Compare And Contrast The Bolsheviks And The Nazis

Stalin’s early promises compromised of socialism and a life free from exploitation in regards to his social policies. However, he soon realised his error and reverted to a more conservative form of rule, whereby the interest of the state was given priority. Many describe his soviet social policy during the 1930s as a ‘Great Retreat’, it was named this as his policies saw a return to earlier social policies under the Tsar and former leaders. It is debatable as to how far his actions were a retraction of previous decisions…and the areas impacted were women, family, and education. A common theme of the great retreat was the gender role in society.

This essay shall address the issue of how the far the brutality of Bolshevik Regime ensured the maintaining of it’s power between the years of 1917-24. This essay shall explore topics concerning the ‘Dictatorship Of The Proletariat’, The Cheka, War Communism, The Red Terror and other potential reasons for the Bolsheviks remaining in power. This essay shall also explore the various views put forth by various Historians such as Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes.

Soviet officials prioritised the establishment of Communist Hegemony in the GDR (Bruce 2003, p. 6) and therefore allocated vast resources to controlling threats (Bruce 2003, p. 14). The end of World War II saw eleven internment camps established, intended for Nazis and those against communism (Bruce 2003, p. 6), and from 1945 to 1954, Erica Riemann found herself interned in a number of them (Molloy 2009, p. 65). We may be aware of GDR paranoia resulting in prosecution of imagined crimes (Bessel 2011, p. 154), but it is through individual stories that the reality of this comes across. The fact that a schoolgirl was interrogated, assaulted and sleep deprived for hours in a dungeon for taking lipstick to a picture of Stalin (Molloy 2009, p. 66) reveals the absurdity and extent of the cruelty that the SED went to. The details of long nightly interrogations and starvation help us understand how a normal teenager ended up confessing to being part of Nazi resistance (Molloy 2009, p. 66). It is through examples of people being mocked, raped, starved, assaulted, threatened and killed that we can begin to imagine the experiences of prisoners. Recounts of Erica’s attempted suicide and the inability to hold relationships (Molloy 2009, p. 73) create a deeper understanding of the

The Third Reich is one of the most notorious eras of German History. Hitler's reign is remembered as tumultuous times filled with violence, bigotry, and racism. A male-controlled society, the Third Reich relegated women to secondary roles, forcing them into lesser jobs and making them primarily focus on the home. Many traditional studies of the Third Reich ignore women or merely acknowledge them superficially. Once women began to receive a place in the histories, it was only as laborers and mothers. The study of women during the Third Reich took time to evolve. This study focuses on showing the evolution of the scholarship of women during the Third Reich; it utilizes eight texts (one with two parts): four journal articles and four monographs

It is hard to imagine what living life in constant fear of death and arrest would be like, knowing that any slight slip in actions or speech could result in the end of one’s life as they knew it. Eugenia Ginzburg is an active communist member who finds herself on the wrong side of this situation. Arrested for over exaggerated claims of being a trotskyist terrorist, she is immediately thrust into a spiral of events that will dramatically change her, her ideals, and the entire state of communism. However, while in the prisons and labor camps it is interesting to note how her perceptions of life and reality change, including her affiliation to the state. This naturally begs the question; How do Ginzburg's perceptions of Communism and the Stalinist regime change throughout

The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 shocked the world, but no one knew what Hitler really desired from the Soviets until he commenced Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941. The War in the East began with much confusion on the Soviet side, but in the end, they prevailed and the Germans were unable to achieve Lebensraum. Upon examination, the different levels of planning and strategies employed by both leaders guaranteed a Soviet victory, as Hitler overestimated his own forces, while Stalin focused on effective methods.

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin met three times during the Second World War to discuss the strategies and punishments regarding Germany. The Allies were nearing the end of the war in Europe and believed the Pacific would soon end. The United States and Great Britain were convinced that if the Soviet Union attacked Japan, the Pacific war would end. Thus, at the Yalta Conference, which took place in a resort in Crimea, the three leaders decided to finish the war in Europe at the Elbe River in Germany. Aside from the demand of unconditional surrender from Germany, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin discussed the conditions of what would happen when the Soviet Union declares war on Japan.

The following paper will be an analysis of "The Great Terror," that is, the arrest and often execution of millions of Russian and Russian minorities from 1936 to 1938, carried out by the Soviet secret police, known as, and hereafter referred to as the NKVD. The analysis will use Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg's, a Russian professor and writer who was arrested early into the purges and experienced, as well as survived, it in its entirety, memoir a Journey Into the Whirlwind as a primary source. More specifically, it will focus on Ginzburg's arrest and

This investigation addresses the topic of to what extent the role of German women in Nazi society was only confined to traditional roles such as motherhood. The books Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields and Nazi Family Policy: 1933-1945 provide different perspectives on the perceived role of German women. Nazi Family Policy is important in examining Nazi ideology regarding family. Hitler’s Furies challenges these beliefs of the Nazi Policy by discussing the active roles played by German women in Nazi genocide.

The terrors of a totalitarian government presented in George Orwell’s 1984 apply not only to the Party, but also to the Stalinist Russia of the 1930’s. Frightening similarities exist between these two bodies which both started out as forms of government, and then mutated into life-controlling political organizations which “subordinated all institutions and classes under one supreme power” (Buckler 924). Orwell shows how such a system can impose its will on the people through manipulation of media, constant supervision as aided by technology, and the threat of pain, both physical and mental. Orwell also shows how the state has more subtle methods for imposing its authority, such as the manipulation of language and propaganda as they are

die. The Allies could not believe what they saw. There were horrific images there of what used to be normal, everyday people and the Allies didn’t know what to think. They started to understand little by little, that the Nazis had tried so hard to dehumanize them, and they were partly successful in killing so many people. The other part of it though, is so many people survived and made it out alive, they failed in that part of it. They tried to take away everything from them, their name, their clothes, their appearance, their hope, but they could not break their spirit. Some wanted to give up and just die because that was a better alternative than the torture from the Nazis. Others however, were determined to make it out alive and to prove

From Stalin’s Cult of Personality to Khrushchev’s period of De-Stalinization, the nation of the Soviet Union was in endless disarray of what to regard as true in the sense of a socialist direction. The short story, This is Moscow Speaking, written by Yuli Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) represents the ideology that the citizens of the USSR were constantly living in fear of the alternations of their nation’s political policies. Even more, the novella gives an explanation for the people’s desire to conform to the principles around them.

In “Whole Systems Change,” Riane Eisler proposes a new framework that transforms traditional ways of thinking. This framework involves a whole systems change instead of simply adapting using the methodology of previous capitalism or socialism traditions. Eisler introduces two social configurations: domination model and partnership model. These “reveal otherwise invisible connections” “drawing from a trans-disciplinary database” (4-5). The domination social configuration is the more traditional and “negative” configuration found in societies such as Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR. This system involves a rigid top-down ranking, subordination of women to men, high degree of abuse and violence, and the belief that these traits are inevitable

These two parties both sprouted from nations in need, had slightly differing structural organizations, and finally they partook in similar actions during the life of their regimes. The Soviet Party had a long and complicated history, yet it did not differ greatly from the Nazi Party of Germany. Both parties were formed in a needy nation, where the government was neglecting its duty to provide for its citizens. In Germany, the Treaty of Versailles had crippled the German economy and led to a Great Depression. On the other hand, in Russia, the people were poor and starving, and the Tsarist government did little to provide assistance to them. This led to the formation of the two different parties. The Nazi party was organized to be a dictatorship,

A serious comparison can be made by comparing Stalinist Russia and Nationalist Germany by assessing the use of terror and violence on minority groups, namely the Poles. Both regimes came to believe that difference and dissent were a threat and sought to eliminate those differences by employing extermination campaigns within Poland. Both used violence and terror to force others to submit to their motivations.