Analysis of Adam Hochschild's 'The Unquiet Ghost'

Now America is the complete opposite from Russia. In America everyone knows that they have the right to speak out without having the fear of being disciplined. Bill of rights Institute states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (Bill of rights Institute). This is the first amendment of the bill of rights, it is their because citizens wanted a warranty of their basic freedoms. Without this protesters could be silenced, the press could not criticize government, and citizens could not inspire for social change. Then there is United States Courts stating “Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech.”(US Courts). America is not making or has not made any laws that keep civilians from talking out and stating what is on their mind. Without this protesters could be silenced, the press could not criticize government, and citizens could not inspire for social change. Thankfully for the 1st amendment in the bill of rights everyone knows that they have the right to talk and express what they feel even if it is about the

I could sense there being a fear of being killed in the war as well as there being a fear of being killed for not fighting for their country. The Soviet people were most likely unhappy during Stalin’s regime. However during Stalin’s rule, he was loved and worshipped in an almost God-like way. There are however some reasons that could have contributed toward this. Stalin used propaganda and terror tactics during his time of leadership. Some could have had a genuine love for their leader, but this broadcast shows Stalin was a very cold and ruthless man. Generations of Russians that were learning in school were being brought up to love and respect Stalin. These children would have genuinely loved the man that they believed was acting in the best wishes of the USSR and would help create a better country for them all. This ideal was shared by many youngsters and was a main reason in many who volunteered to work in the harshest of conditions in the most dangerous of jobs. They believed that Stalin shared their view of creating a better country for their children to live

Pictured on the back cover of the comic book "Ghost World," by Daniel Clowes, are the two main characters of the book in full color. This strikingly significant image, surely shrugged off by most Clowes' readers, represents worlds of diversity within the frames of the book. Sporting pink spandex pants underneath her goldfinch yellow skirt and a blue t-shirt to match perfectly, Enid seems to live her life outside the bubble. She's a very dynamic girl, especially interested in her surroundings and people around her. On the other hand, Becky is dressed like a "typical" girl, with a long black skirt and a white blouse, thus representing her conforming presence in the world. Becky is much more passive than Enid, going with the flow of

My answer is this. No. They don’t. Since 2000 and Vladimir Putin’s election Russia has become more authoritarian, he has gotten away with this through massive economic growth, increased living standards and a much better lifestyle. The Russian government these days openly rigs elections (2011), seizes oligarchs property and assets (Mikhail Khodorkovsky), assassinated journalists (Anna Politkovskaya) and defectors (Alexander Litvinenko) and has passed laws banning homosexual propaganda. Every one of these actions has gone against what I fought for in the Soviet Union. However there are even more violations against what I stood for; today all of Russia’s major companies are state owned and the Russian government is taking over all sectors of the economy, notably agriculture and technology companies, which is completely against economic liberalisation, an idea that I believe is pivotal to a country and its people as it closes the gap of wealth inequality. Modern day Russia is a perfect example of economic inequality, with 110 individuals (Oligarchs) owning 35% of Russia’s wealth. This is worse than Soviet days and I have always pushed for wealth distribution. Furthermore, the Russian government has taken it upon itself to ban women from certain jobs (that are for men) and also it has become more prominent than ever the assassination and silencing of thousands of activists across Russia. However, the recurring theme here is that government is the one continually interfering in the day to day lives of ordinary citizens. It is also very simple why. So that it retains its power and its control of power. So, therefore the biggest opposition and threat to human rights in Russia and as a matter of fact for the whole world is governments. Governments that are corrupt and take and do not

During the Russian Revolution, many leaders passed in and out of power. Russia saw rulers from Nicholas ll, to Lenin, to Trotsky, to Joseph Stalin, who was one of the most well known, but was also one of the worst. He ruled as dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 until 1953. According to History.com, “...he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign”. He kept people in line using fear, and though the Union gained much in terms of industry and military under his rule, Russia paid the price in millions of innocent lives.

The people of the USSR were always used to authoritative command and strict policies that made them fear the government, citizens were also never able to criticize the government. However that all changed, Glasnost gave citizens the freedom to speak about their own government, and as a matter of fact, Gorbachev encouraged his people to speak up against the government, thus allowing citizens to criticize the government openly. Citizens were always accustomed to the total control by the government as citizens now began to express themselves. However, because of this policy, citizens were now being informed of the ongoing incidents and crimes within the government caused major riots against Gorbachev and his regime. The entire nation noted the failures of this system and demanded a new regime. Citizens began to experience more freedom than they ever had since the Bolshevik revolution. This eventually gave birth to a new federal Russia, as Gorbachev was forced to re-sign as leader of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the USSR was

Many countries try to seek a perfect society, they often turn to a socialist or communist government, but in reality these types of governments are unideal to many people living in that society. Russia has a communist government, which is a society where all are supposed to be equal, sharing all money throughout the country. Citizens in this society often have very little rights and the government has overpowering control over what people can and cannot do. A socialist government is one that distributes goods to all people, most instances the upper class receives heavier taxes in order to pay for the goods and services being distributed. Often times these governments are not what they seem, greed will take over, causing them to seek for higher power, defeating the purpose of a perfect

Since the commencement of the Czar regime to the present-day Federation, Russia has known true power. From Ivan the Terrible who had people boiled, hanged, and thrown from walls; to Josef Stalin who was responsible for the slaughter of millions of Russian citizens in the Great Purge, demonstrations of power have always had their place within Russian history.

Sonya Hartnett 's The Ghost 's Child, is a compelling and elaborate story that follows the path of the protagonist Matilda. The most prominent theme in the book is love and how its consequences shape 'Maddy 's life. Maddy 's experiences with love in her early childhood influence how she shows her love to Feather and the fay. As a result of this, Maddy 's greed for Feather to change for her, had cursed their relationship from the very beginning. After cracks had appeared in their relationship, Maddy turns her focus to her love for the fay, thinking that it will fix everything between them. Throughout the story, love teaches Maddy many valuable lessons from her experiences of loving feather, and eventually loosing him.

In his memoir, Bitter Waters: Life and Work in Stalin’s Russia, Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov wrote, “the fundamental mistake made by Stalin and Marxists in general was to assume that inasmuch as ‘existence defines consciousness,’ a person can get used to any existence” (Khomiakov 96). The Soviet system that prevailed from 1922 to 1991 promised an end of class distinctions between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, a growing economy, and an increase international power through a communist regime; it promised to foster a “new Soviet man”. When Stalin took power, he implemented a system driven toward rapid growth and industrialization through collectivization, the abolition of private property, and a labor camp system called Gulags, while disregarding

For many, the most disturbing aspect of this list compiled years ago in Russia, is that Stalin was able to make it on to the list at all, given the regime of terror that Stalin was responsible for, and the millions upon millions of lives that perished in the gulags under his reign. One journalist attributes this to the fact that Russians love their tsars and often believe their leaders to be extensions of themselves (Savodnik, 2006). As one journalist writes, "my real-estate broker told me that German prisoners of war had built my apartment building, when a dictator who killed tens of millions of his own people was vodzh the great leader and that this makes my apartment more valuable" (Savodnik, 2006). It is apparently not the devastation that Russians remember or the massively avoidable tragedies that could have been prevented by these leaders, rather the people of Russia just remember the sheer power, that these leaders wielded and the things that this power accomplished. This is a byproduct of both idealizing the past and not being able to see how the past of several decades ago can possibly link to their lives now. As another writer explains, "People who idealize Stalin (as it's fashionable among some Russian people today) say that severe measures and repressions were necessary for 'keeping everything in order'" (Appel, 2012). This tendency represents the act of "glossing things over" and bolstering the so-called

If there’s one thing that I have learned about the Russian Revolution so far, it is that the Russian people were hard to please. In just about a year, they managed to overthrow 3 different government systems. Russia shifted their government drastically in just one year. First, getting rid of the Romanovs and with that ending the monarchy, and then ruining the Duma’s attempts at a provisional government under the Bolsheviks, and then being dissatisfied with the leader they had appointed after overthrowing that and then going back to the Bolsheviks at the end of it all. Even after the revolution ended, Russia continued to shift, first going to the Soviet Union under Lenin, and then Communism under Stalin, and then doing away with Communism

Over the years, many countries have fallen into communism, with leaders who wanted to be in total power and control of the countries they were ruling. Communism, a political theory brought to light by Karl Marx, is the idea of every person in a country being equal in the sense that everyone has what they need and only what they need. Many communist leaders fall into a way of ruling that is very narcissistic and beneficial only to themselves. Having this power meant being the only one to express what they perceive as normal, with any other voices being silenced using fear or even violence. We should start to worry about the state of our governments or other power systems when someone begins to take total power over everything by silencing other

The historians who begin the 20th century with the First World War do so because of the great change in thinking brought about during and after the fighting: people became less friendly toward colonialism; people’s roles in their societies were often not the same after the war, most of all women, and where other methods failed to, a new kind of nationalism could perhaps help them to rebuild their identities as they rebuilt their countries. Various sources about the time can be used to examine it from different angles and draw different conclusions about it: Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, for example, is a primary source and a memoir, assembled from her own diaries and letters sent from around the turn of the century, and has the unique flavor of being a woman’s perspective during the war. King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild is a secondary source and a collection of stories all looking at the same subject—colonialism in Africa, the Congo in particular—and it provides multiple views through different eyes. The chapter “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing” from Hannah Arendt’s book Men in Dark Times is also a secondary source, as the book is a collection of her own essays and thus likely has notes of personal reflection as Brittain’s memoir would while bringing in the facts and somewhat journalistic observation of King Leopold’s Ghost. Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, while a work of fiction, is a novel that focuses on characters dealing with the

866). Their rationality is based on the fact that democracy empowers the masses that are able to use this power to fight back and prevent their government from abusing their human rights. Democracy also makes it easier for citizens to report instances of state repression to the international community, thus forcing abusive leaders to either stop the abuses or to renounce their power (Poe & Tate, 1994, p. 855-866). In a semi-democratic country like Russia, this empowerment of the masses has less strength to significantly prevent state repression, and sometimes the ability to shed light on abuses is difficult since mass media is practically controlled by the abusive government. Similarly, Davenport (1995) argues that democratic governments are less likely to use repression when dealing with mass demonstrations because their nature is to allow expressions of freedom by the citizenry, which they are aware always comes with a level of domestic disorder. This awareness decreases the use of violence against the citizens (p. 690-691). Since Russia is a semi-democratic state, government respect and awareness of citizens’ freedom in not yet well developed, so the government continues to react violently and to use repression when dealing with mass demonstrations, as it was the nature of the pre-existing socialist government.