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Soviet Bureaucracy
The Soviet bureaucracy played a crucial role in the governance and administration of the USSR. A class of high-ranking party bureaucrats, known as the ''nomenklatura'', formed a ''de facto'' elite, wielding immense power over public life. History Until the February Revolution of 1917, an extensive bureaucracy played a major role in the governance of Tsarist Russia. In 1722, the Table of Ranks were introduced by Peter the Great, which organised the Russian military, naval and civil services into a formal hierarchy. This created an administrative class called chinovniks. In 1903, in To the Rural Poor, Vladimir Lenin wrote: ''Just as the peasants were the slaves of the landlords, so the Russian people are still the slaves of the officials. Just as the peasants lacked civil freedom under the serf-owning system, so the Russian people still lack political liberty. Political liberty means the freedom of the people to arrange their public, state affairs.'' Following the Bolshevik seiz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government Of The Soviet Union
The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the executive and administrative organ of the highest organ of state power, highest body of state authority, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, All-Union Supreme Soviet. It was formed on 30 December 1922 and abolished on 26 December 1991. The government was headed by a chairman, most commonly referred to as the premier of the Soviet Union, and several Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, deputy chairmen throughout its existence. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as "Leading role of the party, The leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system" per Article 6 of the 1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union, state constitution, controlled the government by holding a two-thirds majority in the All-Union Supreme Soviet. The government underwent several name changes throughout its history, and was known as the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, Council ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Five-year Plan (Soviet Union)
The first five-year plan (, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, implemented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in one country. Leon Trotsky had delivered a joint report to the April Plenum of the Central Committee in 1926 which proposed a program for national industrialisation and the replacement of annual plans with five-year plans. His proposals were rejected by the Central Committee majority which was controlled by the troika and derided by Stalin at the time. Stalin's version of the five-year plan was implemented in 1928 and took effect until 1932. The Soviet Union entered a series of five-year plans which began in 1928 under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Stalin launched what would later be referred to as a "revolution from above" to improve the Soviet Union's domestic policy. The policies were centered around rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Class
New class is a polemic term by critics of countries that followed the Soviet-type state socialism to describe the privileged ruling class of bureaucrats and Communist party functionaries which arose in these states. Generally, the group known in the Soviet Union as the nomenklatura conforms to the theory of the new class. The term was earlier applied to other emerging strata of the society. Milovan Đilas' new-class theory was also used extensively by anti-communist commentators in the Western world in their criticism of the Communist states during the Cold War. "Red bourgeoisie" is a pejorative synonym for the term new class, crafted by leftist critics and movements like the 1968 student demonstrations in Belgrade. New class is also used as a term in late 1960s post-industrial sociology. Milovan Đilas' analysis A theory of the new class was developed by Milovan Đilas the Vice President of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, who particip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milovan Đilas
Milovan Djilas (; sr-Cyrl-Latn, Милован Ђилас, Milovan Đilas, ; 12 June 1911 – 20 April 1995) was a Yugoslav communist politician, theorist and author. He was a key figure in the Partisan movement during World War II, as well as in the post-war government. A self-identified democratic socialist, Djilas became one of the best-known and most prominent dissidents in Yugoslavia and all of Eastern Europe. Early life and revolutionary activities Milovan Djilas was born in Podbišće near Mojkovac in the Kingdom of Montenegro on 12 June 1911, into a peasant family. He was the fourth of nine children. His father Nikola, a recipient of the Obilić Medal for bravery, served in the Montenegrin Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, then World War I, after which he was awarded the Albanian Commemorative Medal. After that war he commanded the gendarmerie in Kolašin, and opposed the incorporation of Montenegro into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs or Yugoslavians ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Jugoslaveni/Jugosloveni, Југославени/Југословени; ; ) is an identity that was originally conceived to refer to a united South Slavic people. It has been used in two connotations: the first in a sense of common shared ethnic descent, i.e. panethnic or supraethnic connotation for ethnic South Slavs, and the second as a term for all citizens of former Yugoslavia regardless of ethnicity. Cultural and political advocates of Yugoslav identity have historically purported the identity to be applicable to all people of South Slav heritage, including those of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. Although Bulgarians are a South Slavic group as well, attempts at uniting Bulgaria with Yugoslavia were unsuccessful, and therefore Bulgarians were not included in the panethnic identification. Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia and establishment of South Slavic nation states, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Revolution Betrayed
''The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?'' () is a book published in 1936 by the former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky. The book criticized the Soviet Union's actions and development following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. The book is regarded as Trotsky's primary work dealing with the nature of Stalinism. The book was written by Trotsky during his exile in Norway and was originally translated into Spanish language, Spanish by Victor Serge. The most widely available English translation is by Max Eastman. Historical background Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1879–1940) was one of the leaders of the October Revolution which brought the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in 1917. In 1900, as a leading Marxism, Marxist theoretician and revolutionary, Trotsky was exiled to Siberia for his socialist activities against the Russian Empire. In 1905, Trotsky returned to Russia for the 1905 Russian Revolution, where his oratory skills made him ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Degenerated Workers' State
In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class' democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Trotsky in ''The Revolution Betrayed'' (1936) and in other works. Soviet experience Trotsky argued that Russia was a genuine workers' state from the 1917 October Revolution until Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power. The bourgeoisie had been politically overthrown by the working class and the economic basis of that state lay in collective ownership of the means of production. Contrary to the predictions of many socialists such as Lenin, the revolution failed to spread to Germany and other industrial Western European countries although there were massive upheavals of working people in some of those countries and so the Soviet state began to degenerate. That was worsened by the material and political degeneration of the Russian workin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death And State Funeral Of Vladimir Lenin
On Monday, 21 January 1924, at 18:50 EET, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the October Revolution and the first leader and founder of the Soviet Union, died in Gorki aged 53 after falling into a coma. The official cause of death was recorded as an incurable disease of the blood vessels. Lenin was given a state funeral and then buried in a specially erected mausoleum on 27 January. A commission of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) was in charge of organising the funeral. Funeral service On 23 January, the coffin with Lenin's body was transported by train from Gorki to Moscow and displayed at the Hall of Columns in the House of the Unions, and it stayed there for three days. On 27 January, the body of Lenin was delivered to Red Square, accompanied by martial music. There assembled crowds listened to a series of speeches delivered by Mikhail Kalinin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Joseph Stalin, but notably not Leon Trotsky, who had been convalescing in the Caucasus. Trotsky would late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure in the 1905 Revolution, October Revolution of 1917, Russian Civil War, and the establishment of the Soviet Union, from which he was exiled in 1929 before Assassination of Leon Trotsky, his assassination in 1940. Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin were widely considered the two most prominent figures in the Soviet state from 1917 until Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin, Lenin's death in 1924. Ideologically a Marxist and a Leninist, Trotsky's ideas inspired a school of Marxism known as Trotskyism. Trotsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, being arrested and exiled to Siberia for his activities. In 1902 he escaped to London, where he met Lenin. Trotsky initially sided with the Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 and additionally as head of state beginning in 1988, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990 and the president of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s. Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Privolnoye, North Caucasus Krai, to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage. Growing up under the rule of Joseph Stalin, in his youth he operated combine harvesters on a Collective farming, collective farm before joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (19 December 190610 November 1982) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until Death and state funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, his death in 1982 as well as the fourth List of heads of state of the Soviet Union, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of state) from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1977 to 1982. His 18-year term as General Secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration. Brezhnev was born to a working-class family in Kamianske, Kamenskoye (now Kamianske, Ukraine) within the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. After the results of the October Revolution were finalized with the creation of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev joined the Communist party's youth league in 1923 before becoming an official party member in 1929. When Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, he joined the Red Army as a Political commissar, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seweryn Bialer
Seweryn Bialer (November 3, 1926 in Berlin – February 8, 2019 in New York City) was a German-born American academic. He was emeritus professor of political science at Columbia University and an expert on the Communist parties of the Soviet Union and Poland. He was the Director of Columbia's Research Institute on International Change. Biography Born in Berlin, Germany, Bialer joined the underground anti-fascist movement in Lodz, Poland in 1942. Between February 1944 and May 1945 he was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. From May 1945 to June 1951 he was member of the Polish communist police force (the ''Milicja Obywatelska''). He also held various positions in the Polish Communist Party ( PZPR). He was a political officer of the State Police in Warsaw and a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Worker's Party. Subsequently, beginning in June 1951, he became a Professor at the Institute of Sociology and political editor of the newspaper ''Trybuna Ludu''. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
