key terms
Proletariat
the workers would rule the country
Totalitarianism
a government that takes total, centralized, state control over every aspect of public and private life.
Bolsheviks
committed revolutionaries willing to sacrifice everything for change.
Lenin
The major leader of the Bolsheviks was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
Mohandas K. Gandhi
became the leader of the independence movement to free India of British rule.
Bolsheviks
committed revolutionaries willing to sacrifice everything for change.
Great Purge
a campaign of terror directed at eliminating anyone who threatened his power
Totalitarianism
a government that takes total, centralized, state control over every aspect of public and private life.
Rasputin
A self-described “holy man,” he claimed to have magical healing powers.
Civil disobedience
the deliberate and public refusal to obey an unjust
law, and nonviolence as the means to achieve independence.
Provisional government
a temporary government.
Command economy
a system in which the government made all economic decisions
Collective Farm
the government began to seize over 25 million privately owned farms in the USSR. It combined them into large, government owned farm
Joseph Stalin
Stalin was cold, hard, and impersonal. During his early days as a Bolshevik, he changed his name to Stalin, which means “man of steel” in Russian
Causes and Effects of Two Russian Revolutions
Economically, widespread inflation and food shortages in Russia contributed to the revolution. Militarily, inadequate supplies, logistics, and weaponry led to heavy losses that the Russians suffered during World War I; this further weakened Russia's view of Nicholas II. They viewed him as weak and unfit to rule.
Soviet
local councils consisting of workers, peasants, and soldiers.
Five-Year Plan
the development of the Soviet Union’s economy
Rowlatt Acts
These laws allowed the government to jail protesters without trial for as long as two years.
Sun Yixian
a forerunner of the Kuomintang, succeeded in overthrowing the last emperor of the Qing dynasty.
Comparison of Marxist and Leninist ideas
German philosopher Karl Marx saw communism as the end result of an essential historical process. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin built on Marx’s theories and sought ways of applying those theories. Ultimately, however, Lenin’s communist state—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)—became a one-party, totalitarian system.
Communist Party
The Bolsheviks renamed their party to describe the classless society that would exist after workers had seized power
Long March
6,000-mile-long journey
Kuomintang
the Nationalist Party
Jiang Jieshi
formerly called Chiang Kai-shek, headed the Kuomintang. Jiang was the son of a middle-class merchant.
Methods of totalitarian control
Police Terror
Indoctrination
Propaganda and Censorship
Religious or Ethnic Persecution