The Russian Civil War
2. Source B gives the impression that the white forces were ruthless. They were completely against the Bolsheviks. They didn’t care that they were taking whatever they could. The still rode on cavalry, thus being traditional.
3. It shows Bolsheviks pillaging the town. They are extremely hostile. The general feeling towards people doing that would be negative. Then they would be supporting the positive. Which in this case would be supporting the whites because they were against the Bolsheviks, who are shown to be brutal.
4. I feel that source A is a better poster campaigning for support. It focus’ on how good the side advertised is positive as well as the opposing sides negativity. It shows Bolshevik men to be strong and well admired by their fellow man. Because many people tend to like sheep, they idolise people and would like to be what they see as higher members of society, being popular and strong for example. The main figure in source A could be one of these. Source A also gives a set choice in the statement. The rhetorical question automatically gets you to think, I’d rather be on the Bolshevik side thus immediately dismissing the whites. Source C lacks much background, without colour or information on the sheet I have been given, it is hard to make out what is going on.
5. Both sources B and C give the fact that was a lot of pillaging of small towns during the civil war. There were beatings of peasants and other villagers. But both sides claim another did it. This tells me that the peasants and workers of innocent towns were not treated well by either side. The Armies considered themselves to be the most powerful forces, and could take what they needed, because they were “doing it for the greater good,”
6. This statement is very exact. Therefore I would disagree, even though the fact that the whites were lacking in organisation and were fighting on seven different fronts did come into play. I would say that The Reds did have many positive points, which eventually led them to victory. Many of these are stated in source D. We know for a fact that Lenin and Trotsky were very intelligent military leaders, especially Trotsky, and would be able to successfully manoeuvre. I know that the Reds adopted a policy of War communism that meant that the army was able to take goods for the armies benefit. They had a compact locus and could easily defend an area using a tactic similar to the square military tactic. However, at one point it seemed like the reds were doomed imminent failure and it was the failure of the whites to co-operate and be a united force that enabled The Bolsheviks to maintain control. People knew that the whites were campaigning for a return to aristocracy, and this would cause more disruptions and failures in the government, where as the Bolsheviks had new promises.
Stalin
Georgian Marxist revolutionary and later virtual dictator of the USSR (1928--53). Born in Georgia, the son of a cobbler and ex-serf. He studied at Tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminary, from which he was expelled in 1899. After joining a Georgian Social Democratic organization (1898), he became active in the revolutionary underground, and was twice exiled to Siberia (1902, 1913).
As a leading Bolshevik he played an active role in the October Revolution, and became people's commissar for nationalities in the first Soviet government and a member of the Communist Party Politburo. In 1922 he became general secretary of the Party Central Committee, a post he held until his death, and also occupied other key positions which enabled him to build up enormous personal power in the party and government apparatus.
After Lenin's death (1924) he pursued a policy of building "socialism in one country', and gradually isolated and disgraced his political rivals, notably Trotsky. In 1928 he launched the campaign for the collectivisation of agriculture during which millions of peasants perished, and the first 5-year plan for the forced industrialization of the economy.
Between 1934 and 1938 he inaugurated a massive purge of the party, government, armed forces, and intelligentsia in which millions of so-called "enemies of the people' were imprisoned, exiled, or shot. In 1938 he signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler which bought the Soviet Union two years respite from involvement in World War II. After the German invasion (1941), the USSR became a member of the Grand Alliance, and Stalin, as war leader, assumed the title of generalissimo. He took part in the conferences of Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam which resulted in Soviet military and political control over the liberated countries of postwar E and C Europe.
From 1945 until his death he resumed his repressive measures at home, and conducted foreign policies which contributed to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. He was posthumously denounced by Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress (1956) for crimes against the Party and for building a "cult of personality'. Under Gorbachev many of Stalin's victims were rehabilitated, and the whole phenomenon of "Stalinism' officially condemned by the Soviet authorities.
