Soviet Union Essays (Examples)

Soviet Union Trade Blocs

Trade blocs (pacts) and mutual economic associations of interest are hardly new tactical weapons on the nation-state board of marketing strategies. They have been used across the eons for one or another purpose. Leaders of countries of all types have attempted to execute their own versions of this kind of economic vitality model, even when such cooperation forces them to reach outside of their controlling economic philosophies. This was why, in part, Gorbachev cemented early on in his efforts an alliance between COMECON (the Soviet Union's internal Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) with the early partnership members of what would become the European Union (Foxley, 2010). The Soviet Union was on the verge of losing its state market influence, meaning it had a need to reach more broadly to the global market potentials. In 1991, the European Council Free Trade Associations signed an agreement with COMECON,…

In an unprecedented move, Khrushchev denounced many of Stalin's excesses and set about changing Soviet policy towards the developing world. This change, some call it flexibility, was the branch the Soviets offered to developing countries, like Cuba. Looking around and seeing the alienated or disenfranchized, Khrushchev felt the time was right to solidify alliances with anticolonialists in Ghana, the Congo, and especially, Cuba (Hopf).

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Khrushchev viewed President Kennedy as too indecisive and not prepared to make hard decisions, felt that Kennedy would back down even if he discovered missiles in Cuba. However, intelligence gathering continued after the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and regular U-2 flights over the island finally presented the evidence Kennedy needed to prove the Soviets were indeed, placing missiles off the American shore (Franklin).

During President Dwight Eisenhower's term one of his great concerns was the mounting tensions between the…

Soviet Union and Stalin Era

Understanding of Stalin and Soviet Union

The Soviet economic system persisted for around 60 years and even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the basic elements of the system still existed. The leaders exercising the most substantial influence on this system were -- Vladimir I. Lenin and Stalin, who started the prevailing patterns of collectivization and industrialization that became typical characteristic of the Soviet Union's centrally planned system. However, by 1980, the inherent defects became apparent as the national economy suffered; shortly thereafter, reform programs began to alter the traditional structure. One of the chief reformers of the late 1980s, Boris Yeltsin, oversaw the substantial dissolution of the central planning system in the early 1990s.

After the Lenin's demise, two conflicting schools of thought emerged about the future of the Soviet Union in party debates. Left-wing communists believed that world revolution was…

Soviet Union and United States

Comparative Analysis of Industrialization in the Former USS and United States

The political, economic, and cultural impacts of industrialization in North American and European countries are still widely evident today and have heavily affected international relations and global politics. The Industrial evolution is usually considered to have originated in Great Britain in the mid 1700s, which at this point in time was the dominant empire in term of trade, commerce, land ownership, and influence. Other countries with sophisticated economic systems, including Germany, France and the United Kingdom soon developed technology, which allowed for mass production of commodities, more efficient travel over longer distances, and greater participation in formal economic activity for non-elite persons.

One of the hallmarks of technological innovation during the Industrial evolution was undoubtedly the harnessing of steam power, fueled by coal and petroleum. Cities saw rapid growth throughout the 18th and 19th…

he Soviet Union had been administered for the past 70 years through a tight control on information. Gorbachev's policy of openness threw open the floodgates. he Soviet people had been kept on a tight leash through tight control on information and "fear" by an oppressive government. (Kedzie, 1997) the lifting of the fear factor did not result in, as Gorbachev had hoped, improvement in the social and economic conditions within the existing system. When the ordinary people found more out about the outside world and their own history, they chose to ignore "perestroika" altogether and opted instead to change the system itself. o make matters worse, all that Gorbachev's "reforms" managed to do was to disrupt the operations of the existing planned economy, provoking a further slowdown in growth leading to widespread shortages of consumer goods. (Moorewood, 1998)

Nationalism

Nationalism in the Soviet bloc's satellites such as East Germany, Poland,…

S.S.R. The movement began as strike action in protest against rising food prices. Lech Walesa acted as the leader of the Solidarity movement, unifying the public against government abuses. lthough the movement was outlawed, and several workers imprisoned as a result, Gorbachev's reforms changed this. It was once again considered legal, and the movement translated itself as a social gain for citizens in protest against a government that, at the time, positioned itself as the ultimate authority. Solidarity was legalized in 1989 and candidate endorsed by the movement won almost all the seats in the upper house of the bicameral legislature. In other words, Communism was being replaced by a movement that considered the voice of the majority as one of primary importance.

The Soviet Union fell in 1991, which was the year during which Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin became the first President of the Russian Federation. Yeltsin originally supported Mikhail…

fall of the Soviet Union the United States has been often described as the world's only remaining super power. Whether this description is accurate or whether it truly matters, is open to debate but how the United States came to the point where it is even a position to be afforded such a distinction is interesting. For a nation that began as thirteen loosely organized colonies and that for most of its history maintained a position of isolation its now being considered the world's only super power is highly ironic.

It has been the common position of many professional historians that the United States emerged on the world political scene when Commodore Dewey staged a showing of American military power in Manila Bay in 1898 (Fry, 1979). On May 1st of that year Dewey defeated a formidable Spanish fleet and sent a message to the rest of the world that…

The replacement of Communist, military, and dictatorial regimes is usually accompanied by a period of euphoria among the citizenry but soon thereafter reality sets in and the practical operation of the government sets in (Ekman). When democratization developed in America, the role and size of government was much different. Government in the twentieth century is a much more complicated operation. eorganization of the various institutions that had developed under prior governments had to be transformed into institutions operated under new sets of rules. Suddenly, decisions and policies were not made based on an ideology and conflicting interests had to be considered. Suddenly, politicians and administrators in these new Eastern European democracies were forced to learn how to negotiate. With the adoption of democracy, differing points-of-view and differing policies had to now be considered and the bureaucrats who had formerly operated these institutions and agencies were provided with choices and political…

For more than a decade, the country has been de-industrializing and learning to live with firewood or diesel generators brought in from Turkey. eforms in Georgia, with its entrenched corruption, lack of competitive industries, poor work ethic, worn-out Soviet-era infrastructure, and widespread poverty, has been considered difficult, especially in the face of a deep economic crisis and security threats, including ones from ussia.

Agriculture is a leading occupation in Georgia, whose warmer districts produce large quantities of tea and citrus fruits; tobacco, wine grapes, rice, and mulberry trees (for silk) are also grown. Sheep, pigs, and poultry are raised. Georgia is rich in minerals also. Georgia had a large and varied industrial sector. Its chief manufactures included transport equipment, electric motors, machine tools, iron and steel, railroad and mining equipment, chemicals, textiles, wine, and building materials, but many industries collapsed after independence.

Challenges: For Georgian economy to progress there are…

Human Trafficking

Sex trafficking and exploitation in Europe

Sex trafficking in Europe

Although globalization has been a boon in many positive ways to many people, it has also had the unintended consequence of facilitating the sex industry. According to the International Labor Office (ILO) "there are 12.3 million victims of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation worldwide at any given time. Forty-three percent are trafficked for purposes of commercial sexual exploitation," the majority of which are women and children (Hepburn & Simon 2010:2). "In terms of those trafficked for the purposes of forced commercial sexual exploitation, women and girls make up 98%" (Hepburn & Simon 2010:2).

Case study: Katya

As reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, the former republics of the Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe are fertile sites of trafficking into EU nations. While still a young teenager, a Moldavian girl named 'Katya' and her friend…

United States vs. Soviet Union

The Cold ar, although over now, had a demonstrative effect on the United States culture and political sphere. Indeed, some of those effects are still felt in the United States to this very day. However, this report will focus on three political and social effects that were rendered during the height of the Cold ar. This report will explore three political effects and three social effects. hile the United States came out fine from the Cold ar, there were/are some effects that were extensive and wholly negative for the country then and/or now.

One political effect that was rise of paranoia-like questioning found during the McCarthyism era. McCarthy acted under the premise and idea that a good number of Communists had infiltrated the United States government. Even President Truman was part of this framework as he insisted on background checks for all government officials (U.S.…

They began to worship Lenin, and Stalin encouraged this by playing a prominent role at Lenin's funeral and encouraging the Party to collect and display some of Lenin's personal belongings and important documents. He made the people believe that he had supported Lenin and Lenin supported him, even though that was not true. While publicly he seemed humble and meek, in reality he was now waging war against Trotsky. Because he had so much power within the Party, he began to speak out against Trotsky, and people were afraid of their own positions, so they listened and they began to support Stalin. He always used his power to put fear into the people around him.

Trotsky's power was in his leadership of the ed army, and Stalin began to work against him to replace him with someone of his own choosing. Stalin kept index cards with information on all the…

Diplomay and the Cuban Missile CrisisIntrodutionThe Cuban Missile Crisis (16 Otober 1962 to 20 November 1962) began with the disovery by US intelligene of Soviet missile launh failities in Cuba. The threat of an attak on US soil was made lear to President Kennedy by his Joint Chiefs of Staff, who urged Kennedy to take aggressive ounter-measures. Kennedys main onern was that aggressive ation on his point ould lead to even more aggressive retaliation on the part of the Soviet Union and ultimately to nulear war. Largely seen as exerising oerive diplomay to avoid a military onfrontation, Kennedys diplomati efforts in the Crisis have been praised as a defining moment in the Cold War. The reality of the situation is, however, that behind the senes Kennedy engaged in quid pro quo diplomay to satisfy Khrushhev and avert a war.BakgroundThroughout the latter half of 1962, ampaigns for the upoming Congressional eletions…

Soviet Law

The legal system of ussia may be viewed through the prism of communism and Marxism, but that is not all that needs to be considered when discussing Soviet than ussian legal ideology and court systems (Bartlett, 2008). In reviewing the development in how western scholars think about the impact on ussian law from Soviet legal practices, Bartlett points out that law is more than just statutes it is also the "social practices norms, behaviors, and expectations" of the public (Bartlett, 2008, p. 4). As one of the world's nuclear powers and the largest country in Eurasia an understanding of the development of Soviet ussian legal practices is essential to an understanding of region.

Origins of USS Legal History

Soviet law was portrayed as socialist law but the ideology behind it was strictly Marxism (Berman, 1948, p.223). In the socialist legal framework, the legal systems under a capitalist regime…

While Lenin's economic program benefited the Russians, particularly its working class, Stalin's economic program was advantageous for military personnel and industrialists. In fact, Stalin had changed the nature of USSR economy from being socialist to pseudo-capitalist, a reversal of Lenin's objectives. Thus, Stalinism in the Soviet Union had destroyed the nationalistic objective that Lenin had originally created for the Russian people and the Soviet allies.

Nikita Khrushchev's leadership after the rule of the Stalin government included the abolishment of the Soviet Union. Russia gradually assumed a capitalist economy, although the immediate reform that Khruschev implemented was the destruction of Stalin's Communist regime and its institutions. His administration focused on the abolishment of any trace of Stalin's authoritarian rule in the Soviet Union right after World War II. Russian morale at this time was at its lowest, what with the fall of the 'socialist experiment' and prevalence of poverty and hunger…

Soviet Active Measures and U.S. Covert Action programs

The focus of this essay is to explore, compare and contrast the U.S. Covert Action programs with the Soviet Active Measures of the same time period. The United States uses the Covert Action program and Soviet Union uses Active Measure to influence the political, economic, and social conditions of foreign countries. While there are similarities in their operations, there are still some fundamental differences.

Explore, Compare and Contrast the U.S. Covert Action with the Soviet Active Measures

Covert action program is the activities of the United States Government used to influence economic, military and political conditions of foreign countries or government. The U.S. uses the covert action to achieve their desired foreign policy goals without necessarily acknowledging their intention publicly. Typically, U.S. uses broad spectrum of covert actions that include:

Propaganda: CIA covertly disseminates specific information to achieve foreign policy goals. However,…

(Strayer, 126)

For the Soviet Union, the period of time during and immediately after the Second World War was in reality, yet another cruel landmark in the numerous wars, revolutions and crises which had been influencing and destroying the country since the year 1905, and when in the year 1985 Gorbachev took over the administration and management of the country, the people of the Soviet Union hoped for some form of relief from the years of oppression that they had been subjected to under various leaders, including Stalin, Khrushchev who denounced Stalin and caused communists to defect from the party in large numbers, Brezhnev, under whose rule the Soviet government gradually changed from a personal dictatorship to oligarchy, Sakharov, who helped create the world's first Soviet H. bomb, Chernenko, Andropov, and several others. (Lecture 16: 1989: The Walls Came Tumbling Down)

Gorbachev was an individual and a leader who was…

(Harvey, 2003) the suspicion of the United States of the "Soviet Expansionist tendencies" had increased by the 1970s and Harvey states as well that "The pervasive mentality of Washington officials during these years was dominated by the communist domino theory which led many Washington politicians to believe that the Soviet Union sought to take over the entire world." (2003) the United States had always received a safeguard provided by the shah for their Middle East interest of oil and it was this that resulted in the United States perceiving the Soviet-Afghanistan relations as a "considerable threat...before 1979." (Harvey, 2003)

Harvey reports that while Department of State records from the early 1970s report that the United States was indifferent to the relationship that was developing between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan that the truth is that "...Recently declassified ntelligence reports also reveal that the "official history record is false."

[26] Contrary…

Soviet Marshall

It is an undeniable fact that the Marshal Georgy Zhukov is the most commended and highly-praised military commander of the Soviet Union, especially for his services in the World War II. It was due to his relentless efforts that the German army was defeated in the East and the war was brought to an end quickly. A good number of historians acknowledge that "the name of Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, the distinguished military leader of World War II and a controversial figure in the postwar military and political hierarchy, conjures up a picture of an outstanding, often ruthless commander, one of a few who led massive armed forces and never lost a battle."

rief iography

Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov was born Strelkovka (near Moscow) to a peasant family on December 1st, 1896. In 1906, he finished school and was then sent to Moscow to pursue a career in fur-making.…

The ed Army lost numerous men and machinery, and ultimately, the cost was too much for the Soviets to bear. The Soviets finally began to withdraw troops in the spring of 1988, and removing all troops by early 1989. They left the country in political and personal chaos, with infighting between ethnic groups and religious sects. Author Esposito continues, "Within a brief period after the Soviet withdrawal, the great Islamic victory had collapsed into interethnic and sectarian warfare, fueled by foreign patrons. The net result was chaos and the devastation of Afghanistan as various warlords vied to set up their own fiefdoms."

The country disintegrated into Civil War, with some of the mujahidin factions of the Northern Alliance surviving to fight against the Taliban with U.S. forces in 2001. The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, controlling every aspect of life from dress to worship and commerce. The Taliban…

U.S.S.R., Russia, and China: A Comparison

Factors Contributing to the demise of the U.S.S.R.

Many factors contributed to the downfall of the U.S.S.R. One of the main things was the lack of leadership that the country had. This is not to say that it did not have a leader, only to say that the leadership itself had difficulties that the leaders tried to hide but ultimately could not. It was not the people that were flawed, although they were certainly not perfect, but it was the leadership ideals that the country held that were the problem. This was the main reason that the country fell, but a lack of leadership contributed to a great many other things that worked against the country as well.

For example, divorce, corruption, alcoholism, and economic problems were prevalent, and no one was really doing anything to prevent them from getting worse. This helped work…

Fall of the Soviet Union: Internal Causes Were to lame, Not External

In December of 1991, as the world watched in sheer perplexity and wonder, the mighty Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate smaller countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a convincing victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the final proof of superiority of capitalism over socialism. The United States rejoiced as its sworn enemy was brought to its knees, thereby ending the unprecedented Cold War which had hovered over these two superpowers like a thunderhead since the end of World War II. In fact, the end of the Soviet Union transformed the entire world political situation, leading to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe, not to mention spurred a whole new set of political-economic theories.

What were the causes of this monumental historical…

The issue of justice is also very closely related to that of morality. In the epublic, morality is again a function of the class division dictated by soul dominance. With every individual's place in society rigidly defined, social interaction were also defined. There would be a prescribed way of dealing with someone lese based on which class each member was, and since most immoral behavior has some form of jealousy at its root, the ideal state has carefully removed all such temptations to jealousy. The reason for the ascetic life of the philosopher-kings and warriors is so the commoners see the way of life that the rulers lead and are turned off by it; being ruled by desire and seeing nothing in that way of life to desire, they would cease even to desire power. For Plato, it would have been immoral for someone not equipped to rule to attempt…

Nazi Holocaust

It was in the World War 2 that something so huge was tried by The Nazi Germany that it was just impossible to continue it. Genocide was attempted by Adolf Hitler and his comrades; they made systematic and deliberate attempts to kill all of the Jewish community. Jews were blamed by the Nazis for the misfortune that they faced in World War 1 because of which after the war Hitler made it his mission to kill all the Jews. This genocide started in 1939 and lased till 1945. Adolph Hitler was the one by whom this whole thing was introduced as he wanted to get rid of all the minority races from Germany (Bergen, 2009).

In the World War 2 there was a lot of suffering but what happened with the Jews can't be forgotten. The Jewish people had a set of laws for them which were known…

Ethnic nationality comes when a "consciousness of a shared identity within a group, rooted in a shared culture and a belief in common ancestry. Ethno-nationalism is a term that refers to nationalism based on this consciousness of ethnic nationality, as opposed to civic nationality" ("Week 1"). This is in direct contrast to civic nationality.

Civic nationality centers on the shared territory of the group of people. It matters little what each individual's ancestry is, as long as the person was born or is permanently residing within a geographic area ("Week 1"). For the Ukraine, it mattered little that the ussians were permanent residents, or that many had been born within the Ukrainian borders, what mattered was the shared culture of the Ukrainian people, and their ancestry.

It should have been little surprise that ethnic nationalism took hold over civic nationalism. Civic nationalism usually occurs in well-institutionalized democracies ("Week 1"). However,…

political framework of EU and OCT

European Union (EU) and Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) are in association with each other via a system which is based on the provisions of part IV of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU), consisting of detailed rules and measures which are laid down in the document issued on 27th November 2001 title Oversees Association Decision. The expiry date of this association decision is 31st December 2013. Stress has been laid down by the European Council in its conclusions issued on 22nd December 2009 that the relationship between OCT and EU should continuously be updated in order to reflect latest developments not only in EU and OCT but thorough out the world. The commission has also been encouraged to make revisions to the Overseas Association Decision and present it in front of the council prior to July 2012 (Hill et al.,…

S.-Soviet partnership lasted only a year and a half. With World War II over and the OSS disbanded in October 1945, the Cold War was looming on the horizon.

Conclusion

The research showed that the KGB was established in 1917 and was official deactivated in 1991. The research also showed that the KGB was not the stuff of the James Bond movies, but rather was characterized by an enormous sense of internal rivalry, a profound sense of paranoia and a desire on the part of many of its agents to defect to the West at their first opportunity. In this environment, it was little wonder that the KGB would resort to some of the tactics it used to achieve its mission, and it is reasonable to assert that current ussian intelligence agents will have taken a lesson or two from their KGB predecessors as they seek to maintain hegemony with…

If these countries have a choice of two strategies of development, then Russia is left none. Russian foreign policy was historically based on domination over its neighbors and imperialist model of foreign policy over neighboring countries.

oreigners who visit former Soviet Union countries are often shocked by existing poverty, poor social infrastructure and corruption which erodes society from inside. It may be explained taking into consideration different historical factors: Soviet Union was based on strict dictatorship, where the interests of individual were not taken into consideration. Individual got basic facilities for living: in 1930's it was a great progress as USSR turned into a quickly developing industrial economy from a conservative and outdated agricultural one. ormal equality of all citizens created favorable conditions for unavoidable corruptions which made citizens to exploit their positions illegally in order to improve the living. There is an ethical explanation too: several generations of Soviet…

Battle of Zhawar in the Soviet-Afghan War

"Afghanistan is a country of strong beliefs and traditions in the population oppose the Soviets and the hostile communist ideology of the government of Afghanistan. The communist ideology directly attacked the ethnic structure, community structure and religious beliefs of the people and the people violently rejected this ideology," which eventually led to the most embarrassing Soviet defeat in the history of the Soviet Union. There were a number of decisive battles where the Soviets completely dropped the ball, including the Second Battle of Zhawar, partly because of their reliance of poor commanders. In this battle, LTG Nabi Azimi of the Democratic epublic of Afghanistan, which had sided with the Soviets, illustrated his shortcomings as a commander and failed to execute the mission because he had clearly underestimated the Mujahideen fighting force in the caves around the Ghar Mountains and provided poor guidance for…

To achieve these various purposes, NATO embarked on a series of interlocking efforts during the 1990s that were intended to provide some aspect of an overall concept of security. A series of initiatives resulted in NATO accepting new members with the possibility of still further additions in the future, crafted the Partnership for Peace and created the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council; entered into a Founding Act with ussia and a Charter with Ukraine; revised its command arrangements; and, simultaneously, became increasingly aware that developing a new relationship with the Western European Union was clearly in its best interests (Hunter, 2003).

In this regard, Dannreuther (2004) maintains that the EU's engagement with its immediate periphery represents a highly important, and potentially the most important, post-Cold War geopolitical challenge for its foreign and security policy; the nature of these obstacles can be considered to have three major dimensions, as follows:

There has been…

This was certainly needed as technology has also evolved from time to time and the nature of labor that was being used in the 1920s or so is not the same as is the nature today. This is certainly commendable. Along with the changes in laws, the emphasis on labor and its problems have also been shifted out of the center stage and matters that were directly being dealt with by the Secretaries Office have shifted out. This shows clearly that importance of the problems of labor have now become of a much lower priority and this is also clearly seen in the patterns of development of American business and industry where many production units have transferred their labor problems by shifting them out of United States. The government has also clearly remained out of the ambit of labor laws as no laws are applicable to government laborers. Thus it…

In this regard, Francis adds that, "The determining factor will be ASEAN's ability to provide the leadership necessary to create a strong, independent East Asian Union" (Francis, p. 77). In addition, Bowles (2002) notes that the ongoing efforts to create improved Asia/Pacific regional cooperation are fundamentally efforts intended to balance the influence of the United States on the region and the world in general.

4. What are the main hypotheses of the work?

The guiding hypotheses of the proposed study are as follows:

H1: Encouraging China to participate in as a coalition leader in an East Asian Union in the future would serve to ensure that the price it would have to pay in terms of loss of trade and investment if it acts against the interests of the union's other members would be prohibitively high.

H2: Former Cold War alliances will be replaced by new ones in the future…

Former Soviet Satellites and the European Union

Recent decades have been decades of great change for the nations and peoples of Europe. The est has witnessed the gradual demise of interstate rivalries, the former system of wholly independent states being replaced by an increasingly close union of partner nations. Meanwhile, in the East, these same years saw nearly the whole of Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea fall under the domination of the Soviet Union. However, with the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, these former Soviet satellites were transformed, almost overnight, into a collection of fledgling democracies. And though the nations of Eastern Europe, at least ostensibly, now share the same political values as their neighbors to the est, their transformation has not been without its problems. Years of Communist rule, has left these countries economically backward and underdeveloped. Yet each of these former Communist nations…

Lastly, a loss of Ajaristan (Ajaria) would weaken Georgias buffer with Turkey and increase loss of lack Sea shoreline:

In the conflict between the Ossetians and Ingush, the Russian government favored the "always loyal Ossetians" over the discontented Muslim Ingush. The conflicts with the Georgians in the south and the Ingush in the west have fueled the growth of Ossetian nationalism, but the majority hope for autonomy, not full independence, fearing the loss of Russian protection in the volatile region they have inhabited since ancient times. The Ossetians, although needing Russian protection in the mostly Muslim region, continue to work for the unification of their small nation in a single political entity. In 1996, the governments of North and South Ossetia signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation. Relations between the South Ossetians and the Georgian government improved in the late 1990s. The Georgian government of Eduard Shevardnadze proposed in…

The Totalitarian Soviet Ideal and The Circus
In Grigori Aleksandrov’s (1936) Soviet film The Circus, an American white woman named Marion Dixon is chased out of the racist South after giving birth to a black baby. She escapes by train and is protected by a German, who becomes her manager, as she is a dancer. Their act takes them to the Soviet Union, where her act is incorporated into the circus there. She becomes beloved of the people for her performances and in turn falls in love with a Soviet engineer. This raises the ire of her manager, who tries to blackmail her to leave the Soviet Union. However, the Soviets are not put off by her son, who is of mixed ethnicity. The film indicates that Russians themselves are of mixed ethnicity and for that reason they are very accepting of the bi-racial child. The film ends with Marion’s…

Unconventional Warfare: The Mujahidin of Afghanistan

esistance is not futile. It was one of the lessons learned from the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan: that any resistance force can counter effectively against a powerful aggressor. esistance - with the proper tools, strategy, and determination - can countermeasure any unwanted entity. The anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan not only pushed the invaders out of their country, but it helped precipitated the eventual fall of the U.S.S.. As a world power. The question on the table is: what happened in that poor Southwest Asian country? How did the Soviets lose that war, or how did the mujahidin - the soldiers of God - win? First and foremost, the Soviet political and military leaders made strategic and tactical errors. The Afghan rebels employed unconventional warfare in Afghanistan: it was their only possible means in defeating the Soviets. Eventually, though too late, the ussian troops…

President Carter believed that Russians planned to control the strategically important locations of South Asia, and resolved his commitment towards ensuring right of sovereignty to people of that region.

President warned Soviets was diplomatic isolation if it persisted towards military aggression, President revealed that, 'In the meantime, neither the United States nor any other nation which is committed to world peace and stability can continue to do business as usual with the Soviet Union'. President planned to impose possible diplomatic, trade, economic barriers not only from United States but from platform of United Nations.

President warned that if Russians continued their military campaign, violation of International law, the United States has the right to review its commitment towards SALT II treaty, which restricted the development of nuclear arsenal. President reaffirmed, 'we will of course, keep the ratification of SALT II under active review in consultation with the leaders of the…

8).

Likewise, the Institute of Agriculture required a quorum of two-thirds of its members for voting purposes and for the balancing of votes according to the size of the budgetary contributions (owett, 1970). While this analysis of these early forms of public international unions is not complete, it does suggest that they were beginning to identify the wide range of interests involved in modern international commerce and what was required to mediate disputes rather than war over them. According to owett (1970), despite the growing body of research into the history and purpose of international public unions, the authorities have not reached a consensus on their classification; however, the constitutional developments and innovations made by the public unions are important considerations for policymakers today because they presaged those made by contemporary inter-governmental organizations (owett, 1970).

In the first instance, the trend towards permanence of association was distinct, no matter whether…

The eurozone package is politically more complicated. it's designed to show that 16 nations sharing the euro currency will stand united behind the debts of member nations to stave off a potential crisis of confidence that could damage them all." (Trumbull, 1)

This complexity is underscored by the inherently questionable imperatives of the European Monetary Union. Indeed, one of the core challenges of free trade, globalization and the establishment of intra-continental unions is the inherent difficulty in facing up the inherent incongruity of the aligning markets. The European Union has served as a prime example of this, matching a widely varied set of nations in a single economic pact. The result is that in many contexts, visible distinctions remain even as economic policy is set with the collective in consideration. These distinctions are not necessarily irreconcilable, but under the current structure of the European Monetary Union, they most certainly are.…

One of the phenomenal things about the European Union is its extraordinary capacity to be able to work both as a unified entity, in which all 27 voices act as one, and as a federation, in fact, of its member states. In order to be able to function in this manner, the European Union also needs functional institutions. John McCormick is keen in this part of the book to describe both how all these European institutions operate internally (the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice and the European Council and Specialized Agencies) and, additionally, how they are able to work with one another in a functional manner. Each of these institutions is allocated a separate chapter, with generally the same structure that includes the institution's structure, its evolution, functionality and the way it works etc.

The final part of the book deals…

At the same time, the socialist views of Karl Marx and Frederic Engels came to be known in Russia and offered the intellectuals a new consideration of the relation between work, remuneration, and the relationship between the worker and its employer. This in turn created a new sense of national unity and a reconsideration of what nationality really meant.

Taking all these perspectives into account, it is essential that the precise reason for the revolution. First and foremost, there was a need for change and the socialist views considered that change cannot occur through evolution, but rather revolution. In this sense, at the time, it was considered that the tsarist rule had brought the Russian empire to its ruin through the constant attempts to support social exclusion and differentiation. Thus, "for more than a century Russia's progressive forces stubbornly and tirelessly labored for the destruction of the most despotic governmental…

But by doing so, Zia and ilson gained the most powerful ally one could want when it came to appropriations. ith Doc Long's support, ilson was able to obtain $40 million from the Defense Appropriations subcommittee; a group of eleven elected officials who meet behind closed doors and decide how to spend billions of dollars. And since the recommendations from the committee have to be voted on by the full House without the specifics of where the money is being sent, Charlie ilson was able to appropriate the money without any public knowledge. This was important because the participation of the United States in the arming of Afghan mujahideen had to be kept a secret or else it risked direct war with the Soviet Union.

Part of Charlie ilson's ability to convince the other members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote for his appropriations was the fact that…

Guevara

Perceptions of Che Guevera

PERCEPTIONS OF CHE GUEVARA

Che Guevara was born as Ernesto Guevara de la Serna in 1928 to a middle-class family (Castaneda 1998, 3). He was Argentinean by birth but was later awarded with an honorary Cuban citizenship in recognition of his contribution towards the armed struggle in the Cuban revolution. Studying to become a doctor, Guevara became influenced by Marxist ideals and teachings upon a motorbike trip across South America at the age of twenty-four where he observed the exploitation and deprivation of the poor people under capitalism (Castaneda 1998, 50). He became a champion of the class struggle against capitalism on an international level. He joined Fidel Castro in 1955 in overthrowing the Cuban government of atista. Subsequently, he became an important figure in Cuban diplomacy and a vocal critic of the United States and the Soviet Union. Later on he helped revolutionary groups…

Gorbachev most certainly did undertake policies that were not half measures, and for which he did all in his power as a government official to implement systemic, nationwide (and international) change. The degree of efficaciousness of these measures and their results, however, is somewhat dubious. An excellent example of a measure implemented by the General Secretary that no one can claim was done in a halfhearted attempt was the Soviet Union's prohibition of alcohol consumption, selling and purchasing. Alcoholism had long been a problem in the Soviet Union by the time Gorbachev became its leader, and prohibition was an earnest effort on his part to address and even correct this seriously debilitating issue. However, the most long-range result of this measure was the rise of Russian mafia and the underground market that this law produced. Although he made a noble effort, Gorbachev did not succeed in curing the Soviet Union…

Space Program

hen the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik I, the first ever artificial satellite, in orbit on October 4, 1957, the event took the Americans and the entire western world by surprise. Sputnik I was just a 2-foot sphere with nothing more than two tiny radio transmitters on it, but the symbolic significance of the event -- the implication that Communist Russia had taken a significant technological lead over the United States was a massive blow to the American nation's pride. It signaled the start of the Cold ar space-race between the two major super powers of the time and developed into a race for putting the first man on the moon that culminated in the historic "giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. This paper focuses on the history of the U.S. Space Program, the role…

Australia began shifting to a limited Welfare State at the end of the Second World War (1945) and has continually supported privatization and deregulation. The 1904 Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act and 1988 Industrial Relations Act (IRA) both have set a strong precedent for workers' rights and the right to create and form unions. From an ER standpoint these laws and compliance requirements are also constrictive as they are one-size-fits-all in approach.

Role of Stakeholders- the Government, Unions, Workers,

Both Australia and Germany are comparable in the depth and sophistication of systems, processes and procedures to support stakeholders. Of the two, Germany ahs been architecture far more to support and protect the unionized work. The German Trade Union Confederation, combined with the German series of laws to protect the worker has lead to protectionist approaches when it comes to allowing new businesses into Germany. MNCs looking t expand into Germany…

The UK needs to build good economic relationships with emerging markets even more than with its EU neighbors. China is already highly competitive in manufacturing and is gaining competitiveness in high-technology manufacturing. India is a leader in Information Technology and, being an English speaking country, also has the ability to be globally competitive in Professional Services. Latin American and Southeast Asian economies, such as Brazil or Indonesia, will become increasingly competitive in agriculture and energy. The WTO and various other bilateral free trade agreements are reducing the barriers to these types of goods, making them increasingly attractive to the European consumer.

Considering the competition for European markets, the EU's greatest value and likely greatest priority will be the protection of European markets, not the opening of global markets. The UK, because of its focus on global finance and professional services, has little to gain from the protection of its own…

" It seems perfectly apparent that this was the original policy of the U.S. In Afghanistan specific to the Soviet Union. The CSR Report for Congress entitled: "Afghanistan: Current Issues and U.S. Policy" Kenneth Katzman, Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs writes that the policy objectives of the United States in Afghanistan have: "...long gone beyond establishing political stability and combating terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan." (Katzman, 2005)

IV. PRESENT U.S. INVOLVEMENT in AFGHANISTAN

Some of the areas targeted by the United States include: "...ending discrimination against women and girls, the eradication of narcotics production, and alleviating severe humanitarian difficulties, and promoting long-term economic development...with varying degrees of intensity." (2005) Further reported is landmine eradication and retrieval of some U.S. Stingers that are in the country. In relation to long-term economic development in the country of Afghanistan the $2.5 billion Central Asia Gas Pipeline immediately became a focus after the U.S.…

Tear down that wall," has been the one sentence legacy of Ronald Reagan's presidential administration (Boyd). Ask any conservative political pundit and you are likely to hear that Reagan's defense strategy and, in particular, his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was the direct cause of the Berlin all coming down, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the eventual end of the Cold ar. Yet, in reality, how instrumental was Reagan and his policy in these occurrences or was the actual cause due to other factors?

Reagan, unlike his predecessors, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon, adopted a much sterner posture relative to relations with the Soviet Union. Reagan entered office initially on the coat strings of President Carter's problems with the Iran hostages and Reagan campaigned on the strength of his strong militaristic positions. hen Reagan entered office the Cold ar was forty years old. The Soviet Union and…

Cuban Missile Crisis

There are two views, as with any conflict or issue, on the reasons and reactions of the major players in the Cuban Missile Crisis that took place at the end of October 1962. The crisis pitted two world powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, against each other in what many describe as the closest the world has come to World War III and a nuclear holocaust.

In order to understand the Crisis, it is important to first understand the events leading up to the crisis. This paper examines the background of the crisis from the Cuban/Soviet point-of-view in depth. Toward the end of the paper, the United States' perspective of the crisis is discussed with regard to what is described previously from the perspective of supporters of the Castro regime and the now collapsed Soviet Union.

ackground

After the devastation that the bombs left in…

They did not like the reforms or the way Gorbachev was running the country allowing all the freedoms -- glasnost and perestroika. They presented him with documents signing away his powers as General Secretary. Gorbachev exploded and ordered them to leave. They did, but Gorbachev knew he was in a grave situation, cut off from the world, not telephones, and guarded.

Yeltsin

However, the "old guard" had made one huge mistake. They had failed to take into account or arrest the second most powerful man in the country, a man by the name of oris Yeltsin. He had just been elected as the first President of Russia, and he and Gorbachev were bitter rivals to control the entire USSR. However, not today. y Yeltsin's choice, he joined with Gorbachev in spirit and ideology, rushed to the Russian parliament and declared the supposed coup the act of mad men and threw…

The events leading to the Vietnam conflict were determined by the administration in place at that time (VIETNAM CONFLICT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War).

Initially it was decided that Vietnam would be occupied by Chinese and British troops and that they would supervise the surrender of Japan.

In 1960 Hanoi instructed the southern communists to establish an organization called the national liberation front. The purpose of this organization was to overthrow the government of the south. The organization was made up of two groups. The intellectuals of the South and who opposed the foundation of the government of South Viet Nam and the communists who had remained in the south after the partition.

The Di-m government was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of U.S. advisers, and by 1962 seemed to be winning. Senior U.S. military leaders were receiving positive reports from the U.S. commander, Gen. Paul D. Harkins of…

labor policies of the former Soviet Union and how they contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. The writer explores the labor policies that were in force at the time and explains their contribution to the eventual downfall. There were ten sources used to complete this paper.

It was one of the more historic moments in recent world history. As the world watched in awe, the Soviet Union began to dismantle itself so that it could rebuild from the ground up. After many decades of communist regime, the government was taken apart from the inside out, the entire nation brought itself to the ground and the process to rebuild began. For years it had been accepted as a superpower and those who lived there felt that the United States was its only rival.

American residents had been raised to fear the Soviet Union and believe that they were the…

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But evidence indicates the true motive for the increased arms sales since the dismantling of the former Soviet Union is not about peacekeeping at all but about the bottom dollar.

According to the annual assessment, the United States supplied $8.1 billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 -- 45.8% of the total and far more than second-ranked ussia with 15% and Britain with a little more than 13% (Bender, 2006)."

Arms sales (agreements) ranked by Supplier, 1998-2005 (in constant 2005 million U.S. Dollars and percentage of world sales).

Supplier

Total Dollars

Percentage of total sales

Source:

Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, http://www.globalissues.org/i/pdf.gif

eport for Congress, U.S. Congressional esearch Service, Library of Congress, October 23, 2006. (Dollar values are constant 2005 dollars)

Each country shown as follows:

developing countries industrialized countries

If you are viewing this table on another site, please see http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/BigBusiness.aspfor further details and context.…

It was during the middle of the 1980s that the Soviet Union first decided that a pattern of renewal was needed for the country. Of course, that was not something that could take place overnight. The country would have to weed out economic problems, along with issues like corruption and alcoholism that were further weakening the country and its economy. The position that the Soviet Union held from a global standpoint was worsening, and action had to be taken if the country was to pull itself back from the brink and find a way to survive and to grow once again. The Soviet Union was giving help to many third-world nations, but it wasn't getting anything in return. In addition, there was no friendship or alliance with the United States, and the Soviet Union decided to start correction some of the issues that was plaguing it in an effort to…

Hitler-Stalin Pact

Beyond doubt, the world was in an anarchical state in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly as the Great Depression devastated the global economy and aggressive, fascist regimes took power in Germany and Japan. International organizations hardly existed at the time, and in economic policy most countries adopted strategies of nationalism, autarky and protectionism, while the 'revisionist' states like Germany, Japan and Italy made it perfectly clear that they intended to solve their economic problems through creating new empires and spheres on influence at the expense of older empires like Britain and France. Hitler made no secret of the fact that the chief goal of his Lebensraum policy would be conquest of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, which would become a source of raw materials, foodstuffs and slave labor for the Germans. He was also determined to exterminate the 'Jewish-Bolshevik worldview', as he always described Communism, and the…

In many ways, Russia is still recovering from it, trying to deal with the fact that only a few decades ago, it inflicted on itself one of the worst holocausts in human memory" (Hochschild, 1993). Therefore, the purges were used on the one hand to discourage the people and the elites in particular from establishing a dissident opposition or a negative pole of power that could have countered the Soviet regime.

Also, another possible justification of the way in which the Soviet regime acted in that period was the complete elimination of the possible negative influences from the old regimes or more precisely of the opposing forces in Russia. More precisely, "the decade of the 1930s saw the renewal of the Soviet leading stratum. During the period the.regime progressively unburdened itself of its legacy of class prejudice and rose to its full totalitarian posture" (Unger, 1969, 2). The regime of…

They could do it time and time again with success. The first electric car was used on the moon during the Apollo 14 (Endeavor and Falcon) mission (Kennedy Space Center).

Meanwhile in Russia

hile the space program in the United States was busy becoming a popular culture icon, the Russian space program took on a different personality. They still launched missions for "national prestige" (ade). However, the majority of Soviet missions were for military purposes. The Soviet economy played a major role in space efforts. The soviet economy was planned in five-year increments, with long-range military plans being made for the next ten years (ade). This significantly affected the pace of space program development. The Russian space plan was slow to react to American successes.

First generation Soviet launchers had poor reliability. The ten-year plan for the second generation was not approved until 1976 (ade). Third generation plans were approved…

China and the Cold War

The term "cold war" is used for explaining the shifting efforts of the Western powers and the Communist bloc from the ending of World War II until 1989 in order to attain supremacy influence and esteem on a global level. If seen from a worldwide magnitude, the conflict can be understood as an ideological clash between communism and capitalist democracy ("cold war," 2012). China occupied an exceptional place in the Cold War for the reason that it was the point of both the affection and aggression of the two main world powers i.e. The United States of America and Soviet Union (Bernstein, 2003, p. 91).

Cold War -- China's ole

The West and the Soviet Union had a long history of joint mistrust and this resistance was every now and then apparent in the Grand Alliance during World War II. After the end of the…

Bitter Waters

Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov recounts his personal experiences living in Stalinist Russia in his book Bitter Waters. Having spent nearly a decade in a Siberian labor camp during the early part of Stalin's regime, Andreev-Khomiakov had already held a jaded view of Soviet domestic policies decades before he would be able to chronicle his story. Released from the labor camp, suddenly, without any money or connections, Andreev-Khomiakov wandered around his homeland in search of work and livelihood. "During the years of my imprisonment all my ties with freedom had been severed, and it made absolutely no difference where I went," (2). However, Andreev-Khomiakov was prohibited from living in forty-one cities, including Moscow and Leningrad, so he first settled in a small rural town. The author in fact made many small towns and cities his home over the course of the next several years, and although he was freed from the…