The Rise

1
The Rise Fall of the Soviet Union

• 1917-1990

2
Background

• Ivan the Terrible and the Russian Nobility
• Centralization of power bought through Serfdom
• Power and Serfdom by the time of Catherine the
  Great.

3

• Russias acquisition of new territories and
  growth of the Trans-Siberian railway.
• 1894 Nicholas II.
• 1905 Russo-Japanese War
• A Russian Constitution Duma (parliament)
• Industrialization and the creation of the Soviet,
  united by the Social Democratic Party

4

• Nicholas II after the Russo-Japanese Wars
  increased repression
• 1912 Creation of the Bolsheviks (radicals) and
  the Menshiviks (moderate)
• 1914 WWI
• Location
• Industry military
• Defeats
• Food shortages
• Economic collapse
• February 1917 Riots in St. Petersburg
  (Petrograd)
• Troops
• Workers Soviets
• Provisional Government
• March 2, 1917 Abdication of Nicholas II

5

• The Provisional Government (Alexandr Kerensky)
  moderate reforms
• Ending of WWI?
• Bolsheviks gained increasing support
• October 25, 1917 led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
  Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace
• Bolsheviks power
• Popularity
• WWI
• Civil war 1917-1920

6
The Soviet Era

• Lenins New Economic Policy (NEP)
• 10 of production to state and sell any surplus
  on open market for profit.
• Small private businesses were allowed
• State controlled industry operated under
  capitalist notions such as the profit motive,
  the right to dismiss workers, the right to reduce
  wages.
• Trade passed into private hands (created a new
  middle class)
• Currency reform
• Confiscated property returned and loans made
  available to those willing to develop timber, oil
  and other resources.
• Cultural changes Russian Avant-Garde
• Constructivism, Futurism, and Suprematism.
• widespread sense of optimism and opportunity.

7
Russian Avant-Garde

• A term describing art that departs from the
  existing norm in an original or experimental way.

8
Russian Constructivism

• a modern art movement beginning in Russia that
  aimed to create abstract sculpture for an
  industrialized society. The movement utilized
  technology and building materials such as glass,
  plastic, steel and chrome.

9
Futurism

• Art movement which idealized mechanization and
  machinery.

10
Suprematism

• The object in itself is meaningless... the ideas
  of the conscious mind are worthless''. What he
  wanted was a non-objective representation, the
  supremacy of pure feeling.'

11
The Soviet Era

• 1924 Lenin's death Struggle for Power in the
  Communist Party
• Comrade Stalin, having become general secretary,
  has unlimited authority
• concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure
  whether he will always be
• capable of using that authority with sufficient
  caution. Comrade Trotsky,
• on the other hand, as his struggle against the
  Central Committee on the
• question of the Peoples Commissariat has already
  proved, is distinguished
• not only by outstanding ability. He is personally
  perhaps the most capable
• man in the present Central Committee but he has
  displayed excessive self-
• assurance and shown preoccupation with the purely
  administrative side of
• the work. - V.I. Lenin

12
The Soviet Era

• Joseph Stalin
• End of the NEP. Beginning of 5-year plans
• Collectivization
• Industrial development
• Censorship Soviet Realism
• Religion repressed
• Purges
• By the 1930s totalitarianism replaced
  experimentalism

13
Soviet Realism

• 1934 To proletarianize the arts to create
  expressions that would be understood immediately
  by the masses and inspire them to carry out the
  goals of the revolution. All other forms of art
  were thought of as Bourgeois and irrelevant.

14

• WWII
• Unprepared
• Purges and the Military
• Industrial production
• 1939 Non-aggression Pact
• June 1941-1945 War with Germany
• After WWII
• 20,000,000 dead
• Land gained.
• Agriculture Industry
• Political liberties
• More purges
• The Cold War
• 1953 Stalin died

15

• Nikita Khruschev
• Repressive policies that he had instituted were
  dismantled.
• political controls
• cultural life
• 1970s - 1982, Leonid Brezhnev
• domestic stability and an aggressive foreign
  policy.
• Stagnation
• In March of 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev

16

• New Soviet Union under Gorbachev
• glasnost
• perestroika
• The economy
• End to corruption
• Chernobyl glasnost
• Problems in the Soviet Union discussed openly
• Poverty
• Corruption
• Management of resources
• Afghan war
• Radical reform leaders emerged for the first
  time!
• New Moscow Party chief Boris Yeltsin
• Dissidents like Andrei Sakharov
• Government as the target of most of the criticism
• Early in 1989, Soviet troops were withdrawn from
  Afghanistan.
• Spring of 1989, the first open elections since
  1917
• Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe

17

• 1990, the Soviet Union
• declarations of independence.
• Difficulties
• Yeltsin elected chairman of the Parliament
• Large scale strikes and demonstrations
• Economy food shortages
• 1991 radical reform criticism of Gorbachev
• June Yeltsin elected Russian President.
• Conservatives try to take control by arresting
  Gorbachev
• Gorbachev resigned under duress
• Attempted Coup by conservatives
• Gorbachev was reinstated, but powerless
• The End of the Soviet Union