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Eastern Bloc Dissidents
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian governments in countries such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, the Soviet Union (and later Russia), Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, China, and Turkmenistan. In the Western world, there are historical examples of people who have been considered and have considered themselves dissidents, such as the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed without explicit political accusations, or due to infringements of the very same laws they are opposing, or because they are supporting civil liberties such as freedom of speech. Eastern bloc The term ''dissident'' was used in the Eastern b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political System
In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state (polity), state. It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the governmental legal system, legal and economic system, social system, social and cultural system, and other state and government specific systems. However, this is a very simplified view of a much more complex system of categories involving the questions of who should have authority and what the government influence on its people and economy should be. The major types of political systems are democracies, monarchies, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes with varying Hybrid regime, hybrid systems. Definition According to David Easton, "A political system can be designated as the interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society". Social political science The sociological interest in politi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan ( or ; tk, Türkmenistan / Түркменистан, ) is a country located in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ashgabat is the capital and largest city. The population is about 6 million, the lowest of the Central Asian republics, and Turkmenistan is one of the most sparsely populated nations in Asia. Turkmenistan has long served as a thoroughfare for other nations and cultures. Merv is one of the oldest oasis-cities in Central Asia, and was once the biggest city in the world. It was also one of the great cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan figured prominently in the anti-Bolshevik movement in Central Asia. In 1925, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Bloc
The Western Bloc, also known as the Free Bloc, the Capitalist Bloc, the American Bloc, and the NATO Bloc, was a coalition of countries that were officially allied with the United States during the Cold War of 1947–1991. It was spearheaded by the member states of NATO, but also included countries that advocated anti-communism and anti-socialism, and likewise were opposed to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The term was used to distinguish this anti-Soviet grouping from its pro-Soviet counterpart: the Eastern Bloc. Throughout the protracted period marked by Soviet–American tensions, the governments and the press of the Western Bloc were more inclined to refer to themselves as the Free World or the First World, whereas the Eastern Bloc was often referred to as the "Communist World" or more formally as the " Second World". 1947–1991 Western Bloc associations NATO * Belgium* * Canada* * Denmark* * France* * FR Germany (1955–1990) * Greece (from 1952) * Iceland* ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. It is the world's largest and most familiar international organization. The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City, and has other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna, and The Hague (home to the International Court of Justice). The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future world wars, succeeding the League of Nations, which was characterized as ineffective. On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and started drafting the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945 and took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. Pursuant to the Charter, the organization's objectives include maintaining internatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samizdat
Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because most typewriters and printing devices required official registration and permission to access. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet censorship. Name origin and variations Etymologically, the word ''samizdat'' derives from ''sam'' (, "self, by oneself") and ''izdat'' (, an abbreviation of , , "publishing house"), and thus means "self-published". The Ukrainian language has a similar term: ''samvydav'' (самвидав), from ''sam'', "self", and ''vydavnytstvo'', "publishing house". A Russian poet Nikolay Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems and included the note ''Samsebyaizd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As a ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction ("of the majority") and the Menshevik faction ("of the minority"). To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fall Of Communism
The Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism, was a revolutionary wave that resulted in the end of most communist states in the world. Sometimes this revolutionary wave is also called the Fall of Nations or the Autumn of Nations, a play on the term Spring of Nations that is sometimes used to describe the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe. It also led to the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union—the world's largest communist state—and the abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. The events, especially the fall of the Soviet Union, drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War era. The earliest recorded protests were started in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1986 with the student demonstrations — the last chapter of these revolutions is considered to be in 1993 when Cambodia enacted a new Constitution ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Premier of the Soviet Union, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a Collective leadership in the Soviet Union, collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninism, Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori, Georgia, Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia (country), Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the Second World, whereas the term " First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former pre-1948 Soviet ally SFR Yugoslavia, which was located in Europe. In Western Europe, the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania). In Asia, the Soviet Bloc comprised Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, Nor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Václav Havel Cut Out
Václav () is a Czech male first name of Slavic origin, sometimes translated into English as Wenceslaus or Wenceslas. These forms are derived from the old Slavic/Czech form of this name: Venceslav. Nicknames are: Vašek, Vašík, Venca, Venda For etymology and cognates in other languages, see Wenceslaus. Václav or Vácslav * Saint Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (907–935 or 929) (svatý Václav) * Václav Noid Bárta, singer, songwriter, and actor *Václav Binovec, Czech film director and screenwriter * Václav Brožík, painter * Václav Hanka, philologist * Václav Havel, last President of Czechoslovakia (1989 – 1992) and first President of the Czech Republic (1993 – 2003) * Václav Holek, Designer of the ZB-26 light machinegun for Zbrojovka Brno and its descendants * Václav Hollar, graphic artist * Vaclav Jelinek, a Czechoslovak spy, who worked in London under the assumed identity of Erwin van Haarlem * Václav Jiráček, Czech actor * Václav Jírů, Czech photo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freedom Of Speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like ''free speech'', ''freedom of speech,'' and ''freedom of expression'' are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may include the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/ negative rights. Overview Many contemporary nations have a constitution, a bill of rights, or similar constitutional documents that enumerate and seek to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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