Monday, January 14, 2008

Joseph Stalin and Totalitarianism


Totalitarianism is when the government or someone has total control over a state, country, and city, ect. Joseph Stalin was a totalitarian. He had total control over Russia. He first was promoted as Secretary General of the Communist party. From there he was against Trotsky for power. He allied himself with Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. But Stalin now turned against Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev and allied with Nicolai Bukharin in order to get rid of Trotsky. They succeeded, Trotsky got run out of Russia, he was later found found in Mexico were he was murdered. Joseph Stalin had an idea on how to industrialize Russia. Russian was about a hundred years behind other advanced countries. So Stalin decided to put the five-year plan into action. Basically everybody has to work about 2 times harder. In order to catch up with the rest of the countries. The poor and dangerous working conditions caused many deaths. Most of the complexes built for the five-year plan were built by slaves who were sentenced there for crimes they didn’t commit. About 3.7 million people were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes. About 6.7 million were put to death, 0.7 were expatriated and 2.7 million were forced to go to camps (which were called the Gulag) the majority of the people sentenced to camp ended up dieing. This just shows the amount of power Totalitarianism gives somebody.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Film Lesson:Dr.Zhivago


The Russian Revolution begun around 1917, many people of Russia didn’t like their Czar. During the war the soldier’s jus got up out of the drenches and walked home. They met up with the replacing soldiers; all the soldiers including the replacement soldiers killed the military leaders. While all these soldiers, Dr.Zhivago Being one of them were in war The Czar was assassinated, Civil war broke out in Russia and now Moscow was controlled by a communist government. When Dr.Zhivago went home he found at least 15 families living in his mansion. He got home confused not knowing what all those people were doing in his house. In a Communist government everybody has to share everything. Dr.Zhivago’s mansion was good enough for 15 families. So he, his wife and his father in law were living in his bedroom.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Causes of WWI


World War 1 started on 1914. One of the reasons/causes of WWI was all the countries militaries. Every Country begun to build up there armies. Every year starting from 1880 Europe would spend more and more money on their military. So it was like a competition to see who would build the bigger army. With all of these countries on each others borders with an army , war was bound to happen. Another cause is Imperialism. France took over most of Africa . The British had control over some countries in 5 continents. When Germany decided to gain control on other countries as well, that created more rivalry towards Germany. Now the big and main reason World war 1 had begun was when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated . Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the austro-Hungrian Throne. But on June 28 , 1914 Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo princip. Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist , sent along with 3 other men to assassinate Franz Ferdinand . Now When This assassination occurred Austro-Hungary was furious. So they declared war on Serbia. Now Most of the European countries had alliances with other countries. So when Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Serbia had an alliance with another country and that country with another and so on.The same with Austro-Hungary.