Animal Farm

Background

Important Terms• Communism

• Socialism

• Marxism

• Capitalism

• Bolshevik

• Menshevik

• Fascism

• Totalitarianism

• Proletariat

• Propaganda

• Czar

• Abdication

• Duma

• Provisional government

Important People

Rulers

• Czar Alexander III• Czar Nicholas II• Czarovich Alexis• Czarina Alexandra• Rasputin

Revolutionaries

• Karl Marx • Josef Stalin• V. I. Lenin• Leon Trotsky

Czar Nicholas II•1865-1918

•The last Czar of Russia

Important Events:

• Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)

• World War I

Czarina Alexandra•Wife of Nicholas II

•Superstitious

•Disliked and distrusted by the Russian people

Romanov Family

Romanov Family

Czarovich Alexi• Heir to the Russian throne

• Nicholas II’s only son

• Suffered from hemophilia

Rasputin• “The Mad Monk”• Known as a faith

healer and pervert• Brought into the royal

household to heal Alexi

• Probably helped Alexi through hypnosis

Meanwhile...

Life in Russia• Russia is behind in the Industrial Revolution; they still rely primarily on agriculture.

• The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 left the countryside in deep poverty.

• While the nobility live in luxury, most people live in abject poverty.

• Lack of food provokes riots.

• The ideals of communism are very appealing to many.

• Two groups arise supporting Communism: the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

Marxism• Marxism predicts the downfall of capitalist societies.

• It defines history as the struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

Primary Theories:• Theory of Alienation• Theory of Surplus Value

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Capitalism

• Private ownership of the means of production: labor and raw materials

• Industry operated for profit

• Marketplace ruled by laws of supply and demand and competition

Problems

• Only things that are profitable get produced.

• Increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

Communism“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need...”

• In pure communism, everything is held “in common” and distributed for the good of the entire community.

• The private individual owns nothing.

Problems:

• Who decides how to distribute the resources?

• Who oversees the leaders?

Communist Manifesto“A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact.

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.”

Communist Manifesto“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property.

Precisely so: that is just what we intend.”

Communist Manifesto“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.

They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”

A guide to political theory - "Politicows"Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk. Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need. Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you. Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. American Capitalism: You don't have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don't have any cows to put up as collateral.

Vladimir Ilich Lenin

1870-1924

Born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov

Expelled from the University of Kazan for radical views

Studied Marxist philosophy between 1893 and 1902

Changed his name to Lenin

In 1895 Lenin was arrested and sent to Siberia

Bolshevik Leaders

In Siberia, Lenin organized the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic Labor Party (1903).

Leon Trotsky1879-1940

born Lev Davidovich Bronstein

He became a professional revolutionary at age 18.

He was arrested and sent to Siberia in 1898.

In 1902, he began his affiliation with Bolshevik party.

For a while, he sided with the Mensheviks, but eventually, he rejoined the Bolshevik party.

First Commisar of Foreign Affairs

Josef Stalin1879-1953

born Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili

His family was very poor.

His father was an abusive alcoholic.

Stalin’s mother wanted him to become a priest.

He entered seminary, but found the discipline too harsh.

In 1898, he became involved with the radical movement.

When the Social Democratic Party split in 1903, Stalin supported the Bolsheviks and began his association with Lenin.

In 1912, Lenin appointed Stalin to the Bolshevik Central Committee.

At this time, he began using the name Stalin, meaning “Man of Steel.”

He was arrested and sent to Siberia in 1913.

Russia is ripe for revolution.

St. Petersburg

• In 1915, Russia was involved in WWI, and Nicholas was identified with the army’s failures.

• WWI weakened the army.

• Food shortages provoked a riot in the streets of Petrograd in 1917.

• The soldiers mutinied and refused to fire on the rioters.

• The Duma demanded that Nicholas transfer power to a parliamentary government

• Sensing that the provisional government was weak, and the time was right for revolution, Lenin mobilized the Bolshevik party and began to seek support among the people with the slogan “Peace, Land, and Bread.”

Food demonstration in Petrograd in 1905

On the night of November 6-7, 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in the name

of the Soviets*.*A Soviet is a party of Russian workers.*USSR= United Soviet Socialist Republic

re-enactment of the Storming of the Winter Palace

1918 Civil WarLenin’s policies of “war communism” provoked anti-Bolshevik resistance.

War communism: Lenin requisitioned grain from the countryside to feed the cities and nationalized all industry

Menshevik forces (the Whites) mobilized against the Bolsheviks (the Reds).

In 1921, the New Economic Policy was instituted, which restored some private ownership of property.

By 1922, the Bolsheviks were firmly in power.

The Royal family is secretly executed.

• The family is told that they are being rescued.

• They sew jewels into their clothes in preparation to leave.

• They are taken into a cellar and shot; because of the jewels the bullets ricochet.

• They are stabbed.

• The bodies are loaded onto a cart and taken into the woods.

• They are buried in a mass grave.

• The bodies are burned and the remains have acid poured on them.

• Why did the Bolsheviks need to get rid of the royal family?

In January 21, 1924, Lenin died of a stroke at the age of 53.

Lenin’s body was embalmed and on display in a glass coffin.

Lenin’s Funeral

In three days more than one million of people visited the Pillared Hall to say fare-well to Lenin

Stalin becomes the leader of Russia after Lenin’s death.

• In 1928, Stalin began driving out anyone who opposed him, including Trotsky (exiled in 1929).

• In 1928, Stalin seized land from the middle-class to help fund industrialization.

• In 1928, Stalin began his series of Five-Year Plans to industrialize Russia.

• In December, 1934, Kirov was assassinated, and Stalin used this to begin the Great Purges.

• During the Great Purges, Stalin staged the Moscow show trials.

• By 1939, 98 of the 139 central committee members had been shot.

• 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th congress were arrested.

• Most were later executed.

• Deaths are estimated to have been in the millions.

• Stalin has control of the country through a secret police force.

Meanwhile, Stalin is cultivating a cult of adoration that proclaimed him a genius in

every field and the Savior of Russia.

Russia is now a Fascist state.Totalitarianism• a form of government in

which all societal resources are monopolized by the state to control all aspects of public and private life.

• The government controls the media and education at all levels.

• The government controls the population primarily through propaganda.

Fascism• includes all aspects of

totalitarianism, but takes it even further

• The government controls the population primarily through violence and fear.

• A secret police force is essential.

• Terrorism is an officially endorsed policy.

Stalin’s successes• Stalin was successful in industrializing Russia.

• Because of Russia’s industrial strength, Russia was successful in World War II.

• Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were impressed with Stalin’s skill as a negotiator at the Allied (Yalta) conferences at the end of World War II.

• Stalin successfully brought Russia into the Twentieth Century.

• In 1945, Stalin was at the height of his power and prestige.

• He was regarded as his country’s savior by millions.

• However, between 1945 and 1953, Stalin became more repressive.

• In early 1953, he announced that he had uncovered a plot among the Kremlin’s corps of doctors.

• Many expected another Great Purge.

• Stalin died suddenly in March 5, 1953.

Red Square meeting Stalin’s death

•Stalin’s reputation declined in the USSR after Nikita Khrushchev revealed many of Stalin’s crimes in 1956.

•Khrushchev’s successor’s down-played anti-Stalinist rhetoric.

•It was not until Mikhael Gorbechev’s policy of glasnov (openness) in 1989 that the majority of the details of Stalin’s rule were made public.