communist Manifesto</i>'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was first published on 21 February 1848 and ends with the world famous phrase: "<i>Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win ... Working Men of All Countries, Unite !</i>"</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was a revolution in France in 1848 that eventually spread to other Western European countries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This event caused Engels and Marx to go back to their home country of Prussia, specifically the city of Köln (</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cologne).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While living in Köln they created and served as editors for a new daily newspaper called the 'Neue Rheinische Zeitung'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the June 1849 Prussian coup d'état the newspaper was suppressed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the coup, Marx lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported, and fled to Paris.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Marx then </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">moved to </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">London</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> together with his wife and children, where he continued writing and formulating his theories about social and economic activity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">At the same time Engles fled to Switzerland, and then to London.where he joined Marx.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Once Engels made it to Britain, he decided to re-enter the Manchester company in which his father held shares, in order to be able to support Marx financially so he could work on his masterpiece "Das Kapital".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Engels didn't like the work but did it for the good of the cause.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">In 1870, Engels moved to London where he and Marx lived until Marx's death in 1883.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">His London home during this period and until his death was 122 Regent's Park Road, Primrose Hill, NW1.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Marx's first London residence was a cramped apartment at 28 Dean Street, Soho.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">From 1856, he lived at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town, and then in a tenement at 41 Maitland Park Road from 1875 until his death.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marx's theories about society, economics and politics—collectively known as '<i>Marxism</i>'—hold that human societies progress through '<i>class struggle'</i>: a conflict between an ownership class that controls production and a proletariat that provides the labour for production.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He called capitalism the "<i>dictatorship of the bourgeoisie</i>," believing it to be run by the wealthy classes for their own benefit; and he predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its <i>self-destruction </i>and replacement by a new system: <i>socialism</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He argued that under socialism society would be governed by the <i>working class</i> in what he called the "<i>dictatorship of the proletariat</i>", the "<i>workers' state</i>" or "<i>workers' democracy</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a <i>stateless, classless </i>society called <i>communism</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Along with believing in the <i>inevitability</i> of socialism and <i>communism</i>, Marx actively fought for the former's implementation, arguing that social theorists and underprivileged people alike should carry out organised <i>revolutionary action</i> to topple capitalism and bring about political and <i>socio-economic change</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Legacy</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Vladimir Lenin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of Engles, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "<i>After his friend Karl Marx, Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world.... In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others.</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marx's ideas have had a profound impact on world politics and intellectual thought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His work gave birth to modern sociology, has had a lasting legacy in economic thought, and profoundly affected philosophy, literature, the arts, and almost all of the academic disciplines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Karl Löwith considered Marx and Søren Kierkegaard to be the two greatest Hegelian philosophical successors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In social theory, twentieth and twenty-first centuries thinkers have pursued two main strategies in response to Marx.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One move has been to reduce it to its <i>analytical core</i>, known as 'Analytical Marxism', which came at the cost of sacrificing its most interesting and perplexing ideas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another, more common move has been to<i> dilute</i> the <i>explanatory</i> claims of Marx's social theory, and to emphasize the "<i>relative autonomy</i>" of aspects of social and economic life not directly related to Marx's central narrative of interaction between the development of the "<i>forces of production</i>" and the succession of "<i>modes of production.</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such has been, for example, the '<i>Neo-Marxist</i>' theorizing adopted by historians inspired by Marx's social theory, such as E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has also been a line of thinking pursued by thinkers and activists like Antonio Gramsci who have sought to understand the opportunities and the difficulties of transformative political practice, seen in the light of Marxist social theory</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Marxism - Developments</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Followers of Marx have frequently debated among themselves over how to interpret Marx's writings and apply his concepts to the modern world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The legacy of Marx's thought has become contested between numerous tendencies, each of which sees itself as Marx's most accurate interpreter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the political realm, these tendencies include Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism. Various currents have also developed in academic Marxism, often under influence of other views, resulting in structuralist Marxism, historical Marxism, phenomenological Marxism, Analytical Marxism and Hegelian Marxism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">THE VANGUARD PARTY</span></div>
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A prime feature of Marxist revolutionary praxis is the Theory of the Vanguard Party.</div>
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A vanguard party is a political party at the fore of a mass-action political movement and of a revolution.</div>
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In the praxis of political science, the concept of the vanguard party, composed of professional revolutionaries, was first effected by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), the first leader of the Bolsheviks, coined the term vanguard party, and argued that such a party was necessary in order to provide the practical and political leadership that would impel the proletariat (urban workers and peasants) to achieve a communist revolution, hence, as a political-science concept and term, vanguard party most often is associated with Leninism; however, similar concepts (under different names) also are present in other revolutionary ideologies.</div>
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Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx presented the concept of the vanguard party as solely qualified to politically lead the proletariat in revolution; in Chapter II: "<i>Proletarians and Communists</i>" of 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848), they said:</div>
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'<i>The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat</i>.'</div>
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According to Vladimir Lenin, the purpose of the vanguard party is to establish a <i>dictatorship of the proletariat</i>; supported by the working class.</div>
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The change of ruling class, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, makes possible the full development of socialism.</div>
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In early 20th century Russia, Lenin argued that the vanguard party would lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and transfer government power to the working class.</div>
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In the pamphlet 'What is to be Done ?' (1902), Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade union struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and later by the anarcho-syndicalists.</div>
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Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the two aspects of a revolution, the economic campaign (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused plural leadership; and the political campaign (socialist changes to society), which featured the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin found several theoretic problems with the Marxism of the late 19th century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contrary to what Karl Marx had predicted, capitalism had become stronger in the last third of the 19th century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Western Europe, the working class had become poorer, rather than becoming politically progressive, thinking people; hence, the workers and their trade unions, although they had continued to militate for better wages and working conditions, had failed to develop a revolutionary class consciousness, as predicted by Marx.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To explain that undeveloped political awareness, Lenin said that the division of labour in a bourgeois capitalist society prevented the emergence of a proletarian class consciousness, because of the ten-to-twelve-hour workdays that the workers laboured in factories, and so had no time to learn and apply the philosophic complexities of Marxist theory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, in trying to effect a revolution in Tsarist Imperial Russia (1721–1917), Lenin faced the problem of an autocratic régime that had outlawed almost all political activity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the Tsarist autocracy could not enforce a ban on political ideas, until 1905 — when Tsar Nicholas II (1894–1917) agreed to the formation of a national duma — the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, suppressed every political group seeking social and political changes, including those with a democratic program.</span></div>
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To counter such political conditions, Lenin said that a professional revolutionary organisation was necessary to organise and lead the most class-conscious workers into a politically coherent movement.</div>
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About the Russian class struggle, in the book 'What Is to Be Done ?' (1902), against the “<i>economist</i>” trend of the socialist parties (who proposed that the working class would develop a revolutionary consciousness from demanding solely economic improvements), Lenin said that the “<i>history of all countries bears out the fact that, through their own powers alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness</i>”; and that under reformist, trade-union leadership, the working class could only engage spontaneous local rebellions to improve their political position within the capitalist system, and that revolutionary consciousness developed unevenly.</div>
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Nonetheless, optimistic about the working class’s ability to develop a revolutionary class consciousness, Lenin said that the missing element for escalating the class struggle to revolution was a political organisation that could relate to the radicalism of political vanguard of the working class, who then would attract many workers from the middling policies of the reformist leaders of the trade unions.</div>
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It is often believed that Lenin thought the bearers of class consciousness were the common intellectuals who made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist system, educate the public in revolutionary theory, and prepare the workers for the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat that would follow, yet, unlike his <i>Menshevik </i>rivals, Lenin distinguished himself by his <i>hostility</i> towards the bourgeois intelligentsia, and was routinely criticised for placing<i> too much trust</i> in the intellectual ability of the working class to transform society through its own political struggles.</div>
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Like other political organisations that sought to change Imperial Russian society, Lenin's Bolshevik Party resorted to <i>conspiracy</i>, and operated in the political underground.</div>
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Against Tsarist repression, Lenin argued for the necessity of confining membership to people who were<i> professionally trained</i> to combat the Okhrana secret police; however, at its core, the Bolshevik Party was an exceptionally flexible organisation who pragmatically adapted policy to changing political situations.</div>
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After the Revolution of 1905, Lenin proposed that the Bolshevik Party "<i>open its gates</i>" to the militant working class, who were rapidly becoming political radicals, in order for the Party to become a mass-action political party with genuine roots in the working class movement.</div>
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The concept of a <i>vanguard party</i> was used by the Bolsheviks to justify their suppression of other parties.</div>
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They took the line that since they were the <i>vanguard of the proletariat</i>, their right to rule could not be legitimately questioned.</div>
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Hence, opposition parties could<i> not </i>be permitted to exist.</div>
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From 1936 onward, Communist-inspired state constitutions enshrined this concept by giving the Communist parties a "<i>leading role</i>" in society—a provision that was interpreted to either ban other parties altogether or force them to accept the Communists' guaranteed right to rule as a condition of being allowed to exist.</div>
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In the 20th century, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) continued regarding itself as the institutionalization of Marxist-Leninist political consciousness in the Soviet Union; therein lay the justification for its <i>political control </i>of Soviet society.</div>
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Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution refers to the CPSU as the "<i>leading and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations</i>".</div>
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The CPSU, precisely because it was the bearer of Marxist-Leninist ideology, determined the <i>general development </i>of society, directed <i>domestic and foreign policy</i>, and "<i>imparts a planned, systematic, and theoretically substantiated character</i>" to the struggle of the Soviet people for the victory of Communism.</div>
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Nonetheless, the political role of the <i>vanguard party</i>, as outlined by Lenin, is disputed among the contemporary communist movement.</div>
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Lenin's contemporary in the Bolshevik Party,<i> Leon Trotsky,</i> further developed and established the <i>vanguard party</i> with the creation of the <i>Fourth International</i>.</div>
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Trotsky, who believed in <i>worldwide permanent revolution</i>, proposed that a <i>vanguard party</i> must be an<i> international political party</i> who organised the most militant activists of the working classes of the countries of the world.</div>
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Although the <i>Fourth International</i> faded from the public upon the death of Trotsky, there continued some efforts to revive the concept of an <i>international vanguard party</i>.</div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-42548493537194898552013-04-04T15:34:00.002-07:002015-09-30T01:58:26.405-07:00NKVD - Народный комиссариат внутренних дел<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joseph Stalin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Народный комиссариат внутренних дел, Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), abbreviated NKVD was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the 'All Union Communist Party', including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NKVD contained the regular, public police force of the USSR, including traffic police, firefighting, border guards and archives.</span></div>
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It is best known for the activities of the Gulag and the 'Main Directorate for State Security' (GUGB), the predecessor of the KGB).</div>
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The NKVD conducted mass extrajudicial executions, ran the Gulag system of forced labor camps and suppressed underground resistance, and was also responsible for mass deportations of entire nationalities and Kulaks to unpopulated regions of the country.</div>
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It was also tasked with protection of Soviet borders and espionage, which included political assassinations abroad, influencing foreign governments and enforcing Stalinist policy within communist movements in other countries.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">History and Structure</span><br />
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After the October Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government dissolved the Tsar's police and created People's Militsiya.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">мили́ция - Militsiya or militia - is used as an official name of the civilian police in Soviet Russia, despite its original military connotation. The term was used in the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The name originates from a Provisional Government decree dated April 17, 1917, and from early Soviet history, when both the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks intended to associate their new law enforcement authority with the self-organization of the people and to distinguish it from the czarist police. The militsiya was reaffirmed on October 28 (November 10, according to the new style dating), 1917 under the official name of the Workers' and Peasants' Militsiya, in further contrast to what the Bolsheviks called the "<i>bourgeois class protecting</i>" police.</span><br />
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The October Revolution established a new Bolshevik regime, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) turned into NKVD under a People's Commissar, however, the NKVD apparatus was overwhelmed by duties inherited from MVD, such as the supervision of the local governments and firefighting, and the proletarian workforce of now Workers' and Peasants' Militsiya was largely inexperienced.<br />
Realizing that it was left with no capable security force, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR created a <i>secret political police</i>, the '<i>Cheka</i>', led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.<br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; 11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877 – 20 July 1926) was a Soviet statesman and a prominent member of Polish and Russian revolutionary movements. He is better known under his nickname as the Iron Felix, Bloody Felix, or abbreviation FD. His party pseudonyms were Yatsek, Yakub, Pereplyotchik, Franek, Astronom, Yuzef, and Domanski.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Фе́ликс Дзержи́нский<br />
Felix Dzerzhinsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was a member of several revolutionary committees such as the Polish Revkom as well as several Russian and Soviet official positions.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet State Security forces under their original name<i> Cheka</i> (1917–26).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats, while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Cheka became notorious for torture and mass summary executions, performed especially during the 'Red Terror' and the Russian Civil War.</span></div>
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It gained the right to undertake quick non-judicial trials and executions, if that was deemed necessary in order to "<i>protect the revolution</i>".</div>
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The Cheka was reorganized in 1922 as the State Political Directorate, or GPU, of the NKVD of the RSFSR.</div>
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In 1923, the USSR was formed with the RSFSR as its largest member.</div>
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The GPU became the OGPU (Joint State Political Directorate), under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.</div>
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The NKVD of the RSFSR retained control of the militsiya, and various other responsibilities.</div>
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In 1934, the NKVD of the RSFSR was transformed into an all-union security force, the NKVD of the USSR (which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders soon came to call "t<i>he leading detachment of our party</i>"), and the OGPU was incorporated into the NKVD as the Main Directorate for State Security (GUGB); the separate NKVD of the RSFSR was not resurrected until 1946 (as the MVD of the RSFSR).</div>
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As a result, the NKVD also became responsible for all detention facilities (including the forced labor camps, known as the GULag) as well as for the regular police.</div>
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Until the reorganization begun by Nikolai Yezhov with a purge of the regional political police in the autumn of 1936 and formalized by a May 1939 directive of the All-Union NKVD by which all appointments to the local political police were controlled from the center, there was frequent tension between centralized control of local units and the collusion of those units with local and regional party elements, frequently resulting in the thwarting of Moscow's plans.</div>
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Since its creation in 1934, the NKVD of the USSR underwent many organizational changes; between 1938 and 1939 alone, the NKVD's structure changed three times.</div>
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On February 3, 1941, the Special Sections of the NKVD responsible for military counterintelligence (CI) became part of the Army and Navy (RKKA and RKKF, respectively). The GUGB was separated from the NKVD and renamed the "People's Commissariat for State Security" (NKGB).</div>
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After the German invasion, the NKVD and NKGB were reunited on 20 July 1941.</div>
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The CI sections were returned to the NKVD in January 1942.</div>
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In April 1943, the CI sections were again transferred to the People's Commissariats (Narkomat) of Defense and the Navy, becoming SMERSH (from Smert' Shpionam or "<i>Death to Spies</i>"); at the same time, the NKVD was again separated from the NKGB.</div>
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In 1946, all Soviet Commissariats were renamed "<i>ministries</i>".</div>
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Accordingly, the NKVD of the USSR was renamed as the <i>Ministry of Internal Affairs</i> (MVD), while the NKGB was renamed as the <i>Ministry of State Security</i> (MGB).</div>
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According to a 1996 radio documentary by the Russian Service of Radio Liberty, the MGB was reduced from being a ministry to a <i>committee</i> because Soviet leaders feared what the MGB might do if the purges were to resume.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия<br />
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria</td></tr>
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In 1953, after the arrest of Lavrenty Beria, the MGB was merged back into the MVD.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">- Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; - 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician, <i>Marshal of the Soviet Union</i> and state security administrator, <i>chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus</i> (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years (1946–1953).</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Beria was the longest lived and <i>most influential</i> of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the NKVD field units responsible for anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front during World War II. Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labor camps and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret defense institutions known as <i>sharashkas</i>, critical to the war effort.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> шара́жка - Sharashka - was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system. The official name was ОКБ that is Опытное конструкторское бюро that can be translated as "Experimental Design Bureau".</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Léon Theremin</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners picked from various camps and prisons and assigned to work on scientific and technological problems for the state. Living conditions were usually much better than in an average taiga camp, especially bearing in mind the absence of hard labor.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The results of the research in sharashkas were usually published under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit given to the real authors, whose names frequently have been forgotten. Some of the brilliant scientists and engineers imprisoned in sharashkas were released during and after World War II, continuing independent careers and becoming world-famous, such as Léon Theremin.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines. He attended the <i>Yalta Conference</i> with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "<i>our Himmler</i>".</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After the war, he organized the communist takeover of the countries of Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet <i>atomic bomb project</i>. Stalin gave it absolute priority and the project was completed in under five years in no small part due to Soviet espionage against the West organized by Beria's NKVD.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On 26 June 1953, after Stalin's death, Beria was arrested, and condemmned to death for treason.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Beria was fatally shot through the forehead by General Batitsky</span><br />
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The police and security services were finally split in 1954 to become:</div>
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The '<i>USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs</i>' (MVD), responsible for the criminal militia and correctional facilities.</div>
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The '<i>USSR Committee for State Security</i>' (KGB), responsible for the political police, intelligence, counter-intelligence, personal protection of the leadership, and confidential communications.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">NKVD Activities</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main function of the NKVD was to <i>protect</i> the state security of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This function was successfully accomplished through <i>massive political repression</i>, including the use of sanctioned<i> political murders and assassinations</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Domestic Repressions and Executions</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-epNeHMIO96c/UWiGu4UC1VI/AAAAAAAAFKc/ZaeVsjuK_qo/s1600/gulag+in+Perm+-+Siberia+-+NKVD+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="154" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-epNeHMIO96c/UWiGu4UC1VI/AAAAAAAAFKc/ZaeVsjuK_qo/s200/gulag+in+Perm+-+Siberia+-+NKVD+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gulag in Perm - Siberia</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In implementing Soviet internal policy with respect to perceived enemies of the state ("<i>enemies of the people</i>"), untold multitudes of people were sent to GULAG camps and hundreds of thousands were <i>executed</i> by the NKVD.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Formally, most of these people were convicted by NKVD troikas ("<i>triplets</i>")– special courts martial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Evidential standards were very <i>low</i>: a tip-off by an anonymous informer was considered sufficient grounds for arrest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Use of "<i>physical means of persuasion</i>" (torture) was sanctioned by a special decree of the state, which opened the door to numerous abuses, documented in recollections of victims and members of the NKVD itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hundreds of <i>mass graves </i>resulting from such operations were later discovered throughout the country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Documented evidence exists that the NKVD committed mass<i> extrajudicial executions,</i> guided by secret "<i>plans</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those plans established the number and proportion of victims (officially "<i>public enemies</i>") in a given region (e.g. the quotas for clergy, former nobles etc., regardless of identity).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The families of the repressed, including children, were also automatically repressed according to NKVD Order no. 00486.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The purges were organized in a number of waves according to the decisions of the 'Politburo of the Communist Party'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some examples are the campaigns among engineers (<i>Shakhty Trial</i>), party and military elite plots ('Great Purge' with Order 00447), and medical staff ("<i>Doctors' Plot</i>").</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A number of mass operations of the NKVD were related to the prosecution of whole <i>ethnic categories</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whole populations of certain ethnicities were<i> forcibly resettled</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Foreigners</i> living in the Soviet Union were given particular attention.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When disillusioned American citizens living in the Soviet Union thronged the gates of the U.S. embassy in Moscow to plead for new U.S. passports to leave USSR (Stalin had taken their original U.S. passports for 'registration' purposes years before), none were issued.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead, the NKVD promptly arrested all of the Americans, who were taken to Lubyanka Prison and later <i>shot</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">American factory workers at the Soviet Ford GAZ plant, suspected by Stalin of being '<i>poisoned</i>' by Western influences, were dragged off with the others to Lubyanka by the NKVD in the very same Ford Model A cars they had helped build, where they were tortured; nearly all were<i> executed </i>or died in labor camps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many of the slain Americans were dumped in the mass grave at Yuzhnoye Butovo District near Moscow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even so, ethnic Russians still formed the majority of NKVD victims.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NKVD also served as the Soviet government's arm for the <i>lethal persecution of Judaism</i>, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Catholics, the Latin Catholics, Islam and other religious organizations, an operation headed by <i>Yevgeny Tuchkov</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">International Operations, Kidnappings, and Assassinations</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the 1930s, the NKVD was responsible for political murders of those Stalin believed to oppose him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Espionage networks headed by experienced multilingual NKVD officers such as <i>Iskhak Akhmerov</i> were established in nearly every major Western country, including the United States. The NKVD recruited agents for its espionage efforts from all walks of life, from unemployed intellectuals such as <i>Mark Zborowski</i> to aristocrats such as <i>Martha Dodd</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Besides the gathering of intelligence, these networks provided organizational assistance for so-called wet business, where disillusioned Communist party members or Soviet agents such as Juliet Stuart Poyntz either disappeared or were openly liquidated.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The pro Soviet leader Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang received NKVD assistance in conducting a purge to coincide with Stalin's '<i>Great Purge</i>' in 1937.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive <i>Trotskyist</i> conspiracy and a "<i>Fascist Trotskyite plot</i>" to destroy the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff, General Ma Hushan, Ma Shaowu, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang and Hoja-Niyaz were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang became under virtual Soviet control. Stalin opposed the Chinese Communist Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NKVD's intelligence and special operations (<i>Inostranny Otdel</i>) unit organized overseas assassinations of ex-Soviet citizens, former Soviet agents, dissident Communist Party members, and/or foreigners who were regarded as enemies of the USSR by Joseph Stalin. Among the officially confirmed victims of such plots were:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ezT7qM-njKM/UT-9JOQFTPI/AAAAAAAAECc/XdVR9A9-0xg/s1600/Leon+Trosky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+1920s+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ezT7qM-njKM/UT-9JOQFTPI/AAAAAAAAECc/XdVR9A9-0xg/s200/Leon+Trosky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+1920s+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="170" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leon Trotsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Leon Trotsky</i>, a personal political enemy of Stalin and his most bitter international critic, killed in Mexico City in 1940;</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Leon Trotsky, byname of Lev Davidovich Bronshtein (born November 7 [October 26, Old Style], 1879, Yanovka, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died August 21, 1940, Coyoacán, Mexico), communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russia’s October Revolution in 1917, and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union (1917–24). In the struggle for power following Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s death, however, Joseph Stalin emerged as victor, while Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929). He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition abroad until his assassination by a Stalinist agent</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l1N9GsNg1Pk/UWcsSEsia0I/AAAAAAAAFEI/Jd__r8yC4sQ/s1600/savinkov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l1N9GsNg1Pk/UWcsSEsia0I/AAAAAAAAFEI/Jd__r8yC4sQ/s200/savinkov.jpg" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Бори́с Ви́кторович Са́винков<br />
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Boris Savinkov, Russian revolutionary and terrorist (lured back into Russia in 1924 by the Trust Operation of the GPU);</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Бори́с Ви́кторович Са́винков - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (Russian: ) (19 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian writer and revolutionary terrorist. As one of the leaders of the Fighting Organisation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he was responsible for the most spectacular assassinations of imperial officials in 1904 and 1905. </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Later, he became Assistant War Minister in the Provisional Government. Savinkov emigrated in 1920, but in 1924 he made an endeavour to return to Russia, w</span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">as arrested and either was killed in prison or committed suicide.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sidney Reilly, British spy and adventurer, friend of Savinkov who deliberately entered Russia in 1925 to expose the Trust Operation to avenge Savinkov's death;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yevhen Konovalets, prominent Ukrainian political and military leader.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Guy Leland, French anti-Soviet underground poet</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Walter Krivitsky, NKVD defector</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ignace Reiss (aka Ignace Poretsky), Soviet GPU defector</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many other prominent political dissidents were either kidnapped and forcibly returned to the Soviet Union or were found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, including Alexander Kutepov, General Evgeny Miller, Lev Sedov, and former German Communist Party (KPD) member Willi Münzenberg.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Spanish Civil War</span><br />
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During the Spanish Civil War, NKVD agents, acting in conjunction with the Communist Party of Spain, exercised substantial control over the Republican government, using Soviet military aid to help further Soviet influence.</div>
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The NKVD established numerous secret prisons around Madrid, which were used to detain, torture, and kill hundreds of the NKVD's enemies, at first focusing on Spanish Nationalists and Spanish Catholics, while from late 1938 increasingly anarchists and Trotskyists were the objects of persecution.</div>
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In June, 1937 Andrés Nin, the secretary of the anti-Stalinist Marxist POUM, was tortured and killed in an NKVD prison.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">World War II Operations</span><br />
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Prior to the German invasion, in order to accomplish its own goals, the NKVD was prepared to <i>cooperate</i> even with such organizations as the <i>German Gestapo</i>.</div>
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In March 1940 representatives of the NKVD and the <i>Gestapo</i> met for one week in Zakopane, to coordinate the pacification of Poland.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UBBOPsALy0Y/UWiPc9bs83I/AAAAAAAAFK4/M3TWIivPXMU/s1600/NKVD+soldier+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UBBOPsALy0Y/UWiPc9bs83I/AAAAAAAAFK4/M3TWIivPXMU/s200/NKVD+soldier+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="145" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NKVD Soldier</td></tr>
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For its part, the Soviet Union delivered hundreds of German and Austrian Communists to the Gestapo, as unwanted foreigners, together with their documents, however, some NKVD units were later to fight the Wehrmacht, for example the 10th NKVD Rifle Division, which fought at the Battle of Stalingrad.</div>
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During World War II, NKVD units were used for rear area security, including the deterrence of desertion.</div>
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At the beginning of the war the NKVD formed 15 rifle divisions, which had expanded by 1945 to 53 divisions and 28 brigades.</div>
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Though mainly intended for internal security, NKVD divisions were sometimes used in the front-lines, for example during the Battle of Stalingrad and the breakthrough in Crimea.</div>
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Unlike the Waffen-SS, the NKVD did not field any armored or mechanized units.</div>
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In liberated territory the NKVD and (later) NKGB carried out mass arrests, deportations, and <i>executions</i>.</div>
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The targets included both collaborators with Germany and non-Communist resistance movements such as the Polish Armia Krajowa.</div>
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The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1939–1941, inter alia committing Katyń massacre. NKVD units were also used to wage the prolonged partisan war in Ukraine and the Baltics, which lasted until the early 1950s.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Postwar Operations</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nifjw3y8x9Q/UWiSbcILE2I/AAAAAAAAFLI/CN8uLiIeL-U/s1600/Nikita+Kruschev+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nifjw3y8x9Q/UWiSbcILE2I/AAAAAAAAFLI/CN8uLiIeL-U/s200/Nikita+Kruschev+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nikita Khrushchev</td></tr>
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After the death of Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader <i>Nikita Khrushchev</i> halted the NKVD purges.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (April 15 [O.S. April 3] 1894 – September 11, 1971) led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the partial '<i>de-Stalinization</i>' of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.</span><br />
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From the 1950s to the 1980s, thousands of victims were legally "rehabilitated" (i.e., acquitted and had their rights restored).</div>
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Many of the victims and their relatives refused to apply for rehabilitation out of fear or lack of documents.</div>
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The rehabilitation was not complete: in most cases the formulation was "due to lack of evidence of the case of crime", a Soviet legal jargon that effectively said "there was a crime, but unfortunately we cannot prove it".</div>
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Only a limited number of persons were rehabilitated with the formulation "cleared of all charges".</div>
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Very few NKVD agents were ever officially convicted of the particular violation of anyone's rights. Legally, those agents executed in the 1930s were also "purged" without legitimate criminal investigations and court decisions.</div>
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At present, living former agents retain generous pensions and privileges established by the USSR and later confirmed by all of the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States.</div>
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They have not been prosecuted in any way, although some have been identified by their victims.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Contribution to the Soviet Economy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The extensive system of labor exploitation in the Gulag made a notable contribution to the Soviet economy and the development of remote areas.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Colonization of Siberia, the North and Far East was among the explicitly stated goals in the very first laws concerning Soviet labor camps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mining, construction works (roads, railways, canals, dams, and factories), logging, and other functions of the labor camps were part of the Soviet planned economy, and the NKVD had its own production plans.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most unusual part of the NKVD's achievements was its role in Soviet science and arms development.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many scientists and engineers arrested for political crimes were placed in special prisons, much more comfortable than the Gulag, colloquially known as '<i>sharashkas</i>'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These prisoners continued their work in these prisons.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When later released, some of them became <i>world leaders</i> in science and technology.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PRmeozUeWBs/UWiUeZ75vcI/AAAAAAAAFLU/QADkiY9IzOQ/s1600/Andrei+Tupolev+-+sharashka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PRmeozUeWBs/UWiUeZ75vcI/AAAAAAAAFLU/QADkiY9IzOQ/s200/Andrei+Tupolev+-+sharashka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="173" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrei Tupolev</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MNZAhlJdqSI/UVyxdwN5RaI/AAAAAAAAEj0/3d19vJ-3n3Y/s1600/Sergey_Korolyov+-++Soviet+Space+Program+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MNZAhlJdqSI/UVyxdwN5RaI/AAAAAAAAEj0/3d19vJ-3n3Y/s200/Sergey_Korolyov+-++Soviet+Space+Program+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="121" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/soviet-space-program.html" target="_blank">Sergey Korolev</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among such '<i>sharashka'</i> members were <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/soviet-space-program.html" target="_blank">Sergey Korolev</a></i>, the head designer of the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/soviet-space-program.html" target="_blank">Soviet rocket program</a> and <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/soviet-space-program.html" target="_blank">first human space flight mission</a> in 1961, and <i>Andrei Tupolev</i>, the famous airplane designer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn</i> was also imprisoned in a '<i>sharashka'</i>, and based his novel 'The First Circle' on his experiences there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After World War II, the NKVD coordinated work on Soviet nuclear weaponry, under the direction of General Pavel Sudoplatov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The scientists were not prisoners, but the project was supervised by the NKVD because of its great importance, and the corresponding requirement for absolute security and secrecy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also, the project used information obtained by the NKVD from the United States.</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-37050009090649149252013-04-04T15:31:00.003-07:002014-02-28T16:57:48.228-08:00Cheka - Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Cheka</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cheka (ЧК - чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия chrezvychaynaya komissiya, Emergency Commission, was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was created on December 20, 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Фе́ликс Дзержи́нский<br />
Felix Dzerzhinsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; 11 September [O.S. 30 August] 1877 – 20 July 1926) was a Soviet statesman and a prominent member of Polish and Russian revolutionary movements. He is better known under his nickname as the Iron Felix, Bloody Felix, or abbreviation FD. His party pseudonyms were Yatsek, Yakub, Pereplyotchik, Franek, Astronom, Yuzef, and Domanski.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was a member of several revolutionary committees such as the Polish Revkom as well as several Russian and Soviet official positions.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet State Security forces under their original name<i> Cheka</i> (1917–26).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats, while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Cheka became notorious for torture and mass summary executions, performed especially during the 'Red Terror' and the Russian Civil War.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya ("Gubcheks"), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by various Cheka groups.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, into bodies whose members continued to be referred to as "Chekisty" (Chekists) into the late 1980s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Vladimir Putin's rise to power, the reference to the FSB members as "Chekists" arose, particularly by Putin's political opponents, often with negative connotations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From its founding, the Cheka was an important military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1921 the <i>Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic</i> (a branch of the Cheka) numbered 200,000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These troops policed labor camps; ran the Gulag system; conducted requisitions of food; subjected political opponents to torture and summary execution; and put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Name</span><br />
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The name of the agency was originally "The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage" (Russian: Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия по борьбе с контрреволюцией и саботажем; Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya po bor'bye s kontrrevolyutsiyei i sabotazhem), but was often shortened to "Cheka" or "VCheka".</div>
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In 1918 its name was changed, becoming "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption".</div>
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A member of Cheka was called a "chekist".</div>
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Also, the term "chekist" often referred to Soviet secret police throughout the Soviet period, despite official name changes over time.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TT9NHhymhpU/UV_7voPERBI/AAAAAAAAErM/szTE7Y04vGA/s1600/Alexander+Solzhenitsyn+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TT9NHhymhpU/UV_7voPERBI/AAAAAAAAErM/szTE7Y04vGA/s200/Alexander+Solzhenitsyn+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Солжени́цын<br />
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn</td></tr>
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In 'The Gulag Archipelago', Alexander Solzhenitsyn recalls that zeks in the labor camps used "<i>old 'Chekist</i>'" as "<i>a mark of special esteem</i>" for particularly experienced camp administrators.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, 11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian writer, dissident and activist. He helped to raise global awareness of the gulag and the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system from 1918 to 1956. While his writings were often suppressed, he wrote several books most notably 'The Gulag Archipelago' and 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich', two of his best-known works. </span><br />
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The term is still found in use in Russia today (for example, President Vladimir Putin has been referred to in the Russian media as a "chekist" due to his career in the KGB).</div>
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The Chekists commonly dressed in black leather, including long flowing coats, reportedly after being issued such distinctive coats early in their existence.</div>
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Western communists adopted this clothing fashion.</div>
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The Chekists also often carried with them Greek-style worry beads made of amber, which had become "fashionable among high officials during the time of the 'cleansing'".</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Creation of the Cheka</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uEFNDMfLUb0/UV_x2blDmMI/AAAAAAAAEpg/gIBnqF6ClyE/s1600/Menzhinsky+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uEFNDMfLUb0/UV_x2blDmMI/AAAAAAAAEpg/gIBnqF6ClyE/s320/Menzhinsky+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Members of the presidium of VCheKa (left to right)<br />
Yakov Peters, Józef Unszlicht, A. Ya. Belenky (standing),<br />
Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, 1921</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the first month and half after the October Revolution (1917), the duty of "<i>extinguishing the resistance of exploiters</i>" was assigned to the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (or VRK).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It represented a temporary body working under directives of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) and Central Committee of RDSRP(b). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The VRK created new bodies of government, organized food delivery to cities and the Army, requisitioned products from bourgeoisie, and sent its emissaries and agitators into provinces. One of its most important functions was the security of revolutionary order, and the fight against counterrevolutionary activity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 1, 1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK or TsIK) reviewed a proposed reorganization of the VRK, and possible replacement of it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 5, the Petrograd VRK published an announcement of dissolution and transferred the functions to the department of TsIK to the fight against "counterrevolutionaries".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 6, the 'Council of People's Commissars' (Sovnarkom) strategized how to persuade government workers to strike across Russia.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Sovnarkom</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Совет народных коммиссаров or Совнарком - (The Council of People's Commissars - Sovnarkom, also as generic SNK), was a government institution formed shortly after the October Revolution in 1917.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6KQDb4k-DII/UWccTqtkaaI/AAAAAAAAFD8/J0UclmQ00zM/s1600/1917+Sovnarkom+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6KQDb4k-DII/UWccTqtkaaI/AAAAAAAAFD8/J0UclmQ00zM/s320/1917+Sovnarkom+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="138" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Совет народных коммиссаров - Sovnarkom</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Created in the Russian Republic the council laid foundations in restructuring the country to form the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It evolved to become the highest government authority of executive power under the Soviet system in states which came under the control of Bolsheviks.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Leon Trotsky devised the names commissar and council to avoid the more "bourgeois" terms minister and cabinet. The 1918 Constitution of the RSFSR formalised the role of the Sovnarkom of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR): it was to be responsible to the Congress of Soviets for the "general administration of the affairs of the state." The constitution enabled the Sovnarkom to issue decrees carrying the full force of law when the Congress was not in session. The Congress then routinely approved these decrees at its next session.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established in December 1922, the USSR Sovnarkom was modelled on the RSFSR Sovnarkom. It was transformed in 1946 into the Council of Ministers</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They decided that a special commission was needed to implement the "<i>most energetically revolutionary</i>" measures.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p6jlN00bofI/UWcwa2ifi7I/AAAAAAAAFEg/9cgbFx72NAE/s1600/smolny+institute+petrograd+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p6jlN00bofI/UWcwa2ifi7I/AAAAAAAAFEg/9cgbFx72NAE/s320/smolny+institute+petrograd+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="255" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smolny Institute - Petrograd</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Felix Dzerzhinsky (<i>the Iron Felix</i>), (see above), was appointed as Director and invited the participation of the following individuals: V. K. Averin, V. N. Vasilevsky, D. G. Yevseyev, N. A. Zhydelev, I. K. Ksenofontov, G. K. Ordjonikidze, Ya. Kh. Peters, K. A. Peterson, V. A. Trifonov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 7, 1917, all invited except Zhydelev and Vasilevsky gathered in the 'Smolny Institute' to discuss the competence and structure of the commission to combat counterrevolution and sabotage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The obligations of the commission were:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>to liquidate to the root all of the counterrevolutionary and sabotage activities and all attempts to them in all of Russia, to hand over counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs to the revolutionary tribunals, develop measures to combat them and relentlessly apply them in real world applications. The commission should only conduct a preliminary investigation</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The commission should also observe the press and counterrevolutionary parties, sabotaging officials and other criminals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was decided to create three sections: informational, organizational, and a unit to combat counter-revolution and sabotage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Upon the end of the meeting, Dzerzhinsky reported to the '<i>Sovnarkom</i>' with the requested information. The commission was allowed to apply such measures of repression as 'confiscation, deprivation of ration cards, publication of lists of enemies of the people etc.'".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That day, Sovnarkom officially <i>confirmed the creation of VCheKa</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The commission was created not under the VTsIK as was previously anticipated, but rather under the Council of the People's Commissars.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 8, 1917, some of the original members of the VCheka were replaced. Averin, Ordzhonikidze, and Trifonov were replaced by V. V. Fomin, S. E. Shchukin, Ilyin, and Chernov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the meeting of December 8, the presidium of VChK was elected of five members, and chaired by Dzerzhinsky. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The issue of "speculation" was raised at the same meeting, which was assigned to Peters to address and report with results to one of the next meetings of the commission.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A circular, published on December 28 [O.S. December 15] 1917, gave the address of VCheka's first headquarters as "Petrograd, Gorokhovaya 2, 4th floor".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 11, Fomin was ordered to organize a section to suppress "speculation."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And in the same day, VCheKa offered Shchukin to conduct arrests of counterfeiters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In January 1918, a subsection of the anti-counterrevolutionary effort was created to police bank officials.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The structure of VCheKa was <i>changing repeatedly</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By March 1918, when the organization came to Moscow, it contained the following sections: against counterrevolution, speculation, non-residents, and information gathering.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of 1918-1919, some units had been created: secretly operative, investigatory, of transportation, military (special), operative, and instructional.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By 1921, it changed once again, forming the following sections: directory of affairs, administrative-organizational, secretly operative, economical, and foreign affairs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">First Months</span><br />
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In the first months of its existence, VCheKa consisted of only 40 officials.</div>
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It commanded a team of soldiers, the Sveaborgesky regiment, as well as a group of Red Guardsmen.</div>
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On January 14, 1918, Sovnarkom ordered Dzerzhinsky to organize teams of "<i>energetic and ideological</i>" sailors to combat speculation.</div>
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By the spring of 1918, the commission had several teams.</div>
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In addition to the Sveaborge team, it had an intelligence team, a team of sailors, and a strike team.</div>
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Through the winter of 1917-1918, all the activities of VCheKa were centralized mainly in the city of Petrograd.</div>
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It was one of the several other commissions in the country that fought against counterrevolution, speculation, banditry, and other activities perceived as crimes.</div>
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Other organizations included: the Bureau of Military Commissars, and an Army-Navy investigatory commission to attack the counterrevolutionary element in the Red Army, plus the Central Requisite and Unloading Commission to fight speculation.</div>
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The investigation of counterrevolutionary or major criminal offenses was conducting by the Investigatory Commission of Revtribunal.</div>
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The functions of VCheKa were closely intertwined with the <i>Commission of V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich</i>, which beside the fight against wine pogroms was engaged in the investigation of most major political offenses.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Влади́мир Бонч-Бруе́вич<br />
Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Vladimir Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich (Russian: Влади́мир Дми́триевич Бонч-Бруе́вич; sometimes spelled Bonch-Bruevich; 28 June [O.S. 16 June] 1873, Moscow – 14 July 1955, Moscow) was a Soviet politician, historian and writer, Old Bolshevik (since 1895). He was a brother of Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich. His family was of Polish descent - surname written in Polish: Boncz-Brujewicz.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of Bonch-Bruyevich's research interests were Russia's dissenting religious minorities ("sects"), which were usually persecuted to various extent by both the established Orthodox Church and the Tsarist government. In the late 1890s, he collaborated with Vladimir Chertkov and Leo Tolstoy, in particular in the arrangement of the Doukhobors' emigration to Canada in 1899. Bonch-Bruyevich sailed with the Doukhobors, and spent a year with them in Canada. During that time, he was able to record much of their orally transmitted tradition, in particular the Doukhobor "psalms" (hymns). He published them later (1909) as "The Doukhobor Book of Life" (Russian: «Животная книга духоборцев», Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the Soviet period, Bonch-Bruyevich's interest in religion earned him the position of the 'Director of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR' in Leningrad (1945-1955).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the Soviet Union, Bonch-Bruyevich was best known as the author of a canonical Soviet book about Vladimir Lenin, whom Bonch-Bruyevich served as <i>secretary</i> in the years immediately following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. </span><br />
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All results of its activities, VCheKa had either to transfer to the Investigatory Commission of Revtribunal or to dismiss a case.</div>
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The control of the commission's activity was provided by the People's Commissariat for Justice (Narkomjust, at that time headed by Isidor Steinberg) and Internal Affairs (NKVD, at that time headed by Hryhoriy Petrovsky).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petrovsky</td></tr>
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Although the VCheKa was officially an independent organization from the NKVD, its main members such as Dzerzhinsky, Latsis, Unszlicht, and Uritsky (all main chekists), since November 1917 composed the collegiate of NKVD headed by Petrovsky.</div>
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In November 1918, Petrovsky was appointed as the head of the All-Ukrainian Central Military Revolutionary Committee during VCheKa's expansion to provinces and front-lines.</div>
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At the time of political competition between Bolsheviks and SRs (January 1918), Left SRs attempted to curb the rights of VCheKa and establish through the Narkomiust its control over its work.</div>
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Having failed in attempts to subordinate the VCheKa to Narkomiust, the Left SRs were to seek control of the Extraordinary Commission in a different way.</div>
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They requested that the Central Committee of the party was granted the right to directly enter their representatives into the VCheKa.</div>
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Sovnarkom recognized the desirability of including five representatives of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary faction of VTsIK.</div>
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Left SRs were granted the post of a companion (deputy) chairman of VCheKa, however, Sovnarkom, in which the majority belonged to the representatives of RSDLP(b) retained the right to<i> approve</i> members of the collegium of the VCheKa.</div>
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Originally, the members of the Cheka were <i>exclusively</i> Bolshevik; however, in January 1918, the Left SRs also joined the organization</div>
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The Left SRs were expelled or arrested later in 1918, following the attempted assassination of Lenin by an SR, Fanni Kaplan.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Consolidation of VCheKa and National Establishment</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of January 1918, the Investigatory Commission of Petrograd Soviet (probably same as of Revtribunal) petitioned Sovnarkom to delineate the role of detection and judicial-investigatory organs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It offered to leave, for the VCheKa and the Commission of Bonch-Bruyevich, only the functions of detection and suppression, while investigative functions entirely transferred to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Investigatory Commission prevailed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On January 31, 1918, Sovnarkom ordered to relieve VCheKa of the investigative functions, leaving for the commission only the functions of detection, suppression, and prevention of so-called crimes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars on January 31, 1918, a merger of VCheKa and the Commission of Bonch-Bruyevich was proposed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The existence of both commissions, VCheKa of Sovnarkom and the Commission of Bonch-Bruyevich of VTsIK, with almost the same functions and equal rights, became impractical.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A decision followed two weeks later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On February 23, 1918, VCheKa sent a radio telegram to all Soviets with a petition to immediately organize emergency commissions to combat counter-revolution, sabotage and speculation, if such commissions had not been yet organized.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">February 1918 saw the creation of local Extraordinary Commissions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the first founded was the Moscow Cheka.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sections and commissariats to combat counterrevolution were established in other cities. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Extraordinary Commissions arose, usually in the areas during the moments of the greatest aggravation of political situation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On February 25, 1918, as the counterrevolutionary organization Union of Front-liners was making advances, the executive committee of the Saratov Soviet formed a counter-revolutionary section.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On March 7, 1918, because of the move from Petrograd to Moscow, the Petrograd Cheka was created.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On March 9, a section for combating counterrevolution was created under the Omsk Soviet. Extraordinary commissions were also created in Penza, Perm, Novgorod, Cherepovets, Rostov, Taganrog. On March 18, VCheKa adopted a resolution, 'The Work of VCheKa on the All-Russian Scale', foreseeing the formation everywhere of Extraordinary Commissions after the same model, and sent a letter that called for the widespread establishment of the Cheka in combating counterrevolution, speculation, and sabotage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Establishment of provincial Extraordinary Commissions was largely completed by August 1918.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Soviet Republic, there were 38 gubernatorial Chekas (Gubcheks) by this time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On June 12, 1918, the All-Russian Conference of Cheka adopted the 'Basic Provisions on the Organization of Extraordinary Commissions'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They set out to form Extraordinary Commissions not only at Oblast and Guberniya levels, but also at the large Uyezd Soviets.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In August 1918, in the Soviet Republic had accounted for some 75 Uyezd-level Extraordinary Commissions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the end of the year, 365 Uyezd-level Chekas were established. In 1918, the 'All-Russia Extraordinary Commission' and the Soviets managed to establish a local Cheka apparatus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It included Oblast, Guberniya, Raion, Uyezd, and Volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners. In addition, border security Chekas were included in the system of local Cheka bodies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the autumn of 1918, as consolidation of the political situation of the republic continued, a move toward elimination of Uyezd-, Raion-, and Volost-level Chekas, as well as the institution of Extraordinary Commissions was considered.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On January 20, 1919, VTsIK adopted a resolution prepared by VCheKa, On the abolition of Uyezd Extraordinary Commissions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On January 16 the presidium of VCheKa approved the draft on the establishment of the Politburo at Uyezd militsiya.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This decision was approved by the Conference of the Extraordinary Commission IV, held in early February 1920.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Other Types of Cheka</span><br />
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On August 3, a VCheKa section for combating counterrevolution, speculation and sabotage on railways was created.<br />
On August 7, 1918 <i>Sovnarkom</i> adopted a decree on the organization of the railway section at VCheKa.<br />
Combating counterrevolution, speculation, and malfeasance on railroads was passed under the jurisdiction of the railway section of VCheKa and local Cheka.<br />
In August 1918, railway sections were formed under the Gubcheks.<br />
Formally, they were part of the non-resident sections, but in fact constituted a separate division, largely autonomous in their activities.<br />
The gubernatorial and oblast-type Chekas retained in relationship to the transportation sections only control and investigative functions.</div>
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The beginning of a systematic work of organs of VCheKa in RKKA refers to July 1918, the period of extreme tension of the civil war and class struggle in the country.</div>
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On July 16, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars formed the Extraordinary Commission for combating counterrevolution at the Czechoslovak (Eastern) Front, led by M. I. Latsis.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Мартын Иванович Лацис<br />
Martin Ivanovich Latsis</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Martin Ivanovich Latsis (December 14, 1888 – February 11, 1938) was a Soviet politician, revolutionary and state security high officer from Courland (today - Latvia). He was a member of the Bolshevik Party since 1905 (an "Old Bolshevik"), an active participant in the Russian Revolutions of 1905–1907 and 1917, a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, a member of the <i>Collegium of the All-Russia Cheka </i>(1918–1921) and <i>Chairman of the Cheka in Ukraine</i> (1919), and a member of <i>VTsIK</i>. </span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Latsis was the author of the book 'Dva goda borby na vnutrennom fronte' ("Two Years of Struggle in the Internal Front", Moscow: Gos. izd-vo, 1920), in which he advocated <i>unrestrained violence</i> against class enemies. He boasted of the harsh repressive policies used by the Cheka. In 1918, while a deputy chief of the <i>Cheka </i>in Ukraine, he established the principle that sentences were not to be determined by guilt or innocence—but by social class. He is quoted as explaining the 'Red Terror' as follows:</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">'<i>We are engaged in exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. You need not prove that this or that man acted against the interests of the Soviet power. The first thing you have to ask an arrested person is: To what class does he belong, where does he come from, what kind of education did he have, what is his occupation? These questions are to decide the fate of the accused. That is the quintessence of the Red Terror</i>.[3]</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Latsis became a victim of the Soviet regime himself during the 1930s '<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">Great Purge'</a>, when he was arrested on November 29, 1937 and accused by a commission of <i>NKVD</i> and Prosecutor of the USSR belonging to a "<i>counter-revolutionary, nationalist organization</i>". He was executed in 1938 by firing squad.</span><br />
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In the fall of 1918, Extraordinary Commissions to combat counterrevolution on the Southern (Ukraine) Front were formed.</div>
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In late November, the Second All-Russian Conference of the Extraordinary Commissions accepted a decision after the report of I. N. Polukarov to establish at all frontlines and army sections of the Cheka and granted them the right to appoint their commissioners in military units.</div>
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On December 9, 1918, the collegiate (or presidium) of VCheKa had decided to form a military section, headed by M. S. Kedrov, to combat counterrevolution in the Army.</div>
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In early 1919, the military control and the military section of VCheKa were merged into one body, the Special Section of the Republic. Kedrov was appointed as head.</div>
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On January 1, he issued an order to establish the Special Section.</div>
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The order instructed agencies everywhere to unite the Military control and the military sections of Chekas and to form special sections of frontlines, armies, military districts, and guberniyas.</div>
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In November 1920 the Soviet of Labor and Defense created a Special Section of VCheKa for the security of the state border.</div>
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On February 6, 1922, after the Ninth All-Russian Soviet Congress, the Cheka was dissolved by VTsIK, "with expressions of gratitude for heroic work."<br />
It was replaced by the State Political Administration or GPU, a section of the NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).</div>
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Initially formed to fight against counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, as well as financial speculators, Cheka had its own classifications.</div>
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Those counter-revolutionaries fell under these categories:</div>
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any civil or military servicemen suspected of working for Imperial Russia;</div>
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families of officers-volunteers (including children);</div>
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all clergy;</div>
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workers and peasants who were under suspicion of not supporting the Soviet government;</div>
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any other person whose private property was valued at over 10,000 rubles.</div>
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As its name implied, the Extraordinary Commission had virtually unlimited powers and could interpret them in any way it wished. </div>
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No standard procedures were ever set up, except that the Commission was supposed to send the arrested to the Military-Revolutionary tribunals if outside of a war zone.</div>
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This left an opportunity for a wide range of interpretations, as the whole country was in total chaos.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Владимир Ильич Ленин<br />
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin</td></tr>
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At the direction of Lenin, the Cheka performed mass arrests, imprisonments, and executions of "enemies of the people".</div>
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In this, the Cheka said that they targeted "<i>class enemies</i>" such as the <i>bourgeoisie</i>, and <i>members of the clergy</i>; the first organized mass repression began against the <i>libertarians</i> and <i>socialists</i> of Petrograd in April 1918.</div>
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Over the next few months, 800 were arrested and <i>shot without trial</i>.</div>
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However, within a month, the Cheka had extended its repression to all political opponents of the communist government, including <i>anarchists</i> and others on the left.</div>
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On April 11/12, 1918, some 26 anarchist political centres in Moscow were attacked.</div>
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There 40 anarchists were <i>killed</i> by Cheka forces, and about 500 were arrested and jailed after a pitched battle took place between the two groups.</div>
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In response to the anarchists' resistance, the Cheka orchestrated a massive retaliatory campaign of repression, executions, and arrests against <i>all opponents</i> of the Bolshevik government, in what came to be known as "<i>Red Terror</i>".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Krasnaya Gazeta</td></tr>
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'The Red Terror', implemented by Dzerzhinsky on September 5, 1918, was vividly described by the Red Army journal 'Krasnaya Gazeta':</div>
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"<i>Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky … let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie – more blood, as much as possible…</i>"</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">KRASNAYA GAZETA (The Red Gazette), a daily newspaper, at different periods an organ of the central, provincial, city committees of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolcheviks) and the Petrograd/Leningrad Soviet. It circulated from January 1918 until February 1939. The editorial office was located at Smolny, 76 Fontanka River Embankment, 57 Fontanka River Embankment and other places. In 1918-19 and 1922-36 the periodical also came out as an evening edition (in 1922-23 and 1932-36 - Vechernyaya Krasnaya Gazeta). Throughout different periods journals Chelovek i priroda, Bud zdorov, Dom i khozyaystvo, Na dosuge, Literaturnaya nedelya, Rezets, and some others circulated as its supplements. In the 1920-30s the Krasnaya Panorama, The Red Panorama, Nauka i Tekhnika, Science and Technology, Begemot, journals were also published within the newspaper publishing house. In March 1939 Krasnaya Gazeta merged with the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda,. In 1931-36 the organ of the Leningrad Regional Soviet, later the Leningrad Regional Trade Union Soviet, newspaper in German Rote Zeitung (Red Gazette) came out.</span><br />
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An early Bolshevik, Victor Serge described in his book 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary':</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ви́ктор Льво́вич Киба́льчич<br />
Victor Serge</td></tr>
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<i>'Since the first massacres of Red prisoners by the Whites, the murders of Volodarsky and Uritsky and the attempt against Lenin (in the summer of 1918), the custom of arresting and, often, executing hostages had become generalized and legal. Already the Cheka, which made mass arrests of suspects, was tending to settle their fate independently, under formal control of the Party, but in reality without anybody's knowledge. The Party endeavoured to head it with incorruptible men like the former convict Dzerzhinsky, a sincere idealist, ruthless but chivalrous, with the emaciated profile of an Inquisitor: tall forehead, bony nose, untidy goatee, and an expression of weariness and austerity. But the Party had few men of this stamp and many Chekas. I believe that the formation of the Chekas was one of the gravest and most impermissible errors that the Bolshevik leaders committed in 1918 when plots, blockades, and interventions made them lose their heads. All evidence indicates that revolutionary tribunals, functioning in the light of day and admitting the right of defense, would have attained the same efficiency with far less abuse and depravity. Was it necessary to revert to the procedures of the Inquisition?'</i></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ви́ктор Льво́вич Киба́льчич - Victor Serge - born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (December 30, 1890 – November 17, 1947), was a Russian revolutionary and writer</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd, in January 1919, and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was critical of the Stalinist regime and remained a revolutionary Marxist until his death.</span><br />
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The Cheka was also used against the armed anarchist Black Army of Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine. After the Black Army had served its purpose in aiding the Red Army to stop the Whites under Denikin, the Soviet communist government decided to eliminate the anarchist forces. In May 1919, two Cheka agents sent to assassinate Makhno were caught and executed.</div>
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Many victims of Cheka repression were '<i>bourgeois hostages</i>' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary act.</div>
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Lenin's dictum was:</div>
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<i>that it was better to arrest 100 innocent people rather than to risk one enemy going free. That ensured that wholesale, indiscriminate arrests became an integral part of the system</i>.</div>
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It was during the 'Red Terror' that the Cheka, hoping to avoid the bloody aftermath of having half-dead victims writhing on the floor, developed a technique for execution known later by the German words "<i>Nackenschuss</i>" or "<i>Genickschuss</i>", a shot to the nape of the neck, which caused minimal blood loss and instant death.</div>
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The victim's head was bent forward, and the executioner fired slightly downward at point blank range. This had become the standard method used later by the NKVD to liquidate Joseph Stalin's purge victims and others.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Persecution of Deserters</span><br />
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It is believed that there were more than <i>three million deserters</i> from the Red Army in 1919 and 1920.</div>
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Approximately 500,000 deserters were arrested in 1919 and close to 800,000 in 1920, by troops of the '<i>Special Punitive Department</i>' of the Cheka, created to punish desertions.</div>
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These troops were used to forcibly repatriate deserters, taking and shooting hostages to force compliance or to set an example.</div>
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Throughout the course of the civil war, several thousand deserters were shot - a number comparable to that of belligerents during World War I.</div>
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In September 1918 in only twelve provinces of Russia, 48,735 deserters and 7,325 "<i>bandits</i>" were arrested, 1,826 were killed and 2,230 were executed.</div>
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The exact identity of these individuals is confused by the fact that the Soviet Bolshevik government used the term '<i>bandit'</i> to cover ordinary criminals as well as armed and unarmed political opponents, such as the anarchists.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Conflicts</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">белые казаки<br />
White Cossacks</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Civil War intensified due to the Czechoslovak invasion May 1918 that was supported by the Entente powers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Massive White attacks against the Soviet forces intensified.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The total number of victims of the White incursions in Central Russia at the hands of the Czechoslovaks and the SR-led Komuch regime amounted to more than 5000 people killed in the summer and autumn of 1918.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the White Cossacks led by Krasnov seized control of the Don Province, more than 40,000 people were killed by Krasnov's regime.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Пётр Николаевич Краснов<br />
Petro Mykolayovich Krasnov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Пётр Николаевич Краснов - Petro Mykolayovich Krasnov (September 22 (10 old style), 1869 – January 17, 1947), sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was Lieutenant General of the Russian army when the revolution broke out in 1917, and one of the leaders of the counterrevolutionary White movement afterward.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iMCpnfcdmTY/UWc7LSM2ciI/AAAAAAAAFFs/OcMAEumwSYY/s1600/Alexander+Ilyich+Dutov+-+White+Russian+-+1918+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iMCpnfcdmTY/UWc7LSM2ciI/AAAAAAAAFFs/OcMAEumwSYY/s200/Alexander+Ilyich+Dutov+-+White+Russian+-+1918+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ду́тов<br />
Alexander Ilyich Dutov </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Samara region on May 5, 1918, Alexander Ilyich Dutov's Cossack forces killed 675 people by execution and burying the victims alive.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алекса́ндр Ильи́ч Ду́то - Alexander Ilyich Dutov (1879—1921), one of the leaders of the Cossack counterrevolution in the Urals, Lieutenant General (1919).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was Assistant Commander of the Cossack regiment during World War I. After the February Revolution, Dutov was appointed head of the All-Russian Cossack Army Union, then Chairman of the counterevolutionary All-Russian Cossack Congress (June, 1917), and then Chief of the Army Administration and ataman of the Orenburg Cossack Army (September).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In November, Dutov raised a revolt against the Soviet authorities in Orenburg. In June 1918, Dutov with the help of the Czech Legion organized a struggle for complete termination of the Soviet authority in the Urals. He was in charge of the Detached Orenburg Army in Aleksandr Kolchak's army.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1919 he tried to convince General Seminkoff to join him as a stronger force to fight the Red Army. General Seminkoff refused despite a significant diplomatic effort from Governor Vasile Balabanov claiming he was governor only since the provisional government in St Petersburg collapsed in the revolution.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1920 General Dutov helped a number of Russian leaders including Vasile Balabanov, the Administrator of Semirechye to escape to China.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After his army's defeat by Red Army, Dutov escaped to China, where he was assassinated in Suiding by a Bolshevik agent Мahmud Khadzhamirov (Махмуд Хаджамиров) in February 1921.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qT0Mkd-Kis/UWc8wTYakoI/AAAAAAAAFF8/vmt_k44Fx08/s1600/Pokrovski+viktor+-+White+Russian+-+1918+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8qT0Mkd-Kis/UWc8wTYakoI/AAAAAAAAFF8/vmt_k44Fx08/s200/Pokrovski+viktor+-+White+Russian+-+1918+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Покровский Виктор Леонидович<br />
Viktor Leonidovich Pokrovsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the autumn of 1918, General Viktor Leonidovich Pokrovskys forces killed 2500 people in the town of Maikop, while Ataman Annenkov's forces shot more than 1500 peasants in Slavgorod region.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Покровский Виктор Леонидович - Viktor Leonidovich Pokrovsky (1889 - November 9, 1922)- Russian lieutenant general and one of the leaders of anti-communist counterrevolutionary White Army during Russian Civil War.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Following the October Bolshevik coup (see Russian Revolution of 1917) he formed an anti-Bolshevik army unit in the Kuban region of southern Russia. Kuban Rada promoted him to the rank of colonel and later to the rank of major general.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In March 1918, after heavy fighting with the Red Army, his units were forced to leave Yekaterinodar. After this, on March 26, 1918, Viktor Pokrovsky joined Volunteer Army of general Lavr Kornilov (later led by generals Anton Denikin and Pyotr Wrangel and known also as the Armed Forces of South Russia). General Pokrovsky was in charge of Kuban Cossacks and Caucasus army units of the White Army.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pokrovsky’s men played a key role in the capture of Tsaritsyn and Kamyshin from the Bolshevik forces in the summer of 1919. Many in the White movement, including military officers, complained about Pokrovsky's penchant to hang prisoners.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In April 1920, he emigrated from Crimea and settled in Bulgaria and continued anti-Soviet activities. On November 9, 1922, he was killed by the Bulgarian police while resisting arrest in a murder investigation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The intensification in the summer of 1918 of massive and individual White attacks inevitably led to the revision of punitive-repressive policies of the Soviet government to an increase in repression.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This policy more easily asserted itself with the more frequent reports of White attacks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition to White attacks, individual incidents against the Soviet forces significantly increased as 1918 progressed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the summer of 1918 in Petrograd, Socialist-Revolutionary cells organized plots of assassinations against leading Soviet officials Volodarsky, Zinoviev, and Uritsky, as well as Lenin, Trotsky, and other officials of the Soviet state.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The situation in Petrograd after the assassination of Soviet official Volodarsky showed the willingness of the population for mass repression, as seen in the slogans of banners during his funeral. In Petrograd on June 22, a Menshevik member Vasiliev was killed, motivated by revenge over the death of Volodarsky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Individual action against the Soviet government killed 339 people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The end of August 1918 marked a new surge of individual attacks directed against the Soviet state.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the 'Red Terror' that began in early September 1918 and ended particularly after the issuing of an amnesty to prisoners on 7 November 1918, executions amounted to amounted to 8000 people. 2000 executions occurred from August 30 to 5 September 1918, and another 3000 during the remaining days of September.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3000 more were executed during October–November 1918. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were several stages of the 'Red Terror' during the autumn of 1918.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first stage includes the period from 30 August 1918 to 5 September 1918, beginning with the attacks on Lenin and Uritsky and ending with the publication of the 'Red Terror' decree. During this<i> uncontrolled</i> wave of repression, there were more than 3 thousand executions, especially in provincial towns and the frontier provinces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More organized repression took place during the remaining days of September.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The total number of victims of the policy of 'Red Terror' in this period was up to 2 thousand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Starting in October 1918, 'Red Terror' policy experienced a crisis.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With victories at the front and the growth of the revolutionary movement in Europe, the need for the previous policy of suppressing counter-revolution subsided.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Against this backdrop, Communist Party leaders changed the repressive policies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main outcome of this was the redistribution of powers between the Cheka and Revolutionary Tribunal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cheka in early 1919 were <i>denied</i> the right to sentencing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The county Chekas were eliminated.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 6 November 1918, an amnesty to prisoners was issued, which according to Ratkovsky meant the end of the 'Red Terror'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The result was a decrease in repression, with the executions in the RSFSR in 1919 numbering a third of those in 1918.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Atrocities</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Claims were made by the Soviet state's opponents among the White regimes such as Denikin's Commission to Investigate Bolshevik Atrocities as well as political opponents like S. Melgunov about lurid tortures committed by Soviet forces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the head of the Commission was a member of the anti-Soviet Kadet Party G.A. Meyngard. The tasks of this commission was to publicize the alleged crimes committed by the Soviet forces, mainly intended for a Russian emigre audience.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cheka was alleged by the Denikin "<i>Commission to Investigate Bolshevik Atrocities</i>" and the publications of anti-Soviet political emigres such as S. Melgunov to have practiced torture. They claimed that victims were reportedly crucified, stoned to death, and other measures.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They claimed that the Cheka personnel poured water on naked prisoners in the streets during winter until they became living ice statues, as well as be-headings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Others reportedly beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same sources claimed that women and children were also victims of repression: women allegedly tortured and <i>raped </i>before being shot and that children between the ages of <i>8 and 13 </i>were imprisoned and occasionally executed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">for more information on this subject see</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">'THE GREAT PURGE'</a></span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-14972533564029169942013-04-04T03:42:00.004-07:002014-02-28T16:58:41.362-08:00Ленин - Lenin - Revolution and Power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Владимир Ильич Ленин</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin - Revolution and Power</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Petrograd dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in the spontaneous July Days riots, by industrial workers and soldiers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After being suppressed, these riots were blamed by the government on Lenin and the Bolsheviks.[83] Aleksandr Kerensky, Grigory Aleksinsky, and other opponents, also accused the Bolsheviks, especially Lenin—of being Imperial German agents provocateurs; on 17 July, Leon Trotsky defended them:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'An intolerable atmosphere has been created, in which you, as well as we, are choking.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>They are throwing dirty accusations at Lenin and Zinoviev. Lenin has fought thirty years for the revolution.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I have fought for twenty years against the oppression of the people.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>And we cannot but cherish a hatred for German militarism . . . I have been sentenced by a German court to eight months' imprisonment for my struggle against German militarism. This everybody knows. Let nobody in this hall say that we are hirelings of Germany.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the event, the Provisional Government arrested the Bolsheviks and outlawed their Party, prompting Lenin to go into hiding and flee to Finland. In exile again, reflecting on the July Days and its aftermath, Lenin determined that, to prevent the triumph of counter-revolutionary forces, the Provisional Government must be overthrown by an armed uprising.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, he published State and Revolution (1917) proposing government by the soviets (worker-, soldier- and peasant-elected councils) rather than by a parliamentary body.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In late August 1917, while Lenin was in hiding in Finland, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army General Lavr Kornilov sent troops from the front to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Kerensky panicked and turned to the Petrograd Soviet for help, allowing the revolutionaries to organise workers as Red Guards to defend Petrograd.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd thanks to the industrial action of the Petrograd workers and the soldiers' increasing unwillingness to obey their officers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, faith in the Provisional Government had been severely shaken. Lenin's slogan since the April Theses – "A<i>ll power to the soviets </i>!" – became more plausible the more the Provisional Government was discredited in public eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet on 31 August and in the Moscow Soviet on 5 September.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In October Lenin returned from Finland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the Smolny Institute for girls, Lenin directed the Provisional Government's deposition (6–8 November 1917), and the storming (7–8 November) of the Winter Palace to realise the Kerensky capitulation that established Bolshevik government in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Forming a Government</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin had argued in a newspaper article in September 1917:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'The peaceful development of any revolution is, generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult ... but ... a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets. The struggle of parties for power within the Soviets may proceed peacefully, if the Soviets are made fully democratic.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The October Revolution had been relatively peaceful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The revolutionary forces already had de facto control of the capital thanks to the defection of the city garrison.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Few troops had stayed to defend the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most citizens had simply continued about their daily business while the Provisional Government was actually overthrown.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It thus appeared that all power had been transferred to the Soviets relatively peacefully.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the evening of the October Revolution, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met, with a Bolshevik-Left SR majority, in the Smolny Institute in Petrograd.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the left-wing Menshevik Martov proposed an all-party Soviet government, the Bolshevik Lunacharsky stated that his party did not oppose the idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolshevik delegates voted unanimously in favour of the proposal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, not all Russian socialists supported transferring all power to the Soviets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Right SRs and Mensheviks walked out of this very first session of the Congress of Soviets in protest at the overthrow of the Provisional Government, of which their parties had been members.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The next day, on the evening of 26 October O.S., Lenin attended the Congress of Soviets: undisguised in public for the first time since the July Days, although not yet having regrown his trademark beard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The American journalist John Reed described the man who appeared at about 8:40 pm to "<i>a thundering wave of cheers</i>":</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down in his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth, and heavy chin; clean-shaven now, but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader—a leader purely by virtue of intellect; colourless, humourless, uncompromising and detached, without picturesque idiosyncrasies—but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms, of analysing a concrete situation. And combined with shrewdness, the greatest intellectual audacity.'</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Reed, Lenin waited for the applause to subside before declaring simply: "<i>We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order !</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin proceeded to propose to the Congress a Decree on Peace, calling on "<i>all the belligerent peoples and to their Governments to begin immediately negotiations for a just and democratic peace</i>", and a Decree on Land, transferring ownership of all "<i>land-owners' estates, and all lands belonging to the Crown, [and] to monasteries</i>" to the Peasants' Soviets. The Congress passed the Decree on Peace unanimously, and the Decree on Land faced only one vote in opposition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having approved these key Bolshevik policies, the Congress of Soviets proceeded to elect the Bolsheviks into power as the Council of People's Commissars by "<i>an enormous majority</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolsheviks offered posts in the Council to the Left SRs: an offer that the Left SRs at first refused, but later accepted, joining the Bolsheviks in coalition on 12 December O.S. Lenin had suggested that Trotsky take the position of Chairman of the Council—the head of the Soviet government—but Trotsky refused on the grounds that his <i>Jewishness </i>would be controversial, and he took the post of Commissar for Foreign Affairs instead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus Lenin became the head of government in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky announced the composition of the new Soviet Central Executive Committee: with a Bolshevik majority, but with places reserved for the representatives of the other parties, including the seceded Right SRs and Mensheviks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky concluded the Congress: "<i>We welcome into the Government all parties and groups which will adopt our programme</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin declared in 1920 that "<i>Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country</i>" in modernising Russia into a 20th-century country:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>We must show the peasants that the organisation of industry on the basis of modern, advanced technology, on electrification, which will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet the Bolshevik Government had to first withdraw Russia from the First World War (1914–18). Facing continuing Imperial German eastward advance, Lenin proposed immediate Russian withdrawal from the West European war; yet, other, doctrinaire Bolshevik leaders (e.g. Nikolai Bukharin) advocated continuing in the war to foment revolution in Germany.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lead peace treaty negotiator Leon Trotsky proposed No War, No Peace, an intermediate-stance Russo–German treaty conditional upon neither belligerent annexing conquered lands; the negotiations collapsed, and the Germans renewed their attack, conquering much of the (agricultural) territory of west Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Resultantly, Lenin's withdrawal proposal then gained majority support, and, on 3 March 1918, Russia withdrew from the First World War via the <i>Treaty of Brest-Litovsk</i>, losing much of its European territory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of the German threat Lenin moved the Soviet Government from Petrograd to Moscow on 10–11 March 1918.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 19 January 1918, relying upon the soviets, the Bolsheviks, allied with anarchists and the Socialist Revolutionaries, dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly thereby consolidating the Bolshevik Government's political power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, that left-wing coalition collapsed consequent to the Social Revolutionaries opposing the territorially expensive Brest-Litovsk treaty the Bolsheviks had concorded with Imperial Germany.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The anarchists and the Socialist Revolutionaries then joined other political parties in attempting to depose the Bolshevik Government, who defended themselves with persecution and jail for the anti-Bolsheviks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To initiate the Russian economic recovery, on 21 February 1920, he launched the <i>GOELRO</i> plan, the <i>State Commission for Electrification of Russia</i> (Государственная комиссия по электрификации России), and also established free universal health care and free education systems, and promulgated the politico-civil rights of women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, since 1918, in re-establishing the economy, for the productive business administration of each industrial enterprise in Russia, Lenin proposed a government-accountable leader for each enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Workers could request measures resolving problems, but had to abide the leader's ultimate decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although contrary to workers' self-management, such pragmatic industrial administration was essential for efficient production and employment of worker expertise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet Lenin's doctrinaire Bolshevik opponents argued that such industrial business management was meant to strengthen State control of labour, and that worker self-management failures were owed to lack of resources, not incompetence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin resolved that problem by licencing (for a month) all workers of most factories; thus historian S. A. Smith's observation: "<i>By the end of the civil war, not much was left of the democratic forms of industrial administration promoted by the factory committees in 1917, but the government argued that this did not matter since industry had passed into the ownership of a workers' state</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Internationally, Lenin's admiration of the Irish socialist revolutionary James Connolly, led to the USSR's being the first country to grant diplomatic recognition to the Irish Republic that fought the Irish War of Independence from Britain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the event, Lenin developed a friendship with Connolly's revolutionary son, Roddy Connolly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Establishing the Cheka</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emblem of the Cheka<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vo5dee1oKaE/UV_5YvkUc_I/AAAAAAAAErA/IaNYycfv9mw/s1600/Felix+Edmundovich+Dzerzhinsky+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vo5dee1oKaE/UV_5YvkUc_I/AAAAAAAAErA/IaNYycfv9mw/s200/Felix+Edmundovich+Dzerzhinsky+-+Cheka+-+State+Security+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="146" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Felix Dzerzhinsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 20 December 1917, "<i>The Whole-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage</i>", the Cheka (<i>Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya – Extraordinary Commission)</i> was created by a decree issued by Lenin to defend the Russian Revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The establishment of the <i>Cheka</i>, secret service, headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, formally consolidated the censorship established earlier, when on "<i>17 November, the Central Executive Committee passed a decree giving the Bolsheviks control over all newsprint and wide powers of closing down newspapers critical of the régime. . . .</i>"; non-Bolshevik soviets were disbanded; anti-soviet newspapers were closed until 'Pravda' (Truth) and 'Izvestia' (The News) established their communications monopoly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Leonard Schapiro the Bolshevik "<i>refusal to come to terms with the [Revolutionary] socialists, and the dispersal of the Constituent assembly, led to the logical result that revolutionary terror would now be directed, not only against traditional enemies, such as the bourgeoisie or right-wing opponents, but against anyone, be he socialist, worker, or peasant, who opposed Bolshevik rule</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 19 December 1918, a year after its creation, a resolution was adopted at Lenin's behest that forbade the Bolshevik's own press from publishing "<i>defamatory articles</i>" about the Cheka.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Lenin put it: "<i>A Good Communist is also a good Chekis</i>t."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin on antisemitism</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nikita Khrushchev </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin was enthusiastic about new <i>mass communication technology</i> like the <i>radio</i> and the <i>gramophone</i> and its capacity for educating Russia's mostly illiterate peasant population.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1919 Lenin recorded eight speeches on to gramophone records.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the <i>Nikita Khrushche</i>v era (1953–64), seven were published. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The eighth speech, which was not published, outlined Lenin's thoughts on Anti-Semitism:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. ... It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. ... The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. ... Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob, and disunite the workers. ... Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Failed Assassinations</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin survived two serious assassination attempts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first occasion was on 14 January 1918 in Petrograd, when assassins ambushed Lenin in his automobile after a speech.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He and Fritz Platten were in the back seat when assassins began shooting, and "<i>Platten grabbed Lenin by the head and pushed him down... Platten's hand was covered in blood, having been grazed by a bullet as he was shielding Lenin</i>".</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fritz Platten</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Fritz Platten (8 July 1883 – 22 April 1944) was a Swiss Communist, born in the Canton of St. Gallen.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After the collapse of the Second International, Platten joined the Zimmerwald Movement and became a Communist.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Fritz Platten is mostly known for having been the<i> main organizer</i> of Lenin’s return trip from the exile in Switzerland back home to Russia after the February Revolution. Due to the First World War, the trip was not easily arranged, but Lenin and his company traveled through Germany in a sealed traincar. They then took the ferry to Sweden and were greeted in Stockholm by the Swedish communist leaders who together with Platten had helped plan the trip. The train journey then continued through northern Sweden and Finland back to Russia and St Petersburg.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Platten participated in the foundation of the Communist International, and spent much time in the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Platten was present when Lenin’s car was attacked in Petrograd on January 1, 1918. The two were riding in the back of the car after having given a public speech at Mikhailovsky Manege. When the shooting started "Platten grabbed Lenin by the head and pushed him down. ... Platten’s hand was covered in blood, having been grazed by a bullet as he was shielding Lenin."</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Platten became a victim of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. He was arrested in 1938 and moved to a prison camp near Nyandoma in 1939, where he was shot on 22 April 1944.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second event was on 30 August 1918, when the Socialist Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan approached Lenin at his automobile after a speech; he was resting a foot on the running board as he spoke with a woman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kaplan called to Lenin, and when he turned to face her she shot at him three times.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first bullet struck his arm, the second bullet his jaw and neck, and the third missed him, wounding the woman with whom he was speaking; the wounds felled him and he became unconscious.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Фа́нни Ефи́мовна Капла́н<br />
Fanny Yefimovna Kaplan</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Фа́нни Ефи́мовна Капла́н - Fanny Yefimovna Kaplan (real name Feiga Haimovna Roytblat; Russian: Фейга Хаимовна Ройтблат; February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918), was a Russian political revolutionary who attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kaplan was born into a Jewish family, as one of the seven children. She became a political revolutionary at an early age and joined a socialist group, the Socialist Revolutionaries.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kaplan was taken into custody and interrogated by the Cheka.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When it became clear that Kaplan would not implicate any accomplices, she was executed on September 3, 1918 with a bullet to the back of the head.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fearing in-hospital assassins, Lenin was brought to his Kremlin apartment; physicians decided against removing the bullets lest the surgery endanger his recovery, which proved to be slow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Pravda' publicly ridiculed Fanya Kaplan as a failed assassin, a latter-day Charlotte Corday (the murderess of Jean-Paul Marat) who could not derail the Russian Revolution, reassuring readers that, immediately after surviving the assassination: "<i>Lenin, shot through twice, with pierced lungs spilling blood, refuses help and goes on his own. The next morning, still threatened with death, he reads papers, listens, learns, and observes to see that the engine of the locomotive that carries us towards global revolution has not stopped working..</i>."; despite unharmed lungs, the neck wound did spill blood into a lung.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Historian Richard Pipes reports that "<i>the impression one gains ... is that the Bolsheviks deliberately underplayed the event to convince the public that, whatever happened to Lenin, they were firmly in control</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, in a letter to his wife (7 September 1918), Leonid Borisovich Krasin, a Tsarist and Soviet régime diplomat, describes the public atmosphere and social response to the failed assassination attempt on 30 August and to Lenin's survival:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As it happens, the attempt to kill Lenin has made him much more popular than he was.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One hears a great many people, who are far from having any sympathy with the Bolsheviks, saying that it would be an absolute disaster if Lenin had succumbed to his wounds, as it was first thought he would.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And they are quite right, for, in the midst of all this chaos and confusion, he is the backbone of the new body politic, the main support on which everything rests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Red Terror</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In response to Fanya Kaplan's failed assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918, and the successful assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief Moisei Uritsky, Stalin proposed to Lenin "<i>open and systematic mass terror against those responsible</i>"; the Bolsheviks instructed Felix Dzerzhinsky to commence a 'Red Terror', announced in the 1 September 1918 issue of the 'Krasnaya Gazeta' (Red Gazette).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To that effect, among other acts, at Moscow, execution lists signed by Lenin authorised the shooting of 25 Tsarist ministers, civil servants, and 765 White Guards in September 1918.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his 'Diaries in Exile', 1935, Leon Trotsky recollected that Lenin authorised the execution of the Russian Royal Family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, according to Greg King and Penny Wilson's investigation into the fate of the Romanovs, Trotsky's recollections on this matter, seventeen years after the events described, are unsubstantiated, inaccurate, and contradicted by what Trotsky himself said on other occasions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most historians say there is enough evidence to prove Lenin ordered the killings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the late Soviet historian Dmitri Volkogonov:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Indirect evidence shows that the order to execute the royal family was given verbally by Lenin and Sverdlov. The object of 'exterminating the entire Romanov kin' is confirmed by the almost simultaneous murders of Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Feodorovna, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Prince Ivan Konstantinovich, Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich, Prince Igor Konstantinovich and Count Vladimir Paley (son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich), all of them in Alapaevsk, a hundred miles from Yekaterinburg.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Earlier, in October, Lev Kamenev and cohort, had warned the Party that terrorist rule was inevitable, given Lenin's assumption of sole command.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In late 1918, when he and Nikolai Bukharin tried curbing Chekist excesses, Lenin overruled them; in 1921, via the Politburo, he expanded the Cheka's discretionary death-penalty powers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The foreign-aided <i>White Russian</i> counter-revolution failed for want of popular Russian support, because the Bolshevik proletarian state, protected with "<i>mass terror against enemies of the revolution</i>", was socially organised against the previous capitalist establishment, thus class warfare terrorism in post–Tsarist Russia originated in working class (peasant and worker) anger against the privileged aristocrat classes of the deposed absolute monarchy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the Russian Civil War, anti-Bolsheviks faced torture and summary execution, and by May 1919, there were some 16,000 enemies of the people imprisoned in the Tsarist katorga labour camps; by September 1921 the prisoner populace exceeded 70,000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In pursuing their revolution and counter-revolution the White and the Red Russians committed atrocities, against each other and their supporting populaces, yet contemporary historians disagree about equating the terrorisms—because the Red Terror was Bolshevik Government policy (e.g. Decossackization) against given social classes, while the class-based White Terror was racial and political, against Jews, anti-monarchists, and Communists, (cf. White Movement).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such numbers are recorded in cities occupied by the Bolsheviks:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Kharkov there were between 2,000 and 3,000 executions in February–June 1919, and another 1,000–2,000 when the town was taken again in December of that year; in Rostov-on-Don, approximately 1,000 in January 1920; in Odessa, 2,200 in May–August 1919, then 1,500–3,000 between February 1920 and February 1921; in Kiev, at least 3,000 in February–August 1919; in Ekaterinodar, at least 3,000 between August 1920 and February 1921; In Armavir, a small town in Kuban, between 2,000 and 3,000 in August–October 1920. The list could go on and on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Professor Christopher Read states that though terror was employed at the height of the Civil War fighting, "from 1920 onwards the resort to terror was much reduced and disappeared from Lenin's mainstream discourses and practices".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, after a clerical insurrection in the town of Shuia, in a 19 March 1922 letter to Vyacheslav Molotov and the Politburo, Lenin delineated action against defiers of the decreed Bolshevik removal of Orthodox Church valuables: "<i>We must... put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades... The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing... the better.</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result of this letter, historian Orlando Figes estimates that perhaps 8,000 priests and laymen were executed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the crushing of the revolts in Kronstadt and Tambov in 1921 resulted in tens of thousands of executions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Estimates for the total number of people killed in the Red Terror ranger from 50,000 to over a million.</span><br />
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In 1917, as an anti-imperialist, Lenin said that oppressed peoples had the unconditional right to secede from the Russian Empire; however, at end of the Civil War, the USSR annexed Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, because the White Movement used them as attack bases.</div>
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Lenin defended the annexations as geopolitical protection against capitalist imperial depredations.</div>
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To maintain the war-isolated cities, keep the armies fed, and to avoid economic collapse, the Bolshevik government established war communism, via prodrazvyorstka, food requisitioning from the peasantry, for little payment, which peasants resisted with reduced harvests.</div>
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The Bolsheviks blamed the kulaks' withholding grain to increase profits; but statistics indicate most such business occurred in the black market economy.</div>
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Nonetheless, the prodrazvyorstka resulted in armed confrontations, which the Cheka and Red Army suppressed with shooting hostages, <i>poison gas</i>, and labour-camp deportation; yet Lenin increased the requisitioning.</div>
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The six-year long White–Red civil war, the war communism, the famine of 1921, which killed an estimated five million, and red terror reduced much of Russia to ruin, and provoked rebellion against the Bolsheviks, the greatest being the <i>Tambov Rebellion</i> (1919–21).</div>
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After the March 1921 left-wing Kronstadt Rebellion mutiny, Lenin replaced war communism with the <i>New Economic Policy</i> (NEP), and successfully rebuilt industry and agriculture.</div>
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The NEP was his pragmatic recognition of the political and economic realities, despite being a tactical, ideological retreat from the socialist ideal; later, the doctrinaire Joseph Stalin reversed the NEP in consolidating his control of the Communist Party and the USSR.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Retirement and Death</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Persistent stories mark syphilis as the cause of Lenin's death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A "<i>retrospective diagnosis</i>" published in 'The European Journal of Neurology' in 2004 strengthens these suspicions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mental strains of leading a revolution, governing, and fighting a civil war aggravated the physical debilitation consequent to the wounds from the attempted assassinations; Lenin retained a bullet in his neck, until a German surgeon removed it on 24 April 1922.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among his comrades, Lenin was notable for working almost <i>ceaselessly</i>, fourteen to sixteen hours daily, occupied with minor, major, and routine matters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">About the man at his life's end, Volkogonov said:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Lenin was involved in the challenges of delivering fuel into Ivanovo-Vosnesensk... the provision of clothing for miners, he was solving the question of dynamo construction, drafted dozens of routine documents, orders, trade agreements, was engaged in the allocation of rations, edited books and pamphlets at the request of his comrades, held hearings on the applications of peat, assisted in improving the workings at the "Novii Lessner" factory, clarified in correspondence with the engineer P. A. Kozmin the feasibility of using wind turbines for the electrification of villages... all the while serving as an adviser to party functionaries almost continuously</i>.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When already sick, Lenin remembered that, since 1917, he had only rested twice: once, while hiding from the Kerensky Provisional Government (when he wrote 'The State and Revolution'), and while recovering from Fanya Kaplan's failed assassination.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In March 1922, when physicians examined him, they found evidence of neither nervous nor organic pathology, but, given his fatigue and the headaches he suffered, they prescribed rest. Upon returning to St. Petersburg in May 1922, Lenin suffered the first of three strokes, which left him unable to speak for weeks, and severely hampered motion in his right side; by June, he had substantially recovered.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By August he resumed limited duties, delivering three long speeches in November.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In December 1922, he suffered the second stroke that partly paralyzed his right side, he then <i>withdrew</i> from active politics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In March 1923, he suffered the third stroke that rendered him mute and bed-ridden until his death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the first stroke, Lenin dictated government papers to Nadezhda; among them was 'Lenin's Testament' (changing the structure of the soviets), a document partly inspired by the 1922 'Georgian Affair', which was a conflict about the way in which social and political transformation within a constituent republic was to be achieved.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It criticized high-rank Communists, including <i>Joseph Stalin</i>, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, <i>Nikolai Bukharin</i>, and <i>Leon Trotsky</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">About the Communist Party's General Secretary (since 1922), <i>Joseph Stalin</i>, Lenin reported that the "<i>unlimited authority</i>" concentrated in him was <i>unacceptable</i>, and suggested that "<i>comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His phrasing, "<i>Сталин слишком груб</i>", implies "<i>personal rudeness, unnecessary roughness, lack of finesse</i>", flaws "<i>intolerable in a Secretary-General</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At Lenin's death, Nadezhda mailed his testament to the central committee, to be read aloud to the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, however, to remain in power, the ruling troika—Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev—<i>suppressed</i> 'Lenin's Testament'; it was not published until 1925, in the United States, by the American intellectual Max Eastman.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In that year, Trotsky published an article <i>minimising</i> the importance of 'Lenin's Testament', saying that Lenin's notes should not be perceived as a will, that it had been neither concealed, nor violated; yet he did invoke it in later anti-Stalin polemics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin died at 18.50 hrs, Moscow time, on 21 January 1924, aged 53, at his estate at Gorki settlement (later renamed Gorki Leninskiye).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the four days that the Bolshevik Leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lay in state, more than 900,000 mourners viewed his body in the 'Hall of Columns'; among the statesmen who expressed condolences to the Soviet Union was Chinese premier Sun Yat-sen, who said:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>Through the ages of world history, thousands of leaders and scholars appeared who spoke eloquent words, but these remained words. You, Lenin, were an exception. You not only spoke and taught us, but translated your words into deeds. You created a new country. You showed us the road of joint struggle... You, great man that you are, will live on in the memories of the oppressed people through the centuries</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Winston Churchill, who encouraged British intervention against the Russian Revolution, in league with the White Movement, to destroy the Bolsheviks and Bolshevism, said:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'He alone could have found the way back to the causeway... The Russian people were left floundering in the bog. Their worst misfortune was his birth... their next worst his death</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Funeral</span><br />
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The Soviet government publicly announced Lenin's death the following day, with head of State Mikhail Kalinin tearfully reading an official statement to delegates of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets at 11am, the same time that a team of physicians began a postmortem of the body.</div>
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On 23 January, mourners from the Communist Party Central Committee, the Moscow party organisation, the trade unions and the soviets began to assemble at his house, with the body being removed from his home at about 10am the following day, being carried aloft in a red coffin by Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, Bukharin, Bubhov and Krasin.</div>
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Transported by train to Moscow, mourners gathered at every station along the way, and upon arriving in the city, a funerary procession carried the coffin for five miles to the 'House of Trade Unions', where the body lay in state.</div>
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Over the next three days, around a million mourners from across the Soviet Union came to see the body, many queuing for hours in the freezing conditions, with the events being filmed by the government.</div>
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On Saturday 26 January, the eleventh 'All-Union Congress of Soviets' met to pay respects to the deceased leader, with speeches being made by Kalinin, Zinoviev and Stalin, but notably not Trotsky, who had been convalescing in the Caucasus.</div>
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Lenin's funeral took place the following day, when his body was carried to 'Red Square', accompanied by martial music, where assembled crowds listened to a series of speeches before the corpse was carried into a vault, followed by the singing of the revolutionary hymn, "You fell in sacrifice."</div>
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Three days after his death, Petrograd was renamed 'Leningrad' in his honour, so remaining until 1991, when the USSR dissolved, yet the administrative area remains "Leningrad Oblast". In the early 1920s, the Russian cosmism movement proved so popular that Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov proposed to <i>cryonically </i>preserve Lenin for future resurrection, yet, despite buying the requisite equipment, that was not done.[</div>
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Instead, the body of V. I. Lenin was <i>embalmed</i> and permanently exhibited in <i>Lenin's Mausoleum</i>, in Moscow, on 27 January 1924.</div>
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Despite the official diagnosis of death from stroke consequences, the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov reported that Lenin died of <i>neurosyphilis</i>, according to a publication by V. Lerner and colleagues in the European Journal of Neurology in 2004.</div>
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The authors also note that "<i>It is possible that future DNA technology applied to Lenin's preserved brain material could ultimately establish or disprove neurosyphilis as the primary cause of Lenin's death</i>."</div>
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In a poll conducted by a Russian website, 48 per cent of the people that responded voted that the body of the former leader should be buried.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Politics and World Revolution</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin was a Marxist, and principally a revolutionary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His revolutionary theory—the belief in the necessity of a violent overthrow of capitalism through communist revolution, to be followed by a <i>dictatorship of the proletariat</i> as the first stage of moving towards <i>communism</i>, and the need for a <i>vanguard party</i> to lead the proletariat in this effort—developed into <i>Marxism–Leninism</i>, a highly influential ideology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin biographer Robert Service noted that Lenin considered "<i>moral questions</i>" to be "<i>an irrelevance</i>", rejecting the concept of moral absolutism; instead he judged whether an action was justifiable based upon its chances of success for the revolutionary cause.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As stated in his 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism', Lenin's revolutionary project embraced not just Russia but the world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To implement world revolution the 'Third</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> International' was convened in Russia in 1919, to replace the discredited 'Second International'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin dominated the first, second (1920) and third (1921) Congresses of the International and hoped to use the organisation as an agency of international socialist revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the failure of revolutionary ambitions in Poland, in the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–21, and after various revolutions in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1919 had been crushed, Lenin, increasingly, saw that anti-colonial struggles in the Third World would be the foci of the revolutionary struggle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He believed that revolution in the Third World would come about through an alliance of the proletarians with the rural peasantry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1923 Lenin said:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc,. account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the last few years it is this majority that has been drawn into the struggle for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be. In this sense the complete victory of socialism is fully and absolutely assured</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin praised Chinese socialist revolutionary leader <i>Sun Yatsen</i> and his <i>Kuomintang</i> party for their ideology and principles. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin praised Sun, his attempts on social reformation and congratulated him for fighting foreign Imperialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sun also returned the praise, calling him a "<i>great man</i>", and sent his congratulations on the revolution in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Organised on Leninism, the Kuomintang was a nationalist revolutionary party, which had been supported by the Soviet Union.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Writings</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin was a prolific political theoretician and philosopher who wrote about the practical aspects of carrying out a proletarian revolution; he wrote pamphlets, articles, and books, without a stenographer or secretary, until prevented by illness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He simultaneously corresponded with comrades, allies, and friends, in Russia and world-wide. His Collected Works comprise <i>54 volumes</i>, each of about 650 pages, translated into English in 45 volumes by Progress Publishers, Moscow 1960–70.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most influential include:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'What is to be Done ?' (1902) states that a revolution requires a professional vanguard party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism' (1916) explains why capitalism had not collapsed, as Marx had posited, presenting the First World War as a capitalist war for land, resources, and cheap labour.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The State and the Revolution' (1917) interprets the ideas of Marx and Engels, the October Revolution's theoretic basis, and opposes the social-democratic tendency as indecisive in effecting revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'April Theses' (1917) propose the socio-economic need for a socialist revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder' (1920) sharply criticizes the "ultra-left"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Lenin's death, the USSR selectively <i>censored</i> his writings, to establish the <i>dogma of the infallibility of Lenin,</i> Stalin (his successor), and the Central Committee; thus, the Soviet fifth edition (55 vols., 1958–65) of Lenin's œuvre deleted the Lenin–Stalin contradictions, and all that was unfavourable to the founder of the USSR.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The historian Richard Pipes published a documentary collection of letters and telegrams excluded from the Soviet fifth edition, proposing that edition as incomplete.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Personal Life and Character</span></div>
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"<i>Lenin's collected writing] reveal in detail a man with iron will, self-enslaving self-discipline, scorn for opponents and obstacles, the cold determination of a zealot, the drive of a fanatic, and the ability to convince or browbeat weaker persons by his singleness of purpose, imposing intensity, impersonal approach, personal sacrifice, political astuteness, and complete conviction of the possession of the absolute truth. His life became the history of the Bolshevik movement.</i>"</div>
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—Biographer Louis Fischer, 1964.</div>
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One of Lenin's biographers, the historian Robert Service, asserted that the Russian had been "<i>a young man of intense emotions</i>", who also exhibited a "<i>visceral hatred</i>" of the "<i>slightest sign of illegality or corruption</i>", which he saw exhibited throughout Tsarist Russia.</div>
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He furthermore argued that Lenin was a man who could be "<i>moody and volatile</i>".</div>
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Service noted that Lenin developed an "<i>emotional attachment</i>" to his ideological heroes, such as Marx, Engels and Chernyshevsky, owning portraits of them.</div>
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Lenin's outward appearance was distinguished by simplicity and strength.</div>
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He was below the middle height, with the plebeian features of the Slavonic type of face, brightened by piercing eyes; and his powerful forehead and still more powerful head gave him a marked distinction.</div>
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—Leon Trotsky, "Lenin" in The Encyclopædia Britannica (Fourteenth Edition, 1939): 911–914</div>
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According to Bertrand Russell, who had an hours conversation with him:</div>
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<i>'He is very friendly, and apparently simple, entirely without a trace of hauteur. If one met him without knowing who he was, one would not guess that he is possessed of great power or even that he is in any way eminent. I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got the impression that he despises a great many people and is an intellectual aristocrat.'</i></div>
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According to most reports, in his personal life Lenin was a modest and unassuming man.</div>
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He liked <i>children and cats</i> and his enthusiasms included bicycling, amateur photography, chess, skating, swimming, hunting, music and hiking.</div>
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Lenin despised untidiness, always keeping his work desk tidy and his pencils sharpened. When in exile in Switzerland, Lenin, accompanied by his wife Krupskaya, developed a considerable passion for mountain walking in the Swiss peaks.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Legacy</span><br />
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As influential as he was in life, Lenin may have been more so in death.<br />
Over 100 million have lined up to view his mummified body.<br />
His memory has been used to support every change in Soviet policy and every new regime since his death.<br />
His theories inspired the successful revolutions of Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh; as well as countless other revolutionaries in countries full of oppressed and powerless people.<br />
When Lenin died on 21 January 1924, near Moscow, he was acclaimed as "<i>the greatest genius of mankind</i>" and "<i>the leader and teacher of the peoples of the whole world</i>".<br />
Historian J. Arch Getty has remarked that "<i>Lenin deserves a lot of credit for the notion that the meek can inherit the earth, that there can be a political movement based on social justice and equality"</i>.<br />
Time Magazine also named Lenin one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century, and one of their top 25 political icons of all time; remarking that "<i>for decades, Marxist–Leninist rebellions shook the world while Lenin's embalmed corpse lay in repose in the Red Square</i>".<br />
Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, reverence for Lenin <i>declined</i> among the post-Soviet generations, yet he remains an important historical figure for the Soviet-era generations.<br />
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-20274794777279504712013-04-03T02:28:00.002-07:002014-02-28T16:59:14.722-08:00Soviet Space Program<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">THE SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YiBXmffbVA4/UVyu2UPjPOI/AAAAAAAAEjc/x6RgFHWZN_w/s1600/Soviet+Space+Program+Poster+1+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YiBXmffbVA4/UVyu2UPjPOI/AAAAAAAAEjc/x6RgFHWZN_w/s200/Soviet+Space+Program+Poster+1+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="124" /></a></div>
The Soviet space program is the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the Soviet Union or U.S.S.R.) from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991.</div>
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Over its sixty-year history, this primarily classified military program was responsible for a number of pioneering accomplishments in space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile (1957), first satellite (Sputnik-1), first animal in space (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the moon (Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover, first space station, and first interplanetary probe.</div>
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The rocket and space program of the USSR, initially boosted by the assistance of captured scientists from the advanced German rocket program, was performed mainly by Soviet engineers and scientists after 1955, and was based on some unique Soviet and Imperial Russian theoretical developments, many derived by <i>Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii</i>, sometimes known as the father of theoretical astronautics.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Konstantin Tsiolkovsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (17 September [O.S. 5 September] 1857 – 19 September 1935) was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Along with his followers, the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergey Korolyov and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 200 km (120 mi) southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, he appeared strange and bizarre to his fellow townsfolk.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Although many called his ideas impractical, Tsiolkovsky influenced later rocket scientists throughout Europe, like Wernher von Braun. Russian search teams at Peenemünde found a German translation of a book by Tsiolkovsky of which "<i>almost every page...was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Leading Russian rocket-engine designer Valentin Glushko and rocket designer Sergey Korolyov studied Tsiolkovsky's works as youths, and both sought to turn Tsiolkovsky's theories into reality. In particular, Korolyov saw traveling to Mars as the more important priority, until in 1964 he decided to compete with the American Project Apollo for the moon.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tsiolovsky wrote a book called '<i>The Will of the Universe. The Unknown Intelligence</i>' in 1928 in which he propounded a philosophy of <i>panpsychism</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He believed humans would eventually colonize the Milky Way galaxy.</span></div>
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Серге́й Па́влович Королёв (Sergei Pavlovich Korolev) was the head of the principal design group; his official title was "chief designer" (a standard title for similar positions in the USSR).</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (12 January [O.S. 30 December 1906] 1907 in Zhytomyr, Russian Empire – 14 January 1966 in Moscow, USSR) was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer in the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s. He is considered by many as the father of practical astronautics.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Although Korolev was trained as an aircraft designer, his greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning. Arrested for alleged mismanagement of funds (he spent the money on unsuccessful experiments with rocket devices), he was imprisoned in 1938 for almost six years, including some months in a Kolyma labour camp. Following his release, he became a recognized rocket designer and a key figure in the development of the Soviet ICBM program. He was then appointed to lead the Soviet space program, made Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects. By the time he died unexpectedly in 1966, his plans to compete with the United States to be the first nation to land a man on the Moon had begun to be implemented.</span><br />
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Unlike its American competitor in the "<i>space race</i>", which had NASA as a single coordinating agency, the USSR's program was <i>split </i>among several competing design groups led by Korolyov, Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko, and Vladimir Chelomei.</div>
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Because of the program's classified status, and for propaganda value, announcements of the outcomes of missions were delayed until success was certain, and failures were sometimes kept secret.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mikhail Gorbachev</td></tr>
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Ultimately, as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost in the 1980s, many facts about the space program were declassified.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв (Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev - born 2 March 1931), is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the first (and last) president of the Soviet Union from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the Soviet Union to have been <i>born during the Communist rule</i>.</span><br />
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Notable setbacks included the deaths of Korolyov, Vladimir Komarov (in the<i> Soyuz 1</i> crash), and Yuri Gagarin (on a routine fighter jet mission) between 1966 and 1968, and disastrous experiences with the huge '<i>N-1'</i> rocket intended to power a manned lunar landing, and which exploded shortly after launch on each of four unmanned tests.</div>
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The Soviet Space Program was dissolved with the fall of the Soviet Union, with Russia and Ukraine becoming its immediate heirs.</div>
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Russia created the 'Russian Aviation and Space Agency', now known as the 'Russian Federal Space Agency' (ROSCOSMOS), while Ukraine created the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU).</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Prewar Research</span></div>
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The theory of space exploration was well established in the Russian Empire before the First World War from the writings of <i>Konstantin Tsiolkovsky</i>, who published pioneering papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and in 1929 even introduced the concept of the multistaged rocket.</div>
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Similarly the practical aspects were established by early experiments carried out by the reactive propulsion study group, GIRD in the 1920s and 1930s, where such pioneers as <i>Sergey Korolyov</i>—who dreamed of traveling to <i>Mars</i>—and German-Russian engineer <i>Friedrich Zander</i> worked.</div>
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On August 18, 1933, GIRD launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket Gird-09, and on November 25, 1933, the first hybrid-fueled rocket GIRD-X.</div>
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In 1940-41 another advance in the reactive propulsion field was made: the development and serial production of the '<i>Katyusha'</i> multiple rocket launcher.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">German Influence</span></div>
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During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was <i>comparable</i> to Germany's, but <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin's </a><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">'Great Purge'</a> severely <i>damaged its progress</i>.</div>
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Many leading engineers were killed, and <i>Korolyov</i> and others were imprisoned in the Gulag.</div>
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Although the '<i>Katyusha'</i> was very effective on the Eastern Front during World War II, the advanced state of the German rocket program amazed Russian engineers who inspected its remains at <i>Peenemünde</i> and <i>Mittelwerk</i> after the end of the war in Europe.</div>
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Although the Americans had secretly moved most leading German scientists and 100 V-2 rockets to the United States in '<i>Operation Paperclip</i>' the Russian program greatly <i>benefited </i>from captured German records and scientists, in particular drawings obtained from the V-2 production sites.</div>
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Under the direction of <i>Dimitri Ustinov, Korolyov</i> and others inspected the drawings.</div>
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Helped by rocket scientist Helmut Gröttrup and other captured Germans until the early 1950s, they built a replica of the '<i>V-2'</i> called the '<i>R-1'</i>, although the weight of Soviet nuclear warheads required a more powerful booster.</div>
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<i>Korolyov's</i> OKB-1 design bureau was dedicated to the liquid-fueled cryogenic rockets he had been experimenting with in the late 1930s.</div>
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Ultimately, this work resulted in the design of the R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which was successfully tested in August 1957.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Sputnik and Vostok</span></div>
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The Soviet space program was tied to the USSR's 'Five-Year Plans' and from the start was reliant on support from the Soviet military.</div>
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Although he was "<i>single-mindedly driven by the dream of space travel</i>", Korolyov generally kept this a secret while working on military projects—especially, after the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb test in 1949, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the United States—as many mocked the idea of launching satellites and manned spacecraft.</div>
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Nonetheless, the first Soviet rocket with animals aboard launched in July 1951; the two dogs were recovered alive after reaching 101 km in altitude.</div>
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Two months ahead of America's first such achievement, this and subsequent flights gave the Soviets valuable experience with space medicine.</div>
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Because of its <i>global</i> range and large payload of approximately five tons, the reliable R-7 was not only effective as a strategic delivery system for nuclear warheads, but also as an excellent basis for a space vehicle.</div>
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The United States' announcement in July 1955 of its plan to launch a satellite during the 'International Geophysical Year' greatly benefited <i>Korolyov</i> in persuading Soviet leader <i>Nikita Khrushchev</i> to support his plans in January 1956, in order to surpass the Americans.</div>
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Plans were approved for <i>Earth-orbiting satellites</i> (<i>Sputnik</i>) to gain knowledge of space, and for unmanned military reconnaissance satellites, Zenit.</div>
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Further planned developments called for a <i>manned Earth orbit flight</i> by 1964 and an <i>unmanned lunar mission</i> at an earlier date.</div>
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After the first '<i>Sputnik</i>' proved to be a successful propaganda coup, <i>Korolyov</i>—now known publicly only as the mysterious "<i>Chief Designer of Rocket-Space Systems</i>"—was charged to accelerate the manned program, the design of which was combined with the '<i>Zenit'</i> program to produce the '<i>Vostok'</i> spacecraft.</div>
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Still influenced by <i>Tsiolkovsky</i>—who had chosen <i>Mars</i> as the most important goal for space travel—in the early 1960s the Russian program under <i>Korolyov</i> created substantial plans for <i>manned trips to Mars</i> as early as 1968 to 1970.</div>
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With <i>closed-loop life support systems</i> and <i>electrical rocket engines</i>, and launched from large <i>orbiting space stations</i>, these plans were much more ambitious than America's goal of landing on the moon.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">First Manned Spaceflight</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, on his Return to Earth 1962<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first manned spaceflight took place on April 12, 1961, when cosmonaut <i>Yuri Gagarin</i> made one orbit around the Earth aboard the <i>Vostok 1</i> spacecraft, launched by the Soviet space program.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Valentina Tereshkova</i> became the first woman in space aboard <i>Vostok 6</i> on June 16, 1963. Both spacecraft were launched by <i>Vostok 3KA</i> launch vehicles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Alexei Leonov</i> made the first spacewalk when he left <i>Voskhod 2</i> on March 8, 1965.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Svetlana Savitskaya</i> became the first woman to do so on July 25, 1984.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Funding and Support</span></div>
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Despite the Soviet space program's achievements, it was "<i>neither a high priority nor a central tool of Soviet state policy.</i>" Khrushchev had decided that the Soviet military's funding would focus on the '<i>Strategic Rocket Forces' ICBMs</i>', and the space program "<i>rode its coattails</i>". While the West believed that Khrushchev personally ordered each new space mission for propaganda purposes, and the Soviet leader did have an unusually <i>close relationship</i> with <i>Korolyov</i> and other chief designers, he "<i>was more concerned about money and missiles than he was about cosmonauts and the cosmos...He was never particularly interested in competing with Apollo.</i>"</div>
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While the government and the Communist Party used the program's successes as <i>propaganda tools</i> after they occurred, systematic plans for missions based on political reasons were rare, one exception being <i>Valentina Tereshkova</i>, the <i>first woman in space</i>, on '<i>Vostok 6</i>' in 1963.</div>
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Missions were planned based on <i>rocket availability</i> or <i>ad hoc reasons</i>, rather than scientific purposes.</div>
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For example, the government in February 1962 abruptly ordered an ambitious mission involving <i>two</i> 'Vostoks' simultaneously in orbit launched "<i>in ten days time</i>" to obscure John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 that month; the program could not do so with Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 until August.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Internal competition</span></div>
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Unlike the American Space program, which had '<i>NASA</i>' as a single coordinating structure directed by its Administrator,<i> James Webb</i> through most of the 1960s, the USSR's program was <i>split</i> between several competing design groups.</div>
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Despite the remarkable successes of the Sputniks between 1957 and 1961 and Vostoks between 1961 and 1964, after 1958 <i>Korolyov's</i> OKB-1 design bureau faced increasing <i>competition</i> from his rival chief designers,<i> Mikhail Yangel</i>, <i>Valentin Glushko</i>, and <i>Vladimir Chelomei</i>.</div>
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<i>Korolyov</i> planned to move forward with the<i> 'Soyuz'</i> craft and '<i>N-1' </i>heavy booster that would be the basis of a permanent <i>manned space station</i> and <i>manned exploration of the Moon</i>. However, <i>Ustinov</i> directed him to focus on near-Earth missions using the very reliable '<i>Voskhod'</i> spacecraft, a modified <i>Vostok</i>, as well as on interplanetary <i>unmanned missions</i> to nearby planets Venus and Mars.</div>
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<i>Yangel</i> had been<i> Korolyov's</i> assistant but with the support of the military he was given his own design bureau in 1954 to work primarily on the military space program.</div>
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This had the stronger rocket engine design team including the use of <i>hypergolic</i> fuels but following the <i>Nedelin</i> catastrophe in 1960 <i>Yangel</i> was directed to concentrate on ICBM development.</div>
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He also continued to develop his own heavy booster designs similar to <i>Korolyov's 'N-1'</i> both for <i>military applications</i> and for <i>cargo flights</i> into space to build future <i>space stations</i>.</div>
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<i>Glushko</i> was the chief rocket engine designer but he had a personal friction with <i>Korolyov</i> and refused to develop the large <i>single chamber cryogenic engines</i> that <i>Korolyov</i> needed to build heavy boosters.</div>
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<i>Chelomei</i> benefited from the patronage of <i>Khrushchev</i> and in 1960 was given the plum jobs of developing a rocket to send a <i>manned craft around the moon</i> and a <i>manned military space station.</i></div>
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With limited space experience, his development was slow.</div>
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The '<i>Apollo</i>' program's progress alarmed the chief designers, who each advocated for his own programs as response.</div>
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Multiple, overlapping designs received approval, and new proposals threatened already approved projects.</div>
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Due to <i>Korolyov's</i> "<i>singular persistence</i>", in August 1964 —more than three years after the United States declared its intentions— the Soviet Union finally decided to compete for the moon.</div>
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It set the goal of a <i>lunar landing</i> in 1967 —the <i>50th anniversary of the October Revolution</i>— or 1968.</div>
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At one stage in the early 1960s the Soviet space program was actively developing <i>30 projects </i>for launchers and spacecraft.</div>
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With the fall of Krushchev in 1964, <i>Korolyov</i> was given complete control of the manned space program.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">After Korolyov</span></div>
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<i>Korolyov</i> died in January 1966 following a routine operation that uncovered colon cancer and from complications from heart disease and severe hemorrhaging.</div>
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<i>Kerim Kerimov</i>, who was formerly an architect of '<i>Vostok 1'</i>, was appointed Chairman of the 'State Commission on Piloted Flights' and headed it for the next 25 years (1966–1991).</div>
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He supervised every stage of development and operation of both manned space complexes as well as unmanned interplanetary stations for the former Soviet Union.</div>
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One of <i>Kerimov's</i> greatest achievements was the launch of<i> 'Mir'</i> in 1986.</div>
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Leadership of the '<i>OKB-1</i>' design bureau was given to <i>Vasili Mishin</i>, who had the task of sending a man around the Moon in 1967 and landing a man on it in 1968.</div>
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<i>Mishin</i> lacked <i>Korolyov's</i> political authority and still faced competition from other chief designers.</div>
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Under pressure <i>Mishin</i> approved the launch of the '<i>Soyuz 1'</i> flight in 1967, even though the craft had never been successfully tested on an unmanned flight.</div>
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The mission launched with known design problems and ended with the vehicle crashing to the ground, killing <i>Vladimir Komarov</i>.</div>
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This was the first in-flight<i> fatality</i>.</div>
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Following this disaster and under new pressures, <i>Mishin</i> developed a drinking problem.</div>
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The Soviets were narrowly beaten in sending the first manned flight around the Moon in 1968 by '<i>Apollo 8'</i>, but <i>Mishin</i> pressed ahead with development of the problematic super heavy '<i>N1' </i>rocket in the hope that the Americans would have a setback, leaving enough time to make the '<i>N-1'</i> workable, and land a man on the moon first.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soviet 'N-1' Rocket</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The N-1 was a heavy lift rocket intended to deliver payloads beyond low Earth orbit, acting as the Soviet counterpart to the NASA Saturn V rocket. This heavy lift booster had the capability of lifting very heavy loads into orbit, designed with manned extra-orbital travel in mind. Development work started on the N-1 in 1959. Its first stage is the most powerful rocket stage ever built.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The N1-L3 version was developed to compete with the United States Apollo Saturn V to land a man on the Moon. The basic N1 launch vehicle had three stages, which was to carry the L3 lunar payload into low Earth orbit. The L3 contained an Earth departure stage and a lunar landing assist stage, in addition to the single-cosmonaut LK Lander spacecraft, and a two-cosmonaut Soyuz 7K-LOK lunar orbital spacecraft.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">N1-L3 was <i>under-funded</i> and <i>under-tested</i>, and started development in October 1965, almost four years after the Saturn V. The project was badly derailed by the death of its chief designer Sergei Korolev in 1966. Each of the four attempts to launch an N1 failed; during the second launch attempt the N1 rocket crashed back onto its launch pad shortly after liftoff and detonated, resulting in the largest artificial non-nuclear explosion in human history, equivalent to the detonation of approximately 7,000 tons of TNT.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The N1 program was suspended in 1974, and in 1976 was officially cancelled.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Along with the rest of the Soviet manned Moon programs, the N1 was kept secret almost until the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991; information about the N1 was first published in 1989.</span><br />
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There was a success with the joint flight of <i>Soyuz 4</i> and <i>Soyuz 5</i> in January 1969 that tested the rendezvous, docking and crew transfer techniques that would be used for the landing, and the '<i>LK Lander'</i> was tested successfully in earth orbit.</div>
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But after four unmanned test launches of the '<i>N-1</i>' ended in failure, the heavy booster was <i>abandoned</i> and with it any chance of the Soviets landing men on the moon in a single launch.</div>
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Besides the manned landings, abandoned Soviet moon program included a building the multipurpose moonbase '<i>Zvezda'</i>, first detailed such project with developed mock-ups of expedition vehicles and surface modules.</div>
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Later proposed new moon manned program "<i>Vulkan-LEK</i>" were not adopted on <i>economic</i> reasons.</div>
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Following this setback, <i>Chelomei</i> convinced <i>Ustinov </i>to approve a program in 1970 to advance his '<i>Almaz'</i> military space station as a means of beating the US's announced '<i>Skylab'</i>.</div>
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<i>Mishin</i> remained in control of the project that became '<i>Salyut',</i> but the decision backed by <i>Mishin</i> to fly a three-man crew without pressure suits rather than a two-man crew with suits to '<i>Salyut 1'</i> in 1971 proved fatal when the re-entry capsule depressurized killing the crew on their return to Earth.</div>
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<i>Mishin</i> was removed from many projects, with <i>Chelomei</i> regaining control of '<i>Salyut'</i>.</div>
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After working with '<i>NASA' </i>on the '<i>Apollo Soyuz Test Project'</i>, the Soviet leadership decided a new management approach was needed and in 1974 the '<i>N-1'</i> was <i>cancelled</i> and <i>Mishin</i> dismissed.</div>
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A single design bureau was created '<i>NPO Energia'</i> with <i>Glushko</i> as chief designer.</div>
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Despite the <i>failure</i> of manned lunar programs, USSR achieved a significant success with two historical firsts, the automatic '<i>Lunokhod'</i> and the Luna sample return missions.</div>
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Also, the Mars probe program was continued with some small success, while the explorations of Venus and then of the Halley comet by '<i>Venera'</i> and '<i>Vega'</i> probe programs was more effective.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet space program produced the Space Shuttle '<i>Buran</i>' based on the 3rd in history super heavy '<i>Energia'</i> launcher.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'<i>Energia</i>' would be used as the base for a <i>manned Mars mission</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>'Buran'</i> was intended to operate in support of large <i>space based military platforms</i> as a response first to the US '<i>Space Shuttle'</i> and then the '<i>Strategic Defense Initiative'</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the time the system was operational, in 1988, strategic arms reduction treaties and the end of the Cold War made '<i>Buran'</i> redundant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On November 15, 1988, the '<i>Buran</i>' orbiter and its '<i>Energia</i>' rocket were launched from <i>Baikonur Cosmodrome </i>in Kazakhstan, and after three hours and two orbits, glided to a landing a few miles from its launch pad.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Several vehicles were built, but only the one flew an unmanned test flight; it was found too expensive to operate as a civilian launcher.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Incidents, Failures, and Setbacks</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet space program has experienced a number of fatal incidents and failures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The so-called <i>Nedelin</i> catastrophe in 1960 was a disastrous explosion of a fueled rocket being tested on launchpad, killing many technical personnel, aerospace engineers, and technicians working on the project at the time of the explosion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first cosmonaut fatality during training occurred on March 23, 1961 when <i>Valentin Bondarenko</i> died in a fire within a low pressure, high oxygen atmosphere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The '<i>Voskhod'</i> program was canceled after two manned flights owing to the change of Soviet leadership and nearly fatal '<i>close calls</i>' during the second mission.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Had the planned further flights gone ahead they could have given the Soviet space program further '<i>firsts</i>', including a long duration flight of 20 days, a spacewalk by a woman and an untethered spacewalk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The deaths of <i>Korolyov, Komarov</i> (in the '<i>Soyuz 1' </i>crash) and <i>Gagarin</i> (the first human in space who was on a routine fighter jet mission) within two years of each other understandably had substantial negative impact on the Soviet program.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviets continued striving for the first lunar mission with the huge '<i>N-1</i>' rocket, which exploded on each of four unmanned tests shortly after launch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On April 5, 1975, the second stage of a '<i>Soyuz'</i> rocket carrying 2 cosmonauts to the '<i>Salyut 4'</i> space station malfunctioned, resulting in the first manned launch abort.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cosmonauts were carried several thousand miles downrange and became worried that they would land in China, which the Soviet Union was then having difficult relations with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The capsule hit a mountain, sliding down a slope and almost slid off a cliff; fortunately the parachute lines snagged on trees and kept this from happening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As it was, the two suffered severe injuries and the commander, <i>Lazerev</i>, never flew again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On March 18, 1980 a '<i>Vostok'</i> rocket exploded on its launch pad during a fueling operation, killing 48 people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In August 1981, '<i>Kosmos 434'</i>, which had been launched in 1971, was about to re-enter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To allay fears that the spacecraft carried nuclear materials, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR assured the Australian government on August 26, 1981 that the satellite was "<i>an experimental lunar cabin</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was one of the first admissions by the Soviet Union that it had ever engaged in a manned lunar spaceflight program.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In September 1983, a '<i>Soyuz'</i> rocket being launched to carry cosmonauts to the '<i>Salyut 7' </i>space station exploded on the pad, causing the '<i>Soyuz'</i> capsule's abort system to engage, saving the two cosmonauts on board.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition to these, there have been several unconfirmed accounts of <i>Lost Cosmonauts</i> whose deaths were allegedly covered up by the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-12362275641615844302013-03-30T12:56:00.002-07:002015-10-20T05:35:09.338-07:00Soviet Society and Culture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">SOVIET SOCIETY and CULTURE</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Новый советский человек</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The New Soviet Man</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">"Study the Great Path of the Party of Lenin and Stalin!"<br />
a young man recreates himself.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The New Soviet man, as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>Study the Great Path of the Party of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin </a>and Stalin !</i>": a young man recreates himself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the early times, ideologists of Communism have postulated that within the new society of pure communism and the social conditions therein, a 'New Man' and 'New Woman' would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific development.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ezT7qM-njKM/UT-9JOQFTPI/AAAAAAAAECY/ql78DhY28GU/s1600/Leon+Trosky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+1920s+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ezT7qM-njKM/UT-9JOQFTPI/AAAAAAAAECY/ql78DhY28GU/s200/Leon+Trosky+-+Russian+Revolution+-+1920s+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="170" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Leon Trotsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, Leon Trotsky wrote in Literature and Revolution about the "<i>Communist man</i>", "<i>man of the future</i>":</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.'</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Leon Trotsky; born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein; 7 November 1879 – 21 August 1940) was a Jewish Russian revolutionary and theorist, Marxist Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Wilhelm Reich wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>Will the new socio-economic system reproduce itself in the structure of the people's character ? If so, how ? Will his traits be inherited by his children ? Will he be a free, self-regulating personality ? Will the elements of freedom incorporated into the structure of the personality make any authoritarian forms of government unnecessary ?</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Wilhelm Reich (24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Sigmund Freud, and one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry. He was the author of several influential books and essays, most notably 'Character Analysi' (1933), 'The Mass Psychology of Fascism' (1933), and 'The Sexual Revolution'(1936). His work on character contributed to the development of Anna Freud's 'The Ego' and the 'Mechanisms of Defence' (1936), and his idea of muscular armour – the expression of the personality in the way the body moves – shaped innovations such as body psychotherapy, Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen's bioenergetic analysis, and Arthur Janov's primal therapy. His writing influenced generations of intellectuals: during the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of 'The Mass Psychology of Fascism' at the police.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Author and philosopher Bernard Byhovsky, Ph.D. writes:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The new man is endowed, first of all, with a new ethical outlook.</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The three major changes postulated to be indispensable for the building of the communist society were economical and political changes, accompanied with the changes in the human personality.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iYJ7pCOKjfA/UT_Dz25xrqI/AAAAAAAAECg/GWeXex9e8tE/s1600/The+New+Soviet+Man+and+Woman+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iYJ7pCOKjfA/UT_Dz25xrqI/AAAAAAAAECg/GWeXex9e8tE/s320/The+New+Soviet+Man+and+Woman+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">'The New Man'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">'The Soviet Man' was to be <i>selfless</i>, <i>learned</i>, <i>healthy</i> and<i> enthusiastic</i> in spreading the socialist Revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adherence to Marxism-Leninism, and individual behavior consistent with that philosophy's prescriptions, were among the crucial traits expected of the 'New Soviet man'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This required <i>intellectualism</i> and hard discipline.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was not driven by crude impulses of nature but by conscious self-mastery – a belief that required the rejection of both innate personality and the unconscious, which Soviet psychologists did therefore reject.<br />He treated public property with respect, as if it were his own.<br />He also has lost any nationalist sentiments, being Soviet rather than Russian, or Ukrainian, or any of the many other nationalities found in the USSR.</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bkgL88e9IRM/UVfpvf9HDwI/AAAAAAAAETE/pOCOyqj5Egw/s1600/Aleksei+Grigorievich+Stakhanov+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bkgL88e9IRM/UVfpvf9HDwI/AAAAAAAAETE/pOCOyqj5Egw/s200/Aleksei+Grigorievich+Stakhanov+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alexey Stakhanov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His work required exertion and austerity, to show the new man triumphing over his base Alexey Stakhanov's record-breaking day in mining coal caused him to be set forth as the exemplar of the "new man" and the members of Stakhanovite movements tried to become Stakhanovites. This could also be a new woman; - 'Правда' (Pravda) described the Soviet woman as someone who had and could never have existed before.<br />Female Stakhanovites were rarer than male, but a quarter of all trade-union women were designated as "norm-breaking."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the Paris World Fair, Vera Mukhina depicted a monumental sculpture, 'Worker and Kolkhoz Woman', dressed in work clothing, pressing forward with his hammer and her sickle crossed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea that men could be remade was very important in the Soviet 'world-view'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea of human remaking was part of the whole notion of transformation that was at the heart of the Soviet project.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As Bukharin put it:</span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“<i>plasticity of the organism is the silent theoretical premise of our course of action,” for without it, why would anyone bother to make a revolution ?</i>"</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Soviet era was an 'age of heroism', in which even ordinary people became heroes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The First Five-Year Plan inaugurated the heroic age, launching the country on a make-or-break effort to transform itself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A 'heroic age' called forth heroic personalities and feats, and gloried in them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In Maxim Gorky’s 'Nietzschean' formulation, Soviet man was becoming Man with a capital letter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Free from the burden of serf consciousness inculcated through past exploitation and deprivation, the contemporary hero - “man of the new humanity” - is “big, daring, strong.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He pits the force of human will against the forces of nature in a “grandiose and tragic” struggle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His mission is not only to understand the world but also to master it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The word “hero” was ubiquitous in Soviet Russia, used for record-breaking aviators and polar explorers, border guards, Stakhanovites, and all kinds of Heroes of Labor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Political leaders might also be described as heroes performing heroic feats: in poems by folk bards, Voroshilov was “a fantastic knight” on his steed, Stalin “the hero Joseph-Our-Light Vissarionovich.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Soviet hero was often described as a 'bogatyr', using the old word for the hero of Russian folk epics, and ascribed the same qualities of daring, defiance, and high spirits.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Films and plays about these national heroes appeared in abundance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Cheliuskin expedition was celebrated in the film 'Seven of the Brave' (1936) and also was the subject of a play by one of the participants in the expedition, Sergei Semenov, 'We Won’t Give In', focusing on the theme of collective heroism in the face of a hostile environment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A whole string of films about aviators appeared, starting with 'Aviators' (1935) and including 'The Fatherland Calls' (1936), 'Tales of Aviation Heroes' ('Wings') (1938), 'Brother of a Hero' (1940), and 'Valerii Chkalov' (1941). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Increasingly, the aviator films became celebrations of Soviet military aviation, emphasizing the pilots’ role as defenders of the native land. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When asked about their heroes, Soviet adolescents named three 'generic' hero types - aviators, polar explorers, and border guards - as well as individual heroes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Similarly, when young auto workers were asked about their life plans in 1937, many said they wanted to be aviators (including military pilots) or serve in the border guards. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The individual heroes chosen by the first group ranged from party and military leaders (Stalin, Voroshilov, Semen Budennyi), and Civil War heroes (Chapaev and Shchors, both the subjects of popular films of the period) to aviators (Chkalov), explorers (the Norwegian explorer of the North, Fridtjof Nansen), scientists (Konstantin Tsiolkovskii, a rocket pioneer who publicized the idea of space travel), Stakhanovite workers, chess players, and footballers from the Dinamo club.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The “little man” as hero was a favorite motif.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The heroes of Gorky’s 'Stories about Heroes' (1931) were 'rank-and-filers' - rural teachers, worker correspondents, worker inventors, reading-room organizers, activists of all kinds. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The newspapers ran many stories on the extraordinary achievements of ordinary people, whose photographs, serious or smiling, looked out from the front page. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Factory and kolkhoz “shockworkers” were the heroic 'little people' of the early 1930s. Then, in the mid 1930s, the 'Stakhanovite' movement gave new dimensions to the celebration of ordinary people. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stakhanovites - named for the record-breaking Donbass coalminer, Aleksei Stakhanov - were supposed to be not only record-breakers, but also rationalizers of production. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The most visible Stakhanovites became members of a new social status group that might be called 'ordinary celebrities'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These were ordinary people - workers, kolkhozniks, saleswomen, teachers, or whatever - who suddenly became national media heroes and heroines. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In theory, they were selected because of their achievements, but in practice patronage from a local party secretary or journalist often played a large role. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stakhanovites’ photographs were published in the newspapers; journalists interviewed them about their achievements and opinions; they were selected as delegates to conferences of Stakhanovites, and learned to make public speeches; some of the lucky ones even met Stalin and were photographed with him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stakhanovites and other 'ordinary celebrities' were living examples that little people mattered in the Soviet Union, that even the most humble and ordinary person had a chance of becoming famous for a day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“<i>I became a hero along with the people</i>,” wrote the Stakhanovite tractor-driver Pasha Angelina modestly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">However, the representative function was only part of it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stakhanovites were also celebrated for their individual achievements and encouraged to show their individuality and leadership potential. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To become a famous Stakhanovite was to acquire a self whose worth turned out to be far greater than anyone had dreamed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Selflessness</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was <i>selfless collectivism</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice his life for good causes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This trait was glorified from the first Soviet days, as exemplified by lines from the poem <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">'Vladimir Ilyich Lenin</a>' by the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Who needs a "1"?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The voice of a "1"</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>is thinner than a squeak.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Who will hear it?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Only the wife...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>A "1" is nonsense.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>A "1" is zero.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fictional characters, and presentations of contemporary celebrities, embodying this model were prominent features of Soviet cultural life, especially at times when fostering the concept of the 'New Soviet man' was given special priority by the government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pro-natalist policies encouraging women to have many children were justified by the selfishness inherent in limiting the next generation of "<i>new men</i>."</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Psychological Consequences</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yAdJPYMIUwY/UT_Htz6HC0I/AAAAAAAAEDA/aNqRhC93_x0/s1600/Igor+Kon+-+The+New+Soviet+Man+and+Woman+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yAdJPYMIUwY/UT_Htz6HC0I/AAAAAAAAEDA/aNqRhC93_x0/s200/Igor+Kon+-+The+New+Soviet+Man+and+Woman+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Игорь Семёнович Кон</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Igor Kon</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Игорь Семёнович Кон </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Igor Kon) has studied the psychology of "<i>Soviet man</i>" (or "<i>Sovki</i>" (scoops, in Russian), as the Soviet people used to semi-jokingly call themselves sometimes) extensively.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of his most important insights is that the "<i>negative selection</i>", including various types of visibly oppressive treatment of those whose thinking doesn't fit the "party line" leads to development of "<i>acquired helplessness syndrome</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Kon,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"T<i>he lack of individual responsibility is a product of decades of living under limited freedom. People get used to oppression. This has always happened with totalitarian regimes. I remember, I was greatly surprised to meet people with a similar mentality in East Germany, a country that has always been very different from Russia. This happened during the unification of the East and West Germany. I saw fright in the eyes of the East Germans, the same reaction as I see here in Russia – people do not know what to do. There is a psychological term for this – the acquired helplessness syndrome. The syndrome is usually manifested in social pessimism and lack of self-confidence. The acquired helplessness syndrome is the main feature of Soviet mentality and unfortunately it is prevalent among senior citizens.</i>"</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">New Soviet Woman</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 1920s, and into the Stalinist era, the concept of the “<i>New Soviet Woman</i>” served alongside that of the “<i>New Soviet Man</i>.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her roles were vastly different than that of her male counterpart; she was burdened with a complex identity that changed with ideology shifts in the party doctrine toward more conservative notions of the role of the family and the mother in the Soviet system.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The '<i>New Soviet Woman</i>' was a <i>Superwoman</i> who balanced competing responsibilities and took on the burden of multiple roles — Communist citizen, full-time worker, wife and mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The '<i>New Soviet Person</i>' was generally characterized as male.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In propaganda centered on the '<i>New Soviet Person</i>', it was standard for men to be depicted as the primary actors, either battling opponents of the Marxist revolution, or rebuilding the world. Women, on the other hand, were often portrayed as “<i>backward</i>,” <i>passive</i> beneficiaries of the revolution rather than its securers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was so not least because the proletarian movement was organized and fought by the working class, which by and large consisted of men.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, propaganda often equated male domination with proletariat domination.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the party leadership claimed the sexes enjoyed equal status under the law, not an insignificant accomplishment in itself, men remained the measure of worth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This <i>marginalization</i> of women in the newly developing civil order made it difficult for women to find a place among the proletarian class for which the revolution was fought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Due to regulations during the NEP period on the extent to which women could work in dangerous conditions, how many hours they could work in a shift and the kinds of special care they received during maternity, many factory owners reluctantly hired women, despite the Commissariat of Labor’s requirements that women be given equal access to employment.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SCC-PbJjqO8/UT_ITnLdplI/AAAAAAAAEDI/ojzZf2c2bPs/s1600/Lenin+Profile+-+The+New+Soviet+Man+and+Woman+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SCC-PbJjqO8/UT_ITnLdplI/AAAAAAAAEDI/ojzZf2c2bPs/s200/Lenin+Profile+-+The+New+Soviet+Man+and+Woman+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="163" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Владимир Ильич Ленин</a><br />
<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Ilyich Lenin</a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">NEP - </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The New Economic Policy (Новая экономическая политика) was an economic policy proposed by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Ilyich Lenin</a>, who called it state capitalism. It was a new, more capitalism- oriented economic policy necessary after the Civil War to raise the economy of the country, which was almost ruined. Nationalization of industry, established during the period of War Communism, was revoked and replaced by a system of mixed economy which allowed private individuals to own small enterprises, while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade, and large industries. In addition, the NEP abolished forced grain requisition and required instead that farmers give the government a specified amount of raw agricultural product as a tax in kind. Although many members of the Bolshevik party were reluctant to issue policies that encouraged private profit by traders, events such as the Kronstadt Rebellion highlighted the need to address the deteriorating economic conditions. The new policy was adopted in the course of the 10th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party and was promulgated by decree on 21 March 1921, "<i>On the Replacement of Prodrazvyorstka by Prodnalog</i>" (i.e., on the replacement of foodstuffs requisitions by fixed foodstuffs tax). Further decrees refined the policy. The New Economic Policy was replaced by Stalin's First Five-Year Plan in 1928.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There were gains made in combating illiteracy and promoting education for women during the 1920s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soviet policy encouraged working-class women to attend school and develop vocational skills. There even existed opportunities for women to participate in politics, become party members and vie for elected and administrative positions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Access to the political sphere, however, was <i>extremely limited</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joseph Stalin’s policies on women were more <i>conservative</i> than that of his predecessor Lenin. Because he was concerned with a declining population rate, Stalin de-emphasized the Marxist feminist view of women in society, which necessitated the emancipation of the woman from the shackles of her doubly binding oppression, patriarchy and capitalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In keeping with the party line, Stalin reasserted the importance of women in the workforce and female education, primarily literacy, although he began to emphasize the role of mother in a way that differed from more radical notions of the early 1920s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The “<i>withering away</i>” of the family was no longer a goal of economic and political progress.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The new party line was that '<i>the family, like the state, was to grow stronger with the full realization of socialism'</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Massive propaganda campaigns linked the joys of motherhood with the benefits of Soviet power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soviet ideology began to argue that women’s public roles were compatible with her roles as wife and mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, that the two reinforced one another and were both necessary for real womanhood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The '<i>New Soviet Woman</i>' differed greatly from the conceptions of revolutionaries preceding the 1930s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead of being freed from domestic concerns, she was bound to them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though she now filled the role of man’s peer in the workplace, she was also obligated to devote herself to being his helpmate in the home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the primary roles of the New Soviet Woman was that of mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This role became of great importance in the wake of population decline beginning in the 1920s. War and revolution had decimated the population.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Legislation legalizing abortions and the increasing use of contraception—though still not that widespread—in the 1920s also contributed to the lower population numbers as women began to work more and give birth less.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a means to combat that trend, propaganda placed a new emphasis on the female’s role as the<i> perpetuator</i> of the Communist regime in their ability to produce the next class of healthy workers, a policy called pronatalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Propaganda postured pronatalism, a means to encourage women to bear children, differently to urban working-class women than to rural peasant women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Propaganda designed for an urban audience linked healthy female sexuality with reproduction while medical information to peasant women positioned conception as the purpose of sexual intercourse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The new ideal Soviet woman appealed to many Soviet women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many had found Marxist feminism difficult to swallow, and preferred their traditional female roles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although these women drew satisfaction from their role as mothers, they appreciated the opportunity afforded them by the Communist ideology to dismantle the oppression that often went hand-in-hand with domestic life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With husbands that often beat, abused, and abandoned them, and a society and government that looked down on them as intellectually and ideologically inferior prior to the Stalinist era, many women welcomed the ability to cast aside the stigma that came with their role as mother while retaining the status as an equal participant in society.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZtfDZCsI3I/UT_JC45E2sI/AAAAAAAAEDQ/117M8WvFErc/s1600/Stalin+-+Generalissimo+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZtfDZCsI3I/UT_JC45E2sI/AAAAAAAAEDQ/117M8WvFErc/s200/Stalin+-+Generalissimo+-+Russian+Revolution+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин<br />
<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Vissarionovič Stalin</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the 1920s and into the Stalinist era, Soviet policy forced women to <i>curtail </i>their professional aspirations in order to fulfill their dual role as worker and housewife.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Competing requirements of family life limited female occupational mobility.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Women managed the role strain experienced during the Stalinist era either by either a restriction of professional aspirations or by limiting family size.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite pitfalls, unprecedented opportunities were available to lower-class women during this time. Women now had a voice in debates and the 'Zhenotdel', the women’s section of the Central Committee from 1919–1930, made strides during its operation to increase political, social and economic agency of Soviet women.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">THE CULTURE of the SOVIET UNION</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Bolsheviks had always been obsessed with the concept of 'culture' - in its broadest sense.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">'Culture' was something that had to be <i>mastered</i>, like virgin lands and foreign technology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But what was culture ?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the 1920s, there had been heated arguments among Communist intellectuals on this question.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Богда́нов<br />
Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Some,such as </span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Bogdanov,</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> stressed the essential class nature of culture, and therefore wanted to destroy 'bourgeois' culture and develop a new 'proletarian' culture. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">see (Proletkult) - below.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1918-1920, Bogdanov co-founded the proletarian art movement Proletkult and was its leading theoretician. In his lectures and articles, he called for the total destruction of the "old bourgeois culture" in favour of a "pure proletarian culture" of the future. It was also through Proletkult that Bogdanov's educational theories were given form with first the establishment of the Moscow Proletarian University. At first Proletkult, like other radical cultural movements of the era, received financial support from the Bolshevik government, but by 1920 the Bolshevik leadership grew hostile, and on December 1, 1920 Pravda published a decree denouncing Proletkult as a "petit bourgeois" organization operating outside of Soviet institutions and a haven for "socially alien elements". Later in that month, the president of Proletkult was removed, and Bogdanov lost his seat on its Central Committee. He withdrew from the organization completely in 1921-1922.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Other Bolsheviks, including Lenin</span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">and Lunacharsky thought that culture had a meaning</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> beyond class</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, and moreover that Russia had too little of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The 'proletarian' side achieved brief dominance in the years of Cultural Revolution but was then discredited.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">That left the alternative view, that culture was something immensely valuable and beyond class, in the ascendant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But it also left a tacit agreement that the meaning of culture was something that should not be probed too deeply.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Culture, like obscenity, was something you knew when you saw it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Tautologically, it was the complex of behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge that 'cultured' people had, and ignorant, 'backward' people lacked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Its positive value, like its nature, was self-evident.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In practice, we can distinguish several levels of the culture that people throughout the Soviet Union were busy mastering.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The first was the culture of basic hygiene - washing with soap, tooth-cleaning, not spitting on the floor - and elementary literacy, which was still lacking among a substantial part of the Soviet population.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here, the Soviet civilizing mission was construed in very similar terms to that of other European nations among backward native peoples, although it should be noted that in the Soviet case the 'backward elements' included Russian peasants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The second, emphasizing such things as table manners, behavior in public places, treatment of women, and basic knowledge of Communist ideology, was the level of culture required of any town-dweller.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The third, part of what had once been called 'bourgeois' or 'petty-bourgeois' culture, was the culture of propriety, involving good manners, correct speech, neat and appropriate dress, and some appreciation of the high culture of literature, art, music, and ballet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This was the level of culture implicitly expected of the managerial class, members of the new Soviet elite.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Members of the new elite - many of them recently upwardly mobile from the working class and peasantry - had always expected to acquire such cultural skills.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rfxzrjvvkas/ViY0hb8eS1I/AAAAAAAANY8/Y-HQfoymAUg/s1600/Study%2Bthe%2BGreat%2BPath%2Bof%2Bthe%2BParty%2B%2B-%2BThe%2BNew%2BSoviet%2BMan%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rfxzrjvvkas/ViY0hb8eS1I/AAAAAAAANY8/Y-HQfoymAUg/s320/Study%2Bthe%2BGreat%2BPath%2Bof%2Bthe%2BParty%2B%2B-%2BThe%2BNew%2BSoviet%2BMan%2B-%2BRussian%2BRevolution%2B-%2BPeter%2BCrawford.jpg" width="251" /></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A worker who mastered Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' as well as the 'History of the All-Union Communist Party: Short Course' </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">was a high achiever, deserving praise; the wife of a manager who was ignorant of Pushkin, and had never seen Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' was an embarrassment. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">История Всесоюзной Коммунистической Партии (Большевиков): Краткий курс -(History of the All-Union Communist Party: Short Course), is a propagandist textbook on the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, first published in 1938. Colloquially known as "the Short Course", it was the most widely disseminated book during the rule of Joseph Stalin and one of the most important representing the ideology of Stalinism, which Stalin himself in the book dubbed "Marxism-Leninism".</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Reading the nineteenth-century classics of Russian literature, keeping up with the news and the contemporary cultural scene, going to the theater, having your children learn the piano - this was all part of the culture expected of people in managerial and professional jobs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The managerial stratum had to meet higher demands in some respects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">From the mid 1930s, they were expected to dress in a way that distinguished them from blue-collar workers at the plant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>“The white collar and the clean shirt are necessary work tools for the fulfilment of production plans and the quality of products,”</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ordzhonikidze instructed his managers and engineers in heavy industry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He also told them to shave regularly, and ordered factories to provide extra mirrors so that personnel could monitor their appearance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Apart from observing these marks of status, managers also needed to acquire organizational skills, which should be applied not only in the workplace but in their own lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A newly appointed shop head at a ball-bearings plant described how he coped with his demanding job.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He started the day with gymnastics at 6.15.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After an eleven hour workday, he arrived home in the evening early enough for cultural recreation: visits to the theater and cinema, drives in the car.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He made a point of keeping up with technical literature in his field as well as with 'belles-lêttres'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The secret was his methodical nature and ability to stick to a routine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Women had different cultural imperatives than men at this level, since with the exception of the small (but prized) group of women who were themselves managers and professionals, most were full-time housewives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Their responsibility was to create a '<i>cultured</i>' home environment, in which the bread-winner could relax when he came from his demanding job.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'<i>Culture</i>' in this context implied propriety and good household organization, as well as comfort and tastefulness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Home life should run to schedule; apartments should be appointed with 'snowwhite' curtains, spotless tablecloths, and lampshades shedding 'soft light'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Cultural requirements at the this level included knowledge of how to dress for formal public occasions, conduct oneself at polite parties, and entertain guests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was often forms of sociability that most clearly distinguished '<i>the intelligentsia'</i>, by which was meant broadly the upper class, from the lower classes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“<i>The Party man is more advanced and more cultured because the Party educates him</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the 69-year existence of the Soviet Union.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was contributed by people of various nationalities from every of 15 union republics, although a slight majority of them were Russians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Soviet state supported cultural institutions, but also carried out strict censorship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> Years</span></div>
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The main feature of communist attitudes towards the arts and artists in the years 1918-1929 was <i>relative freedom</i> and significant <i>experimentation</i> with several different styles in an effort to find a distinctive Soviet style of art.</div>
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At first artists and writers were given a fair amount of freedom but many fled Russia because of their opposition to the Bolshevik government.</div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> was a <i>traditional </i>man in art.</div>
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He hated the new 'isms' (Futurism, Expressionism), and wanted art to be kept to traditional ways, yet he did nothing to discourage the spread what was described as of 'Futurism' in Russia.</div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> showed his support for the art scene, and wanted art to be <i>accessible to the masses</i>.</div>
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He nationalised many private art collections and created the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow.</div>
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Lenin wanted at the beginning to have full control of the art system and he appointed Izo-Narkompros to take control.</div>
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The 'Пролетку́льт' ('Proletkult') movement soon sprung up after the February Revolution.</div>
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Its members wanted to make art more sympathetic to the masses and to encourage more participation in the arts.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qFU-dNiZtA4/UVtS2fwwTMI/AAAAAAAAEio/gsZm0AL8gkI/s1600/Proletkult+-+1922+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qFU-dNiZtA4/UVtS2fwwTMI/AAAAAAAAEio/gsZm0AL8gkI/s200/Proletkult+-+1922+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="130" /></a><span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Пролетку́льт (Proletkult), a portmanteau of the Russian words "proletarskaya kultura" (proletarian culture), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution which arose in conjunction with the Russian Revolution of 1917. This organization, a federation of local cultural societies and avant-garde artists, was most prominent in the visual, literary, and dramatic fields. Proletkult aspired to radically modify existing artistic forms by creating a new, revolutionary working class aesthetic which drew its inspiration from the construction of modern industrial society in backwards, agrarian Russia.<br />Although funded by the People's Commissariat for Education of Soviet Russia, the Proletkult organization sought autonomy from state control, a demand which brought it into conflict with the Communist Party hierarchy and the Soviet state bureaucracy. Some top party leaders, such as <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">V.I. Lenin</a>, sought to concentrate state funding on the basic education of the working class rather than on whimsical artistic endeavors. He and others also saw in Proletkult a hotbed of bourgeois intellectuals and potential political oppositionists.<br />At its peak in 1920, Proletkult had 84,000 members actively enrolled in about 300 local studios, clubs, and factory groups, with an additional 500,000 members participating in its activities on a more casual basis.<br />Despite its formal termination as an organization, the Proletkult movement continued to influence and inform early Soviet culture. Historian Peter Kenez has noted the heavy influence of the Proletkult ethic in the work of pioneer Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, director of the classic films 'Strike' (1925), 'The Battleship Potemkin' (1926), and 'October': Ten Days That Shook the World' (1927):</span></div>
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Many new art studios were set up in many cities.</div>
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Its movement was <i>progressive</i> and its members <i>pro-revolutionary</i>.</div>
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In many respects, the NEP period was a time of relative freedom and experimentation for the social and cultural life of the Soviet Union.</div>
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The government tolerated a variety of trends in these fields, provided they were not overtly hostile to the regime.</div>
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In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated.</div>
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Communist writers Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time, but other authors, many of whose works were later repressed, published work lacking socialist political content.</div>
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Film, as a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, received encouragement from the state; much of cinematographer <i>Sergei Eisenstein</i>'s best work dates from this period.</div>
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Education, under Commissar Anatoliy Lunacharskiy, entered a phase of experimentation based on progressive theories of learning.</div>
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At the same time, the state expanded the primary and secondary school system and introduced night schools for working adults.</div>
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The quality of higher education suffered, however, because admissions policies preferred entrants from the proletarian class over those of bourgeois backgrounds, regardless of the applicants' qualifications.</div>
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Under NEP the state eased its active persecution of religion begun during war communism but continued to agitate on behalf of atheism.</div>
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The party supported the <i>Living Church reform movement </i>within the Russian Orthodox Church in hopes that it would undermine faith in the church, but the movement died out in the late 1920s.</div>
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In family life, attitudes generally became more permissive.</div>
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The state <i>legalized abortion</i>, and it made divorce progressively easier to obtain, whilst public cafeterias proliferated at the expense of private family kitchens.</div>
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In general, traditional attitudes toward such institutions as marriage were slowly changed by the party's promotion of revolutionary ideals.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Stalin Era</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arts during the rule of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin</a> were characterised by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of 'Socialist Realism', with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions (e.g., many notable Mikhail Bulgakov's works - however the full text of his The Master and Margarita was published only in 1966).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many writers were imprisoned, examples being Osip Mandelstam, Isaac Babel and Boris Pilnyak. Andrei Platonov worked as a caretaker and wasn't allowed to publish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The work of Anna Akhmatova was also condemned by the regime, although she notably refused the opportunity to escape to the West.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition to literature, musical expression was also repressed during the Stalin era, and at times the music of many Soviet composers was banned altogether.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dmitri Shostakovich experienced a particularly long and complex relationship with <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>, during which his music was denounced and prohibited twice, in 1936 and 1948 (see Zhdanov decree).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian had similar cases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Igor Stravinsky did not live in the Union, his music was officially considered formalist and anti-Soviet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Late Soviet Union</span></div>
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In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the Brezhnev era, a distinctive period of Soviet culture developed characterized by conformist public life and intense focus on personal life.</div>
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In the late Soviet Union Soviet popular culture was characterized by fascination with American popular culture as exemplified by the blue jeans craze.</div>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/paintings-of-ilya-repin.html" target="_blank">SOVIET REALISM</a></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z6pdlAZR1R0/UVf_k1SfrhI/AAAAAAAAETk/09uuQRJFmj4/s1600/Worker+and+Kolkhoz+Woman+(1939)+-+Vera+Mukhina+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z6pdlAZR1R0/UVf_k1SfrhI/AAAAAAAAETk/09uuQRJFmj4/s320/Worker+and+Kolkhoz+Woman+(1939)+-+Vera+Mukhina+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">'<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/paintings-of-ilya-repin.html" target="_blank">Socialist Realism</a>' is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style, having as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Unlike social realism, socialist realism often glorifies the roles of the meek and working class, and the struggle for its emancipation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In conjunction with the 'Socialist Classical Style of Architecture', Socialist Realism was the officially approved type of art in the Soviet Union for nearly sixty years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All material goods and means of production belonged to the <i>community</i> as a whole; this included means of producing art, which were also seen as <i>powerful propaganda tools.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks established an institution called <i>'<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/paintings-of-ilya-repin.html" target="_blank">Proletkult</a>' </i>(the Proletarian Cultural and Enlightenment Organizations) which sought to put all arts into the service of the dictatorship of the proletariat.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vC1GXxg8i5s/UVgCbrzgbLI/AAAAAAAAET0/mIWNvgm1ZdU/s1600/Tatlins+Tower+-+Constructivism+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vC1GXxg8i5s/UVgCbrzgbLI/AAAAAAAAET0/mIWNvgm1ZdU/s200/Tatlins+Tower+-+Constructivism+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tatlin's Tower</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vyx_Wi_ZUUw/UVgCuzqAFgI/AAAAAAAAET8/REpb-iPIE6o/s1600/Zuev+Workers'+Club+-+1928+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vyx_Wi_ZUUw/UVgCuzqAFgI/AAAAAAAAET8/REpb-iPIE6o/s200/Zuev+Workers'+Club+-+1928+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="165" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zuev Workers' Club - 1928</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the early years of the Soviet Union, Russian and Soviet artists embraced a wide variety of art forms under the auspices of Proletkult.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Revolutionary politics and radical non-traditional art forms were seen as complementary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In art, <i>Constructivism</i> flourished, long with a few examples of <i>Art Deco</i> - the most famous example being the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> Mausoleum in Red Square.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental building designed by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, that was never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern (the third international).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Monument is generally considered to be the defining expression of architectural constructivism, rather than a buildable project. Even if the gigantic amount of required steel had been available in revolutionary Russia, in the context of housing shortages and political turmoil, there are serious doubts about its structural practicality.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Symbolically, the tower was said to represent the aspirations of its originating country and a challenge to Eiffel Tower as the foremost symbol of modernity.Soviet critic Viktor Shklovsky is said to have called it a monument "made of steel, glass and revolution."</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8rzHsjBHC70/UVi5liWiFPI/AAAAAAAAEWQ/2okXHCJTAfU/s1600/mausoleum-sarcophagus+-++Lenin+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8rzHsjBHC70/UVi5liWiFPI/AAAAAAAAEWQ/2okXHCJTAfU/s320/mausoleum-sarcophagus+-++Lenin+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Interior of Lenin's Mausoleum</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eaMbIQH2ivI/UVgEHPonBGI/AAAAAAAAEUE/GWsSRDCQHY0/s1600/Original+(Temporary)+Mausoleum+-+Lenin+-+Red+Square+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eaMbIQH2ivI/UVgEHPonBGI/AAAAAAAAEUE/GWsSRDCQHY0/s200/Original+(Temporary)+Mausoleum+-+Lenin+-+Red+Square+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lenin's Mausoleum - 1924</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Мавзоле́й Ле́нина (Lenin's Mausoleum) also known as Lenin's Tomb, situated in Red Square in the center of Moscow, is the mausoleum that serves as the current resting place of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Lenin</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Aleksey Shchusev's diminutive but monumental granite structure incorporates some elements from ancient mausoleums, such as the Step Pyramid and the Tomb of Cyrus the Great.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dVZYmWpa1GI/UVi5-CJacaI/AAAAAAAAEWY/ydZOmZb7y9g/s1600/LeninsTomb+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dVZYmWpa1GI/UVi5-CJacaI/AAAAAAAAEWY/ydZOmZb7y9g/s320/LeninsTomb+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lenin Mausoleum - Red Square - Moscow</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Shortly after the death of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Ilich Lenin</a> in 1924, and despite the opposition of his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Soviet leaders built a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square to display his embalmed body. The architect Alexei V. Shchusev designed two temporary cube-shaped wooden structures and then a permanent red granite pyramid-like building that was completed in 1929. The top of the mausoleum held a tribune from which Soviet leaders addressed the public. This site became the ceremonial center of the Bolshevik state as Stalin and subsequent leaders appeared on the tribune to view parades on November 7, May 1, and other Soviet ceremonial occasions. When Josef V. Stalin died in 1953, his body was placed in the mausoleum next to Lenin's. In 1961, as Nikita Khrushchev's attack on Stalin's cult of personality intensified, Stalin's body was removed from the mausoleum and buried near the Kremlin wall. <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> and his tomb, however, remained the quintessential symbols of Soviet legitimacy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In poetry, the</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> non-traditional</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and the </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">avant-garde </i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">were often praised.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This, however, was rejected by some members of the Communist party, who did not appreciate modern styles such as <i>Impressionism</i> and <i>Cubism</i>, since these movements existed before the revolution and were thus associated with "<i>decadent bourgeois art</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Socialist realism was, to some extent, a reaction against the adoption of these "<i>decadent</i>" styles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was thought that the non-representative forms of art were <i>not understood</i> by the proletariat and could therefore not be used by the state for propaganda.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alexander Bogdanov argued that the radical reformation of society to Communist principles meant little if any bourgeois art would prove useful; some of his more radical followers advocated the destruction of libraries and museums.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a> <i>rejected</i> this philosophy, deplored the rejection of the beautiful because it was old, and explicitly described art as needing to call on its heritage:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>Proletarian culture must be the logical development of the store of knowledge mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist, landowner, and bureaucratic society</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Modern art styles appeared to refuse to draw upon this heritage, thus clashing with the long realist tradition in Russia and rendering the art scene complex.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even in Lenin's time, a cultural bureaucracy began to restrain art to fit propaganda purposes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leon Trotsky's arguments that a "<i>proletarian literature</i>" was un-Marxist, because the proletariat would lose its class characteristics in the transition to a classless society, however, did not prevail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Socialist realism became state policy in 1932 when Soviet leader <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin</a> promulgated the decree "On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Accordingly, the 'Moscow and Leningrad Union of Artists' was established in 1932, which brought the history of post-revolutionary art to a close.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Кузьма Сергеевич Петров-Водкин<br />
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin - 1927</td></tr>
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The epoch of Soviet art began.</div>
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In Leningrad well-known artist and art teacher <i>Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin</i> was elected the first president of the 'Union of Artists'.</div>
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This choice laid down the foundation of the lasting development of the 'Leningrad Union of Artists and Academy of Arts' as a unified creative body.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Кузьма Сергеевич Петров-Водкин (Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1878, Khvalynsk, now Saratov Oblast – February 15, 1939, Leningrad) was an important Russian and Soviet painter and writer.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Until the mid-1960s, Petrov-Vodkin was nearly forgotten in the Soviet Union after his curtailment of painting and turn towards writing.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Petrov-Vodkin writings were republished in the 1970s to a great acclaim, after a long period of neglect. His most famous literary works are the 3 self-illustrated autobiographical novellas: "Khlynovsk", "Euclidean Space" and "Samarcandia". The second of these is of particular importance, as it transmits Petrov-Vodkin worldview as an artist in great detail.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The largest collection of Petrov-Vodkin's works is in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, where, as of 2012, a whole room in the permanent exhibition is devoted to the painter.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Праздник Конституции<br />
Holiday of the Constitution (1930)<br />
Isaak Izrailevich Brodsky</td></tr>
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In 1931-2, the early emphasis on the "little man", and the anonymous laboring masses gave way to the "hero of labor", derived from the people but set apart by the scale of his deeds.</div>
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Writers were explicitly enjoined to develop "<i>heroization</i>".</div>
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This reflected a call for 'romantic art', which reflected the <i>ideal</i> rather than the realistic.</div>
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Furthermore, it should show one clear and unambiguous meaning.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Исаак Израилевич Бродский (</span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Izrailevich Brodsky Russian: 6 January 1884 [O.S. 25 December 1883] – August 14, 1939), was a Soviet painter whose work provided a blueprint for the art movement of Socialist Realism. He is known for his iconic portrayals of Lenin and idealized, carefully crafted paintings dedicated to the events of the Russian Civil War and Bolshevik Revolution.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He studied at Odessa Art Academy and the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. In 1916 he joined the Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Arts.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Brodsky was on good terms with many leading Russian painters, including his mentor, Ilya Repin. He was an avid art collector who donated numerous first-class paintings to museums in his native Ukraine and elsewhere. His superb art collection included important works by Repin, Vasily Surikov, Valentin Serov, Isaak Levitan, Mikhail Vrubel, and Boris Kustodiev. After his death Brodsky's apartment on Arts Square in St. Petersburg was declared a national museum. His art collection is still on exhibit there.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Brodsky was an Honoured Artist of the Russian SFSR and a member of the Union of Russian Artists. He was the first painter to be awarded the Order of Lenin. In 1934 he was appointed Director of the All-Russian Academy of Arts. From 1934–1939 he was also a head of personal Art workshop in institute, where his pupils included the well-known Soviet painters Nikolai Timkov, Alexander Laktionov, Yuri Neprintsev, Piotr Belousov, Piotr Vasiliev, Mikhail Kozell and others.</span><br />
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The first exhibition organized by the Leningrad Union of Artists took place in 1935.</div>
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Its participants – Piotr Buchkin, Rudolf Frentz, Alexander Samokhvalov, Isaak Brodsky, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Kazimir Malevich, Nikolai Dormidontov, Mikhail Avilov among them – became the founding fathers of the Leningrad school while their works formed one of its richest layers and the basis of the largest museum collections of Soviet painting of the 1930-1950s.</div>
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In 1932, the Leningrad Institute of Proletarian Visual Arts was transformed into the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (since 1944 named Ilya Repin).</div>
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The 15-year period of constant reformation of the country’s largest art institute came to an end.</div>
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Thus, basic elements of the Leningrad school – namely, a higher art education establishment of a new type and a unified professional union of Leningrad artists, were created by the end of 1932.</div>
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In 1934 Isaak Brodsky, a disciple of Ilya Repin was appointed director of the National Academy of Arts and the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Brodsky invited distinguished painters and pedagogues to teach at the Academy, namely Konstantin Yuon, Pavel Naumov, Boris Ioganson, Semion Abugov, Pavel Shillingovsky, Dmitry Kardovsky, Alexander Osmerkin, Nikolai Radlov, Yevgeny Lansere, Alexander Lubimov, Rudolf Frentz, Nikolai Petrov, Victor Sinaisky, Vasily Shukhaev, Dmitry Kiplik, Nikolai Punin, Vasily Meshkov, Mikhail Bernshtein, Efim Cheptsov, Ivan Bilibin, Matvey Manizer, Piotr Buchkin, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Alexander Karev, Leonid Ovsyannikov, Sergei Priselkov, Ivan Stepashkin, Konstantin Rudakov and others.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (1939)</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Рабо́чий и колхо́зница Rabochiy i Kolkhoznitsa - (Worker and Kolkhoz Woman)) is a famous landmark of monumental art, "t<i>he ideal and symbol of the Soviet epoch</i>", that represents a dynamic sculpture group of two figures with a sickle and a hammer raised over their heads (☭). It is 24.5 meters (78 feet) high, made from stainless steel by Vera Mukhina for the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, and subsequently moved to Moscow. The sculpture is an example of the 'socialist realistic' style, as well as 'Art Deco' style.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The worker holds aloft a hammer and the kolkhoz woman a sickle to form the hammer and sickle symbol.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The sculpture was originally created to crown the Soviet pavilion (architect: Boris Iofan) of the World's Fair. The organizers had placed the Soviet and German pavilions facing each other across the main pedestrian boulevard at the Trocadéro on the north bank of the Seine.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mukhina was inspired by her study of the classical Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the 'Victory of Samothrace' and 'La Marseillaise', François Rude's sculptural group for the 'Arc de Triomphe', to bring a monumental composition of 'socialist realist' confidence to the heart of Paris.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The symbolism of the two figures striding from West to East, as determined by the layout of the pavilion, was also not lost on the spectators.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Although as Mukhina said, her sculpture was intended "to continue the idea inherent in the building, and this sculpture was to be an inseparable part of the whole structure", after the fair the Rabochiy i Kolkhoznitsa was relocated to Moscow where it was placed just outside the Exhibition of Achievements of the People's Economy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1941, the sculpture earned Mukhina one of the initial batch of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> Prizes.</span><br />
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Art exhibitions of 1935–1940 disprove the claims that artistic life of the period was suppressed by the ideology and artists submitted entirely to what was then called ‘social order’.</div>
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A great number of landscapes, portraits, genre paintings exhibited at the time pursued purely technical purposes and were thus ostensibly free from any ideology.</div>
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Genre painting was also approached in a similar way.</div>
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In the post-war period between the mid-fifties and sixties, the Leningrad school of painting was approaching its vertex.</div>
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New generations of artists who had graduated from the Academy (Repin Institute of Arts) in the 1930s–50s were in their prime.</div>
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They were quick to present their art, they strived for experiments and were eager to appropriate a lot and to learn even more.</div>
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Their time and contemporaries, with all its images, ideas and dispositions found it full expression in portraits by Lev Russov, Victor Oreshnikov, Boris Korneev, Leonid Steele, Oleg Lomakin, Semion Rotnitsky, Vladimir Gorb, Samuil Nevelshtein, Engels Kozlov, in landscapes by Nikolai Timkov, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Sergei Osipov, Alexander Semionov, Arseny Semionov, Vasily Golubev, Nikolai Galakhov, Dmitry Maevsky, in genre paintings by Nikolai Pozdneev, Yuri Neprintsev, Yevsey Moiseenko, Andrey Milnikov, Nina Veselova, Mikhail Trufanov, Yuri Tulin, Mikhail Natarevich, and others.</div>
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In 1957, the first all-Russian Congress of Soviet artists took place in Moscow.</div>
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In 1960, the all-Russian Union of Artists was organized.</div>
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Accordingly, these events influenced the art life in Moscow, Leningrad and the provinces.</div>
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The scope of experimentation was broadened; in particular, this concerned the form and painterly and plastic language.<br />
Images of youths and students, rapidly changing villages and cities, virgin lands brought under cultivation, grandiose construction plans being realized in Siberia and the Volga region, great achievements of Soviet science and technology became the chief topics of the new painting.<br />
Heroes of the time – young scientists, workers, civil engineers, physicians – were made the most popular heroes of paintings.</div>
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In this period, life provided artists with plenty of thrilling topics, positive figures and images.</div>
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Legacy of many great artists and art movements became available for study and public discussion again.</div>
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This greatly broadened artists’ understanding of the <i>realist</i> method, and widened its possibilities.</div>
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It was the repeated renewal of the very conception of realism that made this style dominate Russian art throughout its history.</div>
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Realist tradition gave rise to many trends of contemporary painting, including painting from nature, "<i>severe style</i>" painting, and decorative art.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Bathing Soldiers' - 1959<br />
Dmitry Zhilinsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After the death of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> in 1953, political change came to the Soviet Union. Censorship remained in force and artistic themes and means of expression were still controlled by the Party. This period, however, is known as the Thaw. In fine art, literature and cinema, artists began to openly reflect on life, without attempting to idealise reality.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The romantic artists of the 1960s and 1970s constituted a movement known as the “severe style.” They travelled around the country, observing the new construction sites and the changes taking place in the towns and countryside. Their humanist works no longer promoted the Communist ideology. Instead, the masters of the “severe style” increasingly advocated reflections on various aspects of Soviet life.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'At The Sea' -1964<br />
Dmitry Zhilinsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Dmitry Zhilinsky - born in Volnovka, Krasnodar region, (25 May 1927). He trained in Moscow at the Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (1944–6) and the Surikov Art Institute (1946–51) under Pavel Korin and others, while Vladimir Favorsky was particularly influential in shaping his talent. Zhilinsky was a member of the generation of the so-called Severe (or Austere) Style (Rus. Surovyy Stil’), a movement in Russian art in the 1960s that sought to endow images with a new integrity and strict verism, thereby overcoming the decrepit standards of Socialist Realism, and he has always been distinguished by the refined aestheticism of his paintings.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Working in tempera on levkas (the gesso-like priming typical of Russian medieval painting), he drew stylistically on the heritage of the Italian Quattrocento and the German Renaissance.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Touches of a sort of <i>Art Nouveau</i> revival are also manifested in his precise, rhythmical use of line and in the exquisite details of his works.</span><br />
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However, during this period impressionism, post-impressionism, cubism and expressionism also had their fervent adherents and interpreters.</div>
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The Union of Soviet Writers was founded to control the output of authors, and the new policy was rubber-stamped at the Congress of Socialist Writers in 1934.</div>
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It was enforced ruthlessly in all spheres of artistic endeavor.</div>
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Artists who strayed from the official line were severely punished.</div>
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Form and content were often limited, with erotic, religious, abstract, surrealist and expressionist art being forbidden.</div>
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Formal experiments, including internal dialogue, stream of consciousness, nonsense, free-form association and cut-up were also disallowed.</div>
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This was either because they were "decadent", unintelligible to the proletariat or counter-revolutionary.</div>
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In response to the 1934 Congress in Russia, the most important American writers of the left gathered in the First American Writers Congress of 26, 27 April 1935 in Chicago, at the meetings which were supported by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a>.<br />
Waldo David Frank was its first president See the League of American Writers which was backed by the Communist Party USA.</div>
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A number of the novelists balked at the control, and the League broke up at the invasion of the Soviet Union by German forces.</div>
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The restrictions were relaxed somewhat after <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin'</a>s death in 1953, but the state still kept a tight rein on personal artistic expression.</div>
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This caused many artists to choose to go into exile, for example the Odessa Group from the city of that name. Independent-minded artists that remained continued to feel the hostility of the state.</div>
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In 1974, for instance, a show of unofficial art in a field near Moscow was broken up, and the artworks destroyed with a water cannon and bulldozers (see Bulldozer Exhibition).</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost and perestroika facilitated an explosion of interest in alternative art styles in the late 1980s, but socialist realism remained in limited force as the official state art style until as late as 1991.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Origins</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The initial tendencies toward socialist realism date from the mid-19th century.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They include revolutionary literature in Great Britain (the poetry of the Chartist movement), Germany (Herwegh, Freiligrath, and G. Weerth), and France (the literature of the Paris Commune and Pottier's "Internationale.")<br />Socialist realism emerged as a literary method in the early 20th century in Russia, especially in the works of Gorky.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was also apparent in the works of writers like Kotsiubinsky, Rainis, Akopian, and Edvoshvili. Following Gorky, writers in several countries combined the realistic depiction of life with the expression of a socialist world view.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They included Barbusse, Andersen Nexø, and John Reed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The political aspect of socialist realism was, in some respects, a continuation of pre-Soviet state policy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Censorship and attempts to control the content of art did not begin with the Soviets, but were a long-running feature of Russian life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsarist government also appreciated the potentially disruptive effect of art and required all books to be cleared by the censor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writers and artists in 19th century Imperial Russia became quite skilled at evading censorship by making their points without spelling it out in so many words, however, Soviet censors were not easily evaded. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Socialist realism had its roots in neoclassicism and the traditions of realism in Russian literature of the 19th century that described the life of simple people. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was exemplified by the aesthetic philosophy of Maxim Gorky. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The work of the Peredvizhniki (The Itinerants or Wanderers), a Russian realist movement of the late 19th / early 20th centuries), Jacques-Louis David and Ilya Yefimovich Repin were notable influences. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Socialist Realism was a product of the Soviet system. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whereas in market societies professional artists earned their living selling to, or being commissioned by rich individuals or the Church, in Soviet society not only was the market suppressed, there were few if any individuals able to patronize the arts and only one institution – the State itself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence artists became state employees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NXE_LeFBpdo/UVqg9LyT45I/AAAAAAAAEgA/p9FNTRZnPzY/s1600/Moscow+metro+Art+-+Soviet+Emblem+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NXE_LeFBpdo/UVqg9LyT45I/AAAAAAAAEgA/p9FNTRZnPzY/s200/Moscow+metro+Art+-+Soviet+Emblem+-+Soviet+Culture+and+Society+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" width="200" /></a>As such the State set the parameters for what it employed them to do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was expected of the artist was that he/she be formally qualified and to reach a standard of competence, however, whilst this rewarded basic competency, it did not provide an incentive to excel, resulting in a stultification similar to that in other spheres of Soviet society. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The State, after the Congress of 1934, laid down four rules for what became known as "Socialist Realism":</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Moscow Metro Mosaic</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them. <br />Typical: scenes of every day life of the people. <br />Realistic: in the representational sense. <br />Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party. <br />Socialist realism held that successful art depicts and glorifies the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress. <br />The 'Statute of the Union of Soviet Writers' in 1934 stated that socialist realism is the basic method of Soviet literature and literary criticism. <br />It demands of the artist the truthful, historically concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development, moreover, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic representation of reality must be linked with the task of ideological transformation and education of workers in the spirit of socialism. <br />Its purpose was to elevate the common worker, whether factory or agricultural, by presenting his life, work, and recreation as admirable. <br />In other words, its goal was to educate the people in the goals and meaning of Communism. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soviet Miners</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ultimate aim was to create what Lenin called "an entirely new type of human being": <br />The 'New Soviet Man' (see above). <br />Stalin described the practitioners of socialist realism as "engineers of souls". <br />The "realism" part is important. <br />Soviet art at this time aimed to depict the worker as he truly was, carrying his tools. <br />In a sense, the movement mirrors the course of American and Western art, where the everyday human being became the subject of the novel, the play, poetry, and art. <br />The proletariat was at the center of communist ideals; hence, his life was a worthy subject for study. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was an important shift away from the aristocratic art produced under the Russian tsars of previous centuries, but had much in common with the late-19th century fashion for depicting the social life of the common people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In practice, this entailed realistic depictions of objects, so that ordinary people could understand; a theater could not use a box to represent a chair. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soviet Soldier</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The artist could not, however, portray life just as he saw it; because everything that reflected poorly on Communism had to be omitted, and indeed, people who were not simply good or evil could not be used as characters. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">All characters were poured into a heroic mold, sometimes termed 'heroic realism'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This reflected a call for heroic and romantic art, which reflected the ideal rather than the realistic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Maxim Gorky urged that one obtained realism by extracting the basic idea from reality, but by adding the potential and desirable to it, one added romanticism with deep revolutionary potential; "critical realism" had been appropriate for older, corrupt societies, but criticism of society must now give way to optimism.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pYtVVeJNISw/UVfmeRE_TPI/AAAAAAAAES0/aY8pGis8TS0/s1600/Heroic+Portrait+-+Joseph+Stalin+-+Socialist+Realism+-++Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pYtVVeJNISw/UVfmeRE_TPI/AAAAAAAAES0/aY8pGis8TS0/s200/Heroic+Portrait+-+Joseph+Stalin+-+Socialist+Realism+-++Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="136" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Joseph Stalin</a></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">rt was filled with health and happiness; paintings teemed with busy industrial and agricultural scenes, and sculptures depicted workers, sentries, and schoolchildren.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Literature filled with "positive heroes".<br />Compared to the eclectic variety of 20th century Western art, socialist realism often resulted in a predictable range of artistic products.<br />Painters would depict happy, muscular peasants and workers in factories and collective farms; during the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">Stalin</a> period, they also produced numerous heroic portraits of the dictator to serve his cult of personality.<br />Industrial and agricultural landscapes were popular subjects, glorifying the achievements of the Soviet economy.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">THE SOVIET METRO</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Novelists were expected to produce uplifting stories in a manner consistent with the Marxist doctrine of dialectical materialism.<br />Composers were to produce rousing, vivid music that reflected the life and struggles of the proletariat. It was argued that mere photographic replication of facts was merely "naturalism", while socialist realism was distinguished by a will and purpose on part of the artist, and his recognition of these facts as part of a vision of the whole. <br />Even diarists would attempt to fit their accounts of their daily lives into suitable purpose-driven, future-oriented accounts. <br />Socialist realism thus demanded close adherence to party doctrine, and has often been criticized as detrimental to the creation of true, unfettered art – or as being little more than a means to censor artistic expression. <br />Not all Marxists accepted the necessity of socialist realism (Marx's, Engels' and Trotsky's views on art and culture were very liberal and may have balked at the propagandism of Socialist realism themselves). Its establishment as state doctrine in the 1930s had rather more to do with internal Communist Party politics than classic Marxist imperatives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Notable works and artists</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maxim Gorky's novel 'Mother' is usually considered to have been the first socialist realist novel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gorky was also a major factor in the school's rapid rise, and his pamphlet, 'On Socialist Realism', essentially lays out the needs of <i>Soviet Art</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other important works of literature include Fyodor Gladkov's 'Cement' (1925), Nikolai Ostrovsky's 'How the Steel Was Tempered' and Mikhail Sholokhov's two volume epic, 'Quiet Flows the Don' (1934) and 'The Don Flows Home to the Sea' (1940).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yury Krymov's novel 'Tanker "Derbent"' (1938) portrays Soviet merchant seafarers being transformed by the '<i>Stakhanovite'</i> movement.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In Soviet history and iconography, a Stakhanovite (стахановец) follows the example of Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, employing hard work or Taylorist efficiencies to over-achieve at work.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Stakhanovite movement began during the second 5-year plan in 1935 as a new stage of the socialist competition. The Stakhanovite movement was named after Aleksei Stakhanov, who had mined 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours (14 times his quota), however, his record would soon be "broken" by his followers. On February 1, 1936, it was reported that Nikita Izotov had mined 607 tons of coal in a single shift.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stakhanov and other "model workers" were promoted in the press, literature and film, and other workers were urged to emulate their heroic examples. What is more, the achievements of Stakhanovites served as an argument in favor of increasing of work quotas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Martin Andersen Nexø developed socialist realism in his own way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His creative method was characterized by a combination of publicistic passion, a critical view of capitalist society, and a steadfast striving to bring reality into accord with socialist ideals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The novel Pelle, the Conqueror is considered to be a classic of socialist realism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The novel 'Ditte, Daughter of Man' had a working-class woman as its heroine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He battled against the enemies of socialism in the books Two Worlds, and Hands Off!.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The novels of Louis Aragon such as 'The Real World' depicts the working class as a rising force of the nation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He published two books of documentary prose, 'The Communist Man'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the collection of poems 'A Knife in the Heart Again', Aragon criticizes the penetration of American imperialism into Europe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The novel 'The Holy Week' depicts the artist's path toward the people against a broad social and historical background.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hanns Eisler composed many workers' songs, marches, and ballads on current political topics such as 'Song of Solidarity', 'Song of the United Front', and 'Song of the Comintern'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was a founder of a new style of revolutionary song for the masses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also composed works in larger forms such as 'Requiem for Lenin'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eisler's most important works include the cantatas 'German Symphony', 'Serenade of the Age' and 'Song of Peace'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eisler combines features of revolutionary songs with varied expression.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His symphonic music is known for its complex and subtle orchestration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Closely associated with the rise of the labor movement was the development of the revolutionary song, which was performed at demonstrations and meetings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among the most famous of the revolutionary songs are 'The Internationale' and 'Warszawianka'. Notable songs from Russia include 'Boldly, Comrades, in Step', 'Workers' Marseillaise', and 'Rage, Tyrants'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Folk and revolutionary songs influenced the Soviet mass songs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mass song was a leading genre in Soviet music, especially during the 1930s and the war. The mass song influenced other genres, including the art song, opera, and film music.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most popular mass songs include Dunaevsky's 'Song of the Homeland', Blanter's 'Katiusha', Novikov's 'Hymn of Democratic Youth of the World', and Aleksandrov's 'Sacred War'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the early 1930s, Soviet filmmakers applied socialist realism in their work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Notable films include 'Chapaev', which shows the role of the people in the history-making process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The theme of revolutionary history was developed in films such as 'The Youth of Maxim', by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, Shchors by Dovzhenko, and 'We are from Kronstadt' by E. Dzigan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The shaping of the 'new man' under socialism was a theme of films such as 'A Start Life' by N. Ekk, 'Ivan' by Dovzhenko, 'Valerii Chkalov' by M. Kalatozov and the film version of 'Tanker "Derbent"' (1941).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some films depicted the part of peoples of the Soviet Union against foreign invaders: 'Alexander Nevsky' by <i>Eisenstein</i>, Minin and Pozharsky by Pudvokin, and Bogdan Khmelnitsky by Savchenko.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алекса́ндр Не́вский - Alexander Nevsky is a 1938 historical drama film directed by Sergei Eisenstein. It depicts the attempted invasion of Novgorod in the 13th century by the Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire and their defeat by Prince Alexander, known popularly as Alexander Nevsky (1220–1263).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Eisenstein made the film in association with Dmitri Vasilyev and with a script co-written with Pyotr Pavlenko; they were assigned to ensure that Eisenstein did not stray into "<i>formalism</i>" and to facilitate shooting on a reasonable timetable. It was produced by Goskino via the Mosfilm production unit, with Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role and a musical score by <i>Sergei Prokofiev</i>, 'Alexander Nevsky' was the first and most popular of Eisenstein's three sound films. In 1941 Eisenstein, Pavlenko, Cherkasov and Abrikosov were awarded the Stalin Prize for the film.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soviet politicians were the subjects in films such as Yutkevich's trilogy of movies about Lenin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The painter Aleksandr Deineka provides a notable example for his expressionist and patriotic scenes of the Second World War, collective farms, and sports.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yuri Pimenov, Boris Ioganson and Geli Korzev have also been described as "<i>unappreciated masters of twentieth-century realism</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another well-known practitioner was Fyodor Pavlovich Reshetnikov.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Socialist realism had a significant impact on art in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The works of authors such as Gorky, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov, Tvardovsky, Fadeyev, Leonov, and many other writers became established classics, achieved <i>worldwide renown</i>, and have become a firm part of the world's cultural heritage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Socialist realism was credited for helping talent to develop and art to flourish in many forms and for making it more accessible to the masses.<br />Mikhail Bulgakov wrote his work, 'The Master and Margarita', in secret, despite earlier successes such as 'White Guard'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1936 Dmitri Shostakovich was criticized for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in a Pravda article entitled "<i>Muddle instead of Music</i>",.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sergei Prokofiev too found his musical language increasingly restricted in the years after his permanent return to the Soviet Union in 1935 (especially in the wake of the 1948 Zhdanov Decree), although he continued to compose until the end of his life five years later.<br />The political doctrine behind socialist realism also underlay the pervasive censorship of Communist societies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apart from obvious political considerations that saw works such as those of George Orwell being banned, access to foreign art and literature was also restricted on aesthetic grounds. Bourgeois art, and all forms of <i>experimentalism</i> and<i> formalism</i> were denounced as <i>decadent, degenerate and pessimistic</i>, and therefore anti-Communist in principle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The works of James Joyce were particularly harshly condemned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The net effect was that it was not until the 1980s that the general public in the Communist countries were able to freely access many works of Western art and literature.</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-32248155543683247572013-03-29T15:13:00.002-07:002014-02-28T17:01:17.972-08:00Joseph Stalin - The Great Purge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 33px;"><b>Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 33px;"><b>Joseph Stalin - The Great Purge</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Purge was a series of repressive measures in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and unaffiliated persons in an atmosphere of widespread surveillance and suspicion of "saboteurs."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Proportionately, most of the victims of the Great Purge were Old Bolsheviks.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union</span><br />
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Purges (or simply purges, Russian: "чистка", chistka – "cleansing") with a "small-p" purge was one of the key rituals during which a periodic review of party members was conducted to get rid of the "<i>undesirables</i>".</div>
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Such purges were conducted especially during the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Union "<i>bringing excitement into the workday bureaucratic routine</i>".<br />
Such reviews would start with a short autobiography from the reviewed person and then interrogation of him or her by the purge commission as well as the attending audience.</div>
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The first major purge of the 'Communist Party of the Soviet Union' ranks was performed by Bolsheviks as early as 1921.</div>
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About 220,000 members were purged or left the party in 1921.</div>
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The purge was justified by the necessity to get rid of the members who joined the Party simply to be on the winning side.</div>
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The major criteria were social origins (members of working classes were normally accepted without question) and contributions to the revolutionary cause.</div>
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The first purge of the Joseph Stalin era was performed in 1929–1930 according to the resolution of the XVI Party Conference.</div>
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Over 10% of the Party members were purged.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Алексе́й Ива́нович Ры́ков<br />
Alexey Ivanovich Rykov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Алексе́й Ива́нович Ры́ков - Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 1881 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924–29 and 1924–30 respectively.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He played an active part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. Months prior to the October Revolution of 1917, he became a member of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and was elected to the Bolshevik Party Central Committee in July–August of the same year, during the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party. Rykov served many roles in the new government, starting October–November (old style) as People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on the first roster of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), which was chaired by Lenin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During the Russian Civil War (1918–20), Rykov oversaw the implementation of the "War Communism" economic policy, and helped oversee the distribution of food to the Red Army and Navy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov—along with Lev Kamenev—was elected by the <i>Sovnarkom</i> to serve as Deputy Chairman to Lenin. While both Rykov and Kamenev were Lenin's deputies, Kamenev was the acting Premier of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lenin died from a fourth stroke on January 21, 1924 and on February 2 Rykov was chosen by the Council of People's Commissars as <i>Premier</i> of both the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and of the Soviet Union, which he served as until May 18, 1929 and December 19, 1930, respectively. On December 21, 1930 he was removed from the Politburo.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">From 1931-37 Rykov served as People's Commissar of Communications on the Council he formerly chaired. On February 17, 1937—at a meeting of the Central Committee—he was arrested with Nikolai Bukharin. In March 1938 both were found guilty of treason and executed.</span><br />
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At the same time a significant number of new members, industrial workers, joined the Party.</div>
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The next systematic Party purge in the Soviet Union was declared in December 1932 to be performed during 1933.</div>
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During this period new memberships were suspended.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин<br />
Nikolai Bukharin</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (9 October [O.S. 27 September] 1888 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo (1924–1929) and Central Committee (1917–1937), chairman of the Communist International (Comintern, 1926–1929), and the editor in chief of Pravda (1918–1929), the journal Bolshevik (1924–1929), Izvestia (1934–1936), and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He authored Imperialism and World Economy (1918), The ABC of Communism (1919. co-authored with Yevgeni Preobrazhensky), and Historical Materialism (1921) among others. Initially a supporter of Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin's death, he came to oppose a large number of Stalin's policies and was one of Stalin's most prominent victims during the "Moscow Trials" and purges of the Old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s.</span><br />
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A joint resolution of the Party Central Committee and Central Revision Committee specified the criteria for purge and called for setting special Purge Commissions, to which every communist had to report.</div>
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Also, this purge concerned members of the Central Committee, Central Revision Committee, which previously were immune to purges, because they were elected at Party Congresses.<br />
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In particular, <i>Nikolai Bukharin</i>, <i>Alexei Ivanovich Rykov</i>, and <i>Mikhail Tomsky</i> had to try hard to defend themselves during this purge.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xaIsHUeD12k/UWSUwQjaA8I/AAAAAAAAE8A/6iOItJ8B4XQ/s1600/Michail+Tomski+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xaIsHUeD12k/UWSUwQjaA8I/AAAAAAAAE8A/6iOItJ8B4XQ/s200/Michail+Tomski+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="157" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Михаи́л Па́влович То́мский<br />
Mikhail Tomsky</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Михаи́л Па́влович То́мский - Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (born Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov – October 31, 1880 – August 22, 1936) was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader. He was the Soviet leader of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tomsky as head of the trade union movement, 1920s</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">General Secretary of the Red International of Labour Unions</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tomsky attempted to form a trade union at his factory in St. Petersburg resulting in his dismissal.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become a socialist and join the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904 and eventually join the Bolshevik faction of the party.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tomsky headed the State Publishing House from May 1932 until August 1936, when he was accused of terrorist connections during the First Moscow Trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev. Rather than face arrest by the NKVD, Tomsky committed suicide by gunshot in his dacha in Bolshevo, near Moscow. He was posthumously accused of high treason and other crimes during the third (March 1938) show trial of Bukharin, Rykov and others. </span><br />
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At this time, of 1.9 million members, about 18% were purged.</div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In itself, the term was innocent enough: within 1921–1933 in the Soviet Union, for example, some 800,000 people were purged or left the Party, but suffered no worse fate, but from 1936 onward, during the 'Great Purge', the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment or even execution.</span><br />
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Following Stalin's death, purges as systematic campaigns of expulsion from the Party stopped and loss of the Party membership meant only loss of possible <i>nomenklatura privileges</i>.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">номенклату́ра - the nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Virtually all were members of the Communist Party.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Some authors who opposed the Soviet regime, such as Milovan Đilas, critically defined them as a new class. Trotskyism uses the term caste rather than class, because they saw the Soviet Union as a <i>degenerated </i>workers' state, not a new class society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Introduction</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x6_5KoumJBQ/UWSXmRzVORI/AAAAAAAAE8I/zStB3hcViZM/s1600/Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x6_5KoumJBQ/UWSXmRzVORI/AAAAAAAAE8I/zStB3hcViZM/s200/Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="182" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stalin</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term "repression" was officially used to describe the prosecution of people considered counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the people by the leadership of the Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The purge was motivated by the desire to remove dissenters from the Communist Party and to consolidate the authority of Joseph Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most public attention was focused on the purge of the leadership of the Communist Party, as well as of government bureaucrats and leaders of the armed forces, most of whom were Party members.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: intelligentsia, peasants and especially those branded as "too rich for a peasant" (kulaks), and professionals.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qeMiHdEjnNk/UV4JvWWr1TI/AAAAAAAAEm4/TGSUPADSQjQ/s1600/Emblema_NKVD.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qeMiHdEjnNk/UV4JvWWr1TI/AAAAAAAAEm4/TGSUPADSQjQ/s200/Emblema_NKVD.png" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NKVD<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A series of NKVD (the Soviet secret police - later known as the KGB) operations affected a number of national minorities, accused of being "fifth column" communities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A number of purges were officially explained as an elimination of the possibilities of sabotage and espionage, mostly by a fictitious "Polish Military Organisation" and, consequently, many victims of the purge were ordinary Soviet citizens of Polish origin.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZR7FiM6U4E/UWSbzp6CSWI/AAAAAAAAE8Y/rtPt4FuVNfc/s1600/Nikita+khrushchev+1965+speech+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZR7FiM6U4E/UWSbzp6CSWI/AAAAAAAAE8Y/rtPt4FuVNfc/s200/Nikita+khrushchev+1965+speech+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+.jpg" height="138" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nikita Khrushchev 1956 Speech</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Nikita </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Khrushchev's 1956 speech, "</span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the Personality Cult and its Consequences</i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">," and more recent findings,</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> a great number of accusations, notably those presented at the Moscow show trials, were based on forced confessions, often obtained by torture, and on loose interpretations of Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code, which dealt with counter-revolutionary crimes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Due legal process, as defined by Soviet law in force at the time, was often largely replaced with summary proceedings by NKVD troikas.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hundreds of thousands of victims were accused of various political crimes (espionage, wrecking, sabotage, anti-Soviet agitation, conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups); they were quickly executed by shooting, or sent to the Gulag labor camps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many died at the penal labor camps of starvation, disease, exposure, and overwork.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other methods of dispatching victims were used on an experimental basis.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One secret policeman, for example, <i>gassed people to death</i> in batches in the back of a specially adapted airtight van.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ks21vuYnzbs/UWSZ6LI3RxI/AAAAAAAAE8Q/zJp9gl-BYHY/s1600/Genrikh+Yagoda+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ks21vuYnzbs/UWSZ6LI3RxI/AAAAAAAAE8Q/zJp9gl-BYHY/s200/Genrikh+Yagoda+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+.jpg" height="200" width="176" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Genrikh Yagoda<br />
Генрих Григорьевич Ягода</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Purge was started under the NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda, but the height of the campaigns occurred while the NKVD was headed by Nikolai Yezhov, from September 1936 to August 1938, hence the name Yezhovshchina.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (7 November 1891–15 March 1938), born Enokh Gershevich Ieguda (Russian: Енох Гершевич Иегуда) was a director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised the arrest, show trial, and execution of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, events that manifested the beginnings of the Great Purge.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Like many Soviet secret policemen of the 1930s, Yagoda was ultimately a victim of the Purge himself. He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in favor of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936, and arrested in 1937. Charged with the crimes of wrecking, espionage, Trotskyism, and conspiracy, Yagoda was a defendant at the Trial of the Twenty-One, the last of the major Soviet show trials of the 1930s. Following his confession at the trial, Yagoda was found guilty and shot.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D6e2D_z7ErE/UWSc6l1w3fI/AAAAAAAAE8g/HcvbFkIFwS4/s1600/Nikolai+Yezhov+-+NKVD+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D6e2D_z7ErE/UWSc6l1w3fI/AAAAAAAAE8g/HcvbFkIFwS4/s200/Nikolai+Yezhov+-+NKVD+-+Stalin+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="200" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Никола́й Иванович Ежо́в<br />
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The campaigns were carried out according to the general line, and often by direct orders, of the Party Politburo headed by Stalin.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Никола́й Иванович Ежо́в - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov - May 1, 1895 – February 4, 1940 was the chairman of the Soviet secret police NKVD who conducted Great Purge in the 1930s under Joseph Stalin. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovshchina" (Russian: Ежовщина, "the Yezhov era"), a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge, Yezhov became its victim. He was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Great Purge has provoked numerous debates about its purpose, scale and mechanisms.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 1950s American scholars proposed a structural explanation of the 'Great Terror': as a totalitarian system, Stalin’s regime had to maintain its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty, and recurrent random purging provided the mechanism (Brzezinski, 1958).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Robert Conquest emphasized Stalin’s paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of “Old Bolsheviks”, and analyzed the carefully planned and systematic destruction of the Communist Party leadership as the first step toward terrorizing the entire population. In the mid-1980s, John Arch Getty, an American historian of the revisionist school, contested Conquest’s interpretation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He argued that the exceptional scale of the purges was the result of strong tensions between Stalin and regional Communist Party bosses who, in order to deflect the terror that was being directed at them, found innumerable scapegoats on which to carry out repressions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this way, they demonstrated their vigilance and intransigence in the struggle against the common enemy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, the 'Great Terror' developed into a “flight into chaos” (Getty, 1985).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Historians of both schools focused on the purge of political, intellectual, economic or military elites, and the struggle between the center and regional party cliques.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mainly because of the scarcity of information on the subject, neither studied the mechanisms, organization, implementation of mass arrests and mass executions, or the sociology of the victims, who represented a much wider group than party elites or intelligentsia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The previous theories have been fundamentally challenged by new information since the opening of the Soviet archives after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, which allowed more research in new areas of materials.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scholars have come to view the 'Great Purge' as a crucial moment – or rather the culmination – of a vast social engineering campaign started at the beginning of the 1930s (Hagenloh, 2000; Shearer, 2003; Werth, 2003).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It claimed about 1% of the USSR adult population as its victims, and many children suffered as collateral damage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the “<i>social disorder</i>” caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933, as well as the massive and<i> uncontrolled migration</i> of millions of peasants into cities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>threat of war</i> heightened Stalin’s perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a <i>mythical</i> “<i>fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies.</i>”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term "purge" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression purge of the Party ranks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people, but from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин<br />
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hDdevFAIYx8/UWP4zRwf9NI/AAAAAAAAE6U/G8K2WzGYrJI/s1600/Lev+Trotsky+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hDdevFAIYx8/UWP4zRwf9NI/AAAAAAAAE6U/G8K2WzGYrJI/s200/Lev+Trotsky+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="126" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Leon Trotsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by<i> Leon Trotsky</i> and <i>Nikolai Bukharin</i>, respectively.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (October [O.S. 27 September] 1888 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo (1924–1929) and Central Committee (1917–1937), chairman of the Communist International (Comintern, 1926–1929), and the editor in chief of Pravda (1918–1929), the journal Bolshevik (1924–1929), Izvestia (1934–1936), and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He authored Imperialism and World Economy (1918), The ABC of Communism (1919. co-authored with Yevgeni Preobrazhensky), and Historical Materialism (1921) among others. Initially a supporter of Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin's death, he came to oppose a large number of Stalin's policies and was one of Stalin's most prominent victims during the "Moscow Trials" and purges of the Old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following the Civil War and reconstruction of the Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Communists no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin's opponents on both sides of the political spectrum chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These tendencies may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 'Ryutin Affair' seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the new form of Party organization, the 'Politburo', and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of communist ideology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious "<i>old guard</i>" of revolutionaries.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Béla Kun</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский<br />
Mikhail Tukhachevsky</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the purges began, the government (through the NKVD) shot Communist heroes, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky and <i>Béla Kun</i>, as well as the majority of Lenin's Politburo, for disagreements in policy.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский - Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (February 16 [O.S. February 4] 1893 – June 12, 1937) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union, commander in chief of the Red Army (1925–1928), and one of the most prominent victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tukhachevsky - Jewish - was born at Alexandrovskoye, Safonovo, into a family of <i>hereditary nobles</i>. He graduated from the Aleksandrovskoye Military School in 1914, joining the Semyenovsky Guards Regiment.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was known for using summary execution of hostages and poison gas in his suppression of peasant uprisings.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Béla Kun (1886-1938), born Béla Kohn, was a Jewish Hungarian revolutionary who led the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Following the fall of the Hungarian revolution, Kun emigrated to the Soviet Union, where he worked as a functionary in the Communist International bureaucracy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During the Great Terror of the late 1930s, Kun was arrested, interrogated, tried, and executed in quick succession. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ramón Mercader</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NKVD attacked the supporters, friends, and family of these "<i>heretical</i>" Marxists, whether they lived in Russia or not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The NKVD nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before killing him in Mexico; the NKVD agent Ramón Mercader was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov, under the personal orders of Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1934, Stalin used the murder of Sergey Kirov as a pretext to launch the 'Great Purge', in which about a million people perished.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among the moderates.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify;">Kirov</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 1934 party congress elected Kirov to the central committee with only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the former oppositionists, an ever-growing group according to their determination, with Kirov's murder as well as a growing list of other offences, including treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Серге́й Миро́нович Ки́ров - Sergei Mironovich Kirov (27 March [O.S. 15 March] 1886 – 1 December 1934), born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kirov had a Jewish wife - which troubled Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Most historians place the blame for his assassination at the hands of Stalin, and believe the NKVD organised its execution. Kirov's death served as one of the pretexts for Stalin's escalation of repression against dissident elements of the Party, culminating in the Great Purge of the late 1930s in which many of the Old Bolsheviks were arrested, expelled from the Party, and executed. Complicity in Kirov's assassination was a common charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the era.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The cities of Kirov, Kirovohrad, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad, as well as a few Kirovsks, were renamed in Kirov's honor after his assassination. Following the collapse of Soviet Union Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names: Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "<i>fifth column</i>" in case of a war.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов<br />
Vyacheslav Molotov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов - Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. </span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Molotov had a Jewish wife. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Premier) from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. Molotov served for several years as First Deputy Premier in Joseph Stalin's cabinet. He retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Nazi Germany and an expansionist Japan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet press portrayed the country as threatened from within by Fascist spies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the October Revolution onward, Lenin had used <i>repression </i>against perceived enemies of the Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating <i>social control</i>. Periods of heightened repression included the '<i>Red Terror</i>', the deportation of <i>kulaks</i> who <i>opposed</i> collectivization, and a <i>severe famine in Ukraine</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kulaks - from the Russian for "fist", by extension "tight-fisted"; kurkuls in Ukraine, also used in Russian texts in Ukrainian contexts) were a category of <i>relatively affluent</i> farmers in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged from the peasantry and became wealthy following the Stolypin reform, which began in 1906. During 1929-1933, the Stalin leadership's total campaign to collectivize the peasantry meant that "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres more than their neighbors" were being labeled 'kulaks'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to the political theory of Marxism-Leninism of the early 20th century, the kulaks were <i>class enemies</i> of the poorer peasants.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Vladimir Lenin described them as "<i>bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who batten on famine</i>.”</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Marxism-Leninism had intended a revolution to liberate poor peasants and farm laborers alongside the proletariat (urban and industrial workers).</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition, the planned economy of Soviet Bolshevism required the collectivization of farms and land to allow industrialization or conversion to large-scale agricultural production.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In practice, these Marxist-Leninist theories led to the <i>ruination of the agricultural economy</i> as government officials <i>violently seized</i> kulak farms and <i>murdered resistors</i>; others were deported to labor camps.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Beginning in 1932-33, <i>great famines </i>ensued, with <i>several million dying </i>in the Ukraine famine alone.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Documents uncovered in recent decades from this time period show that "the Stalin leadership" was aware of what was occurring in the countryside, and were actually using the "famine as a means of <i>terror, and of revenge, against the peasantry</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A distinctive feature of the 'Great Purge' was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims of the repression.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Due to the scale of the terror, there were substantial victims of the purges were Communist Party members and office-holders.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of the <i>whole society</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following events are used for the demarcation of the period.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second Moscow Trial, 1936.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1937 introduction of NKVD troikas for implementation of "revolutionary justice".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1937mm, passage of Article 58-14 about "counter-revolutionary sabotage".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Moscow Trials were a series of three show trials held in the Soviet Union at the instigation of Joseph Stalin between 1936 and 1938.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Moscow Trials included the Trial of the Sixteen, the Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center, and the Trial of the Twenty-One.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The defendants included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the former leadership of the Soviet secret police.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most defendants were charged under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code with conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Moscow Trials led to the execution of many of the defendants, including most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, and the trials are generally seen as part of Stalin's Great Purge.</span><br />
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Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev formed a ruling 'troika' in early 1923 after Vladimir Lenin had become incapacitated from a stroke.</div>
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The troika effected the marginalization of Leon Trotsky in an internal party power struggle.</div>
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A few years later, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined the United Front in an alliance with Trotsky which favored Trotskyism and opposed Stalin specifically.</div>
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Consequently, Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin and defeated Trotsky in a power struggle. Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and Kamenev and Zinoviev temporarily lost their membership in the Communist Party.</div>
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Zinoviev and Kamenev, in 1932, were found to be complicit in the Ryutin Affair and again were temporarily expelled from the Communist Party.</div>
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In December 1934, Sergei Kirov was assassinated and, subsequently 15 defendants were found guilty of direct, or indirect, involvement in the crime and were executed.</div>
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Zinoviev and Kamenev were found to be morally complicit in Kirov's murder and were sentenced to prison terms of ten and five years, respectively.</div>
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Both Kamenev and Zinoviev had been secretly tried in 1935 but it appears that Stalin decided that, with suitable confessions, their fate could be used for propaganda purposes. Genrikh Yagoda oversaw the interrogation proceedings.</div>
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The trial was held from August 19 to August 24, 1936 in the small October Hall of the House of the Unions (chosen instead of the larger Hall of Columns, used for earlier trials) and there were 16 defendants.</div>
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The main charge was forming a terror organization with the purpose of killing Joseph Stalin and other members of the Soviet government.</div>
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They were tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, with Vasili Ulrikh presiding, and the Prosecutor General being Andrei Vyshinsky.</div>
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Defendant Ivan Nikitich Smirnov, was blamed by his co-defendants for being the leader of the Center which planned Kirov's assassination.</div>
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He, however, had been in prison since January 1933 and refused to confess.</div>
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All the defendants were sentenced to death and were subsequently shot in the cellars of Lubyanka prison in Moscow.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Trial of the Sixteen was a staged trial of 16 leaders of the Polish Underground State held by the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1945.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The show trial of 16 leaders of the Polish wartime underground movement (including the Home Army and civil authorities) convicted of "drawing up plans for military action against the U.S.S.R.", Moscow, June 1945.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of them had been invited to help organize the new "Polish Government of National Unity" in March 1945 and were subsequently captured by the NKVD.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Six years later, only two were still alive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some accounts say approaches were made in February with others saying March 1945.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Government Delegate, together with most members of the Council of National Unity and the Commander-in-chief of the Armia Krajowa, were invited by Soviet general Ivan Serov with agreement of Joseph Stalin to a conference on their eventual entry to the Soviet-backed Provisional Government.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were presented with a warrant of safety, but were instead arrested in Pruszków by the NKVD on 27 and 28 March.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leopold Okulicki, Jan Stanisław Jankowski and Kazimierz Pużak were arrested on the 27th with 12 more the next day. Alexander Zwierzynski had been arrested earlier.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were brought to Moscow for interrogation in the Lubyanka.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After several months of brutal interrogation and torture they were presented with the forged accusations of:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">collaboration with Nazi Germany</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">carrying-over intelligence and sabotage at the rear of the Red Army</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">terrorism</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">planning a military alliance with Nazi Germany</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">owning a radio transmitter, printing machines and weapons</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">propaganda against the Soviet Union</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">membership of underground organisation</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The trial took place between 18–21 June 1945 with foreign press and observers from the United Kingdom and USA present.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The date was chosen carefully to be at the same time a conference on creation of the Soviet-backed Polish puppet government was organized.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Immediately after the kidnapping of all the leaders, the Polish government in exile sent a protest note to Washington and London demanding their release.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first the Soviets declared that the whole case was a bluff by the “Fascist Polish government”. When they finally admitted that the leaders had been arrested (on 5 May), the American envoy of Harry S. Truman, Harry Lloyd Hopkins, was told by Joseph Stalin that “<i>there is no point in linking the case of the Trial of the Sixteen with the support for the Soviet-backed government of Poland because the sentences will not be high</i>.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both British and American governments shared this view.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All but one of the defendants were forced to admit to the alleged crimes, and on 21 June the verdict was issued.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to international law the trial should not have taken place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet Union kidnapped and sentenced a group of citizens of a foreign country whose alleged crimes were committed on a foreign land.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were deprived of basic human rights and tortured.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">General Okulicki's witnesses were not allowed to enter the court, which was a violation of Soviet law.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Only two of the kidnapees survived the next six years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result of the trial, the Polish Secret State was deprived of most of its leaders.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Its structures were soon rebuilt, but were never able to fully recover.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trial of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center</span><br />
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The second trial occurred between January 23 and January 30, 1937.[16]</div>
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This second trial involved 17 lesser figures including Karl Radek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov. Thirteen of the defendants were eventually executed by shooting. The rest received sentences in labor camps.</div>
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Radek was spared as he implicated others, including Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, setting the stage for the Trial of Military and Trial of the Twenty One.</div>
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Radek provided the pretext for the purge on massive scale with his testimony that there was a "<i>third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through [Trotsky's] school</i>" as well as "<i>semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against the Party, gave us this help</i>."</div>
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By the third organization, he meant the last remaining former opposition group called Rightists led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying: "<i>I feel guilty of one thing more: even after admitting my guilt and exposing the organisation, I stubbornly refused to give evidence about Bukharin. I knew that Bukharin's situation was just as hopeless as my own, because our guilt, if not juridically, then in essence, was the same. But we are close friends, and intellectual friendship is stronger than other friendships. I knew that Bukharin was in the same state of upheaval as myself. That is why I did not want to deliver him bound hand and foot to the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. Just as in relation to our other cadres, I wanted Bukharin himself to lay down his arms</i>."</div>
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At the time, many Western observers who attended the trials said that they were fair and that the guilt of the accused had been established.</div>
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They based this assessment on the confessions of the accused, which were freely given in open court, without any apparent evidence that they had been extracted by torture or drugging. Joseph E. Davies, the U.S. ambassador, wrote in Mission to Moscow:</div>
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"<i>In view of the character of the accused, their long terms of service, their recognized distinction in their profession, their long-continued loyalty to the Communist cause, it is scarcely credible that their brother officers...should have acquiesced in their execution, unless they were convinced that these men had been guilty of some offense.* It is generally accepted by members of the Diplomatic Corps that the accused must have been guilty of an offense which in the Soviet Union would merit the death penalty.</i></div>
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<i>* The Bukharin trial six months later developed evidence which, if true, more than justified this action. Undoubtedly those facts were all full known to the military court at this tim</i>e."</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization (Russian: "дело троцкистской антисоветской военной организации" or "дело антисоветской троцкистской военной организации", also known as the "Military Case" (Russian: "дело военных") or the "Tukhachevsky Case") was a 1937 secret trial of the high command of the Red Army, a part of the Great Purge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Defendants</span><br />
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The Case of Military was a secret trial, unlike the Moscow Show Trials.</div>
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It is traditionally considered one of the key trials of the Great Purge.</div>
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Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the senior military officers Iona Yakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Robert Eideman, August Kork, Vitovt Putna, Boris Feldman and Vitaly Primakov (as well as Yakov Gamarnik, who committed suicide before the investigations began) were accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy and sentenced to death; they were executed on the night of June 11–12, 1937, immediately after the verdict delivered by a Special Session (специальное судебное присутствие) of the Supreme Court of the USSR.</div>
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The Tribunal was presided over by Vasili Ulrikh and included marshals Vasily Blyukher, Semyon Budyonny and Army Commanders Yakov Alksnis, Boris Shaposhnikov, Ivan Belov, Pavel Dybenko, and Nikolai Kashirin. Only Ulrikh, Budyonny and Shaposhnikov would survive the purges that followed.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The trial triggered a massive subsequent purge of the Red Army. In September 1938 the People's Commissar for Defense, Kliment Voroshilov, reported that a total of 37,761 officers and commissars were dismissed from the army, 10,868 were arrested and 7,211 were condemned for anti-Soviet crimes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The trial was preceded by several purges of the Red Army. In the mid-1920s, Leon Trotsky was removed as Commissar of War, and his known supporters were expunged from the military. Former Tsarist officers had been purged in the late 1920s and early 1930s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The latter purge was accompanied by the "<i>exposure</i>" of the <i>"Former Officers Plot</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The next wave of arrests of military commanders started in the second half of 1936 and increased in scope after the February–March 1937 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), at which Vyacheslav Molotov called for more thorough exposure of "<i>wreckers</i>" within the Red Army, since they "<i>had already been found in all segments of the Soviet economy</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Evidence, Arrest, and Secret Trial</span><br />
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General Mikhail Tukhachevsky was arrested on May 22, 1937 and charged, along with seven other Red Army commanders, with the creation of a "right-wing-Trotskyist" military conspiracy and espionage for Nazi Germany, based on confessions obtained from a number of other arrested officers.</div>
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Before 1990, it was frequently argued that the case against the eight generals was based on forged documents created by the Abwehr, documents which deluded Stalin into believing that a plot was being fomented by Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders to depose him, however, after Soviet archives were opened to researchers after the fall of the Soviet Union, it became clear that Stalin actually concocted the fictitious plot by the most famous and important of his Soviet generals in order to get rid of them in a believable manner.</div>
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At Stalin's order, the NKVD instructed one of its agents, Nikolai Skoblin, to pass to Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the German Nazi SD (Sicherheitsdienst) intelligence arm, concocted information suggesting a plot by Tukhachevsky and the other Soviet generals against Stalin.</div>
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Seeing an opportunity to strike a blow at both the Soviet Union and his arch-enemy Admiral Canaris of the German Abwehr, Heydrich immediately acted on the information and undertook to improve on it, forging a series of documents implicating Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders; these were later passed to the Soviets via Beneš and other neutral parties. Joseph Stalin's archives indeed contain a number of messages received during 1920–30s duly reporting the possible involvement of Tukhachevsky with the "German Nazi leadership".</div>
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While the Germans believed they had successfully deluded Stalin into executing his best generals, in reality they had merely served as useful and unwitting pawns of Stalin.</div>
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It is notable that the forged documents were not even used by Soviet military prosecutors against the generals in their secret trial, instead relying on false confessions extorted or beaten out of the defendants.</div>
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Afraid of the consequences of trying popular generals and war heroes in a public forum, Stalin ordered the trial also be kept <i>secret</i>, and that the defendants be executed immediately following their court-martial.</div>
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Tukhachevsky and his fellow defendants were probably tortured into confessions.</div>
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All convicts were rehabilitated on January 31, 1957 citing "<i>absence of essence of an offence</i>". It was concluded that arrests, investigations and trials were performed in violation of procedural norms and based on forced confessions, in many cases obtained with the aid of physical </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Reasons and Motives</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are no conclusive facts about the real rationale behind the forged trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the years, researchers and historians put forth the following hypotheses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The central hypothesis, and the one with the widest support, is that Stalin had simply decided to consolidate his power by eliminating any and all potential political or military rivals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Viewed from the broader context of the Great Terror which followed, the execution of the most popular and well-regarded generals in the Red Army command can be seen as a preemptive move by Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, 'People's Commissar of State Security', to eliminate a potential rival and source of opposition to their planned purge of the nomenklatura.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fall of the first eight generals was swiftly followed by the arrest of most of the People's Commissars, nearly all regional party secretaries, hundreds of Central Committee members and candidates, and thousands of lesser CPSU officials.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the end, three of five Soviet Marshals, 90% of all Red Army generals, 80% of Red Army colonels, and 30,000 officers of lesser rank had been purged.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Virtually all were executed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first it was thought 25-50% of Red Army officers were purged, it is now known to be 3.7-7.7%.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Previously, the size of the Red Army officer corp was underestimated and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. 30% of officers purged 1937-9 were allowed back.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another suggestion is that Tukhachevsky and others did indeed try to conspire against Stalin. Leon Trotsky in his later works argued that while it was impossible to speak conclusively about the plot, he saw indications in Stalin's mania for involvement in every detail of Red Army organization and logistics that the military had real reasons for dissent, motives which may have eventually led to a plot, however, the revelations of Stalin's actions following the release of Soviet archival information have now largely discredited this theory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the military may well have had many secret reasons for their dislike of Stalin, there is now no credible evidence that any of them ever conspired to eliminate him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Trial of the Twenty-One</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Trial of the Twenty-One was the last of the Moscow Trials, show trials of prominent Bolsheviks, including Old Bolsheviks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Trial of the Twenty-One took place in Moscow in March 1938, towards the end of Stalin's Great Purge.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third show trial, in March 1938, known as The Trial of the Twenty-One, is the most famous of the Soviet Union show trials because of persons involved and the scope of charges, which tied together all loose threads from earlier show trials.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "<i>Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites</i>":</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The accused were all proclaimed members of the "<i>right Trotskyist bloc</i>" that intended to <i>overthrow socialism </i>and restore capitalism in Russia, among other things.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it now alleged that Bukharin and others committed the following crimes:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">murdering Sergey Kirov, Valerian Kuybyshev, State Political Directorate (OGPU) chair Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and writer Maxim Gorky and his son</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">unsuccessfully trying to assassinate Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Yakov Sverdlov in 1918</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">plotting to assassinate Yakov Sverdlov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov and Stalin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">conspiring to wreck the economy (by sabotaging mines, derailing trains, killing cattle, putting nails and glasses in butter) and the country's military power</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spying for British, French, Japanese, and German intelligence agencies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">making secret agreements with Germany and Japan, promising to surrender Belarus, Ukraine, Central Asia and the Russian Far East to foreign powers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of the defendants confessed to these charges during the show trial with a few notable, but limited, exceptions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Trial</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The preparation for this trial was delayed in its early stages due to the reluctance of some party members to denounce their comrades.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was at this time that Stalin personally intervened to speed up the process and replaced Yagoda with Nikolai Yezhov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin also observed some of the trial in person from a hidden chamber in the courtroom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Only one defendant, Nikolai Krestinsky, initially refused to admit his guilt.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He changed his position within a day, however, telling Public Prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky: "<i>I fully and completely admit that I am guilty of all the gravest charges brought against me personally, and that I admit my complete responsibility for the treason and treachery I have committed.</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin's confession was limited in a different fashion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Observers have speculated that Bukharin had reached some sort of agreement with the prosecution: while he admitted guilt to general charges, he undercut that by denying any knowledge when it came to specific crimes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin typically would admit only what was in his written confessions and refused to go any further; at one point in the trial, when Vyshinsky asked him about a conspiracy to weaken Soviet military power, Bukharin responded "it was not discussed, at least in my presence," at which point Vyshinsky dropped the question and moved to another topic.[3]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is other evidence that Bukharin had reached an agreement to trade his confession for personal concessions of some sort. Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov claim that Bukharin was never tortured.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin had been allowed to write four book-length manuscripts, including an autobiographical novel, 'How It All Began', a philosophical treatise, and a collection of poems – all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in the 1990s – while in prison.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin also wrote series of very emotional letters to Stalin protesting his innocence and professing his love for Stalin, which contrasts with his critical opinion of Stalin and his policies expressed to others and his conduct in the trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet Bukharin appears to have strayed from that agreement at trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While he had accepted responsibility "<i>even for those crimes about which I did not know or about which I did not have the slightest idea</i>" on the theory that he was the head of the "<i>Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites</i>", he testified that the Bloc did not exist and its members had never met.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions and subtle criticisms of the trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After disproving several charges against him (one observer noted that he proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case) and saying that "<i>the confession of accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence</i>" in the trial that was solely based on confessions, he finished his last plea with "<i>the monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R become clear to all</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other defendants apparently still hoped for clemency.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yagoda, who had overseen the interrogations that led to the previous show trials, made a plea for mercy directly to Stalin, who may, according to Solzhenitsyn, have been observing the proceedings:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just as though Stalin had been sitting right there in the hall, Yagoda confidently and insistently begged him directly for mercy: "<i>I appeal to you! For you I built two great canals !</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And a witness reports that at just that moment a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall, apparently behind a muslin curtain, and, while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Verdict</span><br />
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All but three were found guilty "<i>of having committed extremely grave state offenses covered by...the Criminal Code...sentenced to the supreme penalty—to be shot.</i>"</div>
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Pletnev was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Rakovsky to 20 years, and Bessonov to 15 years. By one account, Bukharin – who had asked to be poisoned, rather than shot – was forced to watch the execution of sixteen other defendants before being shot himself.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Reactions to the Trial</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even sympathetic observers who had stomached the earlier trials found it hard to swallow new charges as they became ever more absurd and the purge by now expanded to include virtually every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For some prominent former communists, such as Bertram Wolfe, Jay Lovestone, Arthur Koestler, and Heinrich Brandler, the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism and turned the first three into fervent anti-communists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin's testimony became the subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel 'Darkness at Noon' and a philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 'Humanism and Terror', among others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Koestler and others viewed Bukharin's testimony as a true believer's last service to the Party (while preserving a small amount of personal honor) whereas Bukharin biographer Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker saw traces of Aesopian language, with which Bukharin sought to turn the table into trial of Stalinism, while keeping his part of bargain to save his family.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bukharin himself speaks of his "<i>peculiar duality of mind</i>" in his last plea, which led to "<i>semi-paralysis of the will</i>" and Hegelian "<i>unhappy consciousness</i>", which presumably stemmed from the conflict between his knowledge of the reality of Stalinist rule and the threat of fascism, which led Bukharin and others to follow Stalin, who had become the personification of the Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Others were not so critical of the trial.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ambassador Joseph Davies, author of 'Mission to Moscow', wrote that "<i>It is generally accepted by members of the Diplomatic Corps that the accused must have been guilty of an offense which in the Soviet Union would merit the death penalty</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beatrice Webb, the British Fabian, stated that she was happy that Stalin had "<i>cut out the dead wood</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bertolt Brecht, whose lover Clara Neher had disappeared after her return to the Soviet Union, reportedly said "<i>The more innocent they are, the more they deserve to die</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Legacy</span><br />
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All of the surviving members of the Lenin-era, except Stalin and Trotsky, were tried.</div>
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By the end of the final trial Stalin had arrested and executed almost <i>every</i> important living Bolshevik from the Revolution.</div>
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Of 1,966 delegates to the party congress in 1934, 1,108 were arrested.</div>
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Of 139 members of the Central Committee, 98 were arrested.</div>
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Three out of five Soviet marshals (Alexander Ilyich Yegorov, Vasily Blyukher, Tukhachevsky) and several thousands of the Red Army officers were arrested or shot.</div>
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The key defendant, Leon Trotsky, was living in exile abroad, but he still did not survive Stalin's desire to have him dead and was assassinated by a Soviet agent in Mexico in 1940.</div>
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While Khrushchev's Secret Speech denounced Stalin's personality cult and purges as early as 1956, rehabilitation of Old Bolsheviks proceeded at a slow pace.</div>
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Nikolai Bukharin and 19 other co-defendants were officially completely rehabilitated in February 1988. Yagoda, who was deeply involved in the great purge as the head of NKVD, was not included.</div>
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In May 1988, rehabilitation of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, and co-defendants was announced.</div>
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After the death of Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev repudiated the trials in a speech to the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party:</div>
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"<i>The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents and has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to glaring abuses of Socialist legality which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many party, Government and economic activists who were branded in 1937-38 as ‘enemies,’ were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest Communists...They were only so stigmatized and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges – falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.</i>"</div>
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It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants.</div>
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From the accounts of former GPU officer Alexander Orlov and others the methods used to extract the confessions are known: repeated beatings, torture, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families.</div>
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For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism.</div>
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After months of such interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Intelligentsia</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the 1920s and 1930s, 2,000 writers, intellectuals, and artists were imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and concentration camps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After sunspot development research was judged un-Marxist, twenty-seven astronomers disappeared between 1936 and 1938.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Meteorological Office was violently purged as early as 1933 for failing to predict weather harmful to the crops.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the toll was especially high among writers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those who perished during the Great Purge include:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pianist Khadija Gayibova executed in 1938.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The great poet Osip Mandelstam was arrested for reciting his famous anti-Stalin poem Stalin Epigram to his circle of friends in 1934.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After intervention by Nikolai Bukharin and Boris Pasternak (Stalin jotted down in Bukharin's letter with feigned indignation: “<i>Who gave them the right to arrest Mandelstam?</i>”), Stalin instructed NKVD to "<i>isolate but preserve</i>" him, and Mandelstam was "<i>merely</i>" exiled to Cherdyn for three years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But this proved to be a temporary reprieve.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 1938, he was promptly arrested again for "<i>counter-revolutionary activities</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On August 2, 1938, Mandelstam was sentenced to five years in correction camps and died on December 27, 1938 at a transit camp near Vladivostok.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Boris Pasternak himself was nearly purged, but Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off the list, saying <i>"Don't touch this cloud dweller</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writer Isaac Babel was arrested in May 1939, and according to his confession paper (which contained a blood stain) he "<i>confessed</i>" to being a member of Trotskyist organization and being recruited by French writer André Malraux to spy for France.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the final interrogation, he retracted his confession and wrote letters to prosecutor's office stating that he had implicated innocent people, but to no avail.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Babel was tried before an NKVD troika and convicted of simultaneously spying for the French, Austrians, and Leon Trotsky, as well as "<i>membership in a terrorist organization.</i>"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On January 27, 1940, he was shot in Butyrka prison.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writer Boris Pilnyak was arrested on October 28, 1937 for counter-revolutionary activities, spying and terrorism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One report alleged that "<i>he held secret meetings with (André) Gide, and supplied him with information about the situation in the USSR. There is no doubt that Gide used this information in his book attacking the USSR</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pilnyak was tried on April 21, 1938. In the proceeding that lasted 15 minutes, he was condemned to death and executed shortly afterward.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested in 1939 and shot in February 1940 for "<i>spying</i>" for Japanese and British intelligence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a letter to Vyacheslav Molotov dated January 13, 1940, he wrote: "<i>The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal hemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. I incriminated myself in the hope that by telling them lies I could end the ordeal. When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His wife, the actress Zinaida Raikh, was murdered in her apartment by NKVD agents.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Georgian poet Titsian Tabidze was arrested on October 10, 1937 on a charge of treason and was tortured in prison.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a bitter humor, he named only the 18th-century Georgian poet Besiki as his accomplice in anti-Soviet activities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was executed on December 16, 1937</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His friend and poet Paolo Iashvili, having earlier been forced to denounce several of his associates as the enemies of the people, shot himself with a hunting gun in the building of the Writers' Union. (He witnessed and even had to participate in public trials that ousted many of his associates from the Writers' Union, effectively condemning them to death. When Lavrenty Beria chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Stalin and subsequently head of the NKVD, further pressured him with alternative of denouncing his lifelong friend Tabidze or being arrested and tortured by the NKVD, he killed himself.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In early 1937, poet Pavel Vasiliev is said to have defended Nikolai Bukharin as "a man of the highest nobility and the conscience of peasant Russia" at the time of his denunciation at the Pyatakov Trial (Second Moscow Trial) and damned other writers then signing the routine condemnations as "pornographic scrawls on the margins of Russian literature". He was promptly shot on July 16, 1937.[42]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jan Sten, philosopher and deputy head of the Marx-Engels Institute, was Stalin's private tutor when Stalin was trying hard to study Hegel's dialectic. (Stalin received lessons twice a week from 1925 to 1928, but he found it difficult to master even some of the basic ideas. Stalin developed enduring hostility toward German idealistic philosophy, which he called "<i>the aristocratic reaction to the French Revolution</i>".)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1937, Sten was seized on the direct order of Stalin, who declared him one of the chiefs of Menshevizing idealists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On June 19, 1937, Sten was put to death in Lefortovo prison.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ex-kulaks and other "Anti-Soviet Elements"</span><br />
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On July 2, 1937, Stalin sent a top-secret letter to all regional Party chiefs (with a copy to NKVD regional chiefs) ordering them to present, within five days, estimates of the number of kulaks and “<i>criminals</i>” that should be arrested, executed, or sent to camps.</div>
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Produced in a matter of days, these figures roughly matched those of “<i>suspect</i>” individuals already under police surveillance, although the criteria used to distribute the “<i>kulak and criminal elements</i>” among the two categories are not clear.</div>
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On July 30, 1937 the NKVD Order no. 00447 was issued, directed against "<i>ex-kulaks</i>" and other "<i>anti-Soviet elements</i>" (such as former officials of the Tsarist regime, former members of political parties other than the communist party, etc.).</div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were to be executed or sent to GULAG prison camps extra-judicially under the decisions of NKVD troikas.</span><br />
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The following categories were systematically tracked down: “<i>ex-kulaks</i>” previously deported to “<i>special settlements</i>” in inhospitable parts of the country (Siberia, Urals, Kazakhstan, Far North), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the White Army, participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, like thieves, known to the police and various other “<i>socially harmful elements</i>”.</div>
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However, many were also arrested at random in police sweeps, or as a result of denunciations or simply because they happened to be relatives, friends or just acquaintances of people already arrested.</div>
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Many railwaymen, workers, kolkhoz peasants, and engineers were arrested in the course of the Kulak Operation just because they had the misfortune of working in, or near, important strategic factories, railway or building sites, where, as a result of frantic rhythms and plans, many work accidents had occurred in previous years.</div>
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In 1937-1938, the NKVD reopened these cases and systematically ascribed them to “<i>sabotage</i>” or “<i>wrecking</i>” (Werth, 2009).</div>
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The orthodox clergy, including active parishioners, was nearly annihilated: 85% of the 35,000 members of the clergy were arrested. Particularly vulnerable to repression were also the so-called “<i>special settlers</i>” (spetzperesentsy) who were under permanent police surveillance and constituted a huge pool of potential “enemies” to draw on.</div>
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At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror.</div>
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One “<i>sub-operation</i>” targeted “<i>the most vicious and stubborn anti-Soviet elements</i>” in GULAG prison camps; they were all “<i>to be put into the first category”</i> - that is shot.</div>
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Order no. 00447 decreed 10,000 executions for this contingent, but at least three times more were shot in the course of the secret mass operation, the majority in March–April 1938 (Junge and Binner, 2003).</div>
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As soon as the Kulak Operation was launched (August 5, 1937), regional party and NKVD bosses, eager to show their zeal, demanded an increase in the quotas.</div>
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Accordingly, the quotas were increased.</div>
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But this was not only the result of demands from below.</div>
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The largest new allowances were distributed by Stalin and Ezhov on their own initiative: on October 15, 1937, for example, the Politburo passed a secret resolution increasing the number of people “<i>to be repressed</i>” by 120,000 (63,000 “<i>in the first category</i>” and 57,000 “<i>in the second category</i>”); on January 31, 1938, Stalin ordered a further increase of 57,200, 48,000 of whom were to be executed.</div>
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The police organized sweeps and round-ups of markets or railway stations where marginals and other social outcasts were likely to be found.</div>
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In order to carry out a growing number of arrests, the State Security personnel of NKVD – approximately 25,000 officers – were supplemented by ordinary policemen, sometimes by civilian Party or Komsomol (Young Communist League) members.</div>
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Every NKVD local unit had a “<i>casework minimum</i>” of arrests to perform but also of confessions to extract in order to “<i>unmask conspiracies</i>”.</div>
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Uninterrupted interrogation for days on end and merciless beatings were widely used to force prisoners to confess their alleged "<i>counter-revolutionary crimes</i>".</div>
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In order to speed up the procedure, prisoners were often even forced to sign blank pages of the pre-printed interrogation folios on which the interrogator later typed up the confession.</div>
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After the interrogations the files were submitted to NKVD troikas which pronounced the verdicts in the absence of the accused.</div>
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During a half-day long session a troika went through several hundred cases, delivering either a death sentence or a sentence to the GULAG labour camps.</div>
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Death sentences were immediately enforceable.</div>
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The executions were carried out at night, either in prisons or in a secluded area run by the NKVD and located as a rule on the outskirts of major cities.</div>
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The Kulak Operation was<i> largest</i> single campaign of repression in 1937-38, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed, more than half the total of known executions.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">National operations of NKVD</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A series of national operations of the NKVD was carried out during 1937–1940, justified by the fear of the fifth column in the expectation of war with "<i>the most probable adversar</i>y", i.e., Germany, as well as according to the notion of the "<i>hostile capitalist surrounding</i>", which wants to destabilize the country.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Polish operation of the NKVD was the largest and the first of this kind, setting an example of dealing with other targeted minorities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many such operations were conducted on a quota system. NKVD local officials were mandated to arrest and execute a specific number of "<i>counter-revolutionaries</i>," produced by upper officials based on various statistics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Polish operation also claimed the largest number of victims: 143,810 arrests and 111,091 executions, and at least eighty-five thousand of these were ethnic Poles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Western Victims</span><br />
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Some of the victims of the terror were American immigrants to the Soviet Union, who had emigrated at the height of the Great Depression in order to find work.</div>
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At the height of the Terror, American immigrants besieged the US embassy, begging for passports so they could leave the Soviet Union.</div>
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They were turned away by embassy officials, only to be arrested on the pavement outside by lurking NKVD agents.</div>
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Many were subsequently shot dead at Butovo Field near Scherbinka, south of Moscow.</div>
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In addition, 141 American Communists of Finnish origin were executed and buried at Sandarmokh.</div>
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127 Finnish Canadians were also shot and buried there.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">End of Yezhovshchina</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By the summer of 1938, Stalin and his circle realized that the purges had gone too far; Yezhov was relieved from his post as head of the NKVD and was eventually purged himself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lavrenty Beria, a fellow Georgian and Stalin confidant, succeeded him as head of the NKVD. On November 17, 1938 a joint decree of Sovnarkom USSR and Central Committee of VKP(b) (Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation) and the subsequent order of NKVD undersigned by Beria cancelled most of the NKVD orders of systematic repression and suspended implementation of death sentences.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The decree signaled the end of massive Soviet purges.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless, the practice of mass arrest and exile was <i>continued </i>until Stalin's death in 1953. Political executions also continued, but, with the exception of Katyn and other NKVD massacres during World War II, on a vastly smaller scale.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One notorious example is the "Night of the Murdered Poets", in which at least thirteen prominent <i>Yiddish</i> writers were executed on August 12, 1952.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Historians such as Michael Parrish have argued that while the Great Terror ended in 1938, a lesser terror continued in the 1940s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In some cases, military officers arrested under Yezhov were later executed under Beria.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some examples include Marshal of the Soviet Union A.I. Egorov, arrested in April 1938 and shot (or died from torture) in February 1939 (his wife, G.A. Egorova, was shot in August 1938); Army Commander I.F. Fed'ko, arrested July 1938 and shot February 1939; Flagman K.I. Dushenov, arrested May 1938 and shot February 1940; Komkor G.I. Bondar, arrested August 1938 and shot March 1939.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the relatives of those who had been executed in 1937-38 inquired about their fate, they were told by NKVD that their arrested relatives had been sentenced to "<i>ten years without the right of correspondence</i>" (десять лет без права переписки).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When these ten-year periods elapsed in 1947-48 but the arrested did not appear, the relatives asked MGB about their fate again and this time were told that the arrested died in imprisonment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalin's Role</span><br />
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A list from the Great Purge signed by Molotov, Stalin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov</div>
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Historians with archival access have confirmed that Stalin was intimately involved in the terror. Theories about the elemental, spontaneous nature of the terror, about a loss of central control over the course of mass repression, and about the role of regional leaders in initiating the terror are simply not supported by the historical record.</div>
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Stalin personally directed Yezhov to torture those who were not making proper confessions.</div>
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In one instance, he told Yezhov "<i>Isn’t it time to squeeze this gentleman and force him to report on his dirty little business? Where is he: in a prison or a hotel ?</i>"</div>
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In another, while reviewing one of Yezhov's lists, he added to M. I. Baranov’s name, "<i>beat, beat !</i>"</div>
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In addition to authorizing torture, Stalin also signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 which condemned to execution some 40,000 people, and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot.</div>
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While reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "<i>Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time ? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of ? No one.</i>"</div>
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Stalin's alleged remark may be compared with Hitler's famous admonition to his generals in 1939: "<i>Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians ?</i>"</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Number of People Executed</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,366 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day (in comparison, the Tsarists executed 3,932 persons for political crimes from 1825 to 1910 - an average of less than 1 execution per week).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete, or unreliable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, Robert Conquest claims that the probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but some two and a half times as high.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He believes that the KGB was covering its tracks by falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during these two years ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag, as a result of their treatment therein.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/stalinism.html" target="_blank">STALINISM</a></b></span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-71533613378300339172013-03-29T05:28:00.000-07:002014-02-28T17:02:13.829-08:00Joseph Stalin - Иосиф Сталин - Revolution and Power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uGvJibMd6Lc/UVWJ7hNOiKI/AAAAAAAAEJo/YUovH1gEJ8U/s1600/Joseph+Stalin+Bust+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uGvJibMd6Lc/UVWJ7hNOiKI/AAAAAAAAEJo/YUovH1gEJ8U/s320/Joseph+Stalin+Bust+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="257" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин</span></div>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Joseph Stalin - Revolution and Power</span></div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">see also Joseph Stalin - The Great Purge</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Role during the Russian Revolution of 1917</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the tsarist government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Tsarist secret police in Saint Petersburg.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After returning to Petrograd on March 12, 1917 from exile in the village of Kostino and later in the village of Kureika in the region of Turukhansk in northern Siberia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Returning with Stalin to St. Petersburg was Lev B. Kamenev.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By virtue of their seniority in the Party, Stalin and Kamenev replaced Vyacheslav Molotov and Alexander Shlyapnikov on the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writing in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Party, both Stalin and Kamenev reflected a shift in Party policy toward Alexander Kerensky's provisional government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whereas, previously, the Russian Bureau under Shyapnikov had been urging Russian soldiers at the front to engage in fraternization with enemy German and Austrian soldiers to force an end to the war and/or turning the war into a class war against the capitalist imperialist class, Stalin now wrote in Pravda that the slogans like "<i>Down with the War</i>" were not enough.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There was now a need for soldiers and workers to "<i>come out openly and publicly</i>" in mass demonstrations to put real "pressure on the Kerensky provisional government" to immediately negotiate an end to the war.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Events were moving so fast during that revolutionary year of 1917, that party policies seemed to change every few weeks. Indeed just a few days later on April 3 (16 new style), Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg returning from his ten year exile in Switzerland. He had brought with him an article called "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution" which became popularly known as Lenin's "April Theses."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Lenin prevailed at the April 1917 Communist Party conference, Stalin and Pravda shifted to opposing the provisional government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At this conference, Stalin was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In October 1917, the Bolshevik Central Committee voted in favor of an insurrection. On 7 November, from the Smolny Institute, Trotsky, Lenin and the rest of the Central Committee coordinated the insurrection against Kerensky in the 1917 October Revolution. On October 25, 1917 (November 8, 1917 on the new style calendar) the Bolsheviks had stormed the Winter Palace and arrested the Kerensky's Cabinet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Role in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1919</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Upon seizing Petrograd, Stalin was appointed People's Commissar for Nationalities' Affairs. Thereafter, civil war broke out in Russia, pitting Lenin's Red Army against the White Army, a loose alliance of anti-Bolshevik forces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin formed a five-member Politburo, which included Stalin and Trotsky. In May 1918, Lenin dispatched Stalin to the city of Tsaritsyn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Through his new allies, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny, Stalin imposed his influence on the military.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin challenged many of the decisions of Trotsky, ordered the killings of many counter-revolutionaries and former Tsarist officers in the Red Army and burned villages in order to intimidate the peasantry into submission and discourage bandit raids on food shipments.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 1919, in order to stem mass desertions on the Western front, Stalin had deserters and renegades publicly executed as traitors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Role in the Polish-Soviet War, 1919–1921</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, Poland invaded Ukraine, starting what became known as the Polish–Soviet War, but the Bolsheviks pushed them back into Poland. As commander of the southern front, Stalin was determined to take the Polish-held city of Lviv. This conflicted with the general strategy set by Lenin and Trotsky, which focused on the capture of Warsaw further north.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trotsky's forces engaged those of Polish commander Władysław Sikorski at the Battle of Warsaw, but Stalin refused to redirect his troops from Lviv to help.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consequently, the battles for both Lviv and Warsaw were lost, and Stalin was blamed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In August 1920, Stalin returned to Moscow, where he defended himself and resigned his military command.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the Ninth Party Conference on 22 September, Trotsky openly <i>criticized</i> Stalin's behavior.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Rise to Power</span><br />
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For over a decade before the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was one of the chief Bolshevik operatives in the Caucasus, organising cells, spreading propaganda, and raising money through<i> criminal activities.</i></div>
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He eventually earned a place in Lenin's inner circle and the highest echelons of the Bolshevik hierarchy. In 1917, he participated in the Bolshevik uprising in the Russian capital of Petrograd. His name, Stalin, means "<i>man of steel</i>".</div>
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In the civil war that followed, Stalin forged connections with various Red Army generals and eventually acquired military powers of his own.</div>
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He <i>brutally suppressed</i> counter-revolutionaries and <i>bandits</i>.</div>
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After winning the civil war, the Bolsheviks moved to <i>expand the revolution</i> into Europe, starting with Poland, which was fighting the Red Army in Ukraine.</div>
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As joint commander of an army in Ukraine, Stalin's actions in the war were later <i>criticized by many</i>, including<i> Leon Trotsky.</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">General Secretary and Invasion of Georgia</span><br />
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In late 1920, Trotsky argued for a <i>ban on trade unions</i> and a formal imposition of Party <i>dictatorship</i> over the industrial sectors.</div>
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Fearing a backlash from the unions, Lenin asked Stalin to build a support base for him against Trotsky.</div>
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Lenin's faction eventually prevailed at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921.</div>
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Frustrated by the squabbling factions within the Party during what he saw as a time of crisis, Lenin convinced the Tenth Congress to pass a ban on any opposition to official Central Committee policy (the 'Ban on Factions', a law which Stalin would later exploit to expel his enemies).</div>
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Lenin still, however, encountered difficulties pushing his policies through and decided to give his reliable ally, Stalin, more power.</div>
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With the help of Kamenev, Lenin successfully had Stalin appointed to the post of 'General Secretary'on April 3, 1922.</div>
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Stalin still held his posts in the 'Orgburo', the 'Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate' and the 'Commassariat for Nationalities Affairs', though he agreed to delegate his workload to subordinates.</div>
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With this power, he would steadily place his supporters in positions of authority.</div>
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Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army <i>invasion of Georgia</i> following which he adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards Soviet Georgia, which included <i>severe repression</i> of all opposition within the local Communist party (e.g., the Georgian Affair of 1922), not to mention any manifestations of anti-Sovietism (the August Uprising of 1924).</div>
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It was in the Georgian affairs that Stalin first began to play his own hand.</div>
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Lenin, however,<i> disliked</i> Stalin's policy towards Georgia, as he believed all the Soviet states should be on equal standing with Russia rather than be absorbed and subordinated to it.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin's Retirement and Death</span><br />
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On May 25, 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke while recovering from surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his neck since a failed assassination attempt in August 1918. </div>
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everely debilitated, he went into semi-retirement and moved to his dacha in Gorki.</div>
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After this, Trotsky and Stalin were stressing about who was going to be the next successor. Trotsky and Lenin had more of a<i> personal relationship</i> and Lenin and Stalin had more of a <i>political relationship</i>.</div>
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Yet, Stalin visited him often, acting as his intermediary with the outside world.</div>
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During this time, the two <i>quarrelled </i>over economic policy and how to consolidate the Soviet republics.</div>
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Lenin and Stalin were agreeing on more political ideas and disagreeing, which was creating a closer relationship.</div>
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One day, Stalin <i>verbally swore</i> at Lenin's wife for breaching Politburo orders by helping Lenin communicate with Trotsky and others about politics; this greatly offended Lenin.</div>
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As their relationship deteriorated, Lenin dictated increasingly disparaging notes on Stalin in what would become his testament.</div>
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Trotsky <i>criticised</i> Stalin's rude manners, excessive power, ambition and politics, and suggested that Stalin should be <i>removed</i> from the position of General Secretary to Lenin.</div>
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One of Lenin's secretaries showed Stalin the notes, whose contents shocked him.</div>
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Before Stalin could mend any bridges, Lenin suffered a heart attack on March 10, 1923 which left him<i> completely incapacitated</i>.</div>
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During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged an alliance with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev<i> against</i> Trotsky.</div>
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These allies <i>prevented</i> Lenin's Testament from being revealed to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923.</div>
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Although they too were disconcerted by Stalin's power and some of his policies, they needed his help in opposing Trotsky's faction and his possible succession to Lenin.</div>
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Lenin died of a stroke on January 21, 1924.</div>
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Stalin was given the honour of organising his funeral.</div>
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Against Lenin's wishes, he was given a <i>lavish funeral </i>and his body was embalmed and put on display.</div>
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Thanks to Kamenev and Zinoviev's influence, the Central Committee decided that Lenin's Testament should<i> not</i> be made public.</div>
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At the Thirteenth Party Congress in May, it was read out only to the heads of the provincial delegations.</div>
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Trotsky did not want to appear divisive so soon after Lenin's death and did not seize the opportunity to demand Stalin's removal.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Downfall of Trotsky</span><br />
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In the months following Lenin's death, Stalin's disputes with Kamenev and Zinoviev <i>intensified</i>. These two Bolsheviks did not regard Stalin highly, and often disparaged him in private even as they had aided him publicly.</div>
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Stalin allied himself now with Nikolai Bukharin, whom he had promoted to the Politburo at the Thirteenth Party Congress.</div>
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At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, Stalin openly attacked Kamenev and Zinoviev, revealing that they had asked for his aid in expelling Trotsky from the Party.</div>
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Stalin began advocating <i>"Socialism in One Country,</i>" which says that the Bolsheviks should focus building communism in the countries they already controlled rather than spreading the revolution.</div>
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This drew to him many like-minded Party members, but put him in ideological opposition to Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev formed a United Opposition against Stalin, demanding greater freedom of expression and a repeal of Lenin's 1921 'Ban on Factions'.</div>
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Stalin eventually defeated this opposition, and forced Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev to sign a letter of submission to him.</div>
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Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev grew increasingly isolated and were ejected from the Central Committee in October 1927.</div>
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On November 14, Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the Party itself, followed by Kamenev at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December.</div>
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Kamenev and Zinoviev were readmitted some six months later after writing open letters of apology, but Trotsky was not.</div>
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Trotsky lived in exile in Alma-ata for a while, and was finally exiled from the Soviet Union itself in January 1929.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Dominating the Politburo</span><br />
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Stalin began pushing for more<i> rapid industrialisation</i> and <i>central control</i> of the economy, a position which resonated with many Party members who disliked Lenin's New Economic Policy.</div>
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At the end of 1927, a critical <i>shortfall in grain supplies</i> prompted Stalin to push for <i>collectivisation</i> of agriculture.</div>
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In January 1928, he personally travelled to Siberia where he oversaw the <i>seizure of grain hoards from kulak farmers.</i></div>
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Many in the Party supported the seizures, but Bukharin and Premier Rykov were outraged.</div>
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Bukharin criticized Stalin's plans for rapid industrialization financed by kulak wealth, and advocated a return to Lenin's NEP.</div>
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However, he was unable to rally sufficient support from the higher levels of the Party to oppose Stalin.</div>
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Stalin accused Bukharin of factionalism (banned by Lenin since 1921) and capitalist tendencies.</div>
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The other Politburo members sided with Stalin, and labelled Bukharin a "<i>Right Deviationist</i>" from Marxist-Leninist principles.</div>
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Bukharin was <i>ejected</i> from the Politburo in November 1929.</div>
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Stalin's agricultural policies were also <i>criticized</i> by fellow Politburo member Mikhail Kalinin.</div>
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In the summer of 1930, Stalin exposed Kalinin's<i> embezzlement</i> of state funds, which he spent on a mistress.</div>
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Kalinin begged forgiveness, and effectively submitted himself to Stalin.</div>
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In September 1930, Stalin proposed dismissing Premier Rykov, who was Bukharin's fellow oppositionist.</div>
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The other Politburo members agreed with Stalin, and supported his nomination of Vyacheslav Molotov.</div>
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On December 19, the Central Committee dismissed Rykov and replaced him with Molotov.</div>
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By the 1930s, open criticism of Stalin within the Party was virtually non-existent, though Stalin continued to hunt for discreet dissenters.</div>
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Stalin <i>dominated</i> the Politburo (the executive branch of the Soviet government) through staunch allies such as Lazar Kaganovich, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Kliment Voroshilov.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Death of Stalin's Wife</span></div>
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On the night of November 9, 1932, Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, shot herself in her bedroom.</div>
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Stalin was sleeping in another room that night (he often slept in a different room each night to confuse assassins), so her death was not discovered until the next morning.</div>
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To prevent a scandal, Pravda reported the cause of death as appendicitis.</div>
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Stalin did not tell his own children the truth to prevent them from spreading the truth accidentally.</div>
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On December 1, 1934, Sergei Kirov was murdered by Leonid Nikolaev.</div>
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The death of this popular, high-profile politician shocked Russia, and Stalin used this murder to begin 'The Great Terror'.</div>
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Within hours of Kirov's death, Stalin declared Grigory Zinoviev and his supporters to be responsible for Kirov's murder.</div>
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Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev were arrested and, to escape long prison sentences, confessed to political and moral responsibility for Kirov's murder.</div>
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They were sentenced to five and ten years respectively. Stalin sanctioned the formation of troikas for the purpose of extrajudicial punishment.</div>
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Hundreds of oppositionists linked to Kamenev and Zinoviev were arrested and exiled to Siberia.</div>
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In late 1935, Stalin reopened the case. Kamenev and Zinoviev were interrogated again, and Trotsky was now implicated in Kirov's murder.</div>
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In July 1936, Stalin personally promised to Kamenev and Zinoviev that there would be no executions or persecution of their families if they confessed to conspiring with Trotsky.</div>
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This promise was broken.</div>
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After a show trial, Kamenev and Zinoviev were executed that August.</div>
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Spearheading Stalin's campaign was a Commissar called<i> Nikolai Yezhov,</i> a fervent Stalinist and a believer in <i>violent repression</i>.</div>
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Nikolai Yezhov continued to expand the lists of suspects to include all the old oppositionists as well as entire nationalities, such as the Poles.</div>
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Stalin distrusted the Soviet secret police - the NKVD - which was filled with Old Bolsheviks and ethnicities he distrusted, such as Poles, Jews and Latvians.</div>
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In September 1936, Stalin fired the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, and replaced him with the more aggressive and zealous Yezhov.</div>
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Since his falling out with Stalin in the late 1920s, Bukharin wrote an endless stream of letters of repentance and admiration to Stalin.</div>
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However, Stalin knew Bukharin's repentance was insincere, as in private Bukharin continued to court Stalin's opponents (the NKVD wiretapped Bukharin's telephone).</div>
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Kamenev and Zinoviev had denounced him as a traitor during their trial. At the December 1936 plenum of the Central Committee, Yezhov accused Bukharin and Alexey Rykov of treachery.</div>
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In March 1938, Bukharin was coerced through torture into confessing to conspiring against Stalin, and later executed.</div>
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Stalin eventually turned on Yezhov.</div>
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He appointed Yezhov Commissar of Water Transport in April 1938 (a similar thing had happened to Yezhov's predecessor shortly before he was fired).</div>
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Stalin began ordering the executions of Yezhov's protégés in the NKVD.<br />
Politburo members also started to openly condemn the excesses of the NKVD.</div>
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Yezhov eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and resigned as NKVD chief on November 23.</div>
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He was replaced by Lavrentiy Beria.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Bolstering Soviet Secret Service and Intelligence</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin vastly increased the scope and power of the state's secret police and intelligence agencies.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Under his guiding hand, Soviet intelligence forces began to set up intelligence networks in most of the major nations of the world, including Germany (the famous 'Rote Kappelle' spy ring), Great Britain, France, Japan, and the United States.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin made considerable use of the Communist International movement in order to<i> infiltrate</i> agents and to ensure that foreign Communist parties remained pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the best examples of Stalin's ability to integrate secret police and foreign espionage came in 1940, when he gave approval to the secret police to have Leon Trotsky <i>assassinated</i> in Mexico.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalin's Cult of Personality</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joseph Stalin's cult of personality became a prominent part of Soviet culture in December 1929, after a lavish celebration for Stalin's 50th birthday.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the rest of Stalin's rule, the Soviet press presented Stalin as an all-powerful, all-knowing leader, and Stalin's name and image became omnipresent.</span><br />
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Stalin's image in propaganda and the mass media</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flowers for Stalin</td></tr>
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The Soviet press worked to portray Stalin as a caring <i>father figure</i>, with the Soviet populace as his "<i>children</i>", - creating a similar relationship of ruler and ruled which existed under the Tsarist regime.</div>
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Interactions between Stalin and children became a key element of the personality cult.</div>
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Stalin often engaged in publicized gift giving exchanges with Soviet children from a range of different ethnic backgrounds.</div>
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Beginning in 1935, the phrase, "<i>Thank You Dear Comrade Stalin for a Happy Childhood !</i>" appeared above doorways at nurseries, orphanages, and schools; children also chanted this slogan at festivals.</div>
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The image of Stalin as a <i>father </i>was one way in which Soviet propagandists aimed to incorporate traditional <i>religious symbols</i> and language into the cult of personality: the title of "<i>father</i>" now first and foremost belonged to Stalin, as opposed to the Russian Orthodox priests. The cult of personality also adopted the <i>Christian traditions</i> of procession and devotion to icons through the use of Stalinist parades and effigies.</div>
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By reapplying various aspects of religion to the cult of personality, the press hoped to shift devotion <i>away</i> from the Church and towards Stalin.<br />
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Initially, the press also aimed to demonstrate a <i>direct link</i> between Stalin and the common people; newspapers often published collective letters from farm or industrial workers praising the leader, as well as accounts and poems about meeting Stalin, however, these sorts of accounts <i>declined</i> after World War II; Stalin drew back from public life, and the press instead began to focus on remote contact (i.e. accounts of receiving a telegram from Stalin or seeing the leader from afar).</div>
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Another prominent part of Stalin's image in the mass media was his close association with <i><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin</a></i>.</div>
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The Soviet press maintained that Stalin had been <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin's</a> constant companion while the latter was alive, and that as such, Stalin closely followed <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Lenin's</a> teachings and could continue the Bolshevik legacy after Lenin's death.</div>
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Stalin publicly defended Lenin's<i> infallibility</i> with a fierce loyalty; in doing so, Stalin implied that his own leadership was <i>similarly faultless</i>, as he was a faithful follower of <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Leninism</a>.</div>
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Before 1932, most Soviet propaganda posters showed Lenin and Stalin together, however, eventually the two figures merged in the Soviet press; Stalin became the<i> embodiment</i> of Lenin. Initially, the press attributed any and all success within the Soviet Union to the wise leadership of both Lenin and Stalin, but eventually Stalin<i> alone</i> became the professed cause of Soviet well-being.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalin and Culture</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although he was <i>Georgian</i> by birth, Stalin became a Russian nationalist, and significantly promoted Russian history, language, and Russian national heroes, particularly during the 1930s and 1940s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are also claims that he held the Russian people up as the elder brothers of the non-Russian minorities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During Stalin's reign the official and long-lived style of 'Socialist Realism' was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Ivan the Terrible'</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Previously fashionable "revolutionary" expressionism, abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or denounced as "<i>formalism</i>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general, and in specific instances, has been the subject of discussion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin's favorite novel 'Pharaoh', shared similarities with <i>Sergei Eisenstein</i>'s film, '<i>Ivan the Terrible'</i>, produced under Stalin's tutelage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In architecture, a <i>Stalinist Empire Style</i> (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the Seven Sisters of Moscow) replaced the <i>constructivism </i>of the 1920s. Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on indigenous cultures within the Soviet Union, though the politics of Korenizatsiya and forced development were possibly beneficial to the integration of later generations of indigenous cultures.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">коренизация - (Korenizatsiya) </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">sometimes also called korenization, meaning "nativization" or "indigenization", literally "putting down roots", was the early Soviet nationalities policy promoted mostly in the 1920s but with a continuing legacy in later years. The primary policy consisted of promoting representatives of titular nations of Soviet republics and national minorities on lower levels of the administrative subdivision of the state, into local government, management, bureaucracy and nomenklatura in the corresponding national entities. The term derives from the Russian term "коренное население" (korennoye naseleniye, "root population") for indigenous nationals.</span><br />
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Stalin became the focus of literature, poetry, music, paintings and film that exhibited fawning devotion.<br />
An example was A. V. Avidenko's "Hymn to Stalin":<br />
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<i>'Thank you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Stalin, our inspired leader ... Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be : Stalin</i> ...'<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stalin</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stalin</td></tr>
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Numerous <i>pictures</i> and <i>statues</i> of Stalin adorned public places.<br />
Statues of Stalin depicted him at a height and build approximating the very tall Tsar Alexander III, but photographic evidence suggests he was between 5 ft 5 in and 5 ft 6 in (165–168 cm).<br />
Stalin-themed art appeared privately, as well: starting in the early 1930s, many private homes included "<i>Stalin rooms</i>" dedicated to the leader and featuring his portrait.<br />
The advent of the cult also led to a renaming craze: numerous towns, villages and cities were renamed after the Soviet leader.<br />
The 'Stalin Prize' and 'Stalin Peace Prize' were also named in his honor, and he accepted several grandiloquent titles (e.g., "<i>Coryphaeus of Science</i>", "<i>Father of Nations</i>", "<i>Brilliant Genius of Humanity</i>", "<i>Great Architect of Communism</i>", "<i>Gardener of Human Happiness</i>", and others).<br />
The cult reached new levels during World War II, with Stalin's name included in the new Soviet national anthem.<br />
The cult of personality primarily existed among the Soviet masses; there was no explicit manifestation of the cult among the members of the Politburo and other high-ranking Party officials, however, Stalin had a notoriously low tolerance for dissent within the Party; as such, the fear of backlash from Stalin made Party officials hesitant to honestly express their viewpoints, especially during the Stalinist show trials of 1937 and 1938.<br />
This atmosphere of fear and self-censorship created the<i> illusion</i> of undisputed government support for Stalin, and this perceived support further fueled the cult for the Soviet populace.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Purges and Deportations</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NKVD<br />
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Stalin, as head of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, consolidated <i>near-absolute power</i> in the 1930s with a '<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank"><i>Great Purge</i></a>' of the party that was justified as an attempt to expel "<i>opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators</i>".<br />
Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party, however more severe measures ranged from banishment to the Gulag labor camps to execution after trials held by NKVD troikas.<br />
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of the Leningrad party boss <i>Sergei Kirov</i>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Серге́й Миро́нович Ки́ро<br />
Sergei Mironovich Kirov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Серге́й Миро́нович Ки́ров (Sergei Mironovich Kirov) (27 March [O.S. 15 March] 1886 – 1 December 1934), born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute. Some historians place the blame for his assassination at the hands of Stalin and believe the NKVD organised its execution, but any evidence for this claim remains elusive. Kirov's death served as one of the pretexts for Stalin's escalation of repression against dissident elements of the Party, culminating in the Great Purge of the late 1930s in which many of the Old Bolsheviks were arrested, expelled from the Party, and executed. Complicity in Kirov's assassination was a common charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the era.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">The cities of Kirov, Kirovohrad, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad, as well as a few Kirovsks, were renamed in Kirov's honor after his assassination. Following the collapse of Soviet Union Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names: Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively.</span><br />
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At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received at least over a hundred negative votes.<br />
After the assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including<i> Trotsky,</i> <i>Kamenev</i> and <i>Zinoviev</i>.<br />
The investigations and trials expanded.<br />
Stalin passed a new law on "<i>terrorist organizations and terrorist acts</i>" that were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed "<i>quickly</i>."<br />
Thereafter, several trials known as the <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">'Moscow Trials'</a> were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibited anti-Soviet activities as counterrevolutionary crime, was applied in the broadest manner.<br />
The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "<i>enemy of the people</i>", starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death.<br />
The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD -NKVD troika- with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.<br />
Stalin's hand-picked executioner, <i>Vasili Blokhin</i>, was entrusted with carrying out some of the high profile executions in this period.<br />
Many military leaders were convicted of treason and a large-scale purge of Red Army officers followed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hDdevFAIYx8/UWP4zRwf9NI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/6eilgbaSEVo/s1600/Lev+Trotsky+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hDdevFAIYx8/UWP4zRwf9NI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/6eilgbaSEVo/s200/Lev+Trotsky+-+Great+Purge+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="126" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Лев Троцкий</span><br /><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Lev Davidovich Bronshtein</span></span></td></tr>
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The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led <i>Leon Trotsky</i> to claim that a "<i>river of blood</i>" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin.<br />
In August 1940, Trotsky was <i>assassinated</i> in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Лев Троцкий - </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Leon Trotsky - born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein; 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1879 – 21 August 1940) was a Russian Jewish Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Party. During the early days of the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army as People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. He was a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–20). He was also among the first members of the Politburo.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was successively removed from power (1927), expelled from the Communist Party, and finally deported from the Soviet Union (1929). As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued in exile in Mexico to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. An early advocate of Red Army intervention against European fascism, in the late 1930s, Trotsky opposed Stalin's non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler. He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico, by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent in August 1940</span><br />
<br />
<br />
With the exception of Vladimir Milyutin (who died in prison in 1937) and Joseph Stalin himself, <i>all</i> of the members of Lenin's original cabinet who had not succumbed to death from natural causes before the purge were executed.<br />
Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" <i>(foreign ethnicities</i>) such as Poles, ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc.<br />
A total of at least 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.<br />
Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed; others were sent to prison camps or gulags.<br />
Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials.<br />
Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.<br />
In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror, with the great mass of victims merely "ordinary" Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars.<br />
Many of the executed were interred in mass graves, with some of the major killing and burial sites being Bykivnia, Kurapaty and Butovo.<br />
Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.<br />
Stalin <i>personally signed</i> 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned to execution some 40,000 people, and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot.<br />
At the time, while reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "<i>Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time ? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of ? No one.</i>"<br />
In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia, established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika, and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as "<i>Japanese Spies</i>." Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead.<br />
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors and other opponents of the Soviet regime.<br />
Victims of such plots included Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Rudolf Klement, Alexander Kutepov, Evgeny Miller, Leon Trotsky and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., Andreu Nin).<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Population Transfer</span><br />
<br />
Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union.<br />
It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics.<br />
By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.<br />
Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly.<br />
Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined.<br />
After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars – more than a million people in total – were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions.<br />
As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particular ethnicities, ethnic groups such as the Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens, and many Poles were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia.<br />
By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route.<br />
According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including the entire nationalities in several cases).<br />
The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations has played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic States, Tatarstan and Chechnya, even today.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Collectivization</span><br />
<br />
Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture.<br />
This was intended to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, and to make tax collection more efficient.<br />
Collectivization brought social change on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and alienation from control of the land and its produce.<br />
Collectivization also meant a drastic <i>drop in living standards</i> for many peasants, and it faced violent reaction among the peasantry.<br />
In the first years of collectivization it was estimated that industrial production would rise by 200% and agricultural production by 50%, but these expectations were not realized. Stalin blamed this unanticipated failure on <i>kulaks</i> (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization, however, kulaks proper made up only 4% of the peasant population; the "<i>kulaks</i>" that Stalin targeted included the slightly better-off peasants who took the brunt of violence from the OGPU and the Komsomol.<br />
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Комсомо́л</div>
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Komsomol Emblem<br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Всесоюзный Ленинский Коммунисти́ческий сою́з молодёжи (ВЛКСМ) (The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), usually known as Комсомо́л (</span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Komsomol) a syllabic abbreviation from the Russian Kommunisticheskii Soyuz Molodyozhi), was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Young Communist League, or RKSM. During 1922, with the unification of the USSR, it was reformed into an all-union agency, the youth division of the All-Union Communist Party.</span><br />
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These peasants were about 60% of the population.<br />
Those officially defined as "<i>kulaks</i>," "<i>kulak helpers</i>," and later "<i>ex-kulaks</i>" were to be <i>shot</i>, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge.<br />
Archival data indicates that 20,201 people were executed during 1930, the year of <i>Dekulakization</i>.<br />
The two-stage progress of collectivization—interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorials, "<i>Dizzy with success</i>" and "<i>Reply to Collective Farm Comrades</i>" —is a prime example of his capacity for tactical political withdrawal followed by intensification of initial strategies.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Famines</span><br />
<br />
Famine affected other parts of the USSR.<br />
The death toll from famine in the Soviet Union at this time is estimated at between 5 and 10 million people.<br />
The worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, had caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.<br />
Most modern scholars agree that the famine was caused by the <i>policies of the government of the Soviet Union under Stalin</i>, rather than by natural reasons.<br />
According to Alan Bullock, "t<i>he total Soviet grain crop was no worse than that of 1931 ... it was not a crop failure but the excessive demands of the state, ruthlessly enforced, that cost the lives of as many as five million Ukrainian peasants</i>."<br />
Stalin <i>refused</i> to release large grain reserves that could have alleviated the famine, while continuing to <i>export </i>grain; he was convinced that the Ukrainian peasants had hidden grain away and strictly enforced draconian new collective-farm theft laws in response.<br />
The USSR also experienced a major famine in 1947 as a result of war damage and severe droughts, but economist Michael Ellman argues that it could have been prevented if the government had not <i>mismanaged </i>its grain reserves.<br />
The famine cost an estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives as well as secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ukrainian Famine</span><br />
<br />
The 'Holodomor' famine is sometimes referred to as the '<i>Ukrainian Genocide</i>', implying it was <i>engineered </i>by the Soviet government, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity.<br />
While historians continue to disagree whether the policies that led to Holodomor fall under the legal definition of genocide, twenty-six countries have officially recognized the Holodomor as such.<br />
On 28 November 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament approved a bill declaring the Soviet-era forced famine an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.<br />
Professor Michael Ellman concludes that Ukrainians were victims of genocide in 1932–33.<br />
He asserts that Soviet policies greatly exacerbated the famine's death toll.<br />
Although 1.8 million tonnes of grain were exported during the height of the starvation—enough to feed 5 million people for one year-the use of torture and execution to extract grain under the 'Law of Spikelets', the use of <i>force</i> to prevent starving peasants from fleeing the worst-affected areas, and the <i>refusal to import </i>grain or secure international humanitarian aid to alleviate conditions led to incalcuable human suffering in the Ukraine.<br />
It would appear that Stalin <i>intended</i> to use the starvation as a cheap and efficient means (as opposed to deportations and shootings) to <i>kill off </i>those deemed to be <i>"counterrevolutionaries</i>," "<i>idlers,</i>" and "<i>thieves</i>," but not to annihilate the Ukrainian peasantry as a whole. Ellman also claims that, while this was not the only Soviet genocide (e.g., the Polish operation of the NKVD), it was the worst in terms of mass casualties.<br />
Current estimates on the total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range mostly from 2.2 million to 4 to 5 million.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Industrialization</span><br />
<br />
The Russian Civil War and wartime communism had a <i>devastating</i> effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914.<br />
A recovery followed under the 'New Economic Policy', which allowed a degree of <i>market flexibility</i> within the context of socialism.<br />
Under Stalin's direction, this was replaced by a system of centrally ordained "<i>Five-Year Plans</i>" in the late 1920s.<br />
These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture.<br />
With seed capital unavailable because of international reaction to Communist policies, little international trade, and virtually no modern infrastructure, Stalin's government financed industrialization both by restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the <i>kulaks</i>.<br />
In 1933 workers' real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level.<br />
Common and political prisoners in labor camps were forced to perform unpaid labor, and communists and <i>Komsomol</i> members were frequently "<i>mobilized</i>" for various construction projects.<br />
The Soviet Union used numerous foreign experts to design new factories, supervise construction, instruct workers and improve manufacturing processes.<br />
The most notable foreign contractor was Albert Kahn's firm that designed and built 521 factories between 1930 and 1932.<br />
As a rule, factories were supplied with imported equipment.<br />
In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved <i>rapid industrialization</i> from a very low economic base.<br />
While it is generally agreed that the Soviet Union achieved significant levels of economic growth under Stalin, the precise rate of growth is disputed.<br />
It is not disputed, however, that these gains were accomplished at the cost of millions of lives.<br />
Official Soviet estimates stated the annual rate of growth at 13.9%; Russian and Western estimates gave lower figures of 5.8% and even 2.9%. Indeed, one estimate is that Soviet growth became temporarily much higher after Stalin's death.<br />
The Five-Year Plan substantially helped to modernize the previously backward Soviet economy.<br />
New products were developed, and the scale and efficiency of existing production greatly increased.<br />
Some innovations were based on indigenous technical developments, others on imported foreign technology.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Science</span><br />
<br />
Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control by Stalin and his government, along with art and literature.<br />
There was significant progress in "<i>ideologically safe</i>" domains, owing to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research, however, the most notable legacy during Stalin's time was his public endorsement of the agronomist <i>Trofim Lysenko</i>, who <i>rejected Mendelian</i> genetics as "<i>bourgeois pseudoscience</i>", and instead supported <i>hybridization</i> theories that caused widespread agricultural destruction and major setbacks in Soviet knowledge in biology.<br />
Although many scientists opposed his views, those who publicly came out were imprisoned and denounced. Some areas of physics were also criticized.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Social Services</span><br />
<br />
Under the Soviet government people benefited from some social liberalization.<br />
Girls were given an adequate, equal education and women had equal rights in employment, improving lives for women and families.<br />
Stalinist development also contributed to advances in health care, which significantly increased the lifespan and quality of life of the typical Soviet citizen.<br />
Stalin's policies granted the Soviet people universal access to healthcare and education, effectively creating the first generation free from the fear of typhus, cholera, and malaria.<br />
The occurrences of these diseases dropped to record low numbers, <i>increasing</i> life spans by <i>decades</i>.<br />
Soviet women under Stalin were the first generation of women able to give birth in the safety of a hospital with access to prenatal care.<br />
Education was also an example of an increase in the standard of living after economic development.<br />
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The generation born during Stalin's rule was the first near-universally <i>literate </i>generation.<br />
Millions benefited from mass literacy campaigns in the 1930s, and from workers training schemes.<br />
Engineers were sent abroad to learn industrial technology, and hundreds of foreign engineers were brought to Russia on contract.<br />
Transport links were improved and many new railways built.<br />
Workers who exceeded their quotas, <i>Stakhanovites</i>, received many incentives for their work; they could afford to buy the goods that were mass-produced by the rapidly expanding Soviet economy.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Religion</span><br />
<br />
Raised in the Georgian Orthodox faith, Stalin, who once considered training to be a priest, became an <i>atheist</i>.<br />
He followed the position adopted by Lenin that religion was an <i>opiate</i> that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist society.<br />
His government promoted<i> atheism</i> through special atheistic education in schools, <i>anti-religious propaganda</i>, the antireligious work of public institutions (<i>Society of the Godless</i>), discriminatory laws, and a terror campaign against religious believers.<br />
By the late 1930s it had become dangerous to be publicly associated with religion.<br />
Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex.<br />
Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction as a public institution: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.<br />
During World War II, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, and thousands of parishes were reactivated.<br />
The Russian Orthodox Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.<br />
Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted.<br />
Many religions popular in ethnic regions of the Soviet Union, including the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism underwent ordeals similar to that which the Orthodox churches in other parts of the country suffered: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalin the Theorist</span><br />
<br />
Stalin and his supporters have highlighted the notion that socialism can be built and consolidated by a country ("Socialism in One Country") as underdeveloped as Russia during the 1920s.<br />
Indeed this might be the only means in which it could be built in a hostile environment.<br />
In 1933, Stalin put forward the theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism, arguing that the further the country would move forward, the more acute forms of struggle will be used by the doomed remnants of exploiter classes in their last desperate efforts – and that, therefore, political repression was necessary.<br />
In 1936, Stalin announced that the society of the Soviet Union consisted of two non-antagonistic classes: workers and <i>kolkhoz</i> peasantry.<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">колхо́з Kolkhoz, plural kolkhozy - were a form of collective farms in the Soviet Union. Kolkhoz existed along with state farms or sovkhoz, plural sovkhozy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство (kollektivnoye khozyaystvo), suggesting collective farm or collective economy. On the other hand, sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство (sovetskoye khozyaystvo), suggesting Soviet farm or collective management. </span><br />
<br />
These corresponded to the two different forms of property over the means of production that existed in the Soviet Union: state property (for the workers) and collective property (for the peasantry).<br />
In addition to these, Stalin distinguished the stratum of <i>intelligentsia</i>.<br />
The concept of "<i>non-antagonistic classes</i>" was entirely new to '<i>Leninist theory'</i>.<br />
Stalin fancied himself as a political philosopher, and among Stalin's contributions to Communist theoretical literature were "<i>Dialectical and Historical Materialism</i>," "<i>Marxism and the National Question</i>", "<i>Trotskyism or Leninism</i>", and "<i>The Principles of Leninism.</i>"<br />
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-great-purge.html" target="_blank">see also Joseph Stalin - The Great Purge</a></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-2477836584426939132013-03-28T15:48:00.002-07:002015-10-12T10:41:42.870-07:00Joseph Stalin - Иосиф Сталин - Early Years<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин</span></div>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Joseph Stalin - The Early Years</span></div>
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">this article is continued @ Joseph Stalin - Revolution and Power</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">И</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">осиф Виссарионович Сталин; - Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin born Ioseb Besarionis je J̌uḡašvili, 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the de facto leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the party's Central Committee in 1922.<br />He subsequently managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin through expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition.<br />He held this nominal post until abolishing it in 1952, concurrently serving as the Premier of the Soviet Union after establishing the position in 1941.<br />Under Joseph Stalin's rule, the concept of "socialism in one country" became a central tenet of Soviet society.<br />He replaced the 'New Economic Policy' 'NEP' introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralised command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power.<br />However, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of several million people in Soviet correctional labour camps and the deportation of many others to remote areas.<br />The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–1933, known as the Holodomor in Ukraine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later, in a period that lasted from 1936–39, Stalin instituted a campaign against alleged enemies of his regime called the 'Great Purge', in which hundreds of thousands were executed.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Major figures in the Communist Party, such as the old Bolsheviks, Leon Trotsky, and several Red Army leaders were killed after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the government and Stalin.<br />In August 1939, Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact with the Third Reich that divided their influence within Eastern Europe, but Germany later violated the agreement and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.<br />Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the German incursion after the decisive battles of Moscow and Stalingrad.<br />After defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies.<br />The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States.<br />The Yalta and Potsdam conferences established communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc countries as buffer states, which Stalin deemed necessary in case of another invasion.<br />He also fostered close relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea.<br />Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War.<br />During this period, the USSR became the second country in the world to successfully develop a nuclear weapon, as well as launching the 'Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature' in response to another widespread famine and the 'Great Construction Projects of Communism'. <br />In the years following his death, Stalin and his regime have been condemned on numerous occasions, most notably in 1956 when his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced his legacy and initiated a process of de-Stalinization. <br />He remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant, however, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed. </span><br />
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Stalin's birth house in Gori, Georgia, within the shrine complex built over it in the 1930s. Currently Joseph Stalin Museum</div>
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Stalin was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili), in Gori in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire, to Besarion Jughashvili, a Georgian cobbler who owned his own workshop, and Ketevan Geladze, a Georgian who was born a serf. He was their fourth child; their three previous sons died in infancy.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Early Childhood</span></div>
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Initially, the Jughashvili family prospered, but Stalin's father became an alcoholic, which gradually led to his business failing and him becoming violently abusive to his wife and child.</div>
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As their financial situation grew worse, Stalin's family moved homes at least nine times in Stalin's first ten years of life.</div>
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His father beat his mother and himself so violently that Stalin once had blood in is urine for over a week. He later asked his mother "Why did you beat me so hard?", to which she replied "That's why you turned out so well."</div>
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The town where Stalin grew up was a <i>violent and lawless</i> place.<br />
It had only a small police force and a <i>culture of violence</i> that included <i>gang warfare</i>, organized street brawls and wrestling tournaments.<br />
Stalin was frequently involved in brawls with other children.</div>
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At the age of seven, Stalin fell ill with smallpox and his face was badly scarred by the disease. He later had photographs retouched to make his pockmarks less apparent. Stalin's native tongue was Georgian; he did not start learning Russian until he was eight or nine years old, and he <i>never lost his strong Georgian accent</i>.</div>
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At the age of ten, Stalin Received a scholarship to the Gori Theological School (Горийское Духовное Училище).<br />
His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants.<br />
He and most of his classmates at Gori were Georgians and spoke mostly Georgian, however, at school they were forced to speak Russian, a policy set by Tsar Alexander III.</div>
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Stalin was one of the best students in the class, earning top marks across the board.</div>
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He became a very <i>good choir singer</i> (like Adolf Hitler) and was often hired to sing at weddings. He also began to write poetry, something he would develop in later years.</div>
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Stalin's father had always wanted his son to be trained as a cobbler rather than be educated. He was infuriated when the boy was accepted into the school. In a drunken rage he smashed the windows of the local tavern, and later attacked the town police chief.<br />
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Out of compassion for Stalin's mother, the police chief did not arrest Besarion, but told him to leave town.</div>
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He moved to Tiflis where he found work in a shoe factory and left his family behind in Gori.</div>
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About the time Stalin began school, his left arm became disfigured. Stalin himself has given conflicting accounts as to the cause, either because of a blood poisoning or because of physical abuse.</div>
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Whatever the cause, his left arm became a couple of inches shorter than his right; this injury would later exempt him from military service in World War I.</div>
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At the age of 12, Stalin was struck again by a horse-drawn carriage and injured much more severely.</div>
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He was taken to a hospital in Tiflis where he spent months in care.</div>
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After he recovered, his father seized the boy and enrolled him as an apprentice cobbler at the shoe factory where he worked.</div>
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When his mother – through the aid of contacts in the clergy and school staff – recovered the boy, his father cut off all financial support to his wife and son, leaving them to fend for themselves.</div>
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Stalin returned to his school in Gori where he continued to excel.</div>
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He graduated first in his class.</div>
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In 1894, at the age of 16, he enrolled at the 'Russian Orthodox Seminary of Tiflis', to which he had been awarded a scholarship.</div>
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The teachers at Tiflis Seminary were also determined to impose Russian language and culture on the Georgian students.</div>
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Like many of his comrades, young Stalin reacted by being drawn to Georgian patriotism.</div>
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For a time, he wrote Georgian poetry, for which he gained some fame.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before he became a Bolshevik revolutionary and the ruler of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin was a promising amateur poet.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Literary Career</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Like all Georgian children, Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili – who would later call himself Stalin – grew up with the national epic, 'The Knight in the Panther's Skin'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As a child, Ioseb knew the poem by heart and passionately read the other popular poems of the time, notably those by Rafael Eristavi, Akaki Tsereteli and – once he learned Russian – Nikolay Nekrasov.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At the Orthodox Seminary of Tiflis, where he was enrolled since 1894, Stalin read <i>Goethe</i> and <i>Shakespeare</i> in translation, and could recite <i>Walt Whitman</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He also started writing romantic poetry in Georgian.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1895, at the age of 17, Stalin's work impressed the noted poet Ilia Chavchavadze, who published five of them in his journal, Iveria, attributed to the pseudonym Soselo.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of these poems, '<i>Morning</i>', begins:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">"</span><i style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The pinkish bud has opened,</i><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Rushing to the pale-blue violet</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>And, stirred by a light breeze,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The lily of the valley has bent over the grass</i>."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd;">Once Stalin entered revolutionary politics, he stopped writing poetry – it took too much time, he told a friend – but in 1907 he still used his prestige as Soselo to obtain information he needed for a bank robbery from an admirer.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">During the 'Great Purge', he edited a Russian translation of the 'Knight in the Panther's Skin' (by a Georgian intellectual he released from prison for the purpose) and competently translated some of the couplets himself.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin published all of his work <i>anonymously</i> and never publicly acknowledged it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When Lavrenti Beria secretly had Boris Pasternak and other noted translators prepare a Russian edition of Stalin's poems for the ruler's 70th birthday in 1949, Stalin had the project stopped.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Tthe poems in Iveria were widely read and much admired.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">They became minor <i>Georgian classics</i>, to be published in anthologies and memorised by schoolchildren until the 1970s (and not as part of Stalin's cult; they were usually published as "Anonymous")."</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin, however, was no Georgian Pushkin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The poems' romantic imagery is <i>derivative</i>, but their beauty lies in the rhythm and language. </span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin's poems have been translated into English by Donald Rayfield.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">During his time at the seminary, Stalin and numerous other students read forbidden literature that included Victor Hugo novels and revolutionary, including Marxist, material.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He was caught and punished numerous times for this.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He became an atheist in his first year.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He insisted his peers call him "Koba", after the Robin Hood-like protagonist of the novel 'The Patricide' by Alexander Kazbegi; he continued to use this pseudonym as a revolutionary.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In August 1898, he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, an organization from which the Bolsheviks would later form.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Shortly before the final exams, the Seminary abruptly raised school fees.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unable to pay, Stalin quit the seminary in 1899 and missed his exams, for which he was officially expelled.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Shortly after leaving school, Stalin discovered the writings of Vladimir Lenin and decided to become a revolutionary.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Early Adulthood in Tiflis</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After abandoning his priestly education, Stalin took a job as a clerk at the Tiflis Meteorological Observatory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the pay was relatively low (20 roubles a month), his workload was light, giving him plenty of time for revolutionary activities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He would organize strikes, lead demonstrations and give speeches.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He soon caught the attention of the Tsar's secret police, the Okhranka.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the night of 3 April 1901, the Okhranka arrested a number of SD Party leaders in Tiflis. Stalin was riding the tram to work when he spotted their agents waiting to ambush him outside the Observatory. He stayed on the tram and avoided capture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He went underground, becoming a full-time revolutionary, living off donations from friends, sympathizers and his Party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He began writing revolutionary articles for the Baku-based radical newspaper Brdzola ("Struggle").</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Political Beginnings</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In October, he fled to Batumi and got work at an oil refinery owned by the Rothschilds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1902, a fire broke out at the refinery, and it is strongly suspected Stalin was involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The workers were entitled to a bonus for putting out the fire, but the manager suspected arson and refused to pay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In response, Stalin organized a series of strikes, which in turn led to arrests and street clashes with Cossacks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In one attempt to break their comrades out of prison, 13 strikers were killed when Cossacks intervened.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin distributed pamphlets portraying the dead as martyrs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 18 April 1902, the authorities finally arrested Stalin at a secret meeting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At his trial, Stalin was acquitted of leading the riots due to lack of evidence, but was kept in custody whilst the authorities investigated his activities in Tiflis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Joining the Bolsheviks</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin ended up in the Siberian village of Novaya Uda on 9 December 1903.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During this time, he heard that two rival factions within the Social-Democrats had formed: the <i>Bolsheviks</i> under Lenin and the <i>Mensheviks</i> under Julius Martov.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin, already an admirer, decided to join Lenin's group.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He managed to obtain false papers and, on 17 January 1904, escaped Siberia by train, arriving back in Tiflis ten days later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With no income, Stalin lived off his circle of friends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of them introduced him to Lev Kamenev (then known as Lev Rosenfeld), his future co-ruler of the USSR after Lenin's death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At this time, Stalin favored a Georgian Social-Democratic party, which caused a rift with the majority who favored international Marxism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Threatened with expulsion, he was forced to write 'Credo', a paper renouncing his views (because this paper distanced himself from Lenin, when Stalin became ruler of the USSR, he tried to destroy all copies of this 'Credo', and many of those who had read it were shot).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The following month, the Russo-Japanese War broke out between Japan and Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The war, which would eventually end in Russia's defeat, severely strained the Russian economy and caused a great deal of restlessness in Georgia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin travelled across Georgia conducting political activity for his party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also worked to undermine the Mensheviks through a campaign of slander and intrigue. These efforts brought him to Lenin's attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 22 January 1905, Stalin was in Baku when Cossacks attacked a mass demonstration of workers, killing 200.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was part of a series of events which sparked off the Russian Revolution of 1905.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Riots, peasant uprisings and ethnic massacres swept the Russian Empire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In February, ethnic Azeris and Armenians were slaughtering each other in the streets of Baku. Commanding a squad of armed Bolsheviks, Stalin ran <i>protection rackets</i> to raise party funds and<i> stole </i>printing equipment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Afterward, he headed west, where he continued to campaign against the Mensheviks, who enjoyed overwhelming support in Georgia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the mining town of Chiatura, both Stalin and the Mensheviks competed for the support of the miners; they chose Jughashvili, preferring his plain and concise manner of speaking to the flamboyant oratory of the Menshevik speaker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From Chiatura, Stalin organized and armed Bolshevik militias across Georgia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With them, he ran <i>protection rackets</i> among the wealthy and waged guerrilla warfare on Cossacks, policemen and the Okhranka.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later that year, in the townhouse in which he had moved in Tiflis, he met <i>Ekaterina Svanidze</i>, who would become his first wife.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joseph Stalin and<br />
Ekaterina "Kato" Svanidze</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ekaterina "Kato" Svanidze, (April 2, 1885 – December 5, 1907) was the Georgian first wife of Joseph Stalin. They were married in 1906.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">She was a daughter of Semon Svanadze and Sephora (née Dvali). Ekaterina, nicknamed Kato, was a tailor who worked for the ladies of the Russian army </span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">She had two sisters, Alexandra (nicknamed "Sashiko") and Maria ("Mariko").</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">She had at least one brother, but some sources claim she had more than one. Because her only known brother Alexander Svanidze spoke German and French and studied in Germany, it is unlikely that her family was poor. Alexander Svanidze was married to Maria Korona, a singer at the Tiflis Opera.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kato Svanidze married Joseph Stalin in St. David's church at Tiflis in 1906.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">They had a son, <i>Yakov Dzhugashvili</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">She died of typhus in 1907.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Much of her family (including her sister Mariko and brother Alexander) would later be executed during her husband's 'Great Terror'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is stated that Ekaterina died of tuberculosis in Stalin's arms.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin would later state that, other than his mother, she may have been the only person he truly loved.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At her funeral, he said "<i>This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Meeting Lenin and Early Politics</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In December 1905, Stalin and two other activists were elected to represent the Caucasus at the next Bolshevik conference, which took place in Tampere, Finland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There, on 7 January 1906, Stalin met<i> Lenin</i> in person for the first time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although Stalin was impressed by Lenin's personality and intellect, he was not afraid to contradict him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He objected to Lenin's proposal that they take part in elections to the recently formed Russian parliament, the Duma.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the conference he also met Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, his future propaganda chief, and Solomon Lozovsky, his future Deputy Foreign Commissar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the conference, Stalin returned to Georgia, where Cossack troops were brutally trying to reconquer the rebellious region for the Tsar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Tiflis, Stalin and the Mensheviks plotted the assassination of Major General Fyodor Gryaznov, which was carried out at the end of January 1906.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin continued to raise money for the Bolsheviks through <i>extortion, bank robberies and hold-ups.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In April 1906, Stalin attended the 'Fourth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the conference, he met Kliment Voroshilov, his future Defence Commissar and First Marshal; Felix Dzerzhinsky, future founder of the <i>Cheka</i>; and Grigory Zinoviev, with whom he would share power after Lenin's death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Congress, in which the Bolsheviks were outnumbered, voted to ban bank robberies. This upset Lenin, who <i>needed the bank robberies to raise money</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin <i>married</i> Ekaterina Svanidze on 28 July 1906.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 31 March 1907, she gave birth to Stalin's first child, Yakov. Stalin and Lenin both attended the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in <i>London </i>in 1907.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This Congress consolidated the supremacy of Lenin's Bolshevik faction, and debated strategy for communist revolution in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here, Stalin first met Leon Trotsky in person; Stalin <i>immediately came to hate him</i>, calling him "<i>pretty but useless</i>".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the conference, Stalin would begin to switch his focus away from Georgia, which was rife with feuding and dominated by the Mensheviks, to Russia, and he began writing in Russian.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yerevan Square - Tbilisi</td></tr>
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The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, also known as the Yerevan Square expropriation, was an armed robbery on 26 June 1907 in the Georgian city of Tiflis (now Georgia's capital, Tbilisi).</div>
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A bank cash shipment was stolen by Bolsheviks to fund their revolutionary activities.</div>
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The robbers attacked a bank stagecoach and surrounding police and military using bombs and guns while the stagecoach was transporting money through Yerevan Square (now Freedom Square) between the post office and the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. The attack killed forty people and injured fifty others, according to official archive documents. The robbers escaped with 341,000 rubles (equivalent to around US $3.4 million in 2008).</div>
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The robbery was organized by a number of top-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov, and executed by a gang of Georgian revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Kamo.</div>
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Because such activities were explicitly prohibited by the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), the robbery and the killings caused outrage within the party against the Bolsheviks (a faction within the RSDLP).</div>
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As a result, Lenin and Stalin tried to distance themselves from the robbery.</div>
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The events surrounding the incident and similar robberies split the Bolshevik leadership, with Lenin against Bogdanov and Krasin.</div>
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Despite the success of the robbery and the large sum involved, the Bolsheviks could not use most of the large bank notes obtained from the robbery because their serial numbers were known to the police.</div>
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Lenin conceived of a plan to have various individuals cash the large bank notes at once at various locations throughout Europe in January 1908, but this strategy failed, resulting in a number of arrests, worldwide publicity, and negative reaction from European social democrats.</div>
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Kamo was caught in Germany shortly after the robbery but successfully avoided a criminal trial by<i> feigning insanity</i> for more than three years.</div>
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He managed to escape from his psychiatric ward but was captured two years later while planning another robbery.</div>
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Kamo was then sentenced to death for his crimes including the 1907 robbery, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment; he was released after the 1917 Revolution.</div>
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None of the other major participants or organizers of the robbery were ever brought to trial. After his death, a grave and monument to Kamo was erected near Yerevan Square in Pushkin Gardens.</div>
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This monument was later removed, and Kamo's remains moved elsewhere.</div>
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The RSDLP, the predecessor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was formed in 1898. The goal of the RSDLP was to change the economic and political system in the Russian Empire through a proletarian revolution in accordance with Marxist doctrine. Alongside their political activities, the RSDLP and other revolutionary groups (such as anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries) practised a range of militant operations, including "expropriations", a euphemism for armed robberies of government or private funds to support revolutionary activities.[</div>
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From 1903 onwards, the RSDLP were divided between two major groups: the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.</div>
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After the suppression of the 1905 Revolution by the Russian Empire, the RSDLP held its 5th Congress in May–June 1907 in London with the hopes of resolving differences between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.</div>
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One issue that still separated the two groups was the divergence of their views on militant activities, and in particular, "expropriations".The most militant Bolsheviks, led at the 5th Congress by Vladimir Lenin, supported continuation of the use of robberies, while Mensheviks advocated a more peaceful and gradual approach to revolution, and opposed militant operations. At the 5th Congress, a resolution was passed condemning participation in or assistance to all militant activity, including "expropriations" as "disorganizing and demoralizing", and called for all party militias to be disbanded.[5][6] This resolution passed with 65 per cent supporting and 6 per cent opposing (others abstained or did not vote) with all Mensheviks and even some Bolsheviks supporting the resolution.[5]</div>
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Despite the unified party's prohibition on separate committees, during the 5th Congress the Bolsheviks elected their own governing body, called the Bolshevik Centre, and kept it secret from the rest of the RSDLP.</div>
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The Bolshevik Centre was headed by a "Finance Group" consisting of Lenin, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov. Among other party activities, the Bolshevik leadership had already planned a number of "expropriations" in different parts of Russia by the time of the 5th Congress and was awaiting a major robbery in Tiflis, which occurred only weeks after the 5th Congress ended.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Preparation</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Before the 5th Congress met, high-ranking Bolsheviks held a meeting in Berlin in April 1907 to discuss staging a robbery to obtain funds to purchase arms.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Attendees included Lenin, Krasin, Bogdanov, Joseph Stalin, and Maxim Litvinov.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The group decided that Stalin, then known by his earlier nom de guerre Koba,[b] and the Armenian Simon Ter-Petrossian, known as Kamo, should organize a bank robbery in the city of Tiflis.[9]</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The 29-year-old Stalin was living in Tiflis with his wife Ekaterina and newborn son Yakov.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin was experienced at organizing robberies, and these exploits had helped him gain a reputation as the Centre's principal financier.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo, four years younger than Stalin, had a <i>reputation for ruthlessness</i>; later in his life he cut a man's heart from his chest.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At the time of the conspiracy, Kamo ran a criminal organization called "the Outfit".</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin said that Kamo was "a master of disguise", and Lenin called Kamo his "Caucasian bandit".</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin and Kamo had grown up together, and Stalin had converted Kamo to Marxism.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After the April meeting, Stalin and Litvinov travelled to Tiflis to inform Kamo of the plans and to organize the raid.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Roman Brackman's 'The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life', while Stalin was working with the Bolsheviks to organize criminal activities, he was also acting as an <i>informant for the Okhrana</i>, the Russian secret police.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Brackman alleges that once the group returned to Tiflis, Stalin informed his Okhrana contact, Officer Mukhtarov, about the bank robbery plans and promised to provide the Okhrana with more information at a later time.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In Tiflis, Stalin began planning for the robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He established contact with two individuals with inside information about the State Bank's operations: a bank clerk named Gigo Kasradze and an old school friend of Stalin's named Voznesensky who worked at the Tiflis banking mail office.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Voznesensky later stated that he had helped out in the theft out of admiration for Stalin's romantic poetry.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Voznesensky worked in the Tiflis banking mail office, giving him access to a secret schedule that showed the times that cash would be transferred by stagecoach to the Tiflis branch of the State Bank.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Voznesensky notified Stalin that the bank would be receiving a large shipment of money by horse-drawn carriage on 26 June 1907.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Krasin helped manufacture bombs to use in the attack on the stagecoach.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo's gang smuggled bombs into Tiflis by hiding them inside a sofa.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Only weeks before the robbery, Kamo accidentally detonated one of Krasin's bombs while trying to set the fuse.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The blast severely injured him in the eye, leaving a permanent scar.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo was confined to his bed for a month owing to intense pain, and had not fully recovered by the time of the robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Day of the Robbery</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On the day of the robbery, 26 June 1907, the 20 organizers, including Stalin, met near Yerevan Square (just 2 minutes from the seminary, bank and viceroy's palace) to finalize their plans, and after the meeting, they went to their designated places in preparation for the attack.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Russian authorities had become aware that some large action was being planned by revolutionaries in Tiflis, and had increased the security presence in the main square; just prior to the robbery, they had been tipped off and were guarding every street corner in Yerevan Square.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To deal with the increased security, gang members spotted each security officer prior to the robbery and lookouts were posted looking down on the square from above.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The gang members mostly dressed themselves as peasants and waited on street corners with revolvers and grenades.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In contrast to the others, Kamo was disguised as a cavalry captain and came to the square in a horse-drawn phaeton, a type of open carriage.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The conspirators took over the Tilipuchuri tavern facing the square in preparation for the robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A witness, David Sagirashvili, later stated that he had been walking in Yerevan Square when a friend named Bachua Kupriashvili, who later turned out to be one of the robbers, invited him into a tavern and asked him to stay. Once inside the tavern, Sagirashvili realized that armed men were stopping people from leaving.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When they received a signal that the bank stagecoach was nearing the square, the armed men quickly left the building with pistols drawn.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire had arranged to transport funds between the post office and the State Bank by horse-drawn stagecoach.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Inside the stagecoach was the money, two guards with rifles, a bank cashier, and a bank accountant.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A phaeton filled with guards rode behind the stagecoach, and horse-mounted guards rode in front, next to, and behind the carriages.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Attack</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The stagecoach made its way through the crowded square at about 10:30 am. Kupriashvili gave the signal, and the robbers hit the carriage with grenades, killing many of the horses and guards, and began shooting security men guarding the stagecoach and the square.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bombs were thrown from all directions.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Georgian newspaper Isari reported: "<i>No one could tell if the terrible shooting was the boom of cannons or explosion of bombs ... The sound caused panic everywhere ... almost across the whole city, people started running. Carriages and carts were galloping away</i>".</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The blasts were so strong that they knocked over nearby chimneys and broke every pane of glass for a mile around.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ekaterina Svanidze, Stalin's wife, was standing on a balcony at their home near the square with her family and young child.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When they heard the explosions, they rushed back into the house terrified.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the injured horses harnessed to the bank stagecoach bolted, pulling the stagecoach with it, chased by Kupriashvili, Kamo, and another robber, Datiko Chibriashvili.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kupriashvili threw a grenade that blew off the horse's legs, but Kupriashvili was caught in the explosion, landing stunned on the ground.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He regained consciousness and sneaked out of the square before police and military reinforcements arrived.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Chibriashvili snatched the sacks of money from the stagecoach while Kamo rode up firing his pistol, and they and another robber threw the money into Kamo's phaeton.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pressed for time, they inadvertently left twenty thousand rubles behind, some of which was pocketed by one of the stagecoach drivers who was later arrested for the theft.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Escape and Aftermath</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After securing the money, Kamo quickly rode out of the square; encountering a police carriage, he pretended to be a captain of the cavalry, shouting, "<i>The money's safe. Run to the square</i>."</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The deputy in the carriage obeyed, realizing only later that he had been fooled by an escaping robber.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo then rode to the gang's headquarters where he changed out of his uniform.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">All of the robbers quickly scattered, and none were caught.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the robbers, Eliso Lominadze, stole a teacher's uniform to disguise himself and came back to the square, gazing at the carnage.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Fifty casualties</i> lay wounded in the square along with the dead people and horses.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The authorities stated that only three people had died, but documents in the Okhrana archives reveal that the true number was around <i>forty</i>.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The State Bank was not sure how much it actually lost from the robbery, but the best estimates were around 341,000 rubles, worth around<i> 3.4 million US dollars as of 2008</i>.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">About 91,000 rubles were in small untraceable bills, with the rest in large 500-ruble notes that were difficult to exchange because their serial numbers were known to the police.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Stalin's Role</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin's exact actions on the day of the robbery are unknown and disputed.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One source, P. A. Pavlenko, claimed that Stalin attacked the carriage itself and had been wounded by a bomb fragment.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo later stated that Stalin took no active part in the robbery and had watched it from a distance.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Another source stated in a police report that Stalin "observed the ruthless bloodshed, smoking a cigarette, from the courtyard of a mansion."</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Another source claims that Stalin was actually at the railway station during the robbery and not at the square.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin's sister-in-law stated that Stalin came home the night of the robbery and told his family about its success.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin's role was later questioned by fellow revolutionaries Boris Nicolaevsky and Leon Trotsky. The latter, Stalin's rival, was later assassinated on orders from Stalin. In his book 'Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence', Trotsky analyzed many publications describing the Tiflis expropriation and other Bolshevik militant activities of that time, and concluded, "<i>Others did the fighting; Stalin supervised them from afar</i>".</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In general, according to Nicolaevsky, "<i>The role played by Stalin in the activities of the Kamo group was subsequently exaggerated</i>".</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kun later discovered official archive documents however clearly showing that "<i>from late 1904 or early 1905 Stalin took part in drawing up plans for expropriations</i>", adding, "<i>It is now certain that [Stalin] controlled from the wings the initial plans of the group</i>" that carried out the Tiflis robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Security Response and Investigation</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The robbery featured in headlines worldwide: "Rain of Bombs: Revolutionaries Hurl Destruction among Large Crowds of People" in the London Daily Mirror, "Tiflis Bomb Outrage" in The Times of London, "Catastrophe!" in Le Temps in Paris, and "Bomb Kills Many; $170,000 Captured" in The New York Times.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Authorities mobilized the army, closed roads, and surrounded the square hoping to secure the money and capture the criminals.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A special detective unit was brought in to lead the police investigation.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unfortunately for the investigators, witness testimony was confusing and conflicting, and the authorities did not know which group was responsible for the robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Polish socialists, Armenians, anarchists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and even the Russian State itself were blamed.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Brackman, several days after the robbery the Okhrana agent Mukhtarov questioned Stalin in a secret apartment.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The agents had heard rumors that Stalin had been seen watching passively during the robbery. Mukhtarov asked Stalin why he had not informed them about it, and Stalin stated that he had provided adequate information to the authorities to prevent the theft.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The questioning escalated into a heated argument; Mukhtarov hit Stalin in the face and had to be restrained by other Okhrana officers.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After this incident, Muktarov was suspended from the Okhrana, and Stalin was ordered to leave Tiflis and go to Baku to await a decision in the case.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin left Baku with 20,000 rubles in stolen money in July 1907.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">While Brackman claims to have found evidence of this incident, whether Stalin cooperated with the Okhrana during his early life has been a subject of debate among historians for many decades and has yet to be resolved.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Moving the Money and Kamo's Arrest</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The funds from the robbery were originally kept at the house of Stalin's friends in Tiflis, Mikha and Maro Bochoridze.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The money was sewn into a mattress so that it could be moved and stored easily without arousing suspicion.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The mattress was moved to another safe house, then later put on the director's couch at the Tiflis Meteorological Observatory, possibly because Stalin had worked there.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Some sources claim that Stalin himself helped put the money in the observatory.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The director stated that he never knew that the stolen money had been stored under his roof.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A large portion of the stolen money was eventually moved by Kamo, who took the money to Lenin in Finland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Kamo spent the remaining summer months staying with Lenin at his dacha.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">That autumn, Kamo traveled to Paris, to Belgium to buy arms and ammunition, and to Bulgaria to buy 200 detonators.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He next traveled to Berlin and delivered a letter from Lenin to a prominent Bolshevik physician, Yakov Zhitomirsky, asking to treat Kamo's eye, which had not completely healed from the bomb blast.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unknown to Lenin, Zhitomirsky had been secretly working as an agent of the Russian government and quickly informed the Okhrana, who asked the Berlin police to arrest Kamo. When they did so, they found a forged Austrian passport and a suitcase with the detonators, which he was planning to use in <i>another large bank robbery.</i></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Cashing the Marked Notes</span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After hearing of Kamo's arrest, Lenin feared that he too might be arrested and fled from Finland with his wife.</span></div>
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<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To avoid being followed, Lenin walked three miles (4.8 km) across a frozen lake at night to catch a steamer at a nearby island.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On his trek across the ice, Lenin and his two companions nearly drowned when the ice started to give way underneath them; Lenin later admitted it seemed like it would have been a "stupid way to die".</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lenin and his wife escaped and headed to Switzerland.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The unmarked bills from the robbery were easy to exchange, but the serial numbers of the 500-ruble notes were known to the authorities, making them impossible to exchange in Russian banks.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">By the end of 1907, Lenin decided to exchange the remaining 500-ruble notes abroad.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Krasin had his forger try to change some of the serial numbers.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Two hundred of these notes were transported abroad by Martyn Lyadov (they were sewn into his vest by the wives of Lenin and Bogdanov at Lenin's headquarters in Kuokkala).</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Lenin's plan was to have various individuals exchange the stolen 500-ruble notes simultaneously at a number of banks throughout Europe.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Zhitomirsky heard of the plan and reported it to the Okhrana, who contacted police departments throughout Europe asking them to arrest anyone who tried to cash the notes.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In January 1908, a number of individuals were arrested while attempting to exchange the notes.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The New York Times reported that one woman who had tried to cash a marked 500-ruble note later tried to swallow evidence of her plans to meet her accomplices after the police were summoned, but the police stopped her from swallowing the paper by grabbing her throat, retrieved the paper, and later arrested her accomplices at the train station.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Most prominent among those arrested was Maxim Litvinov, caught while boarding a train with his mistress at Paris's Gare du Nord with twelve of the 500-ruble notes he intended to cash in London.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The French Minister of Justice expelled Litvinov and his mistress from French territory, outraging the Russian government, which had requested his extradition.</span></div>
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<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Officially the French government stated that Russia's request for extradition had been submitted too late, but by some accounts, they denied the extradition because French socialists had applied political pressure to secure his release.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, discussed these events in her memoirs:</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The money obtained in the Tiflis raid was handed over to the Bolsheviks for revolutionary purposes.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But the money could not be used.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It was all in 500-ruble notes, which had to be changed.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This could not be done in Russia, as the banks always had lists of the note numbers in such cases ...The money was badly needed.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And so a group of comrades made an attempt to change the 500-ruble notes simultaneously in various towns abroad, just a few days after our arrival ... Zhitomirsky had warned the police about the attempt to change the ruble notes, and those involved in it were arrested.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A member of the Zurich group, a Lett, was arrested in Stockholm, and Olga Ravich, a member of the Geneva group, who had recently returned from Russia, was arrested in Munich with Bogdassarian and Khojamirian. In Geneva N. A. Semashko was arrested after a postcard addressed to one of the arrested men was delivered to his house.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Brackman claims that despite the arrests, Lenin continued his attempts to exchange the 500-ruble notes and did manage to trade some of them for 10,000 rubles from an unknown woman in Moscow.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Nicolaevsky, however, Lenin abandoned attempts to exchange the notes after the arrests, but Bogdanov tried (and failed) to exchange some notes in North America, while Krasin succeeded in forging new serial numbers and managed to exchange several more notes.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Soon after, Lenin's associates burned all the 500-ruble notes remaining in their possession.</span></div>
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<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trials of Kamo</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"<i>Resigned to death, absolutely calm. On my grave there should already be grass growing six feet high. One can't escape death forever. One must die some day. But I will try my luck again. Try any way of escape. Perhaps we shall once more have the laugh over our enemies ... I am in irons. Do what you like. I am ready for anything</i>."</span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">– Note from Kamo to a fellow prisoner in 1912 while awaiting the death penalty.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After Kamo was arrested in Berlin and awaiting trial, he received a note from Krasin through his lawyer Oscar Kohn telling him to feign insanity so that he would be declared unfit to stand trial.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To demonstrate his insanity, he refused food, tore his clothes, tore out his hair, attempted to hang himself, slashed his wrists, and ate his own excrement.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To make sure that he was not faking his condition, German doctors stuck pins under his nails, struck him in the back with a long needle, and burned him with hot irons, but he did not break his act.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After all of these tests, the chief doctor of the Berlin asylum wrote in June 1909 that "<i>there is no foundation to the belief that [Kamo] is feigning insanity. He is without doubt mentally ill, is incapable of appearing before a court, or of serving sentence. It is extremely doubtful that he can completely recover.</i>"</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1909 Kamo was extradited to a Russian prison, where he continued to feign insanity.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> In April 1910, he was put on trial for his role in the Tiflis robbery, where he ignored the proceedings and openly fed a pet bird that he had hidden in his shirt.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The trial was suspended while officials determined his sanity.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The court eventually found that he had been sane when he committed the Tiflis robbery, but was presently mentally ill and should be confined until he recovered.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In August 1911, after feigning insanity for more than three years, Kamo escaped from the psychiatric ward of a prison in Tiflis by sawing through his window bars and climbing down a homemade rope.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After escaping, Kamo met up with Lenin in Paris, and was distressed to hear that a "r<i>upture had occurred</i>" between Lenin, Bogdanov, and Krasin.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo told Lenin about his arrest and how he had simulated insanity while in prison.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After leaving Paris, Kamo eventually met up with Krasin and planned another armed robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo was caught before the robbery took place and was put on trial in Tiflis in 1913 for his exploits including the Tiflis bank robbery.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This time, Kamo did not feign insanity while imprisoned, but he did pretend that he had forgotten all that happened to him when he was previously "insane".</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The trial was brief and Kamo was given four death sentences.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Seemingly doomed to death, Kamo then had the good luck along with other prisoners to have his sentence commuted to a long prison term as part of the celebrations of the Romanov dynasty tricentennial in 1913.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kamo was released from prison after the February Revolution in 1917.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Effect of the Robbery on the Bolsheviks</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Apart from Kamo, none of the organizers of the robbery were ever brought to trial, and initially it was not clear who was behind the raid, but after the arrest of Kamo, Litvinov and others, the Bolshevik involvement became obvious.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Mensheviks felt betrayed and angry; the robbery proved that the Bolshevik Centre operated independently from the unified Central Committee and was taking actions explicitly prohibited by the party congress.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The leader of the Mensheviks, Georgi Plekhanov, called for separation from the Bolsheviks. Plekhanov's colleague, Julius Martov, said the Bolshevik Centre was something between a secret factional central committee and a criminal gang.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Tiflis Committee of the party expelled Stalin and several members for the robbery.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The party's investigations into Lenin's conduct were thwarted by the Bolsheviks.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The robbery made the Bolsheviks even less popular in Georgia and left the Bolsheviks in Tiflis without effective leadership.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
After the death by natural causes of his wife Ekaterina Svanidze in November 1907, Stalin rarely returned to Tiflis.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Other leading Bolsheviks in Georgia, such as Mikhail Tskhakaya and Filipp Makharadze, were largely absent from Georgia after 1907. Another prominent Tiflis Bolshevik, Stepan Shahumyan, moved to Baku.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Bolsheviks' popularity in Tiflis continued to fall, and by 1911, there were only about 100 Bolsheviks left in the city.</div>
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<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The robbery also made the Bolshevik Centre unpopular more widely among European social democrat groups.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lenin's desire to distance himself from the legacy of the robbery may have been one of the sources of the rift between him and Bogdanov and Krasin.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Stalin distanced himself from Kamo's gang and never publicized his role in the robbery.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Later Careers</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of the Bolsheviks who had been involved in the robbery gained political power in the new Soviet Union.</div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lenin went on to become its first premier until his death in 1924, followed by Stalin until his death in 1953.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Maxim Litvinov became a Soviet diplomat, serving as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1930–1939).</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Leonid Krasin initially quit politics after the split from Lenin in 1909, but rejoined the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution and served as the Soviet trade representative in London and as People's Commissar for Foreign Trade until his death in 1926.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
After Kamo's release from prison, he worked in the Soviet customs office, by some accounts because he was too unstable to work for the secret police.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
He died in 1922 when a truck hit him while he was cycling.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although there is no proof of foul play, some have theorized that <i>Stalin ordered his deat</i>h to keep him quiet.</div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bogdanov was expelled from the party in 1909, ostensibly over philosophical differences.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the Bolshevik Revolution, he became the leading ideologist of Proletkult, an organization designed to foster a new proletarian culture.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Return to Baku</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin's family moved to Baku. Whilst Stalin continued his revolutionary activities, his wife fell ill from Baku's pollution, heat, stress and malnutrition.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She contracted typhus and died on 5 December 1907.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin was overcome with grief and retreated into mourning for several months.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The loss also hardened him; he told a friend: "<i>with her died my last warm feelings for humanity</i>".</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He abandoned his son, Yakov, who was raised by his deceased wife's family.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Stalin resumed his activities, he organized more strikes and agitation, this time focusing on the Muslim Azeri and Persian workers in Baku.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He helped found a Muslim Bolshevik group called Hummet, and also supported the Persian Constitutional Revolution with manpower and weapons, and even visited Persia to organize partisans.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin ordered the<i> murders</i> of many Black Hundreds (radical supporters of the Tsar) and conducted <i>protection rackets </i>and <i>ransom kidnappings</i> against the oil tycoons of Baku.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also conducted <i>counterfeiting operations and robberies</i>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He <i>befriended criminal gangs</i>, and used them to obstruct the Mensheviks.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stalin's <i>gangsterism </i>upset the Bolshevik intelligentsia, but he was too influential and indispensable to oppose.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Okhranka tracked down and arrested Stalin on 7 April 1908.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After seven months in prison, he was sentenced to two years' exile.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He arrived in the village of Solvychegodsk in early March 1909.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After seven months in exile, he disguised himself as a woman and escaped on a train to St Petersburg.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He returned to Baku in late July.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Spy Hunting and Exile</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vrfuOTaHQgM/UVbiwfSUcqI/AAAAAAAAEOk/-4GmSIaocJA/s1600/Stalin's+NKVD+Mug+Shot+-+Stalin+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vrfuOTaHQgM/UVbiwfSUcqI/AAAAAAAAEOk/-4GmSIaocJA/s320/Stalin's+NKVD+Mug+Shot+-+Stalin+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NKVD Photos of Stalin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Bolsheviks were on the verge of collapse due to Okhranka activity within the Empire and <i>infighting</i> among the intelligentsia abroad.</div>
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In desperation, he advocated a<i> reconciliation</i> with the Mensheviks (<i>which Lenin opposed</i>). </div>
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Stalin demanded the creation of a 'Russian Bureau' to run the Social-Democratic Party from within the Empire, to which he was appointed.</div>
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Stalin soon realized the Bolsheviks had been <i>heavily infiltrated </i>by Tsarist spies.</div>
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He initiated a hunt for the traitors, but failed to root out any real spies - as revealed by Okhranka records - and caused much disarray in the Party.</div>
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On 5 April 1910 Stalin was yet again arrested by the Okhranka.</div>
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He was banned from the Caucasus for five years and sentenced to complete his previous exile in Solvychegodsk.</div>
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He was deported back there in September.</div>
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In early 1911, Stalin's friends tried to sneak him some money to help his escape, but the fellow exile who was supposed to deliver the money instead kept it for himself (Stalin had the man shot in 1937), and he was forced to return to Solvychegodsk.</div>
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During his exile, he had an <i>affair</i> with his landlady, Maria Kuzakova, with whom he <i>fathered a son</i>, Constantine.</div>
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Stalin was released on 1 July 1911, while Maria was still pregnant. Stalin moved to Vologda in late July, where he had been ordered to reside for two months.</div>
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In January 1912, at the Prague Party Conference, Lenin led his Bolshevik faction out of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, founding the separate 'Bolshevik Party'.</div>
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A Central Committee was elected, but when some of its members returned to Russia, they were arrested by the Okhranka, having been secretly betrayed by fellow CC member Roman Malinovsky, an Okhranka spy.</div>
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To fill the void, Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev coopted Stalin as a member of the Central Committee.</div>
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When Stalin was informed of this, he left Vologda in late February.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Creating Pravda and Further Exile</span></div>
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Stalin moved to Saint Petersburg in March 1912, lodging with Kavtaradze, maths tutor to the Alliluyev sisters.</div>
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He took control of the Bolshevik weekly newspaper 'Zvezda'.</div>
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Stalin had been assigned to convert Zvezda into a daily and rename it '<i>Pravda</i>'.</div>
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Initially, Stalin ran 'Zvezda' from the home of Bolshevik Duma deputy Poletaev, who was also a poet and was immune from arrest.</div>
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The first issue of 'Pravda' was published in 3 rooms on 5 May.</div>
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It was legal at first even though its editor-in-chief, Stalin, was not.</div>
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Another founder Vyacheslav Molotov whose old friend, Victor Tikhomirnov, was the son of a Kazan capitalist and funded 'Pravda' with his inheritance.</div>
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Shortly afterwards, the Okhranka caught up with him again.</div>
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On July 2, 1912 he was again exiled to Siberia for three years, this time to the small village of Narym.</div>
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He escaped just thirty-eight days after arriving; this was his shortest exile.</div>
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He returned to Saint Petersburg in September.</div>
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Stalin renewed his efforts to <i>reconcile</i> the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks in the hope of salvaging the then struggling Marxist movement.</div>
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He published editorials in 'Pravda' advocating <i>reconciliation</i>, and secretly met with Menshevik leaders Jordania and Jibladze on several occasions.</div>
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He <i>turned down</i> 47 of Lenin's articles, reaffirming his willingness to disagree with Lenin.</div>
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This angered Lenin, who twice summoned Stalin to Kraków to argue policy.</div>
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On the second visit at the end of 1912, Stalin was replaced by Sverdlov as editor-in-chief of 'Pravda', but was made senior leader of the 'Russian Bureau of the Bolshevik Party', and paid 2 roubles a day.</div>
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Lenin also asked Stalin to write an essay laying out the Bolshevik position on national minorities.</div>
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After Kraków, Stalin spent several weeks in Vienna with a wealthy Bolshevik couple he met with Lenin in Kraków.</div>
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While there he met for the first time <i>Nikolai Bukharin</i>, who would become a leading politician in the future Soviet government.</div>
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They continued to discuss the issue of nationalities.</div>
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Stalin completed his essay on the topic, entitled "Marxism and the National Question", which was published in March 1913.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Return and Another Exile</span></div>
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Stalin returned to Saint Petersburg in February 1913.</div>
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During this time, many Bolsheviks, including almost the <i>entire</i> Central Committee, had been arrested by the Okhranka, having been betrayed by Roman Malinovsky, a high-ranking Bolshevik who for years had been an Okhranka spy and agent provocateur.</div>
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That month, an article had been published that outed Malinovsky as a spy, but the Bolsheviks dismissed it as Menshevik libel (ironically, Lenin and Stalin were his strongest defenders).</div>
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On 8 March Malinovsky persuaded Stalin to attend a Bolshevik fundraising ball, which was raided by the Okhranka.</div>
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Stalin was condemned to four years in the remote Siberian province of Turukhansk.</div>
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He was eventually joined by Kamenev and several other Bolshevik exiles.</div>
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He spent six months in the small hamlet of Kostino on the Yenisei River.</div>
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After learning that Stalin was planning an escape (he had received money and supplies from his comrades), the authorities moved him north to Kureika, a hamlet on the edge of the Arctic Circle.</div>
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There, he lived the life of a hunter-gatherer, having learned fishing and hunting from local Siberian tribesmen.</div>
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While there he began a 2-year<i> affair</i> with Lidia Pereprygina, then <i>aged 13</i>, with whom he fathered<i> two children</i>.</div>
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The first died in infancy; the second, named <i>Alexander</i>, was born in April 1917.</div>
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In late 1916, Stalin was conscripted into the army.</div>
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He was taken to Krasnoyarsk in February 1917, but the medical examiner there found him unfit for service due to his damaged left arm (a childhood injury).</div>
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He spent his last four months of exile in the village of Achinsk.</div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Name and Aliases</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin's first name is also transliterated as "Iosif". His original surname, ჯუღაშვილი, is transliterated as "Jughashvili" or J̌uḡašvili.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Russian transliteration is "Джугашвили", which is in turn transliterated into English as "Dzhugashvili" and "Djugashvili"; -შვილი ("-shvili") is a Georgian suffix meaning "child" or "son".</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There are several etymologies of the jugha (ჯუღა) root. In one version, the name derives from the village of Jugaani in Kakhetia, eastern Georgia.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Neo-Nazi and other anti-Semitic sources have claimed that "Dzhuga" or "Jugha" means "Jew" in Georgian and hence "Dzhugashvili" literally means "Jew-son" or son of a Jew. This, however, is incorrect as the word for "Jew" in Georgian is "ebraeli" (ებრაელი).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">An article in the newspaper Pravda in 1988 claimed the word derives from the Old Georgian for "steel" which might be the reason for his adoption of the name Stalin. Сталин ("Stalin") is derived from combining the Russian сталь ("stal"), "steel", with the possessive suffix -ин ("-in"), a formula used by many other Bolsheviks, including Lenin.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to theories Mihail Vayskopf version, it is the Ossetian for "<i>herd of sheep</i>"; the surname "Jugayev" is common among Ossetians, and before the revolution the names in South Ossetia were traditionally written with the Georgian suffix, especially among Christianized Ossetians. Allusions to the hypothesis of Ossetian ethnicity of Stalin are present in the important Stalin Epigram by Osip Mandelstam:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>..And the Ossetian chest swells</i>' (Translation by A. S. Kline).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Like other Bolsheviks, he became commonly known by one of his revolutionary <i>noms de guerre</i>, of which "Stalin" was only the last.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During his education in Tiflis, he picked up the nickname "Koba", the Robin Hood-like protagonist from the 1883 novel 'The Patricide' by Alexander Kazbegi.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This became his favorite nickname throughout his revolutionary life.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin continued to use Koba as his Party name in the underground world of the RSDLP. During conversations, Vladimir Lenin called Stalin "Koba". Among his friends he was sometimes known by his childhood nickname "Soso" – a Georgian diminutive form of the name Iosif (Ioseb).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin is also reported to have used at least a dozen other nicknames, pseudonyms and aliases such as "Josef Besoshvili"; "Ivanov"; "A. Ivanovich"; "Soselo" (a youthful nickname), "K. Kato"; "G. Nizheradze"; "Chizhikov" or "Chizhnikov"; "Petrov"; "Vissarionovich"; "Vassilyi".</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Directly following World War II, as the Soviets were negotiating with the Allies, Stalin often sent directions to Molotov as "Druzhkov".</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For a long time, the date of birth of Stalin was falsified.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Although there is an inconsistency among published sources about Stalin's year and date of birth, Iosif Dzhugashvili is found in the records of the Uspensky Church in Gori, Georgia as born on 18 December (Old Style: 6 December) 1878.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This birth date is maintained in his School Leaving Certificate, his extensive Tsarist Russia police file, a police arrest record from 18 April 1902 which gave his age as 23 years, and all other surviving pre-Revolution documents.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As late as 1921, Stalin himself listed his birthday as 18 December 1878 in a curriculum vitae in his own handwriting. However, after his coming to power in 1922, Stalin changed the date to 21 December [O.S. 9 December] 1879. That became the day his birthday was celebrated in the Soviet Union.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stalin's apparent ease in escaping from Tsarist persecution, and <i>very light sentences</i> contributed to rumours of him being an Okhrana agent.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">His efforts in 1909 to root out traitors caused much strife within the party; some accused him of doing this deliberately on the orders of the Okhrana.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Menshevik Razhden Arsenidze accused Stalin of betraying comrades he didn't like to the Okhrana.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The prominent Bolshevik Stepan Shahumyan <i>directly accused</i> Stalin of being an Okhrana agent in 1916.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to his personal secretary Olga Shatunovskaya, these opinions were <i>shared </i>by Stanislav Kosior, Iona Yakir and other <i>prominent </i>Bolsheviks.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The rumours were <i>reinforced</i> by being published in the Soviet Union memoirs of Domenty Vadachkory, who wrote that Stalin used an Okhrana badge (<i>supposedly stolen</i>) to help him escape exile.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It also appears <i>suspicious</i> that Stalin played down the number of his escapes from prisons and exiles.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A speculation exists, that some Bolshevisks were in fact <i>double agents</i>.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Since there was no practical way for the revolutionaries to avoid eventual infiltration of their ranks by the Okhrana provocateurs, the leaders secretly <i>allowed </i>some to become agents in order to gain more benefits for their cause than they had to trade in.</span><br />
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<a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank"><img alt="undefined" height="161" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uGvJibMd6Lc/UVWJ7hNOiKI/AAAAAAAAEJo/YUovH1gEJ8U/s200/Joseph+Stalin+Bust+-+Russian+Revolution+-+USSR+-+Soviet+Union+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/joseph-stalin-revolution-and-power.html" target="_blank">this article is continued @ 'Joseph Stalin - Revolution and Power</a>'</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-91270997099522496562013-03-26T15:32:00.003-07:002014-02-28T17:03:58.566-08:00Ленин - Lenin - the Early Years<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Владимир Ильич Ленин</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lenin - the Early Years</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Владимир Ильич Ленин - (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin) born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924) was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He served as the leader of the Russian SFSR from 1917, and then concurrently as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1922, until his death. Politically a Marxist, his theoretical contributions to Marxist thought are known as Leninism, which coupled with Marxian economic theory have collectively come to be known as Marxism–Leninism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Born to a <i>wealthy, middle-class</i> family in Simbirsk, Lenin gained an interest in revolutionary leftist politics following the execution of his brother in 1887.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Briefly attending the University of Kazan, he was ejected for his involvement in anti-Tsarist protests, devoting the following years to gaining a law degree and to radical politics, becoming a Marxist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg, becoming a senior figure within the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nadezhda Krupskaya</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, and fled to Western Europe, living in Germany, England and Switzerland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Following the February Revolution of 1917, in which the Tsar was overthrown and a provisional government took power, he returned home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he took a senior role in orchestrating the October Revolution in 1917, which led to the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government and the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the world's first constitutionally socialist state.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Immediately afterwards, Lenin proceeded to implement socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates and crown lands to workers' soviets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Faced with the threat of German invasion, he argued that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty—which led to Russia's exit from the First World War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1921 Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialisation and recovery from the Russian Civil War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in becoming the Soviet Union, with Lenin as its leader.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolshevik faction later became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which acted as a vanguard party presiding over a single-party dictatorship of the proletariat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After his death, Marxism–Leninism developed into a variety of schools of thought, namely Stalinism, Trotskyism and Maoism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin remains a controversial and highly divisive world figure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Detractors have labelled him a dictator whose administration oversaw multiple human rights abuses, but supporters have countered this criticism citing the limitations on his power and have promoted him as a champion of the working class.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He has had a significant influence on the international Communist movement and was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Childhood: 1870–1887</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maria Alexandrovna Blank </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov (1831–1886), was the fourth child of impoverished tailor Nikolai Vassilievich Ulyanov – born a serf of either Kalmyk or Tatar descent – and a far younger Kalmyk named Anna Alexeevna Smirnova, who lived in Astrakhan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ilya escaped poverty by studying physics and mathematics at the University of Kazan, before gaining a teaching job at the Penza Institute for the Nobility in 1854.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Introduced to Maria Alexandrovna Blank (1835–1916), they married in the summer of 1863.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From a relatively prosperous background, Mariya was the daughter of a Russian-Jewish physician, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, and his German-Swedish wife, Anna Ivanovna Grosschopf.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dr Blank had insisted on providing his children with a good education, ensuring that Mariya learned Russian, German, English and French, and that she was well versed in Russian literature.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhni Novgorod, rising to become Director of Primary Schools in the Simbirsk district six years later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the government's plans for modernisation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, he became a<i> hereditary nobleman</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Ulyanov Family</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <i>middle-class</i> couple had two children, Anna (born 1864) and Alexander (born 1868) before the birth of their third child, Vladimir "Volodya" Ilyich, on 10 April 1870, baptised in St Nicholas Cathedral several days later.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They would be followed by three more children, Olga (born 1871), Dmitry (born 1874) and Mariya (born 1878).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another brother, Nikolai, had died several days after birth in 1873.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Mariya – <i>a Lutheran</i> – was largely<i> indifferent to Christianity</i>, a view that <i>influenced her children</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both parents were monarchists and<i> liberal conservatives</i>, being committed to the Emancipation reform of 1861 introduced by the reformist Tsar Alexander II; they avoided political radicals and there is no evidence that the Tsarist police ever put them under surveillance for subversive thought.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every summer they left their home in Moscow Street, Simbirsk and holidayed at a rural manor in Kokushkino, shared with Mariya's Veretennikov cousins.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Among his siblings, Vladimir was closest to his sister Olya, whom he bossed around, having an extremely competitive nature; he could be destructive, but usually admitted misbehaviour.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A <i>keen sportsman</i>, he spent much of his free time outdoors or playing chess, but his father insisted that he devote his life to study, leading him to excel at school, the Simbirsk Classical Gimnazia, a strictly disciplinarian and conservative institution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By his teenage years, Vladimir was coaching his elder sister in Latin and gave private tuition to a Chuvash student.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ilya Ulyanov died of a brain haemorrhage on 12 January 1886, when Vladimir was 16 years old.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir's behaviour <i>became erratic and confrontationa</i>l, and shortly thereafter he <i>renounced his belief in God</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aleksandr "Sacha" Ulyanov</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the time, Vladimir's elder brother Aleksandr "Sacha" Ulyanov was studying biology at St. Petersburg University, in 1885 having been awarded a gold medal for his dissertation, after which he was elected onto the university's Scientific-Literary Society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He had become involved in political agitation against the absolute monarchy of <i>reactionary</i> Tsar Alexander III which governed the Russian Empire, reading the writings of a number of banned leftists, including Dmitry Pisarev, Nikolay Dobrolyubov, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Karl Marx.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Organising protests against the government, he joined a socialist revolutionary cell bent on assassinating the Tsar and with his scientific background was selected to construct a bomb.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before they carried out the attack, the conspirators were arrested and tried.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 25 April 1887, Sacha was <i>sentenced to death by hanging</i>, and executed on 8 May.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the emotional trauma brought on by the recent deaths of his father and brother, Vladimir continued with his studies, leaving school with a <i>gold medal for exceptional performanc</i>e, and decided that he wanted to study law at Kazan University.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">University and Political Radicalism: 1887–1893</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lenin 1887</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Entering the Judicial Faculty of Kazan University in August 1887, Vladimir and his mother moved into a flat, renting out their Simbirsk family home.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Becoming interested in his late brother's radical ideas, he began meeting with a revolutionary cell run by the Jewish militant agrarian socialist Lazar Bogoraz, associating with leftists intent on reviving the People's Freedom Party (Narodnaya Volya).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joining the university's illegal Samara-Simbirsk zemlyachestvo, he was elected as its representative for the university's zemlyachestvo council.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 4 December he took part in a demonstration demanding the abolition of the 1884 statute and the re-legalisation of student societies, but along with 100 other protesters was arrested by police.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Accused of being a ringleader, the university expelled him and the Ministry of Internal Affairs placed him under police surveillance, exiling him to his Kokushkino estate.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nikolai Chernyshevsky</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here, he read voraciously, becoming enamoured with Chernyshevsky's novel 'What is to be Done ?' (1863).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Disliking his radicalism, in September 1888 his mother persuading him to write to the Ministry of the Interior asking them to allow him to study at a foreign university; they refused his request, but allowed his return to Kazan, where he settled on the Pervaya Gora with his mother and brother Dmitry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Kazan, he contacted M.P. Chetvergova, joining her secret revolutionary circle, through which he discovered <i>Karl Marx's</i> 'Capital' (1867); exerting a strong influence on him, he became increasingly interested in <i>Marxism</i>.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gleb Uspensky</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wary of his political views, his mother <i>purchased an estate</i> in the village of Alakaevka, Samara Oblast – made famous in the work of poet Gleb Uspensky, of whom Lenin was a great fan – in the hope that Vladimir would turn his attention to agriculture.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here, he studied peasant life and the poverty they faced, but remained unpopular as locals stole his farm equipment and livestock, causing his mother to sell the farm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In September 1889, the Ulyanovs moved to Samara for the winter.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here, Vladimir contacted a number of exiled dissidents and joined Alexei P. Sklyarenko's discussion circle.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karl Marx</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Friedrich Engels</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both Vladimir and Sklyarenko adopted Marxism, with Vladimir translating Marx and Friedrich Engels' political pamphlet, 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848), into Russian.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He began to read the works of the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, a founder of the 'Black Repartition' movement, concurring with Plekhanov's argument that Russia was moving from feudalism to capitalism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Becoming increasingly sceptical of the effectiveness of militant attacks and assassinations, he argued against such tactics in a December 1889 debate with M.V. Sabunaev, an advocate of the 'People's Freedom Party'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite disagreeing on tactics, he made friends among the Party, in particular with Apollon Shukht, who asked Vladimir to be his daughter's godfather in 1893.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 1890, Mariya convinced the authorities to allow Vladimir to undertake his exams externally at a university of his choice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He picked the University of Saint Petersburg, obtaining the equivalent of a <i>first-class degree with honours</i>; celebrations were marred when his sister Olga died of typhoid.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir remained in Samara for several years, in January 1892 being employed as a legal assistant for a regional court, and soon gaining a job with local lawyer Andrei N. Khardin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Embroiled primarily in disputes between peasants and artisans, he devoted much of his time to radical politics, remaining active in Skylarenko's group and formulating ideas about Marxism's applicability to Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspired by Plekhanov's work, Vladimir collected data on Russian society, using it to support a Marxist interpretation of societal development and increasingly rejecting the claims of the People's Freedom Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the spring of 1893, Lenin wrote a paper, "New Economic Developments in Peasant Life"; submitting it to the liberal journal 'Russian Thought', it was rejected and only published in 1927.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the autumn of 1893, Lenin wrote another article, "On the So-Called Market Question", a critique of Russian economist G. B. Krasin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">St. Petersburg and Foreign Visits: 1893–1895</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In autumn 1893, Vladimir moved to St. Petersburg, taking up residence in a Sergievsky Street flat in the Liteiny district, before moving to 7 Kazachy Alley, near the Haymarket.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Employed as assistant to the lawyer M.F. Volkenstein, he joined a revolutionary cell run by S.I. Radchenko, whose members were primarily students from the city's Technological Institute.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like Vladimir, they were Marxists, and called themselves the "Social Democrats" after the 'Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Impressed by his extensive knowledge, they welcomed him and he soon became a senior member of the group.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Championing Marxist thought among the revolutionary socialist movement, in January 1894 he openly debated with theorist V.P. Vorontsov at a clandestine meeting, where his outspoken behaviour was noted by a police spy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intent on building Marxism in Russia, Vladimir contacted Petr Bernardovich Struve, a wealthy sympathizer whom he hoped could aid in the publication of literature, and encouraged the foundation of further revolutionary cells in Russia's industrial centres.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also became friends with a young Russian Jewish Marxist named Julius Martov, who encouraged his comrades to spend more time engaged in revolutionary activity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir entered into a relationship with fellow Marxist and schoolteacher Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya, who introduced him to several socialist proletariat.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By autumn 1894, Vladimir was the leader of a workers' circle who met for two hours on a Sunday; known to them by a pseudonym, Nikolai Petrovich, they affectionately referred to him as starik (old man).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was meticulous in covering his tracks, knowing that police spies were trying to infiltrate the revolutionary movement.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also wrote his first political tract, What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats'; based largely on his experiences in Samara, around 200 copies were illegally printed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although sharing ideas, Lenin and the Social-Democrats clashed with the Socialist–Revolutionary Party (SR), who were inspired by the example of the defunct People's Freedom Party.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advocating an agrarian-socialist platform, the SR emphasised the revolutionary role of the peasant, who in 1881 numbered 75 million, in contrast to the 1 million urban proletariat in Russia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In contrast, the Marxists believed that the peasant class' primary motivation was to own their own land, and that they were capitalists; instead, they saw the proletariat as the revolutionary force to advance socialism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin nevertheless retained an influence from the thought of militant agrarian-socialist Pëtr Tkachëvi.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He hoped that connections could be cemented between his Social-Democrats and the Emancipation of Labour group; an organisation founded in Geneva, Switzerland by Pleckhanov and other Russian Marxist emigres in 1883.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir and E.I. Sponti were selected to travel to Switzerland to meet with Pleckhanov, who was generally supportive but criticised the Social-Democrats for ignoring the role that the bourgeoisie could play in the anti-Tsarist revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Traveling on to Zurich, Vladimir met and befriended Pavel Axelrod, another member of Emancipation of Labour.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Proceeding to Paris, France, Vladimir met with Paul Lafargue and undertook research into the Paris Commune of 1871, which he saw as an early prototype for a proletarian government.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Financed by his mother</i>, he returned to Switzerland to stay in a <i>health spa</i> before traveling to Berlin, Germany, where he studied for six weeks at the Staatsbibliothek and met with <i>Wilhelm Liebknecht</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Returning to Russia with a stash of illegal revolutionary literature, he traveled to various cities, becoming aware that he was being monitored by the police.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Coinciding with a series of strikes in St. Petersburg, centered on the Thornton textile mill in 1895, he distributed Marxist literature to the workers, and was involved in the production of a news sheet, 'The Workers' Cause', however, both he and 40 other activists were arrested on the night before the first issue's publication and charged with sedition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Siberian Exile: 1895–1900</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Imprisoned at the House of Preliminary Detention in Shpalernaya Street, Vladimir was refused legal representation, so denied all of the charges.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>His family rallied round</i> to help him, but he was refused bail, remaining imprisoned for a year before sentencing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fellow revolutionaries smuggled messages to him, while he devised a code for playing chess with the neighbouring inmate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Spending much of his time writing, he focused on the role of the working-class in the coming revolution; believing that the rise of industrial capitalism had led large numbers of peasants to move to the cities, where they became proletariat, he argued that class consciousness would develop, leading them to rise up in violent revolution against the aristocracy and bourgeoisie.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By July 1896 he had finished 'Draft and Explanation of A Programme for the Social Democratic Party' and had commenced work on his book 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir was sentenced without trial to 3 years exile in eastern Siberia.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given a few days in St. Petersburg in February 1897 to put his affairs in order, he met with fellow revolutionaries; the Social-Democrats had been renamed the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, and with many of its leading intelligentsia imprisoned, workers had taken over a number of senior positions, a move that caused rifts but which gained Vladimir's cautious support.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1896–97, strikes hit St. Petersburg, aided by the Marxists; believing his predictions to be coming true, Vladimir was unhappy at having to abandon the movement.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsarist government made use of a large network of prison camps and areas of exile on the verges of its empire to deal with dissidents and criminals; by 1897 there were 300,000 Russian citizens in this system, and Vladimir was now one of them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Permitted to make his own way there, the journey took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Considered a <i>minor threat,</i> Vladimir was exiled to Shushenskoye in the Minusinsky District, a settlement that Vladimir described as "not a bad place".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Renting a room in a peasant's hut, he remained under police surveillance, but corresponded with other subversives, many of whom visited him, and also went on trips to hunt duck and snipe and to swim in the Yenisei River.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organizing a strike. Although initially posted to Ufa, she convinced the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye, claiming that she and Vladimir were engaged; they married in a church on 10 July 1898.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Settling into a family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, the couple translated Sidney and Beatrice Webb's 'The History of Trade Unionism' (1894) into Russian, a job obtained for them by Struve.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Keen to keep abreast of the developments in German Marxism – where there had been an ideological split, with revisionists like Eduard Bernstein advocating a peaceful, electoral path to socialism – Vladimir remained devoted to violent revolution, attacking revisionist arguments in 'A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir also finished 'The Development of Capitalism in Russia' (1899), his longest book to date, which offered a well-researched and polemical attack on the Social-Revolutionaries and promoting a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Published under the pseudonym of "Vladimir Ilin", it would be described by biographer Robert Service as "<i>a tour de force</i>", but received predominantly poor reviews upon publication.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Munich, London and Geneva: 1900–1905</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His exile over, Vladimir was banned from St. Petersburg, instead settling in Pskov, a small town two hours' train ride from the capital, in February 1900.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His wife, who had not served the entirety of her sentence, remained in exile in Ufa, where she fell ill.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intent on founding a newspaper, Vladimir and Struve raised money for the publication of Iskra ('The Spark'), a new organ of the Russian Marxist movement, now calling itself the 'Russian Social Democratic Labour Party' (RSDLP).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After visiting his wife, on 29 July 1900, Vladimir left Russia for Western Europe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Switzerland and Germany, he met with Axelrod, Plekhanov and Potresov, and lectured on the Russian situation.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On 24 August 1900, a conference of Russian Marxists was held in the Swiss town of Corsier to discuss Iskra, but both Vladimir and Potresov were shocked at Plekhanov's controlling nature and <i>antisemitism</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was agreed that the paper would be produced in Munich, where Vladimir moved in September 1900.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first issue was printed on Christmas Eve, and contained an article written by Vladimir decrying European intervention in the Boxer Rebellion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A second RSDLP publication, Zarya, appeared in March 1901, and would run for four issues, but Iskra was far more successful, being smuggled into Russia illegally, becoming the most successful Russian underground publication for 50 years. It contained contributions from such figures as the Polish <i>Rosa Luxemburg</i>, the Czech-German Karl Kautsky, and a young Ukrainian Marxist, <i>Leon Trotsky</i>, who became a regular contributor from the autumn of 1902.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vladimir adopted the 'nom de guerre' of "Lenin" in December 1901, possibly taking the River Lena as a basis, thereby imitating the manner in which Plekhanov had adopted the pseudonym of "Volgin" after the River Volga.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1902, he published a political pamphlet entitled 'What Is to Be Done ?' – named after Chernychevsky's novel – under this pseudonym.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His most influential publication to date, it dealt with Lenin's thoughts on the need for a <i>vanguard party</i> to lead the working-class to revolution.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When his wife finished her sentence, she joined him in Munich; she became his personal secretary, aiding the production of Iskra.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Together, they continued their political agitation, with Lenin writing further articles for Iskra and drafting the program for the RSDLP, attacking ideological dissenters and external critics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite remaining an <i>orthodox Marxist</i>, he had begun to accept the Social Revolutionary Party's views on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, penning a pamphlet in 1903 entitled 'To the Village Poor'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1903, Lenin attended the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which initially convened at Brussels before moving to London.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here a longstanding ideological split developed within the party between the Bolshevik faction, led by Lenin, and the<i> Menshevik</i> faction, led by Martov.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These terms "<i>Bolshevik</i>" (from the Russian bol'shinstvo meaning "<i>majorit</i>y") and "<i>Menshevik</i>" (from the Russian menshinstvo meaning "<i>minority</i>") derive from the narrow Bolshevik electoral defeat of the Mensheviks to the party's newspaper editorial board, and to central committee leadership.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The break partly originated from Lenin's book 'What Is to Be Done ?' (1902), which proposed a smaller party organisation of professional revolutionaries, with Iskra in a primary ideologic role.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another issue that divided the two factions was Lenin's support of a worker-peasant alliance to overthrow the Tsarist regime as opposed to the Menshevik's support of an <i>alliance</i> between the working classes and the liberal bourgeoisie to achieve the same aim (while a small third faction, led by Trotsky, espoused the view that the <i>working class alone</i> was the instrument of revolutionary change—needing no help from either the peasants or the middle classes).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The 1905 Revolution: 1905–1907</span><br />
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In November 1905, Lenin returned to Russia to support the 1905 Russian Revolution.</div>
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In 1906, he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP; and shuttled between Finland and Russia, but resumed his exile in December 1907, after the Tsarist defeat of the revolution and after the scandal of the 1907<i> Tiflis bank robbery</i></div>
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Until the February and October revolutions of 1917, he lived in Western Europe, where, despite relative poverty, he developed<i> Leninism</i>—urban Marxism adapted to agrarian Russia reversing Karl Marx's economics–politics prescription to allow for a dynamic revolution led by a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Return to Exile: 1907–1917</span><br />
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In 1909, to disambiguate philosophic doubts about the proper practical course of a socialist revolution, Lenin published 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism' (1909), which became a <i>philosophical foundation</i> of Marxism-Leninism.</div>
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Throughout exile, Lenin travelled Europe, participated in socialist activities, (the 1912 Prague Party Conference).</div>
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When Inessa Armand left Russia for Paris, she met Lenin and other exiled Bolsheviks.</div>
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Rumour has it she was Lenin's lover; yet historian Neil Harding notes that there is a "<i>slender stock of evidence . . . we still have no evidence that they were sexually intimate</i>".</div>
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In 1914, when the First World War (1914–18) began, most of the mass Social Democratic parties of Europe supported their homelands' war effort.</div>
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At first, Lenin disbelieved such political fickleness, especially that the Germans had voted for war credits; the Social Democrats' war-authorising votes broke Lenin's mainstream connection with the Second International (1889–1916).</div>
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He opposed the Great War, because the peasants and workers would be fighting the bourgeoisie's "<i>imperialist war</i>"—one that ought be transformed to an international civil war, between the classes.</div>
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Lenin's view of the war can be summed up in a letter he wrote to the Romanian poet Valeriu Marcu in 1917: "<i>One slaveowner, Germany is fighting another slaveowner, England, for a fairer distribution of the slaves</i>".</div>
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At the beginning of the war, the Austrians briefly detained him in Poronin, his town of residence; on 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral Switzerland, residing first at Bern, then at Zürich.[66]</div>
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In 1915, in Switzerland, at the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference, he led the Zimmerwald Left minority, who failed, against the majority pacifists, to achieve the conference's adopting Lenin's proposition of transforming the imperialist war into a class war. In the next conference (24–30 April 1916), at Kienthal, Lenin and the Zimmerwald Left presented a like resolution; but the conference concorded only a compromise manifesto.</div>
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In the spring of 1916, in Zürich, Lenin wrote 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism '(1916).</div>
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In this work Lenin synthesised previous works on the subject by Karl Kautsky, John A. Hobson ('Imperialism: A Study', 1902), and Rudolf Hilferding ('Das Finanzkapital', 1910), and applied them to the new circumstances of the First World War (1914–18) fought between the German and the British empires—which exemplified the imperial capitalist competition, which was the thesis of his book.</div>
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This thesis posited that the merging of banks and industrial cartels gave rise to finance capital—the basis of imperialism, the zenith of capitalism.</div>
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To wit, in pursuing greater profits than the home market can offer, business exports capital, which, in turn, leads to the division of the world, among international, monopolist firms, and to European states colonising large parts of the world, in support of their businesses. Imperialism, thus, is an advanced stage of capitalism based upon the establishment of monopolies, and upon the exportation of capital (rather than goods), managed with a global financial system, of which colonialism is one feature.</div>
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In accordance with this thesis, Lenin believed that Russia was being used as a <i>tool</i> of French and British capitalist imperialism in World War I and that its participation in the conflict was at the behest of those interests.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The February Revolution</span><br />
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In February 1917 popular demonstrations in Russia provoked by the hardship of war forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate.</div>
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The monarchy was replaced by an uneasy political relationship between, on the one hand, a '<i>Provisional Government</i>' of parliamentary figures and, on the other, an array of "<i>Soviets</i>" (most prominently the Petrograd Soviet): revolutionary councils directly elected by workers, soldiers and peasants.</div>
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Lenin was still in exile in Zurich.</div>
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Lenin was preparing to go to the Altstadt library after lunch on 15 March when a fellow exile, the Pole Mieczyslav Bronski, burst in to exclaim:</div>
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"<i>Haven't you heard the news ? There's a revolution in Russia !</i>"</div>
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The next day Lenin wrote to Alexandra Kollontai in Stockholm, insisting on</div>
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"r<i>evolutionary propaganda, agitation and struggle with the aim of an international proletarian revolution and for the conquest of power by the Soviets of Workers' Deputies</i>".</div>
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The next day:</div>
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"<i>Spread out! Rouse new sections ! Awaken fresh initiative, form new organisations in every stratum and prove to them that peace can come only with the armed Soviet of Workers' Deputies in power</i>."</div>
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Lenin was determined to return to Russia at once.</div>
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But that was not an easy task in the middle of the First World War.</div>
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Switzerland was surrounded by the warring countries of France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, and the seas were dominated by Russia's ally Britain.</div>
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Lenin considered crossing Germany with a Swedish passport, but Krupskaya joked that he would give himself away by swearing at Mensheviks in Russian in his sleep.</div>
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Negotiations with the Provisional Government to obtain passage through Germany for the Russian exiles in return for German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war dragged on. Eventually, bypassing the Provisional Government, on 31 March the Swiss Communist Fritz Platten obtained permission from the German Foreign Minister through his ambassador in Switzerland, Baron Gisbert von Romberg, for Lenin and other Russian exiles to travel through Germany to Russia in a <i>sealed one-carriage train</i>.</div>
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At Lenin's request the carriage would be protected from interference by a special grant of <i>extraterritorial status</i>.</div>
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There are many evidences for German financial commitment to the mission of Lenin.</div>
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The aim was to <i>disintegrate Russian resistance</i> in the First World War by spreading the revolutionary unrest.</div>
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Financial support was continued until July 1917, when the <i>Provisional Government</i>, after revealing German funding for the Bolsheviks, outlawed the party and issued an arrest warrant for Lenin.</div>
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On 9 April Lenin and Krupskaya met their fellow exiles in Bern, a group eventually numbering thirty boarded a train that took them to Zurich.</div>
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From there they travelled to the specially arranged train that was waiting at Gottmadingen, just short of the official German crossing station at Singen.</div>
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Accompanied by two German Army officers, who sat at the rear of the single carriage behind a chalked line, the exiles travelled through Frankfurt and Berlin to Sassnitz (arriving 12 April), where a ferry took them to Trelleborg.</div>
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Krupskaya noted how, looking out of the carriage window as they passed through wartime Germany, the exiles were "<i>struck by the total absence of grown-up men. Only women, teenagers and children could be seen at the wayside stations, on the fields, and in the streets of the towns</i>."</div>
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Once in Sweden the group travelled by train to Stockholm and thence back to Russia.</div>
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Just before midnight on 16 April [O.S. 3 April] 1917, Lenin's train arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd.</div>
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He was greeted, to the sound of the Marseillaise, by a crowd of workers, sailors and soldiers bearing red flags: by now a ritual in revolutionary Russia for welcoming home political exiles. Lenin was formally welcomed by Chkheidze, the Menshevik Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. But Lenin pointedly turned to the crowd instead to address it on the international importance of the Russian Revolution:</div>
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<i>'The piratical imperialist war is the beginning of civil war throughout Europe ... The world-wide Socialist revolution has already dawned ... Germany is seething ... Any day now the whole of European capitalism may crash ... Sailors, comrades, we have to fight for a socialist revolution, to fight until the proletariat wins full victory ! Long live the worldwide socialist revolution !'</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The April Theses</span><br />
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On the train from Switzerland, Lenin had composed his famous 'April Theses': his programme for the Bolshevik Party.</div>
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In the Theses, Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks should not rest content, like almost all other Russian socialists, with the "<i>bourgeois</i>" February Revolution.</div>
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Instead the Bolsheviks should press ahead to a socialist revolution of the workers and poorest peasants:</div>
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The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed 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.</div>
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Lenin argued that this socialist revolution would be achieved by the Soviets taking power from the parliamentary Provisional Government: "<i>No support for the Provisional Government ... Not a parliamentary republic – to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies would be a retrograde step – but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.</i>"</div>
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To achieve this, Lenin argued, the Bolsheviks' immediate task was to campaign diligently among the Russian people to persuade them of the need for Soviet power:</div>
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<i>'Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, ... 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.'</i></div>
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The 'April Theses' were more radical than virtually anything Lenin's fellow revolutionaries had heard.</div>
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Previous Bolshevik policy had been like that of the Mensheviks in this respect: that Russia was ready only for bourgeois, not socialist, revolution. Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev, who had returned from exile in Siberia in mid-March and taken control of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, had been campaigning for support for the<i> Provisional Government</i>.</div>
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When Lenin presented his Theses to a joint Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) meeting, he was booed by the Mensheviks.</div>
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Boris Bogdanov called them "<i>the ravings of a madman</i>".</div>
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Of the Bolsheviks, only Kollontai at first supported the Theses.</div>
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Lenin arrived at the revolutionary 'April Theses' thanks to his work in exile on the theory of imperialism.</div>
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Through his study of worldwide politics and economics, Lenin came to view Russian politics in international perspective. In the conditions of the First World War, Lenin believed that, although Russian capitalism was underdeveloped, a socialist revolution in Russia could spark revolution in the more advanced nations of Europe, which could then help Russia achieve economic and social development.</div>
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A. J. P. Taylor argued: "<i>Lenin made his revolution for the sake of Europe, not for the sake of Russia, and he expected Russia's preliminary revolution to be eclipsed when the international revolution took place. Lenin did not invent the iron curtain. On the contrary it was invented against him by the anti-revolutionary Powers of Europe. Then it was called the cordon sanitaire</i>."</div>
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In this way, Lenin moved away from the previous Bolshevik policy of pursuing only bourgeois revolution in Russia, and towards the position of his fellow Russian revolutionary<i> Leon Trotsky </i>and his theory of <i>permanent revolution</i>, which may have influenced Lenin at this time.</div>
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Controversial as it was in April 1917, the programme of the 'April Theses' made the Bolshevik party a political refuge for Russians disillusioned with the <i>Provisional Government</i> and the war.</div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-29016496592972161552013-02-02T15:44:00.001-08:002014-02-28T17:04:26.111-08:00The Russian Revolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Русская революция</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">(The Russian Revolution)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Царя Николая II и цесаревича Алексея на фронт 1917<br />
Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei at the front 1917</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Russian SFSR - (Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика)</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsar was forced to abdicate, and the old regime was replaced by a <i>provisional government</i> during the first revolution of February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the second revolution, during October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a <i>Bolshevik</i> (Communist) government.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Bolsheviks, большевики, (derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903.</span><br />
<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Bolsheviks were the majority faction in a crucial vote, hence their name.</span><br />
<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">They ultimately became the 'Communist Party of the Soviet Union'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the 'Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic' which would later in 1922 become the chief constituent of the 'Soviet Union'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Bolsheviks, founded by <a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/lenin.html" target="_blank">Vladimir Lenin</a> and Alexander Bogdanov, were by 1905 a mass organization consisting primarily of workers under a democratic internal hierarchy governed by the principle of democratic centralism, who considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary working class of Russia.</span><br />
<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism.</span><br />
<span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky commonly used the terms "Bolshevism" and "Bolshevist" after his exile from the Soviet Union to differentiate between what he saw as true Leninism, and the state and party as they existed under Joseph Stalin's leadership.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The February Revolution (March 1917) was a revolution focused around Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> -'Storming the Winter Palace'<br />
Vasili Vasilevich Sokolov</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">During World War I, the city was renamed 'Petrograd', meaning "Peter's City", to remove the German words Sankt and Burg.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In March 1917, during the February Revolution Nicholas II abdicated both for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over three hundred years of Romanov dynastic rule.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On November 7, 1917 (O.S. October 25), the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, stormed the Winter Palace in an event known thereafter as the Great October Socialist Revolution, which led to the end of the post-Tsarist provisional government, the transfer of all political power to the Soviets, and the rise of the Communist Party. After that the city acquired a new descriptive name, "the city of three revolutions", referring to the three major developments in the political history of Russia of the early 20th century.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament or Duma assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution and Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, abdicated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviets (workers' councils), which were led by more radical socialist factions, initially permitted the Provisional Government to rule, but insisted on a prerogative to influence the government and control various militias.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Русские солдаты - 1917</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Russian Soldiers Surender - 1917</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War (1914–18), which left much of the Russian army in a state of mutiny.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A period of dual power ensued, during which the Provisional Government held state power while the national network of Soviets, led by socialists, had the allegiance of the lower classes and the political left.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards (later the Red Army) over which they exerted substantial control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the October Revolution (November in the Gregorian calendar), the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the workers' Soviets, overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Брест-Литовск - 1918</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - 1918</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) between Russia (the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) and the Central Powers marking Russia's exit from World War I. </span><span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year, it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, who were tied up in fighting the Russian Civil War, and it affirmed the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. Also Poland got a piece of new territory (which included Warsaw), but by no means covered all the areas where Polish speaking people were in the majority. A territorial dispute between Poland, Belarus and Lithuania concerning Wilno (Vilnius today) also occurred. (In the end Poland won this struggle and Lithuania had to use Kaunas as their capital city during the independency 1918–1939.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Civil war erupted between the "Red" (Bolshevik), and "White" (anti-Bolshevik) factions, which was to continue for several years, with the Bolsheviks ultimately victorious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Союз Советских Социалистических Республик - (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) - (USSR) in 1922.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While many notable historical events occurred in Moscow and St. Petersburg, there was also a visible movement in cities throughout the state, among national minorities throughout the empire and in the rural areas, where peasants took over and redistributed land.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">History of the Revolution</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During World War I, Tsarist Russia experienced famine and economic collapse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The demoralized Russian Army suffered severe military setbacks, and many soldiers deserted the front lines.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dissatisfaction with the monarchy and its policy of continuing the war grew among the Russian people.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ке́ренский<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne following the February Revolution of 1917 (or March, depending on Calendar Dating Styles), causing widespread rioting in Petrograd and other major Russian cities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Russian Provisional Government was installed immediately following the fall of the Tsar by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma in early March 1917 and received conditional support of the Mensheviks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Led first by Prince Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov, then Aleksandr Kerensky the Provisional Government consisted mainly of the parliamentarians most recently elected to the State Duma of the Russian Empire, which had been overthrown alongside Tsar Nicholas II.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ке́ренский - (Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky - 4 May [O.S. 22 April] 1881 – 11 June 1970) was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolutions of 1917.</span><br />
<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Kerensky served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until overthrown in the October Revolution. He died in exile.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d5a6bd; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Born: May 4, 1881, Ulyanovsk - Died: June 11, 1970, New York City - Education: Saint Petersburg State University - Children: Oleg Kerensky</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The new Provisional Government maintained its commitment to the war joining the Entente which the Bolsheviks opposed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Provisional Government also postponed the land reforms demanded by the Bolsheviks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lenin, embodying the Bolshevik ideology, viewed alliance with the capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States as involuntary servitude of the proletariat, who was forced to fight the imperialists' war. As seen by Lenin, Russia was reverting to the rule of the Tsar, and it was the job of Marxist revolutionaries, who truly represented socialism and the proletariat, to oppose such counter-socialistic ideas and support socialist revolutions in other countries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within the military, mutiny and desertion were pervasive among conscripts, though being 'Absent Without Leave' was not uncommon throughout all ranks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The intelligentsia was dissatisfied over the slow pace of social reforms; poverty was worsening, income disparities and inequality were becoming out of control while the Provisional Government grew increasingly autocratic and inefficient.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The government appeared to be on the verge of succumbing to a military junta.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Deserting soldiers returned to the cities and gave their weapons to angry, and extremely hostile, socialist factory workers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The deplorable and inhumane poverty and starvation of major Russian centres produced optimum conditions for revolutionaries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the months of February and October 1917, the power of the Provisional Government was consistently questioned by nearly all political parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A system of 'dual power' emerged, in which the Provisional Government held nominal power, though increasingly opposed by the Petrograd Soviet, their chief adversary, controlled by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (both democratic socialist parties politically to the right of the Bolsheviks).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet chose not to force further changes in government due to the belief that the February Revolution was Russia's "crowing" overthrow of the bourgeois.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soviet also believed that the new Provisional Government would be tasked with implementing democratic reforms and pave the way for a proletarian revolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though the creation of a government not based on the dictatorship of the proletariat in any form, was viewed as a "retrograde step" in Vladmir Lenin's April Theses, however, the Provisional Government still remained an overwhelmingly powerful governing body.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Failed military offensives in summer 1917 and large scale protesting and riots in major Russian cities (as advocated by Lenin in his Theses, known as the July Days) led to the deployment of troops in late August to restore order.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The July Days were suppressed and blamed on the Bolsheviks, forcing Lenin into hiding.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still, rather than use force, many of the deployed soldiers and military personnel joined the rioters, disgracing the government and military at-large.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was during this time that support for the Bolsheviks grew and another of its' leading figures, Leon Trotsky, was elected chair of the Petrograd Soviet, which had complete control over the defences of the city, mainly, the city's military force.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On October 24, in early days of the October Revolution, the Provisional Government moved against the Bolsheviks, arresting activists and destroying pro-Communist propaganda.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bolsheviks were able to portray this as an attack against the People's Soviet and garnered support for the Red Guard of Petrograd to take over the Provisional Government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The adminstative offices and government buildings were taken with little opposition or bloodshed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The generally accepted end of this transitional revolutionary period, which will lead to the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) lies with the assault and capture of the poorly defended Winter Palace (the traditional home and symbol of power of the Tsar) on the evening of October 26, 1917.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mensheviks and the right-wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries, outraged by the abusive and coercive acts carried out by the Red Guard and Bolsheviks, fled Petrograd, leaving control in the hands of the Bolsheviks and remaining Left Socialist Revolutionaries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On October 25, 1917 the 'Sovnarkom' was established by the Russian Constitution of 1918 as the administrative arm of the 'All-Russian Congress of Soviets'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By January 6, 1918 the VTsIK, supported by the Bolsheviks, ratified the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly, which intended to establish the non-Bolshevik Russian Democratic Federative Republic as the permanent form of government established at its Petrograd session held January 5 and January 6, 1918.</span><br />
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-88711202844691510892011-09-27T10:40:00.000-07:002014-03-04T16:43:21.466-08:00Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin - Man of Mystery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>Григорий Ефимович Распутин</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">GRIGORI YEFIMOVICH RASPUTIN</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin - (22 January [O.S. 10 January] 1869 – 29 December [O.S. 16 December] 1916) was a Russian Orthodox christian and mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their only son Alexei.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some people called Rasputin the "Mad Monk", while others considered him a "strannik" (or religious pilgrim) and even a starets, believing him to be a psychic and faith healer.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A starets is an elder of a Russian Orthodox monastery who functions as venerated adviser and teacher. Elders or spiritual fathers are charismatic spiritual leaders whose wisdom stems from God as obtained from ascetic experience. It is believed that through ascetic struggle, prayer and Hesychasm (seclusion or withdrawal), the Holy Spirit bestows special gifts onto the elder including the ability to heal, prophesy, and most importantly, give effective spiritual guidance and direction. Elders are looked upon as being an inspiration to believers and an example of saintly virtue, steadfast faith, and spiritual peace. Elders are not appointed by any authority; they are simply recognized by the faithful as being people "<i>of the Spirit</i>". An elder, when not in prayer or in voluntary seclusion, receives visitors (some who travel very far) and spends time conversing with them, offering a blessing (if the elder is an ordained cleric) and confession, and praying. People often petition the elder for intercessionary prayers, believing that the prayer of an elder is particularly effective.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has been argued that Rasputin helped to discredit the Tsarist government, leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Contemporary opinions saw Rasputin variously as a saintly mystic, visionary, healer and prophet or, on the contrary, as a debauched religious charlatan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There has been much uncertainty over Rasputin's life and influence, as accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay and legend.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his homeland he is revered as a righteous man by many people and clerics.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">EARLY LIFE</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4ATybVOJ0jI/ToInJSGJJhI/AAAAAAAAAIg/_aU03Yl78Iw/s1600/Alexey+Bogolyubov+%252816+March+1824+%25E2%2580%2593+3+February+1896%2529+-+Pokrovskoye+-+1891+-++Rasputin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4ATybVOJ0jI/ToInJSGJJhI/AAAAAAAAAIg/_aU03Yl78Iw/s320/Alexey+Bogolyubov+%252816+March+1824+%25E2%2580%2593+3+February+1896%2529+-+Pokrovskoye+-+1891+-++Rasputin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="215" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin was born a peasant in the small village of Pokrovskoye (see left), along the Tura River in the Tobolsk guberniya (now Tyumen Oblast) in Siberia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The date of his birth remained in doubt for some time and was estimated sometime between 1863 and 1873.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently, new documents have surfaced revealing Rasputin's birth date as 10 January 1869 O.S. (equivalent to 22 January 1869 N.S.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The little which is known about his childhood was most likely passed down by his family members.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He had two known siblings, a sister called Maria and an older brother named Dmitri.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His sister Maria, said to have been epileptic, drowned in a river.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One day, when Rasputin was playing with his brother, Dmitri fell into a pond and Rasputin jumped in to save him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were both pulled out of the water by a passer-by but Dmitri eventually died of pneumonia. Both fatalities affected Rasputin and he subsequently named two of his children Maria and Dmitri.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The myths surrounding Rasputin portray him as showing indications of supernatural powers throughout his childhood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One ostensible example of these reputed powers was when Efim Rasputin, Grigori's father, had one of his horses stolen and it was claimed that Rasputin was able to identify the man who had committed the theft.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When he was around the age of eighteen, Rasputin spent three months in the Verkhoturye Monastery, possibly as a penance for theft.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His experience there, combined with a reported vision of the Virgin Mary on his return, turned him towards the life of a religious mystic and wanderer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It also appears that he came into contact with the banned Christian sect known as the khlysty (flagellants) whose impassioned services, ending in physical exhaustion, led to rumors that religious and sexual ecstasy were combined in these rituals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suspicions that Rasputin was one of the Khlysts threatened his reputation right to the end of his life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alexander Guchkov charged him with being a member of this illegal and orgiastic sect.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsar perceived the very real threat of a scandal and ordered his own investigations but did not, in the end, remove Rasputin from his position of influence; on the contrary he fired his minister of the interior for a "lack of control over the press" (censorship being a top priority for Nicholas then).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He then pronounced the affair to be a private one closed to debate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shortly after leaving the monastery, Rasputin visited a holy man named Makariy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Makariy had an enormous influence on Rasputin, and he modelled himself after Makariy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Makariy lived in a rugged hut and practiced some rituals akin to ancient shamanic and tribal traditions of the Siberian people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin mentioned that monk Makariy had cured him from a severe sleep disorder, and trained him to practice hypnotism and vegetarian lifestyle which included some alcohol and also the use of various weeds and drugs for "spiritual transformation" according to ancient shamanic rituals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Subsequently, Rasputin married Praskovia Fyodorovna Dubrovina in 1889 and they had three children: Dmitri, Varvara and Maria.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oS6SeI_z698/ToI1_9mKyxI/AAAAAAAAAIw/zpUYX-2kVHA/s1600/Rasputin+-+John+of+Kronstadt+-+Iliador+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oS6SeI_z698/ToI1_9mKyxI/AAAAAAAAAIw/zpUYX-2kVHA/s200/Rasputin+-+John+of+Kronstadt+-+Iliador+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="191" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin also had another child with another woman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1901, he left his home in Pokrovskoye as a strannik (or pilgrim) and, during the time of his journeying, travelled to Greece and Jerusalem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1903 he arrived in Saint Petersburg where he gradually gained a reputation as a starets (or holy man) with healing and prophetic powers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John of Kronstadt (see right) gave a blessing to Rasputin in 1903, and is reported to heave asked for a blessing in return.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is asserted that he introduced Rasputin to the Imperial Family and chose him as his successor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was at the time of Rasputin's arrival in St Petersburg that he also became acquainted with the Monk Iliador (see right).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliador later broke with Rasputin over his behaviour and his disrespectful talk about the royal family.</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0_kmZwsK4Bc/ToI8idoPEyI/AAAAAAAAAJE/H6341Nif0Pw/s1600/st+John+of+Kronstadt+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0_kmZwsK4Bc/ToI8idoPEyI/AAAAAAAAAJE/H6341Nif0Pw/s200/st+John+of+Kronstadt+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="157" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John of Kronstadt, (Иоанн Кронштадтский) - (October 19, 1829, Sura, Arkhangelsk–December 20, 1908, Kronstadt) - who was later made a saint of the Orthodox Church (1990), (see icon on left) was in some ways similar to Rasputin, and his position helps to explain how Rasputin could be accepted in the very highest circles of society, including the Imperial House.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was born as Ivan Ilyich Sergiyev (Иван Ильич Сергиев) in 1829.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From 1855, he worked as a priest in Saint Andrew's Cathedral in Kronstadt.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John was a charismatic invidual who developed a cult following of thousands, mostly of women. His followers, known as "Ioannites", venerated him as Christ (a practice which he - in public at least - condemned).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They lived in communities where they did not marry, (or if married, lived apart from their spouses).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They ran shelters where they encouraged other followers to send their children.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The children would be put to work making wreaths, which would be sold for high prices since they were supposedly blessed by Father John and had miracle-working powers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some parents received letters asking for large sums of money, and they became suspicious and called the police who investigated.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This became a scandal and the press used the opportunity to parody Orthodox beliefs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Father John was so popular that he developed his own way of doing public confession.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After preparing the crowd, he would announce in a loud voice "Repent", and then they would wail and loudly yell out their private sins.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Father John would always dress very luxuriously.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He wore robes made of very expensive thick silk material, and his cassocks were made of silk and velvet. He wore coats made of valuable furs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These were all gifts from his followers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Father John ministered to the dying Tsar Alexander III in 1894 and soon became popular with the aristocracy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also served at the wedding and coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">RASPUTIN AND THE TSAREVICH</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dWwUb_mtqIU/ToI6CVR5mJI/AAAAAAAAAI0/4OoG-hYzWjs/s1600/Alexei+Romanov+and+Empress+Alexandra+Fyodorovna+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dWwUb_mtqIU/ToI6CVR5mJI/AAAAAAAAAI0/4OoG-hYzWjs/s320/Alexei+Romanov+and+Empress+Alexandra+Fyodorovna+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="320" width="194" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin was wandering as a pilgrim in Siberia when he heard reports of Tsarevich Alexei's (see right) illness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was not publicly known in 1904 that Alexei had haemophilia, a disease that was widespread among European royalty descended from the British Queen Victoria, who was Alexei's great-grandmother.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When doctors could not help Alexei, the Tsaritsa looked everywhere for help, ultimately turning to her best friend, Anna Vyrubova, to secure the help of the charismatic peasant healer Rasputin in 1905.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was said to possess the ability to heal through prayer and was indeed able to give the boy some relief, in spite of the doctors' prediction that he would die.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every time the boy had an injury which caused him internal or external bleeding, the Tsaritsa called on Rasputin, and the Tsarevich subsequently got better.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This made it appear that Rasputin was effectively healing him.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Skeptics have claimed that he did so by hypnosis, which, in one study, actually has proven to relieve symptoms because it lowers stress levels and therefore diminishes the symptomatology of haemophilia, however, during a particularly grave crisis at Spala in Poland in 1912, Rasputin sent a telegram from his home in Siberia, which is believed to have eased the suffering.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His pragmatic advice include suggestions such as "Don't let the doctors bother him too much; let him rest."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was thought to have helped Alexei to relax and allow the child's own natural healing process some headroom.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Diarmuid Jeffreys has pointed out that Rasputin's healing suggestions included halting the administration of aspirin, a then newly-available (since 1899) pain-relieving (analgesic) "wonder drug".</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As aspirin is also an anticoagulant, this intervention would have worsened the hemarthrosis causing Alexei's joints' swelling and pain.</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d2hm4SRYU1w/ToI7e-pM-QI/AAAAAAAAAJA/efj6MlDa0YY/s1600/Empress+Alexandra+Fyodorovna+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d2hm4SRYU1w/ToI7e-pM-QI/AAAAAAAAAJA/efj6MlDa0YY/s200/Empress+Alexandra+Fyodorovna+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man", a sign of the trust that the family had placed in him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin had a considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra, and the Tsar and Tsaritsa considered him a man of God and a religious prophet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alexandra (see left) came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, this relationship can also be viewed in the context of the very strong, traditional, age-old bond between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian leadership.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another important factor was probably the Tsaritsa's German-Protestant origin: she was definitely highly fascinated by her new Orthodox outlook — the Orthodox religion puts a great deal of faith in the healing powers of prayer.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">CONTROVERSY</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lwTvJuJVbfU/ToOfNmCTaQI/AAAAAAAAAKA/RVW0NHFS7HQ/s1600/GRIGORI++YEFIMOVICH++RASPUTIN+2+-+orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lwTvJuJVbfU/ToOfNmCTaQI/AAAAAAAAAKA/RVW0NHFS7HQ/s200/GRIGORI++YEFIMOVICH++RASPUTIN+2+-+orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="158" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin soon became a controversial figure, becoming involved in a paradigm of sharp political struggle involving monarchist, anti-monarchist, revolutionary and other political forces and interests.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was accused by many eminent persons of various misdeeds, ranging from an unrestricted sexual life (including raping a nun) to undue political domination over the royal family.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even before his arrival in St. Petersburg in 1903, the city was agog with mysticism and aristocrats were obsessed with anything occult.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While fascinated by him, the Saint Petersburg elite did not widely accept Rasputin.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He did not fit in with the royal family, and he and the Russian Orthodox Church had a very tense relationship.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Holy Synod frequently attacked Rasputin, accusing him of a variety of immoral or evil practices.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because Rasputin was a court official, though, he and his apartment were under 24-hour surveillance, and, accordingly, there exists some credible evidence about his lifestyle in the form of the famous "staircase notes" — reports from police spies which were not given only to the Tsar but also published in newspapers.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One problem that continually dogged Rasputin right up to the time of his death was the allegation that he was involved with the Khlysty sect.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One Khlyst practice was known as "rejoicing" (радение), a ritual which sought to overcome human sexual urges by engaging in group sexual activities so that, in consciously sinning together, the sin's power over the human was nullified.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l6GXjk2dS3A/ToOe3YMsa5I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/4F3YAjTYUuE/s1600/Rasputin+and+his+admirers+-++Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l6GXjk2dS3A/ToOe3YMsa5I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/4F3YAjTYUuE/s320/Rasputin+and+his+admirers+-++Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="254" width="320" /></a><br />
<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Khlysts or Khlysty was an underground sect from late 17th to early 20th century that split off the Russian Orthodox Church and belonged to the Spiritual Christians (духовные христиане) tendency.'Khlyst', the name commonly applied to them, is a distortion of the name they used; the original name was the invented word Христововеры (Khristovovery, "Christ-believers") or Христы (Khristy); their critics corrupted the name, mixing it with the word хлыст (khlyst), meaning "a whip".</span><br />
<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is also possible that the word 'Khlysty' is related to the Greek word 'χιλιασταί' (=millennialists), pronounced 'khiliasté', or with "klyster", meaning "one that purges". Millennialism has many different branches and sects and their teachings have common points with those of the Khlysty. It is said to have been founded by a peasant, Daniil Filippovich, (or Filippov), of Kostroma. The Khlysty renounced priesthood, holy books and veneration of the saints (excluding the Theotokos - the Mother of God) . They believed in a possibility of direct communication with the Holy Spirit and of His embodiment in living people. Curiously enough, they allowed their members to attend Orthodox churches. The central idea of Khlystys' ideology was to practice asceticism. Khlysty practiced the attainment of divine grace for sin in ecstatic rituals (called радéния, or radeniya) that were rumoured to sometimes turn into sexual orgies (this is very reminiscent of Rasputin's behaviour). They were often subject to persecution and perceived as a subversive element by the nineteenth century Russian authorities and ecclesiastical bodies. In 1910, Grigori Rasputin was accused of having been a Khlyst by Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva, a governess of the Grand Duchesses of Russia, after being horrified that Rasputin was allowed access by the Tsar to the nursery of the Grand Duchesses, when the four girls were in their nightgowns.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--t8W72UxxKs/ToOfjHmiqRI/AAAAAAAAAKE/xspBzPGTPJA/s1600/Elena+Nikandrovna+Klokacheva+-+Portrait+of+Rasputin+-+orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--t8W72UxxKs/ToOfjHmiqRI/AAAAAAAAAKE/xspBzPGTPJA/s320/Elena+Nikandrovna+Klokacheva+-+Portrait+of+Rasputin+-+orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.JPG" height="320" width="238" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like many spiritually minded Russians, Rasputin spoke of salvation as depending less on the clergy and the church than on seeking the spirit of God within.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also maintained that sin and repentance were interdependent and necessary to salvation. Thus, he claimed that yielding to temptation (and, for him personally, this meant sex and alcohol), even for the purposes of humiliation (so as to dispel the sin of vanity), was needed to proceed to repentance and salvation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin was deeply opposed to war, both from a moral point of view and as something which was likely to lead to political catastrophe.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the years of World War I, Rasputin's increasing drunkenness, sexual promiscuity and willingness to accept bribes (in return for helping petitioners who flocked to his apartment), as well as his efforts to have his critics dismissed from their posts, made him appear increasingly cynical.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Attaining divine grace through sin seems to have been one of the central secret doctrines which Rasputin preached to (and practiced with) his inner circle of society ladies.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During World War I, Rasputin became the focus of accusations of unpatriotic influence at court. The unpopular Tsaritsa, meanwhile, was of German descent, and she came to be accused of acting as a spy in German employ.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When Rasputin expressed an interest in going to the front to bless the troops early in the war, the Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, promised to hang him if he dared to show up there.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin then claimed that he had a revelation that the Russian armies would not be successful until the Tsar personally took command.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With this, the ill-prepared Tsar Nicholas proceeded to take personal command of the Russian army, with dire consequences for himself as well as for Russia.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While Tsar Nicholas II was away at the front, Rasputin's influence over Tsaritsa Alexandra increased.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He soon became her confidant and personal adviser, and also convinced her to fill some governmental offices with his own handpicked candidates.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To further the advance of his power, Rasputin cohabited with upper-class women in exchange for granting political favours.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because of World War I and the ossifying effects of feudalism and a meddling government bureaucracy, Russia's economy was declining at a very rapid rate.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many at the time laid the blame with Alexandra and with Rasputin, because of his influence over her.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin's influence over the royal family was used against him and the Romanovs by politicians and journalists who wanted to weaken the integrity of the dynasty, force the Tsar to give up his absolute political power and separate the Russian Orthodox Church from the state.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin unintentionally contributed to their propaganda by having public disputes with clergy members, bragging about his ability to influence both the Tsar and Tsaritsa, and also by his dissolute and very public lifestyle.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nobles in influential positions around the Tsar, as well as some parties of the Duma, clamored for Rasputin's removal from the court.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps inadvertently, Rasputin had added to the Tsar's subjects' diminishing respect for him.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mention must be made that recently found documents proved that accusations in Rasputin's sexual dissoluteness were false</span>.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">ASSASSINATION</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though it is a prevailing view that Rasputin was assassinated by political reasons, the details are not clear.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A previous attempt on Rasputin's life had failed: Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in Pokrovskoye, his hometown along the Tura River in Siberia.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6FFK9w_X2pk/ToIutT-JtsI/AAAAAAAAAIk/v9ZBrQtHdqw/s1600/Iliador+-+Rasputin+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6FFK9w_X2pk/ToIutT-JtsI/AAAAAAAAAIk/v9ZBrQtHdqw/s200/Iliador+-+Rasputin+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On June 29, 1914, after either just receiving a telegram or exiting church, he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor, who once was a friend of Rasputin but had grown disgusted with his behaviour and disrespectful talk about the royal family, had appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin to form a mutual support group.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was said of his survival that "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body."</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His daughter, Maria, observed in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain relief.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The murder of Rasputin has become a legend, some of it invented by the very men who killed him, which is why it has become difficult to discern the actual course of events.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bvIKD39G8FU/ToIw1e2e3SI/AAAAAAAAAIs/NWY2R_Fvjds/s1600/Yusupov+-+Moyka+Palace+-+St+Petersburg+-+Petrograd+-+Rasputin+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bvIKD39G8FU/ToIw1e2e3SI/AAAAAAAAAIs/NWY2R_Fvjds/s320/Yusupov+-+Moyka+Palace+-+St+Petersburg+-+Petrograd+-+Rasputin+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="210" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a threat to the empire, a group of nobles led by foppish Prince Felix Yusupov (see right), the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (see below right), and the right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich created a plan to lure Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace (see left).</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M7y4z3XK5LE/ToJC_U6hCeI/AAAAAAAAAJI/qX7wbknvGWc/s1600/Grand+Duke+Dmitri+Pavlovich+-+Rasputin+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M7y4z3XK5LE/ToJC_U6hCeI/AAAAAAAAAJI/qX7wbknvGWc/s200/Grand+Duke+Dmitri+Pavlovich+-+Rasputin+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="143" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Previously, in November of 1916, Prince Yusupov pretended that he had chest pains and obtained a high recommendation to become a patient of Rasputin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prince Feliks Yusupov made several visits to Rasputin as a patient and soon he made friends with Rasputin, and presented him a picture of his wife, beautiful Princess Irene Yusupov, niece of the Emperor Tsar Nicholas II.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin immediately expressed his desire to meet the beauty.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whether Rasputin was really interested in Irene, or Yusopov is open to question.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yusopov was known to be a cross dresser, who regularly disported himself by night in fashionable drinking establishments and restaurants in St Petersburg dressed as a woman, and he was almost certainly bisexual, and attractive to both women and men.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On December 16, 1916, Prince Yusupov and his fellow officers designed a plan centered on supposedly using the beautiful Princess Irina Yusupov, as a bait.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The group led Rasputin down to the cellar, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Conversely, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because after the attack by Guseva he suffered from hyperacidity and avoided anything with sugar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact, she expresses doubt that he was poisoned at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has been suggested, on the other hand, that Rasputin had developed an immunity to poison due to mithridatism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Determined to finish the job, Prince Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, leaving the conspirators no time to conceal his body.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to get one, and while at the palace, he went to check on the body.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and lunged at Yusupov.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He grabbed Yusupov and attempted to strangle him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At that moment, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at Rasputin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After being hit three times in the back, he fell once more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After binding his body and wrapping him in a carpet, they threw him into the icy Neva River.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He broke out of his bonds and the carpet wrapping him, but drowned in the river.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Three days later, Rasputin's body, poisoned, shot four times, badly beaten, and drowned, was recovered from the river.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An autopsy established that the cause of death was drowning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was found that he had indeed been poisoned, and that the poison alone should have been enough to kill him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is a report that after his body was recovered, water was found in the lungs, supporting the idea that he was still alive before submersion into the partially frozen river.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Subsequently, the Tsaritsa Alexandra buried Rasputin's body in the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, but after the February Revolution, a group of workers from Saint Petersburg uncovered the remains, carried them into the nearby woods, and burned them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the body was being burned, Rasputin appeared to sit up in the fire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His apparent attempts to move and get up thoroughly horrified bystanders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The effect can probably be attributed to improper cremation; since the body was in inexperienced hands, the tendons were probably not cut before burning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consequently, when the body was heated, the tendons shrank, forcing the legs to bend and the body to bend at the waist, resulting in its appearing to sit up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This final happenstance only further fueled the legends and mysteries surrounding Rasputin, which continue to live on long after his death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The official report of his autopsy disappeared during the Stalin era, as did several research assistants who had seen it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some evidence has emerged recently that the murder was, in fact, organised by the British SIS.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">RASPUTIN'S PROPHETIC LETTER</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> '<i>I write this letter at St. Petersburg.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I feel that I shall leave life before January 1.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I would like to make known to the Russian people, the Pope, Mother Russia what they must understand.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>If I am killed by common issues and especially by my brothers peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, for your children, they will rule the country for hundreds of years.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>But if I am dead by politicians, nobles, and my blood is spilled by twenty-five years remain dirty hands of my blood.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>They will leave Russia.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other, ascend hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigori has been killed, you should know this: if it was of their relations who forged my death, no one in your family, that is, none of their children or their relations will remain alive for more than two years.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>They will be killed by the Russian people ...'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">________________________________________</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sZblQKEGKPk/ToOhuDs3dKI/AAAAAAAAAKI/ZUxdrmsVF3E/s1600/Russian+Orthodox+Cross+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sZblQKEGKPk/ToOhuDs3dKI/AAAAAAAAAKI/ZUxdrmsVF3E/s320/Russian+Orthodox+Cross+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="320" width="185" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">EXCERPT FROM 'THE LORD OF THE HARVEST'</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ur1gruYSICw/ToJG1PFh0UI/AAAAAAAAAJM/KcbavluK5eA/s1600/The+Lord+of+the+harvest+title+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ur1gruYSICw/ToJG1PFh0UI/AAAAAAAAAJM/KcbavluK5eA/s400/The+Lord+of+the+harvest+title+-+Peter+Crawford.png" height="132" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Grigory Efimovich Rasputin was born in the village of Pokrovskoe, near Toblosk, the illiterate son of a poverty stricken peasant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rather than work on the land, as a serf, he became a wandering pilgrim.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This gave him the freedom he needed; serfs weren't allowed to travel outside their village without their master's permission.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qU3Y8Mgs_wA/ToJNjqGcCRI/AAAAAAAAAJw/CsaaPtLC9Tg/s1600/First+Vision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qU3Y8Mgs_wA/ToJNjqGcCRI/AAAAAAAAAJw/CsaaPtLC9Tg/s320/First+Vision.jpg" height="320" width="174" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During his wanderings something happened to him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He believed he had been touched and possessed by God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In retrospect, one might ask; which God ?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soon he developed a reputation for healing, and he became widely known as a Holy man.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the West a voracious and openly expressed sexual appetite is not the usual attribute of a man of religion, and Church of England vicars interfering with choirboys, or American Evangelists resorting to prostitutes is usually frowned upon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crowley's sexual athleticism, in like mode, was responsible for much of the censure he suffered during his lifetime.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Russia, however, a rampant sexuality was considered, by many people, to be evidence of spirituality rather than its antithesis.</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1SpotVq-HWw/ToJMrV8RLbI/AAAAAAAAAJo/WStyyYfUNSM/s1600/GRIGORI++YEFIMOVICH++RASPUTIN+-+orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1SpotVq-HWw/ToJMrV8RLbI/AAAAAAAAAJo/WStyyYfUNSM/s200/GRIGORI++YEFIMOVICH++RASPUTIN+-+orthodox+Church+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="171" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In fact Gregory Efimovich's nickname, Rasputin, means 'dissolute one' and was given to him as a sign of approval, rather than censure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That Rasputin had super-natural powers is beyond dispute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even in the few photographs that exist of him, his eyes burn through the page in a hypnotic stare. Apart from healing and sex he was able to consume staggering quantities of Vodka with which his fawning admirers endlessly plied him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition he prophesied future events, both mundane and profound.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Significantly he foretold the coming destruction of the Romanovs and the cataclysm of fire and blood which was soon to sweep Europe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He also foretold his own down fall.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o9_2iQ8xbsI/ToJI2qBcdNI/AAAAAAAAAJU/QQJhY-7Gd_I/s1600/St+John+of+Kronstadt+-++Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o9_2iQ8xbsI/ToJI2qBcdNI/AAAAAAAAAJU/QQJhY-7Gd_I/s200/St+John+of+Kronstadt+-++Imperial+Russia+-+Orthodox+Church+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1905 Rasputin arrived in St Petersburg, his reputation preceding him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">St. John of Cronstadt and the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich provided both ecclesiastical and aristocratic acceptance, and it was not long before Rasputin's name was brought to the attention of the Tsarina.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the Tsarina was deeply religious, having converted from Protestantism to the Russian Orthodox Church on her marriage to Nicholas, it was not Rasputin's religious teaching which interested her, but rather his ability to heal.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1TNU4VfgOeo/ToJHrJXPQsI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/ndbSrBAwEn4/s1600/Alexei+Romanov+-++Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1TNU4VfgOeo/ToJHrJXPQsI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/ndbSrBAwEn4/s200/Alexei+Romanov+-++Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her son, the Tsarevich, Alexis, had been born with the genetic disease haemophilia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This disease, endemic among the royal families of Europe, while only effecting males, is inherited from the female side.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is caused by a lack of the blood-clotting agent, Factor VIII, which is normally present in the body, and cause uncontrollable bleeding, often internally, which is particularly painful when occurring around the joints.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While the missing chemical can now be supplied in the form of injections, at the turn of the century, its existence was unknown, and doctors were unable to successfully treat the condition. Individuals who suffered from this condition often failed to survive beyond young adulthood, and the Tsarevich's prognosis was, therefore, poor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having dismissed the doctors, who were unable to treat the condition with anything other than platitudes, the Tsarina had resorted to prayer and faith-healers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having decided that the latest candidate, a French healer, was unable to alleviate her son's worsening condition, the Tsarina turned to Rasputin in desperation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amazingly, while he was unable to completely cure the Tsarevich, he was able to control the symptoms sufficiently for the boy to begin to lead a normal life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsar and Tsarina were overjoyed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their son, Alexis, was well and the succession was, apparently, assured.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Empire was safe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Tsarina's gratitude was boundless and Rasputin could have had almost anything he desired.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Undoubtedly he did accept gifts from the Imperial family, and from the noble and the wealthy who flocked to him to be healed and to hear his teachings and prophecies, but, like a true holy man, he was not greedy, except, perhaps when it came to vodka and sex.</span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(1) In 1917, with the war going badly for Russia, the Tsar was forced to abdicate.</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
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<i><i><span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When the Bolsheviks toppled the Kerensky Government and took power, in November of 1917, they transported the Imperial family to Ekaterinberg where the entire family was shot, in July of 1918.</span></i></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The real reward he sought, like so many, was power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now power, or powers, he undoubtedly had; but the power he sought was the power over empires.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was an odd weakness for an illiterate peasant, and for this reason, much to the Ochrana's disgust, he couldn't be 'bought off'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin's teachings were not complex, although they were controversial.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His main contention was that in order to receive God's grace it was necessary to sin and subsequently repent.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RGzJf4xuz7k/ToJKIeYORAI/AAAAAAAAAJc/Y_a3RebCwmI/s1600/joseph-smith-mormon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RGzJf4xuz7k/ToJKIeYORAI/AAAAAAAAAJc/Y_a3RebCwmI/s200/joseph-smith-mormon.jpg" height="200" width="146" /></a></div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e4zxBHauR8A/ToJJrlaBOqI/AAAAAAAAAJY/j1kRD-r_ufo/s1600/Aleister+Crowley+-+Lord+of+the+Harvest+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e4zxBHauR8A/ToJJrlaBOqI/AAAAAAAAAJY/j1kRD-r_ufo/s200/Aleister+Crowley+-+Lord+of+the+Harvest+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="151" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The forgiveness of God was, for Rasputin, essentially God's mystic grace of redemption.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As most of Rasputin's sins were those of the flesh, it is possible to see a connection between his teachings and the sexually orientated 'magick' of Crowley (see left), along with Joseph Smith's (see right) doctrine regarding 'celestial marriage'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whilst Rasputin's teachings may seem scandalous today, it should be remembered that the fringes of Russian religiosity held some unusual attitudes, including Rasputin's doctrine, which attracted a considerable acceptance as it derived from ancient tradition, and doctrines sufficiently extreme as to espouse the wholesale castration of male devotees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Equally the Anna-Baptists in Germany, certain Christian Gnostic, and Buddhist and Hindu sects were known to encouraged a similar attitude towards sin and repentance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin's other main belief was in the God given right of the Tsar to rule as supreme Autocrat, untrammelled by the interference of the Duma or any other liberal institutions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin's politics were not in accord with the oncoming tide of events.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regardless of his 'powers' he still only had a peasant's intellect</span>.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ffX9FTDRXH4/ToJLTiKVZQI/AAAAAAAAAJk/K5lxEKJY5tM/s1600/Archduke+Franz+Ferdinand+Sarajevo+-+Austro+Hungarian+Empire+-+Austria+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ffX9FTDRXH4/ToJLTiKVZQI/AAAAAAAAAJk/K5lxEKJY5tM/s200/Archduke+Franz+Ferdinand+Sarajevo+-+Austro+Hungarian+Empire+-+Austria+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a></div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_rY9Wcp6LA/ToJK8ieO9lI/AAAAAAAAAJg/4n_SKL6xGJk/s1600/Russia-Czar+-+Nicholas+Romanov+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_rY9Wcp6LA/ToJK8ieO9lI/AAAAAAAAAJg/4n_SKL6xGJk/s200/Russia-Czar+-+Nicholas+Romanov+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" height="200" width="153" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was, however, astute enough to realise that the one thing the Tsar (see left) could not risk was war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strangely enough, at the very moment when the Tsar was most in need of Rasputin's advice, Rasputin was in hospital, recovering from an assassination attempt in Pokrovskoe, which had occurred at the same time as the successful attempt on the life of Franz-Ferdinand (see right).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If Rasputin had been at his master's side, at that time,it is unlikely that Nicholas would have instigated the mobilisation which made the Great War inevitable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rasputin did manage to send a telegram to his sovereign, but this was as nothing compared to his own presence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so war could not be averted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In such manner do the Gods use and judge those whom they 'favour' with their attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two years into the war, unable to tolerate his interference in the affairs of state any further a group of nobles, close to the throne, assassinated Rasputin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Undoubtedly, though, the hand of God still touched him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the event it required arsenic sufficient to kill a dozen men to merely incapacitate him. Panicking, his assassins shot him repeatedly yet unsuccessfully.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was only by immersing him in the freezing waters of the Neva, and finally forcing him beneath the ice, that they were able to kill him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a lot of trouble to go to over a man who's influence on history had been immense, but who was by then a superfluous character on a doomed stage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;">Hieromonk Iliodor</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Серге́й Миха́йлович Труфа́нов - (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sergei Michailovich Trufanov) -</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> formerly Hieromonk Iliodor or Heliodorus; (October 19, 1880 – 28 January 1952) was a lapsed hieromonk, a charismatic churchman, an enfant terrible of the Orthodox church, panslavist and deist.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Pan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a Creator, accompanied with the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge.</span><br />
<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Deists believed in one god, but found fault with organized religion and did not believe in supernatural events such as miracles, the inerrancy of scriptures, or the Trinity.</span><br />
<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Deism is derived from deus, the Latin word for god. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sergei was born in stanitsa Mariinsky and grew up in a small cottage near the Don river as the son of a local deacon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was one of thirteen children; according to himself five died young of famine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the age of ten he went to school in Novocherkassk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the age of 15 he went to the local theological seminary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Five years later he graduated and went to the capital to attend the St. Petersburg Theological Academy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1903 he was ordained a hieromonk under the name Iliodor; two years later he graduated from the academy.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Hieromonk (Greek: Ἱερομόναχος, Slavonic: Ieromonakh), also called a Priestmonk, is a monk who is also a priest in the Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholicism. A hieromonk can be either a monk who has been ordained to the priesthood or a priest who has received monastic tonsure. When a married priest's wife dies, it is not uncommon for him to become a monk, since the Church forbids clergy to enter into a second marriage after ordination. </span><span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ordination to the priesthood is the exception rather than the rule for monastics, as a monastery will usually only have as many hieromonks and hierodeacons as it needs to perform the daily services.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There he had met with Father Gapon as a student.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor helped the poor, and expected the clergy, not the revolutionaries to change the country. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then he was discovered by Theofan of Poltava, and met with Rasputin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor was appointed at the seminary in Jaroslavl, but returned to the capital within a year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was invited to the Peterhof Palace, but scandalized his audience in a sermon, defending a land reform, which should be ordered by the Tsar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Russian aristocrats and the Most Holy Synod were shocked with his behaviour.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Most Holy Synod (Святейший Правительствующий Синод) was the highest governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church between 1721 and 1918, when the Patriarchate was restored. The jurisdiction of the Most Holy Synod extended over every kind of ecclesiastical question and over some that are partly secular. The Synod was established by Peter I of Russia on January 25, 1721 as a part of his church reform. Its establishment was followed by the abolition of the Patriarchate. The Synod was composed partly of ecclesiastical persons, partly of laymen appointed by the Tsar. Among them were the Metropolitans of Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev, and the Exarch of Georgia. Originally, there were ten ecclesiastical members, but the number later changed to twelve.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Synod decided to ban Iliodor, but Rasputin and the Tsar defended him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead Iliodor moved to Volhynia and lived in Pochayiv Lavra, the center of Panslavism (see above).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a paper he attacked the revolutionaries and the Jews.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to himself Iliodor turned against in the right-wing Union of the Russian People and the Black Hundreds movement, because they believed in the <i>Tsar's autocracy</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">An autocracy is a system of government in which a supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'état or mass insurrection).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He gained notoriety for attacking the prime-minister Pyotr Stolypin, industrialists, and local politicians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then he was prohibited to preach by the Most Holy Synod.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1908 he was rescued by Bishop Hermogen, and appointed in Tsaritsyn, where the URP had founded its first branch, and Iliodor gathered huge crowds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor created Holy Spirit Monastery in 1909.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the year after he was forbidden to preach any longer, and exiled to Minsk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was invited to Tsarskoye Selo to meet with the Tsarina; not in the Alexander Palace, but in the house of Anna Vyrubova.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor was allowed to go back to Tsaritsyn on request of Rasputin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stolypin demanded Iliodor be exiled to Novosil, and the Tsar agreed, but the abbot escaped and went back to Tsaritsyn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Iliodor and Rasputin</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1909 Iliodor and Grigori Rasputin visited his village by train.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor began to wonder if Rasputin was a devil or a saint, but defended him against attacks in the press in 1910.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In early 1911 Rasputin travelled to the Holy Land (Palestine - then part of the Ottoman Empire).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On his way back he visited Tsaritsyn .</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor had been invited by the Tsar on 21 May, who asked him not to attack his ministers, but the revolutionaries and the Jews.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Five days later Iliodor was promoted, and became an archemandrite.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #ea9999; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The title Archimandrite (Greek: ἀρχιμανδρίτης - archimandrites), primarily used in the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic churches, originally referred to a superior abbot whom a bishop appointed to supervise several '<i>ordinary</i>' abbots (each styled hegumenos) and monasteries, or to the abbot of some especially great and important monastery. The title is also used as one purely of honour, with no connection to any actual monastery, and is bestowed on clergy as a mark of respect or gratitude for service to the Church. This particular sign of respect is only given to those priests who have taken vows of celibacy, that is monks; distinguished married clergy may receive the title of archpriest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In December 1911 Hermogenes and Iliodor came into conflict with Rasputin, who liked to touch and kiss and had almost free access to the Imperial family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After having been beaten by Hermogen, in a monastery on Vasilyevsky Island, Rasputin complained to the Imperial couple.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iliodor started a slander and blackmail campaign against Rasputin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hinting that Alexandra and Rasputin were lovers, he showed Makarov a satchel of letters, one written by the Tsarina and four by her daughters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The given, or more likely, stolen letters were handed to the Tsar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1912, Iliodor <i>renounced </i>the Russian Orthodox Church, published an apology to Jews, and was defrocked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His monastery was closed; he was banned to the Frolishi monastery in the Volodarsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He seems to have escaped to Peter Badmayev in St Petersburg.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Summer 1914, after an attack on Rasputin by Khioniya Kozmishna Guseva, he fled all the way around the Gulf of Bothnia to Oslo, Norway with the help of Grand Duke Nicholas and Maxim Gorki. Rasputin believed Iliodor and Vladimir Dzhunkovsky had organized the attack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gusseva, a fanatically religious woman, had been his adherent in earlier years "<i>denied Iliodor's participation, declaring that she attempted to kill Rasputin because he was spreading temptation among the innocent.</i>"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The local procurator decided to suspend any action against Iliodor for undisclosed reasons, Guseva was locked up in a madhouse in Tomsk and a trial was avoided.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of Rasputin's enemies had by now disappeared.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stolypin was dead, Count Kokovtsov fallen from power, Theofan of Poltava exiled, Bishop Hermogen illegally banished and Iliodor in hiding.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Together with Alexei Khvostov he concocted a plan to kill Rasputin early 1916.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In June 1916 he sailed to New York.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the lost silent film, 'The Fall of the Romanovs' (1917), Iliodor played himself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the following he published his book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1918, he returned to Soviet Union, offering his services to Lenin, and lived for several years in Tsaritsyn.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">© Copyright Peter Crawford 2014</span></td></tr>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-401920934188297719.post-25848098107393342862011-09-26T15:13:00.000-07:002016-12-16T07:56:49.299-08:00Great Russian Art - 1850 - 1917<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">GREAT RUSSIAN ART</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">please note - in this blog Russian art is defined as art produced within the borders of the Russian Empire in the 19th Century.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">click below for</span></div>
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<span style="color: #e69138; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://petersrussia.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/blog-post.html" target="_blank">'Soviet Socialist Realism'</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-95dsaHD6veo/VhvsM0YWb9I/AAAAAAAANO4/8_qpfr6AMa8/s1600/Gallery%2Bin%2BRussian%2Btext.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-95dsaHD6veo/VhvsM0YWb9I/AAAAAAAANO4/8_qpfr6AMa8/s1600/Gallery%2Bin%2BRussian%2Btext.png" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bOMzmnn-t48/ToXNV0u8F3I/AAAAAAAAM68/wp5HYMcZm6c/s1600/Holy+Rus+-+Mikhail+Nesterov+%25281862+%25E2%2580%2593+1942%2529+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bOMzmnn-t48/ToXNV0u8F3I/AAAAAAAAM68/wp5HYMcZm6c/s400/Holy+Rus+-+Mikhail+Nesterov+%25281862+%25E2%2580%2593+1942%2529+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'HOLY RUS'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров - (Mikhail Nesterov) - (1862 – 1942)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров - (Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov) - (May 31 [O.S. May 19] 1862, Ufa – 18 October 1942, Moscow) was a major representative of religious Symbolism in Russian art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was a pupil of Pavel Tchistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts, but later allied himself with the group of artists known as the Peredvizhniki.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His canvas The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew (1890–91), depicting the conversion of medieval Russian saint Sergii Radonezhsky, is often considered to be the earliest example of the Russian Symbolist style.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">From 1890 to 1910, Nesterov lived in Kiev and St Petersburg, working on frescoes in St. Vladimir's Cathedral and the Church on Spilt Blood, respectively.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After 1910, he spent the remainder of his life in Moscow, working in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a devout Orthodox Christian, he did not accept the Bolshevik Revolution but remained in Russia until his death, painting the portraits of Ivan Ilyin, Ivan Pavlov, Ksenia Derzhinskaia, Otto Schmidt, and Vera Mukhina, among others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'VISION OF YOUNG BALTHOLOMEW'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров - (Mikhail Nesterov) - (1862 – 1942)</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LoqI81Yr3Cc/UVduUZ494qI/AAAAAAAAEQs/VC3cNriABEU/s1600/Mikhail+Nesterov+-+The+Taking+of+the+Veil+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LoqI81Yr3Cc/UVduUZ494qI/AAAAAAAAEQs/VC3cNriABEU/s400/Mikhail+Nesterov+-+The+Taking+of+the+Veil+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="393" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'THE TAKING OF THE VEIL'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров - (Mikhail Nesterov) - (1862 – 1942)</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PDp4wyOLgdE/UVdvAO-S8gI/AAAAAAAAEQ0/7-8xKag0_oY/s1600/Mikhail+Nesterov+-+Girls+by+the+River+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PDp4wyOLgdE/UVdvAO-S8gI/AAAAAAAAEQ0/7-8xKag0_oY/s400/Mikhail+Nesterov+-+Girls+by+the+River+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'GIRLS BY THE RIVER'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров - (Mikhail Nesterov) - (1862 – 1942)</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AzfKeWb2-Qc/UVdwsSqfPUI/AAAAAAAAERQ/M3KLWftt__Y/s1600/Tzarevich+Dmitry+-+Mikhail+Nesterov+-+1899+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AzfKeWb2-Qc/UVdwsSqfPUI/AAAAAAAAERQ/M3KLWftt__Y/s400/Tzarevich+Dmitry+-+Mikhail+Nesterov+-+1899+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="345" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Tzarevich Dmitry'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Васи́льевич Не́стеров - (Mikhail Nesterov) - (1862 – 1942)</span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rYH20nkgG-c/UVdxCjWau3I/AAAAAAAAERY/k7rzBhizgHc/s1600/Down+the+Oka+River+-++1889+Arhipov+Abram+(1862-1930)+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rYH20nkgG-c/UVdxCjWau3I/AAAAAAAAERY/k7rzBhizgHc/s400/Down+the+Oka+River+-++1889+Arhipov+Abram+(1862-1930)+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Down the Oka River' - 1889</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Arhipov Abram (1862-1930)</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CmSGlhc3aW8/UVdxYUV5HgI/AAAAAAAAERg/5oB9lWnPDZI/s1600/Ice+has+Gone+-+1895+-+Arhipov+Abram+(1862-1930)+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CmSGlhc3aW8/UVdxYUV5HgI/AAAAAAAAERg/5oB9lWnPDZI/s400/Ice+has+Gone+-+1895+-+Arhipov+Abram+(1862-1930)+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Ice has Gone' - 1895</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Arhipov Abram (1862-1930)</span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m6cRFhcLeb0/UVdx0uE8ymI/AAAAAAAAERo/Oupmh4DY4k0/s1600/Ilja+Repin+-+Saint+Nicholas+of+Myra+saves+three+innocents+from+death+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m6cRFhcLeb0/UVdx0uE8ymI/AAAAAAAAERo/Oupmh4DY4k0/s400/Ilja+Repin+-+Saint+Nicholas+of+Myra+saves+three+innocents+from+death+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="361" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> 'Saint Nicholas of Myra Saves Three Innocents from Death'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ilja Repin</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t8lS92z_txw/UVdyL_M0qcI/AAAAAAAAERw/KLWFfE4C6w8/s1600/Ilya+Repin.+Refusal+of+the+Confession.+1879-1885+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" imageanchor="1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="331" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t8lS92z_txw/UVdyL_M0qcI/AAAAAAAAERw/KLWFfE4C6w8/s400/Ilya+Repin.+Refusal+of+the+Confession.+1879-1885+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Refusal of the Confession'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ilya Repin</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cSoPcaw9kmQ/ToYy3j7dnKI/AAAAAAAAAL0/1VpcqR-xFBE/s1600/Vasily+Ivanovich+Surikov+-+Streltsi+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cSoPcaw9kmQ/ToYy3j7dnKI/AAAAAAAAAL0/1VpcqR-xFBE/s400/Vasily+Ivanovich+Surikov+-+Streltsi+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'STRELTSI'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Васи́лий Ива́нович Су́риков</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Vasily Ivanovich Surikov</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Васи́лий Ива́нович Су́риков - (Vasily Ivanovich Surikov) - (January 24, 1848 (Julian calendar: January 12) – March 19, 1916 (Julian calendar: March 6)) was the foremost Russian painter of large-scale historical subjects. His major pieces are among the best-known paintings in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Surikov was born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, where a monument to him was recently opened by his great-grandsons, Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Konchalovsky.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1869-1871 he studied under Pavel Chistyakov at the Imperial Academy of Arts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1877, Surikov settled in Moscow, where he contributed some imposing frescoes to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1878 he married Elizabeth Charais, a granddaughter of the Decembrist Svistunov.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1881 he joined the Peredvizhniki movement. From 1893 he was a full member of the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Surikov was interred at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Surikov painted images from Russia's past that focused on the lives of ordinary people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His works are remarkable for the original way in which they represent space and movements of people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In some cases he seems to have painted the same image in more than one size, probably as a prototype to a bigger image which he has in his mind, or he may have liked the smaller version so much that he decided it would look nicer when enlarged.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-inyrzX1XJQY/ToXOQfOBYEI/AAAAAAAAM7A/2BpJmrRKdwI/s1600/An+Oberek+-1878+-+Jozef+Chelmonski+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-inyrzX1XJQY/ToXOQfOBYEI/AAAAAAAAM7A/2BpJmrRKdwI/s400/An+Oberek+-1878+-+Jozef+Chelmonski+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'AN OBEREK' - (1878)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Jozef Chelmonski</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Józef Marian Chelmonski (November 7, 1849 – April 6, 1914) was born in the village of Boczki near Lowicz in central Congress Poland, Russian Empire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His first drawing teacher was his father (a small leaseholder and administrator of Boczki village). After finishing high school in Warsaw, Jozef studied in Warsaw Drawing Class (1867–1871) and took private lessons from Wojciech Gerson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">From 1871 to 1874 Chelmonski lived in Munich.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His first paintings were done under the influence of Gerson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The works that followed were landscapes and villages.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1875 Chelmonski went to Paris, where he had many important exhibitions and became known to the art scene.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">From 1878 to 1887 Chelmonski visited Poland, Vienna and Venice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1887 he returned to Poland and in 1889 settled in the village of Kuklówka Zarzeczna. Contact with his homeland and nature are qualities revealed in his artworks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He died in Kuklówka near Grodzisk Mazowiecki in 1914.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'COSSACKS ON THE MOVE' - (1881)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Jozef Chelmonski</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sCniqEq27ik/ToYsj7cPrUI/AAAAAAAAALo/hJQoRK3jsQQ/s1600/Stanislaw+Witkiewicz+-+A+Ukrainian+Night+-+1895+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sCniqEq27ik/ToYsj7cPrUI/AAAAAAAAALo/hJQoRK3jsQQ/s640/Stanislaw+Witkiewicz+-+A+Ukrainian+Night+-+1895+-+Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'A UKRANIAN NIGHT' - (1895)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stanislaw Witkiewicz</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Stanislaw Witkiewicz (8 May 1851 in Pašiauše – 5 September 1915 in Lovran) was a painter, architect, writer and art theoretician.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Witkiewicz was born in the Lithuanian village of Pašiaušė (Polish: Poszawsze) in Samogitia, at that time, in the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lands ruled by the Russian Empire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Witkiewicz studied in Saint Petersburg, 1869–71, then in Munich, 1872–75.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He created the Zakopane Style (styl zakopiański) (also known as Witkiewicz Style (styl witkiewiczowski)) in architecture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was strongly associated with Zakopane and promoted it in the art community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'Украинский Пасха'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'Ukranian Easter'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Pimonenko</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">'Пастушка и ее овец - Украина'</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'Shepherdess and her Flock - Ukraine'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Vladimir Orlovsky</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0JKrDLOq_L0/UxPFwPyemJI/AAAAAAAALkk/GKZqHbuQGiw/s1600/Vladimir+Orlovsky+-+A+Spring+Day+in+Ukraine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0JKrDLOq_L0/UxPFwPyemJI/AAAAAAAALkk/GKZqHbuQGiw/s640/Vladimir+Orlovsky+-+A+Spring+Day+in+Ukraine.png" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">'Весенний день в Украине'</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'A Spring Day in Ukraine'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Vladimir Orlovsky</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6wOgfafw0Bw/UxPIcWz0jZI/AAAAAAAALlA/9VUUvNBsI8k/s1600/Vladimir+Orlovsky+-+Landscape+in+Ukraine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6wOgfafw0Bw/UxPIcWz0jZI/AAAAAAAALlA/9VUUvNBsI8k/s640/Vladimir+Orlovsky+-+Landscape+in+Ukraine.png" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'Пейзаж в Украине'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'Landscape in the Ukraine'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Vladimir Orlovsky</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">'Посмотреть вблизи Лубны - Украина'</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">View near Lubni, Ukraine</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Iosif Krachkovsky</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-czMD9lNENFg/UxPKZ6ObdcI/AAAAAAAALlM/QhTg7Ewuads/s1600/Sergey+Vasilkovsky+-+Spring+Day+in+Ukraine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-czMD9lNENFg/UxPKZ6ObdcI/AAAAAAAALlM/QhTg7Ewuads/s1600/Sergey+Vasilkovsky+-+Spring+Day+in+Ukraine.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">'Весенний день в Украине'</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">'Spring Day in the Ukraine'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Sergey Vasilkovsky</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'A WINTER SUNSET'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mikhail Germashyov</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'EMERGING SPRING'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mikhail Germashyov</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Илья́ Ефи́мович Ре́пин</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">ILYA EFIMOVICH REPIN</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kIoMP0yDYzI/ToGacMeLFaI/AAAAAAAAAHg/ZVUZAxO58M0/s1600/Self+Portrait+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kIoMP0yDYzI/ToGacMeLFaI/AAAAAAAAAHg/ZVUZAxO58M0/s320/Self+Portrait+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="272" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'SELF PORTRAIT'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Илья́ Ефи́мович Ре́пин</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ilya Efimovich Repin was born in 1844 in a small Ukrainian town of Chuguev, Kharkov Province, in a family of a military settler.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As a young boy, he received his first lessons in art in 1858, when he worked for a talented icon painter I. M. Bunakov.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At the age of 19, he entered St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His arrival to the capital coincides with the important event in the artistic life of the 60's, the so called 'Riot of the Fourteen'.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Fourteen young artists left the Academy having refused to use mythological subjects for their diploma works.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">They stood on the point that art should be close to real life. Later Ilya Repin would be closely connected with some of them, the members of the Society of Peredvizhinsky.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Working with Kramskoi, in a year Repin developed his skills sufficiently to be accepted in the Academy. In 1870, Repin made his first scketches for 'Barge Haulers on the Volga', while being on a boat trip.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When the work was finished in 1873, it immediately won recognition.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For his diploma work, 'Raising of Jauris' Daughter' (1871), Repin was awared the Major Gold Medal and received a scholarship for studies abroad.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1873 Repin went abroad. For several months he had been traveling around Italy and then settled to work in Paris up until 1876.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was in Paris that he witnessed the first exhibition of the Impressionists, but, judging by the works created then and his letters home, he didn't become an ardent follower of a new Paris school of painting, though he didn't share the opinion of some of his countrymen who saw in the Impressionism a dangerous departure from "the truth of life."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After returning to Russia, Repin settled in Moscow.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was a frequent visitor in Abramtsevo - the country estate of Savva Mamontov, one of the famous Russian patrons of art.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It was a very fruitful period of his creative activity.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">During these 10-12 years Repin created majority of his famous paintings. In 1877, he started painting a religious procession (Krestniy Khod), Krestniy Khod in Kursk Gubernia (1880-1883). The composition was based on the dramatic effect of different attitude of the participants of the procession to the wonder-working icon carried at the head of the procession.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There were two different versions of the picture. The second one, completed in 1883, became the most popular.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Repin painted many portraits, which are an essential part of his artistic heritage.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Repin never painted faces, he painted real people, managing to show his models in their natural state, to reveal their way of communicating with the world: 'Portrait of the Composer Modest Musorgsky' (1881), and 'Portrait of Leo Tolstoy' (1887) and many others are distinguished by the power of visual characteristic and the economy and sharpness of execution.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Repin rarely painted historical paintings, however, the most popular of his paintings in this genre is 'Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan' (1895).</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The expressive, intense composition and psychological insight in rendering the characters produced and unforgettable impression on the spectators.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Another popular painting in this genre is 'The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mahmoud IV' (1880-1891).</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The faithfully rendered spirit of the Zaporozhian freemen, who, according to the artist, had a particularly strong sense of "liberty, equality and fraternity"undoubtedly gives the picture its significance.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Repin's contemporaries saw it as a symbol of the Russian people throwing off their chains.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For six years Repin lived in Moscow (1876-1882), but later he moved to St. Petersburg.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He also made several trips to Europe - in 1883, 1889, 1894, and 1900.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He taught at St. Petersburg's Academy (1894-1907) and was an influential member of the 'Wanderers'.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1900, during his trip to Paris, Repin met Natalia Nordman, "the love of his life" (Repin was separated from his wife), and moved to her home Penaty (Penates), in Kuokkala (Finland), located about an hour train ride from St. Petersburg.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Together they organized the famous Wednesdays at the Penaty which attracted the creative elite of Russia.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When Nordman died in 1914, she left the estate to the Academy, but Repin occupied it for the next sixteen years.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1930, Repin died in Kuokkala, Finland.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After the Continuation War, Finland ceded Kuokkala to the Soviet Union, which renamed it Repino (Leningrad Oblast).</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Penaty is part of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In 1940, Penaty was opened for the public as a house museum.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'VOLGA BARGE HAULERS'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'RELIGIOUS PROCESSION IN KURSK'</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">Krestniy Khod in Kursk Gubernia (1880-1883)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'TOLSTOY PLOUGHING'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'UNEXPECTED VISITOR'</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jhO8J2rL8pY/ToGeoUj5YLI/AAAAAAAAAHw/kG2EqkC3K2s/s1600/Raising+of+Jairus%2527+Daughter+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jhO8J2rL8pY/ToGeoUj5YLI/AAAAAAAAAHw/kG2EqkC3K2s/s400/Raising+of+Jairus%2527+Daughter+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">ILYA REPIN - 'THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER'</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The record of the daughter of Jairus is a combination of miracles of Jesus in the Gospels (Mark 5:21–43, Matthew 9:18–26, Luke 8:40–56).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The story immediately follows the exorcism at Gerasa.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Jairus, a patron of the synagogue, asks Jesus to heal his dying daughter, however, according to Matthew, his daughter is already dead, not dying.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As they travel to Jairus's house, a sick woman in the crowd touches Jesus' cloak and is healed of her sickness. This is called the miracle of Christ healing the bleeding woman.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Meanwhile the daughter dies, but Jesus continues to the house and brings her back to life, or in his own words, awakens her.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In Mark's account, the Aramaic phrase "Talitha Koum" - (ταλιθα κουμ) - and meaning, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!") is attributed to Jesus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">ILYA REPIN - </span>Ива́н Гро́зный - <span class="Apple-style-span">'IVAN THE TERRIBLE'</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ivan IV Vasilyevich - Ivan Chetvyorty, Vasilyevich; 25 August 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584),[1] known in English as Ivan the Terrible, was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 until his death.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres, approximately 4,046,856 km2 (1,562,500 sq mi).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval nation state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All Russia.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental illness.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One notable outburst may have resulted in the death of his groomed and chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich (see above), which led to the passing of the Tsardom to the younger son: the weak and possibly mentally retarded Feodor I of Russia.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His contemporaries called him "Ivan Groznyi" the name, which, although usually translated as "Terrible", actually means something closer to "Redoubtable" or "Severe" and carries connotations of might, power and strictness rather than horror or cruelty.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">ILYA REPIN - 'REPLY OF THE ZAPOROZHIAN COSSACKS TO SULTAN MAHMOUD IV'</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Usl38m_952M/ToEAyi8JtvI/AAAAAAAAAGE/9IWlArzrXj4/s1600/Sadko+%2526+the+Underwater+World+-++Ilya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Usl38m_952M/ToEAyi8JtvI/AAAAAAAAAGE/9IWlArzrXj4/s400/Sadko+%2526+the+Underwater+World+-++Ilya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="281" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">ILYA REPIN - '</span>Садко' - <span class="Apple-style-span">'SADKO & THE UNDERWATER WORLD'</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sadko is an opera in seven scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The libretto was written by the composer, with assistance from Vladimir Belsky, Vladimir Stasov, and others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rimsky-Korsakov was first inspired by the bylina of Sadko in 1867, when he completed a tone poem on the subject, his Op. 5.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After finishing his second revision of this work in 1892, he decided to turn it into a dramatic work. The opera was completed in 1896.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The music is highly evocative, and Rimsky-Korsakov's famed powers of orchestration are abundantly in evidence throughout the score.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UQc8vKf90LA/ToDz4hX5Y5I/AAAAAAAAAFc/jZyT1oDRvys/s1600/Ilya+Repin+-+Wedding+of+Tsar+Nicholas+II+%2526+Empress+Alexandra+Fyodorovna+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UQc8vKf90LA/ToDz4hX5Y5I/AAAAAAAAAFc/jZyT1oDRvys/s400/Ilya+Repin+-+Wedding+of+Tsar+Nicholas+II+%2526+Empress+Alexandra+Fyodorovna+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'WEDDING OF NICHOLAS II'</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qou01R3h7sw/ToGc7R0dqeI/AAAAAAAAAHo/kGTGWzfGzSQ/s1600/imperial-reception-in-the-courtyard-of-the-petrovsky-palace-on-18-may-1896+-+Ilya+Repin+-+Double+Portrait+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qou01R3h7sw/ToGc7R0dqeI/AAAAAAAAAHo/kGTGWzfGzSQ/s400/imperial-reception-in-the-courtyard-of-the-petrovsky-palace-on-18-may-1896+-+Ilya+Repin+-+Double+Portrait+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">ILYA REPIN - 'IMPERIAL RECEPTION IN THE COURTYARD OF THE PETROVSKY PALACE 1896' </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PORTRAITS</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHAJJEpjP_M/ToD-B_t4G-I/AAAAAAAAAGA/4uOEFKAo5mE/s1600/Nicolas_II_of_Russia_by_Iliya_Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gHAJJEpjP_M/ToD-B_t4G-I/AAAAAAAAAGA/4uOEFKAo5mE/s400/Nicolas_II_of_Russia_by_Iliya_Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="265" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'TSAR NICHOLAS II'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nicholas II(Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov) - (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His reign saw Imperial Russia go from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic and military collapse. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As head of state, he approved the Russian mobilization of August 1914, which marked the beginning of Russia's involvement in World War I, a war in which 3.3 million Russians would be killed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The unpopularity of the Russian involvement in this war is often cited as a leading cause of the fall of the Romanov dynasty less than three years later.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">ILYA REPIN - 'TSAR NICHOLAS II' - (1896)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'SELF PORTRAIT'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Илья́ Ефи́мович Ре́пин</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N3Yv6OWlqU8/ToGbRTZicdI/AAAAAAAAAHk/yWBKCtpitLI/s1600/Natalia+Nordmann+and+Ilya+Repin+-+Double+Portrait+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N3Yv6OWlqU8/ToGbRTZicdI/AAAAAAAAAHk/yWBKCtpitLI/s400/Natalia+Nordmann+and+Ilya+Repin+-+Double+Portrait+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'SELF PORTRAIT WITH NATALIA NORDMAN' </span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KWtd6nmZ0lQ/ToD8YuyXiDI/AAAAAAAAAFw/qQnOPBcOk7o/s1600/Ilya_Efimovich_Repin_%25281844-1930%2529_-_Portrait_of_Leo_Tolstoy_%25281887%2529+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KWtd6nmZ0lQ/ToD8YuyXiDI/AAAAAAAAAFw/qQnOPBcOk7o/s400/Ilya_Efimovich_Repin_%25281844-1930%2529_-_Portrait_of_Leo_Tolstoy_%25281887%2529+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="275" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'COUNT LEO TOLSTOY'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy - (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His two most famous works, the novels 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina', are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DISeybWNTds/ToY3rmhMWoI/AAAAAAAAAMA/blwL3-IlApw/s1600/Portrait+of+writer+Ivan+Turgenev+-++Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DISeybWNTds/ToY3rmhMWoI/AAAAAAAAAMA/blwL3-IlApw/s400/Portrait+of+writer+Ivan+Turgenev+-++Great+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="305" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'IVAN TURGENEV'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Ива́н Серге́евич Турге́нев - (Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev) - (November 9 [O.S. October 28] 1818 – September 3, 1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">His first major publication, a short story collection entitled 'A Sportsman's Sketches', is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel 'Fathers and Sons' is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E6cR9FLSnU0/ToGgYNq2j0I/AAAAAAAAAH0/oXxAowZawLs/s1600/Maxim+Gorky+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E6cR9FLSnU0/ToGgYNq2j0I/AAAAAAAAAH0/oXxAowZawLs/s400/Maxim+Gorky+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="293" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'MAXIM GORKY'</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"> Макси́м Го́рький</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Alexei Maximovich</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешков</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Alexei Maximovich Peshkov - (28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), also known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian, Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C_dxnjFeyNs/ToD8wn6jNSI/AAAAAAAAAF0/V5ovjZKhPIE/s1600/Medeleeff+-++Ilya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C_dxnjFeyNs/ToD8wn6jNSI/AAAAAAAAAF0/V5ovjZKhPIE/s400/Medeleeff+-++Ilya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="321" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - DIMITRI IVANOVICH MENDELEEV'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Дми́трий Ива́нович Менделе́ев</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (also romanized Mendeleyev or Mendeleef) - (8 February [O.S. 27 January] 1834 – 2 February [O.S. 20 January] 1907), was a Russian chemist and inventor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Using the table, he predicted the properties of elements yet to be discovered.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4H1glM0jUc8/ToD9Fb4N4rI/AAAAAAAAAF4/tdelcZIrc1I/s1600/Mussorgsky+-++Ilya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4H1glM0jUc8/ToD9Fb4N4rI/AAAAAAAAAF4/tdelcZIrc1I/s400/Mussorgsky+-++Ilya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="305" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'MODEST PETROVICH MUSSORGSKY<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">'</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Моде́ст Петро́вич Му́соргский</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky - (21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other nationalist themes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Such works include the opera 'Boris Godunov', the orchestral tone poem 'Night on Bald Mountain', and the piano suite 'Pictures at an Exhibition'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For many years Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Many of his most important compositions have recently come into their own in their original forms, and some of the original scores are now also available.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qjww9XFMGt0/ToGXJmiwkeI/AAAAAAAAAHY/2NVDHrhMhUg/s1600/Rimsky+Korsakov+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Qjww9XFMGt0/ToGXJmiwkeI/AAAAAAAAAHY/2NVDHrhMhUg/s400/Rimsky+Korsakov+-+Iliya+Repin+-+Russian+Art+-+Imperial+Russia+-+Peter+Crawford.jpg" width="280" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'NIKOLAI ANDREYEVICH RIMSKY-KORSAKOV'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Никола́й Андре́евич Ри́мский-Ко́рсаков</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March [O.S. 6 March] 1844,[a 1] – 21 June [O.S. 8 June] 1908) was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—'Capriccio Espagnol', the 'Russian Easter Festival Overture', and the symphonic suite 'Scheherazade' - are considered staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">'Scheherazade' is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'MIKHAIL IVANOVICH GLINKA'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Михаи́л Ива́нович Гли́нка</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka - (June 1 [O.S. May 20] 1804 – February 15 [O.S. February 3] 1857), was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'ALEKSANDER PORFIRIEVICH BORODIN'</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Портрет композитора и ученого-химика Александра Порфирьевича Бородина</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin - (12 November 1833 – 27 February 1887[2]) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He was a member of the group of composers called 'The Five' (or "The Mighty Handful"), who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He is best known for his symphonies, his two string quartets, and his opera 'Prince Igor'.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Music from Prince Igor and his string quartets was later adapted for the Forrest and Wright musical Kismet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'ARTHUR RUBENSTEIN'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Arthur Rubinstein - (January 28, 1887 – December 20, 1982) was a Polish-born pianist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers (many regard him as the greatest Chopin interpreter of the century).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">He is widely considered one of the greatest classical pianists of the twentieth century.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">ILYA REPIN - 'SLAVIC COMPOSERS'</span></div>
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Peter Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03923568525317435111noreply@blogger.com