And these questions too. You don't have to answer all of these. I'd greatly appreciate it Explain how communism unted Russia and Eastern Europe during the cold war Explain standard of living in western and Eastern Europe and how they differ Why were many countries in eastern Europe forced to become communist after World War II Why did Yugoslavia break into a nmber of small countries after the fall of Communism When did the Soviet Union become communist?
History - 6 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
Pol Pot exterminated more than a million fellow Cambodians Eastern Europa became communist after WWII as they were controlled (and occupied) by the communist Soviet Union Yugoslavia break up into a number of countries as Yugoslavia itself was an abnormal country, just the unification of different countries, nations and religions Soviet Union was formed from the communist Russia and the nearby nations it occupied in 1922
2 :
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime instituted a de-modernization program, to establish a socialist agrarian society, killing millions in the process.
3 :
The khmer rouge pretty nasty party, US should have done something, but it was so chaotic at that time, cold war and the vietnam in 1975 fell to the vietcong, watergate, us became impotent so to speak
4 :
1) Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot - making Cambodia communist required getting rid of the ruling class. Not just the previous bureaucracy but most of the urbanized population were integrated into agrarian communities. Over a million died because of brutal treatment, resource deprivation, etc. sidenote - a memoir of a survivor called When Broken Glass Floats is a really good, powerful, personal narration of Khmer Rouge era Cambodia. Had to read it for a school project, but within 40 pages I was reading because the narrative was so gripping 6) Soviet Union became communist in 1917. Russia had just undergone a revolution and was still really unstable. Germany brought Lenin safely into Russia hoping he would interfere with the Russian war effort. He was more successful than they expected, the Kaiser didn't actually want Russia communist, but Russia did get out of WW1. 2, 4) Russian took control of countries to its west to protect itself from future invasions. Stalin's analysis of European history (especially after Hitler broke their pact in 1941) was that Russia got badly hurt when someone in Europe got antsy and wanted to conquer things. Making Russia safe from such rampages would require creating a really large buffer between Russia and Western Europe. So he did that. When his armies went as far west as Berlin during WW2, they made political changes. The liberated countries all adopted communism under implicit military occupation from USSR, and men that the Russian leaders trusted were put in key positions in the satellite countries to keep them in line. In 1956 when Hungary tried to have a nationalist/democratic movement, USSR tanks occupied Budapest to restore order. 3) Standard of living was and still is much higher in western than eastern europe. To some extent this has been true since the industrial revolution. Western Europe got it first, and has stayed significantly ahead. To a great extent this results from Soviet domination for 40 years. Unclear exactly what was wrong in the Warsaw Pact - was USSR actually draining resources, or communism just inefficient at recovering from the war. Whatever the cause, the proof that living standards were much lower behind the Iron Curtain is seen in the reunification of Germany. East Germany was almost nonindustrial. For 10 years after political reunification, the difficult task was getting approximate parity between living standards in the former West Germany and the former East Germany. 5) Yugoslavia is an interesting case. It is culturally heterogenous, an religious mixture of Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy , and Catholicism and a national mixture of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, et al. Nevertheless, for 45 years under Tito there was a Yugoslav identity. Communism was a Yugoslav decision, not a Soviet one, and Tito's foreign policies sometime differed much more from USSR than those of countries controlled by Moscow. It's interesting the way the question seems to attribute causality of the nationalism in Yugoslavia to the collapse of communism. It was much more a crisis of national identity than of ideology. Tito had led the country from 1945 until his death in the 1980s. There was a leadership vacuum, and among those who vied for leadership were men who instrumentalized sub-Yugoslav nationalism. Ethnic identities that had been cultural became national, and the society fell apart. Anyway, to directly answer the question, I would probably say "because it always contained a number of smaller nations". Whatever the trigger (collapse of communism or leadership or w/e), those nationalities came to the fore and the Yugoslav identity collapsed.
5 :
Pol Pot Instituted his own brand of communism - killing a quarter of his countrymen in the process Eastern Europe was never united with Russia but was "liberated" by Russia during WW2 & subsequently occupied & controlled. The Communists have a tendency to create satelite states out of their immediate neighbours, mainly to create a huge buffer between themselves & the non-communist states which were viewed as enemies or potential enemies. Russia became the Sovie Union after the October Revolution in November 1917 (named October because the Ruusians followed the old calender)
6 :
Pol Pot was educated by the French and so he came up with being a Communist, but also decided that he would empty the capital city - Phnom Penh - of people, even the hospitals and force them to work on farms. He did this even to people in hospital. Many died. He also, as the Chief Communist, had many millions murdered often by their heads being smashed in with a hoe. Eastern Europe and USSR were all part of the Warsaw Pact, but what actually happened was that Joe Stalin put in Quisling governments in Eastern Europe after WWII and backed them up with tanks. Yugoslavia broke up because it was a Communist country controlled by the Serbs who have always been tied up with the Russians, and so when people saw that the Russians were out of the business of suppressing rebellions, they left. So the Serbian Communists decided that they would murder and rape people who broke away. USSR came in existence in 1917. Standard of living was much higher in the West because of the market economy. Just imagine a country where the Post Office ran the whole economy.
Read more discussions :
