From the Paper
"The disestablishment of communism in Czechoslovakia at the end of 1989 was surprising in both the way it happened and the extent to which it happened, leading to question whether a revolution had actually taken place. However, Webster's Dictionary defines "revolution" as "a sudden, radical, or complete change," and a political revolution involves fundamental changes in the structure of a society, its basic beliefs, and individual behavior. This, experts argue, is what has and is still taking place in Czechoslovakia, a one-time stable and closely-tied Soviet Union ally.

The purpose of this research will be to discuss the revolution in Czechoslovakia, including the events leading up to it, the "10-days of revolution," and the revolution's consequences for the nation and its Eastern European neighbors."

From the Paper
"The following is a comparative study of the American and Soviet labor movements. The fundamental goals of labor movements everywhere are the same--to improve the material and social conditions of life for the ordinary working people who make up the bulk of any nation's population. From their inceptions, however, the labor movements in the United States and Russia (originally the Czarist Russian Empire, now the Soviet Union) have differed widely.

Historical Background--Russia
n the beginning, in the nineteenth century, the Russian labor movement was an integral, if relatively undeveloped, part of the broader European labor movement. The European labor tradition, closely tied to socialist ideology and political ... "

From the Paper
"In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee, and Chairman of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Council of Defense. In the somewhat more than five years that he has been the nation's leader, he has introduced far reaching social, political, and economic initiatives.

While economic, political, and social change in the Soviet Union was beginning to emerge under Gorbachev's leadership, however, such change had either been attempted or was already underway in some of the other socialist states. Perhaps the socialist country with the longest uninterrupted experience with change of this sort is Poland. Labor unrest precipitated political turmoil in that country in the summer of 1956, and the ... "

From the Paper
"Between the years 1939 and 1945, the government of the USSR was engaged in social and political activities which were directly related to its wartime concerns. On the brink of the Second World War, Stalin blamed German aggression on the forces of imperialism which drove nations - Allied as well as Axis toward seeking the expansion of territory and the domination of people. The Soviet government wanted to avoid war with Nazi Germany if possible; however, in 1939, Stalin decided to begin preparing his military forces just in case. At that time, it was clear that the Soviet Union was not yet prepared for a war against the Germans. In addition to the Russian people being psychologically unprepared for war, it was evident that both Soviet training and equipment were inferior to those of the Nazi forces."

From the Paper
"INTRODUCTION
On 21 June 1990, the parliaments of both the Federal Republic of Germany (West) and the German Democratic Republic (East) approved a treaty to merge the economies of the two countries ("Germany Unites Economically," 1990). The treaty becomes effective on 2 July 1990, on which date, a single German economy will be created, and de facto unification will occur. Major issues must still be settled, before full, de jure unification can occur. To be decided are political unification, including the question of the future military alliance of a united Germany, and social unification, including difficult issues such as abortion rights--severely restricted in West Germany, and available on demand in East Germany.

The thesis of this research is that, as a rejection of.."

From the Paper
"This research examines the status of advertising in Eastern Europe in the contemporary time period. For about 40 years, advertising was not a part of the societal fabric in most of Communist dominated Eastern Europe. Thus, most of this research is concerned with events occurring subsequent to the summer of 1989.

The Background of Change for Advertising in Eastern Europe
That advertising may occur on a large scale in Eastern Europe in the 1990s is a function of the collapse of most of the Communist dominated governments in that region, and, in the case of the Soviet Union, to a liberalized approach to the function of marketing. That advertising will occur on a large scale in Eastern Europe in the 1990s will largely be a function of the successful ... "

From the Paper
"In recent years, the Soviet Union has eased restrictions on its visa laws. As a result, there has been a dramatic increase in emigration from that country. In 1989, for example, at least 228,500 people left the Soviet Union--"more than twice as many as in 1988" ("While the going," 1990, p. 55). This figure is made all the more remarkable by the fact that there are an estimated 3 to 5 million more Soviet citizens who would like to emigrate if they could (Klein, 1990, p. 16). A large percentage of the Soviet Union's recent emigres have been Jews. In fact, it has been noted that "tens of thousands of Jews and members of other minorities have been leaving the Soviet Union under the new rules" ("Soviet emigres," 1990, p. A10). One source has claimed that more than 62,500 Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union during the year 1989 (Goldman, 1989, p. 29). Many of the Jews who..."

From the Paper
" In January of 1991, the Baltic nation of Latvia was invaded by elite troops of the Soviet Union. The invasion of Latvia came one week after a similar raid had taken place in the bordering nation of Lithuania. Between March and May of 1990, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as the third Baltic nation of Estonia, had all declared independence from the domination of the Soviet Union. It is in response to these declarations that the Soviet military has been brought into play in the Baltic region. The invasion of the Soviet Union on the Baltic states has raised a number of important questions regarding the Cold War. The Cold War began shortly after the end of the Second World War, when the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began conquering the weakened nations of Eastern Europe. Because of these conquests, the United States and the other nations of the Western world perceived a need for..."

From the Paper
"This study will examine the flaws in perestroika, and the reasons that it will not survive as a viable policy in the Soviet Union. Specifically, the study will examine the reasons that the haphazard reforms initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev under perestroika have damaged the political, ideological, and economic base in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's efforts with respect to perestroika have been based on the recognition that the old Soviet system simply was no longer viable.


As we read in Doder and Branson, "The Soviet system had been perpetuating the worst features of imperial Russia, enforcing a uniformity and obedience that spawned passivity and a lack of social and civic responsibility. The system, in effect, had turned Russia into a country of 'political illiterates,' as one Gorbachev aide put it. Gorbachev wanted to restructure the..."

From the Paper
"Introduction
In a recent essay on the dramatic economic difficulties facing the former Soviet Union, Alexander Yakovlev, an intellectual architect of Gorbachev's Perestroika reform program, stated that "By placing Marxist-Leninist theory above reality, above life, we managed to cripple life itself. By embracing the views of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman without making any adjustments for Russian realities, we risk falling into the trap of imposing on Russian life programs that, although inherently sensible, may not be suited to Russian exigencies."[1]
This paragraph succinctly summarizes the debate now exploding across Russia as to the appropriate strategy and direction of economic reform. On the one side are the proponents of "shock therapy," often associated by its critics with a missionary..."

From the Paper
"The Russian Revolution in 1917 was accomplished through the violent overthrow of the existing government, followed by the complete restructuring of Soviet society. The recent revolution in the Soviet Union was largely bloodless up until the aborted hard-liner response, an attempt to retake the government from the liberal forces then in power. The result of this aborted take-over was quite the opposite of what was intended. Instead of returning conservatives to power, the attempt assured power to even more liberal forces. Once again, Russian society is being restructured, along with the dissolution of the union of the various Russian republics. The seeds of this new revolution can be found in the society of the Soviet Union over its history, a society that was tightly controlled by a growing and complex bureaucracy which intruded into every facet of life. The new..."

From the Paper
"Victoria E. Bonnell. Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900.1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.


One of the great paradoxes of Marxism and Communism is that the first Communist revolution and the first regime constructed on Marxist principles appeared not, as Marx had assumed, in the most advanced industrial countries .. in Britain, Germany, or perhaps the United States .. but in the vast, backward, semifeudal, barely industrialized empire of Russia. Marx, like other early theorists of socialism, viewed Russia as a land of peasants, not industrial workers. They thought of it as the champion of the old order and the enemy of progress, never as the place where their own ideas would first be tried."

From the Paper
"Stephen F. Cohen. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. Rev. Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.


Stephen F. Cohen's biography of Nikolai Bukharin, first published in 1973, is an attempt to do much more than simply produce a political biography of a prominent Bolshevik who fell from grace with Stalin in the late 1920s and was executed on trumped-up charges during the great purge a decade later. It is also, and more importantly, an attempt to produce a new general perspective on the fate of the Russian Revolution, and to argue that a viable, more "liberal" alternative path to Stalinism existed in Soviet Russia -- a path whose prime exponent was Bukharin -- although it was not in the end the path that was followed."

From the Paper
"This study will provide an examination of Peter the Great, a collection of critical essays edited and introduced by Marc Raeff (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1963; 109 pp). The subject of the book is the rulership of Peter the Great of Russia, who led the nation from 1682 to 1725, solidifying his power as time went along. The specific concern of the book is expressed in the sub-title: "Reformer or Revolutionary?" The nineteen essays, from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, offer countering views on the question of whether Peter simply began to turn Russia into the modern era, or whether his leadership and impact at the time and later were a far more radical and even revolutionary matter. In that sense, then, it is a broad survey of varied viewpoints. However, the reader cannot read the book and come away with anything but a very deep..."

From the Paper
"This paper will discuss the events which took place during the attempted Soviet coup of August, 1991. During the coup, Communist party hard-liners tried to take control of the Soviet Union and thereby restore the monopolistic power of their party. They were concerned with the democratic reforms which had been set in motion by the General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. In addition, they were concerned with the rising popularity of Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic. Yeltsin was seen as a threat to the power of the Communist party because he was an advocate of even more radical reforms than those of Gorbachev.


Prior to the coup attempt, the Communist party had been the single ruling party of the Soviet Union for more than seventy years. The party first came to power under the leadership of Nikolai Lenin during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Later, the..."