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..."

From the Paper
"The Effects of Glasnost on Sports
Glasnost, translated generally as greater openness in the society of the Soviet Union, is a component of the reform program introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev subsequent to his assumption of political leadership in that country. This research examines the effects on sports of reform in the Soviet Union. Sports, in the context of this research, encompasses both amateur and professional activity in competitive athletics"both individual and team"at national and international levels.


The Character of Reform As It Affects Sports
In the six plus years since Gorbachev was elevated to the political leadership of the Soviet Union, far reaching social, political, and economic reform initiatives have been implemented. The content of these reforms is referred to as perestroika..."

From the Paper
"Five years after Mr. Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet economy is visibly and catastrophically failing, and Soviets are running out of patience.. Shortages, always widespread, have reached the most basic of all goods--bread. In early September of 1990, a month after Muscovites had got used to standing in line for three hours for cigarettes, bakeries came mysteriously to a halt and bread production fell by a third. Even now in large grocery stores, fewer than a dozen pitiful goods are on sale. According to a state committee that monitors the availability of 1,000 products, 996 of them cannot regularly be bought in ordinary shops..


Shortages have long been a feature of all communist economies, but they are growing worse in the Soviet Union, and living standards are falling. In the Soviet Union ownership of..."

From the Paper
"When Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, effectively ending the Prague Spring of peaceful rebellion, many felt that there was no hope for political reform in the Soviet-bloc countries and that the Soviet Union would always exert total dominance over the politics of eastern Europe. the Brezhnev Doctrine was soon issued as a justification of Soviet troops entering Prague and explicitly substantiated feelings that the Soviet Union would not be willing to loosen it grip on eastern Europe.


However, some twenty years later Michael Gorbachev published Perestroika and political reform in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe suddenly became of the utmost concern not only for the Soviet-bloc countries but for the whole world as well. World socialism currently hangs in the balance-dependent almost solely..."

From the Paper
"The Big Three"--Summit Conferences of 1943-61

This research discusses the significant conferences among the Big Three, from the one in Teheran, Iran in November 1943 to the June 1961 Summit Meeting in Vienna. During World War II, both the Americans and British allied successfully with the Soviets to conquer and permanently break up the Fascist-Nazi regime of Hitler's Germany. These three nations contributed lives, weapons, money and time, to the preservation of a stable, prosperous, peaceful Europe. The Soviet term "peaceful coexistence" explains the feelings of the Big Three: They all sought peace and prosperity. The big three played a major role not only in defeating Hitler's armies but also in the unconditional surrender and the difficult reconstruction process of Germany."

From the Paper
"The Effect of Soviet Immigration on Israel

Summary

Israel will face a severe economic and political crisis within the next three years as a result of its open door immigration policy accepting Soviet Jews into the country. More than one million Soviets are expected to immigrate to Israel during this time. The number represents a population increase of about 25 percent in Israel.. The consequences of this increased population during this timeframe include:
1) massive housing shortages and rise in homeless among native Israelis ..."

From the Paper
"During recent weeks, Soviet republics have declared their political and economic independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Lithuania, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and other republics have decided to set their own political future outside the confederation of the Soviet Union. This is not the first time that event has occurred in this century: a similar dissolution took place following the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II in 1917. Lenin and later Stalin moved decisively against the newly formed national governments, and the USSR took its present form by 1924 ("Rebuilding," 1990, p. 33).

It is nearly impossible to separate the economic developments in the Soviet Union from the political events which shaped this century. The two are intertwined in such a way that neither can be considered independently. This research examines ..."

From the Paper
"The purpose of this research is to examine the cycle of political despotism and freedom that is characteristic of the history of Russia, from the period of Tsar Nicholas I to the current period. The plan of the research will be to set forth the scope and limit of the study in the context of political development in Russia, and then to discuss what could be called the pendulum of social experience that has affected dramatic political and cultural change in the country.

The modern post-monarchical history of Russia is embedded in its monarchic past. To understand how and why sociocultural and sociopolitical change has so dramatically affected Russia from time to time, it is necessary to understand the forces militating both for and against such change throughout the country's history. And a decisive fact about that history is the massive ..."

From the Paper
"Every student of the Russian Revolution is presented early on with a little word-paradox: that the Mensheviks, though their name means "minority," were the popular majority party in the revolutionary Russia of 1917, while the triumphant Bolsheviks, though their name means "majority," were actually only a minority faction when they came into power.

This paradox in naming is memorable because it effectively symbolizes a broader paradox: the victory of the Bolsheviks in the face of the broader support of the Mensheviks. Just as the Bolsheviks usurped the status of "majority" within the prewar revolutionary Social Democratic movement, so they later seemed to usurp the revolution itself. In the following pages we will examine the factors which led to the success of the Bolsheviks and the ultimate failure of the Mensheviks when the risks and ..."

From the Paper
"Historically, the Soviet Constitution, Soviet governmental structure and the Communist Party all operated in unison to ensure the consolidation of centralized power. That power rested within the walls of the Kremlin. Much like the Tsarist regimes before it, the Soviet empire was ruled with a strong and often merciless hand. Deviation from Moscow's line was not tolerated, and any hint of nationalism, a dirty and derisive word in the Soviet book, was dealt with immediately and harshly. Until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, there was also no question of opposition from any other political group or party. The Communist Party was clearly in command and the privileges and perquisites awarded to those who belonged to this elite group were not questioned. The concepts of perestroika and glasnost put forward by the Gorbachev government--in tandem with the ..."

From the Paper
"In 1917, a bloody revolution in Russia resulted in the formation of the Soviet Union. In the socialist society that Lenin established at that time, the state was given complete control over all aspects of life. This totalitarian control was extended to the fields of medicine and public health. Lenin "condemned" the idea of doctors practicing medicine for profit (Ryan, 1989, 92). On this basis, all doctors were ordered to quit their private practices and to work directly for the Soviet government. By the 1920's, "the private practice of medicine was suppressed to an almost irreducible level" (Ryan, 1989, p. 93). In contrast to the development of the medical profession in the United States and Europe, doctors in the Soviet Union were subjected to both low prestige and low pay. The situation remained this way until the mid-1980's and the reforms of Mikhail ..."

From the Paper
"National Security in the Pacific and Asia

This paper will discuss present United States national security interests in the Pacific region and future interests in light of the changing world situation. Specifically, the paper will examine 1) the effect of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Asia and the Pacific region and how this event has changed the United States interests in this part of the world; and 2) the effect this dissolution has had on the various countries in Asia and the Pacific and their military capabilities.

Until 1992, United States interests in the Pacific and Asia revolved around containment of Soviet influence and interests in the region (Crowe-& Romberg, 1991, p. 124; Bosworth, 1991/92, p. 114). Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has sought to contain the spread of communism in Asia and the ..."

From the Paper
"Leadership - in the former Soviet Union and the current independent Republic of Russia - is a term that has only recently taken on a comparative meaning. Prior to the helmsmanship of Nikita Khrushchev (1953-64), the country was led by the institution of the Czarist empire (died 1917), then by the cults of personality centered around Vladimir Lenin (1917-1924) and Josef Stalin (1926-1953).. In the former case, imperial leadership was exercised primarily via bureaucratic momentum (or non-momentum, as World War I disastrously proved). Since that era, after the brief establishing rule of Lenin was succeeded by the long dictatorship of Stalin, leadership in the Soviet Union was reduced to the level of personal fiat. Policy dialogue with other national leaders, let alone political debate, was most definitely not a consideration. From Khrushchev through the..."

From the Paper
"The issues facing the various republics that were once bound together as the Soviet Union are considerable, and these formerly communist-led regions are having to rethink their various social, cultural, and political institutions and to try to develop new approaches more in keeping with the democracies they aspire to become. Russia today is faced with this problem in terms of its criminal justice system, and the restructuring of this system was actually started before the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is now being carried forward in an atmosphere of experimentation that may at times clash with the more conservative nature of law, and reform continues to be the motivating element in these efforts. This means that there is a recognition that the old system was unjust and that it would not suit the sort of society Russia has become and intends to build to an even greater degree."

From the Paper
"The civil war in Bosnia and neighboring "republics" of the former Yugoslavia has led in 1992 and 1993 to the most violent fighting and greatest bloodshed that has been seen anywhere in Europe since the end of the Second World War. It has added the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to our lexicon of cynical political euphemisms, and introduced such new horrors to the twentieth century's already-long list as the reputed existence of "rape camps" where women are raped on a large scale and a systematic basis, as a component of political strategy in inter-ethnic strategy (MacKinnon, 1993).


The Bosnian civil war has also posed an intense challenge to the "new world order" that was proclaimed so confidently after the collapse of Soviet communism and the US.-led coalition victory in the Persian Gulf War. Did the concept of a new world..."