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The Enlightenment was a time period in which many philosophers and scientists appeared. They spoke out and questioned many things that people were too afraid to ask due to the suppression by religious institutions and aristocracy. These ideas ranged from Newton's laws of motion to Rousseau's Social Contract. In Russia, Austria, and Prussia it took the form of "Enlightened Absolutism" where "They demonstrated their commitment to absolutist rule by centralizing their administrations, increasing taxation, creating a professional army, and tightening their control of the Church." -Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations, 603. One of these enlightened rulers was Catherine the Great of Russia. Due to her fearing losing support of the nobles of Russia she made them exempt from taxes and corporal punishment. She also enhanced their property rights. I think that this a leading factor into why Russia had such difficulty industrializing. She also conquered new territories and expanded Russia's border into Poland and towards the Black Sea. Which in the future seems to be a common theme of Russia.

The French Revolution and the secular ideologies that it created would also effect the future Russia. Napoleons conquests in the early 1800s in Europe also would lay out seeds for future ideologies that would eventually include socialism and, by extension, Marxism. Without the French Revolution giving Napoleon a power vacuum that he could take advantage of I don't think that the Russian Revolution in 1917 would have ever happened.

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While Russia would remain feudal and wouldn't industrialize until after the rest of Europe the Industrial Revolution in the west would still effect them. The Industrial Revolution was a time period in which Europe rapidly changed from a agricultural economy to an industrial one. Inventions like the steam engine increased productivity to a level never seen before. This increase in productivity would also lead to explosive population increases. Russia would remain primarily agricultural (with some areas industrializing in the later stages) and focused more on expanding their borders for much of it, and I think this is a very early sign of a refusal to be like the western world. It was also a period where the seeds left behind by Napoleons conquests took the form of new ideologies, one of which was socialism.

Socialism's spread was inevitable and necessary in this new world due to the exploitation of the working class. With the new machines such as the threshing machine. Workers had to work more and in worse conditions than ever before shown in a quote from Franz Rehbein, The Life of a Farmworker (1911) "The work goes as fast as the thresher's "sweat box" can swallow the grain. The worker must keep up with the machine, he is a slave and becomes part of the machine. Imagine the nonstop howling and groaning of the thresher, and the impenetrable dust that surrounds you, and then you can understand what the threshing machine means for the worker." -Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations, 667. This increase of work and worsening treatment of the working class made socialism a much more appealing option. Later a branch of socialism would be created by Karl Marx called Marxism. This was a much more radical form in which they believed that the working class needed to revolt out of necessity and that the working class should rule. This ideology would later play a pivotal role in the Russian Revolutions and Bolshevism.

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The first Russian Revolution in 1905 was a large amount of mass protests by the masses. It was caused by the economic boom of the late 19th century finally tapering off, and a massive increase in unemployment. It lead to the October Manifesto which granted individual liberties and more political power to the population. However, many of the promises made in the October Manifesto would later be revoked. These actions by the Tsar, the later defeats and mass casualties in WWI, and general incompetence of it's government would lead to the Russian Revolution in 1917 that would lead to Nicholas abdicating the throne. This created a power vacuum that Lenin and the Bolsheviks could fill. The Bolsheviks were a very nationalistic party that combined their past traditions with Western Marxism which created an ideology that could overthrow the provisional government. The October Revolution would happen in the same year and Lenin and his party quickly took over. They expelled the other political parties that they didn't agree with and created a one party dictatorship. In 1922 the Bolsheviks officially created the USSR.

In 1924 Stalin came to power. Stalin was one of the worst dictators of all time, and responsible for millions of deaths. Due to the lack of industrialization in the the 19th century the USSR had fallen behind the western world, and they needed to catch up quickly. In Stalin's own words, "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed..." -Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations, 892. The Five-Year Plan was Stalin's answer, by using forced prison labor from 3.6 million prisoners to rapidly industrialize, many of which were political opponents, petty criminals, and sometimes just the children of bourgeois. This did however work, and the USSR would become rapidly industrialized at the cost of human life. The final stage of Stalin's reign was the "Great Terror" where he would eliminate anyone he perceived as a threat whether that be politically or culturally and would lead to the deaths of an estimated 1 million people. By proclaiming people "enemies of the people" he was able to do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. Stalin's era would be a permanent stain on the USSR and future leaders would make attempts to rectify this. On a more controversial note though, without the Five-Year Plan I don't think they would have ever become the superpower that they became after WWII.

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Leonard Freed. 1965. GERMANY. The Berlin wall. The Berlin Wall was constructed by the East German government in August 1961 to halt the vast numbers of East Berliners defecting to the West and to prevent East Berliners from commuting to jobs in West Berlin, thus depleting the. https://library-artstor-org.library.cocc.edu/asset/AMAGNUMIG_10311523859.

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The Cold War is our final stop before finally reaching the consequences of itself. It's a time period reaching from the end of WWII to the early 1990s. In this time the USSR annexed a large amount of territory in eastern Europe creating a buffer zone from the West. This Buffer zone was called the "Iron Curtain" by Winston Churchill and also known as the Eastern bloc. In the Eastern bloc communist governments were created. In the west, lead by the USA, a similar situation developed in which they attempted to spread democratic governments to stem the spread of communism. These tensions would lead to the arms race and creation of H-bombs and ICBMs. "J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the development of the first atomic bomb, warned that the H-bomb's dramatic power could make it a "weapon of genocide."" -Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations, 974. This created a situation where neither side was willing to declare all out war on one another and instead fight proxy wars such as the Vietnam and Korean wars.

In 1953, Stalin died and in 1956 a new leader named Nikita Khrushchev would replace him. Khrushchev was responsible for the start of "the thaw" of the Soviet Union. He acknowledged how horrific Stalin's era was and began making change in how the government was run. During the thaw many countries in the eastern bloc experienced dramatic changes in government and in some cases revolt and revolutions. Without "the thaw" and Khrushchev I don't think many of the revolts in the 60s like the "Prague Spring" would have happened. Under Stalin's tyranny people were generally too scared to stand against him.

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Peter Turnley, American, b. 1955. 1989. The Fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, November 1989, from the series: Moments of the Human Condition. Photograph. Place: Lehigh University Art Galleries, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA.  For more information, contact us at LUAG@Lehigh.edu. https://library-artstor-org.library.cocc.edu/asset/24691832.

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Collapse of the USSR and it's Consequences

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Collapse of the USSR and it's Consequences

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Lack of consumer goods, a failing economy especially in comparison to the west, the spread of mass culture and music, and the revolts in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in Eastern Europe all lead to the fall of the USSR. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Communist party and started to make reforms that brought them closer to the Western world. I don't think this would have been possible without "the thaw", and maybe without it we would have seen much more violence leading to the end of the USSR. In November of 1989 we'd see the fall of the Berlin wall and two years later the end of the USSR.

Some of the consequences of the USSR were immediate. Wars erupted areas with different ethnicities and religions like Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Arguably one of the worst consequences of the USSR was the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in the area that was once Yugoslavia, "Stability was restored, but three years of war had killed more than 200,000 people." -Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations, 1035. Some of the consequences were less immediate. To this day tensions between the US and Russia are still tense. In the US a fear of communism is still used to this day, despite there being an entire generation of voters that were born after the fall of the USSR. I can only assume that this is due to today's politicians come from the Cold War era. Russia still fights wars with local nations that were once part of the Soviet Union like Georgia in the Russo-Georgian War and most recently in Ukraine. This most recent war in Ukraine and the unified sanctions against Russia by European countries and the US seems to be the start of another Cold War or maybe just a continuation of it.