Historical
Geography
of the
Soviet Era
Marxism
• Karl Marx’s class analysis
of Germany, Britain
• Working-class power
– “Dictatorship of Proletariat”
– “People’s Democracy”
• First need capitalism/
industry to create workers
• Socialism stage to Communism
Russian
Marxism
Russia had
mainly peasantry
- Bolsheviks (Majority radicals)
– Mensheviks (Minority moderates)
– Also anarchists, other social revolutionaries
Internationalism
before WW I
• European socialists vs.
“War of the Bosses”
• But when war came,
moderates voted for it
• Radicals against war
(incl. Bolsheviks)
World War I
(1914-18)
• Central Powers
– Germany, AustriaHungary, Bulgaria,
Ottoman Turkey
• Allied Powers
– Britain, France, Russia,
Italy, U.S., Canada
• War for democracy?
– Russia, Central Powers
dictatorships
Russia in WWI
• St. Petersburg (capital)
renamed Petrograd
• Losing on Eastern Front
• Immense ruin, hardship
• Bolsheviks looked
like prophets
REVOLUTION, 1917
• Czar Nicholas II
deposed in February;
Provisional Gov’t
• Soviets (Councils) of
workers, soldiers,
peasants govern
themselves
• Bolshevik coup in
October for Soviets
• Surrender west to
Germans, 1918
Russia after WWI
• Revolutions
collapse in
Germany, Hungary
• Peasants like breakup of
aristocratic holdings, but want
to keep their own private land
• Bolshevik (Communist) Party
amasses centralized power,
not Soviets
Civil War (Reds vs. Whites), 1918-21
• Brits, French, Poles,
Americans, Japanese
intervene for Whites
• Russia under siege
• “War Communism,”
railroads win it for Reds
Vladimir Lenin
era, 1917-24
• Workers and peasants together
(Marxism-Leninism)
• Faced “Socialism in One Country”
• Died 1924; then 3-year power struggle
– Petrograd renamed Leningrad
Lenin on national self-determination
• Nationalism of the oppressor vs.
Nationalism of the oppressed
• Criticized Russian
majority nationalism
• Independence for Poland,
Finland, Baltic states
• Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR), 1922
Eastern Europe after WWI
Finland
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Czechoslovakia
Austria
Hungary
Yugoslavia
Romania gains
Bessarabia
(Moldova)
Josef Stalin
era, 1927-53
• Centralism of
Czarist Russia
• Ruthless murder
of dissidents;
purges of leaders
• Millions killed
Stalinist “State Socialism”
• Central planning of
“Command Economy”
• Heavy industrialization
to catch up to West
• Forced collectivization
of private farmlands
• Discredited socialism as
led by The People
Industrial regions
• Ukraine (Donbass)
Ukraine
• Urals
(Donbass)
Urals
• Siberia (Kuzbass)
Siberia
(Kuzbass)
Stalin on nationalism
• Ethnic Georgian
(Dzhugashvili)
but pro-Russian
• Feared, repressed ethnic
minorities & religions
• Russification of
minorities (Cyrillic)
• Ruled republics through
Russified elites, money
Stalin on nationalism
• Constructed ethnic groups
from local identities
• Divide-and-rule through
ethnic boundaries
– “Time bombs” of
minorities within republics
• Yet boundaries
strengthened identity later
S.S.R.s
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR)
_________ Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) :
Ukrainian
Byelorussian
Georgian
Armenian
Azerbaijan
Kazakh
Kirghiz
Turkmen
Tadzhik
Uzbek
Ethnic minority areas within S.S.R.s
Ethnic minority areas within S.S.R.s
(mainly within RSFSR)
• Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR)
• Autonomous Oblast (Region)
• Autonomous Okrug (District)
Nagorno-Karabakh
Ethnic Armenian region, but part of Azerbaijan;
War in 1988-94
WW II, 1939-41
• Pact with Germany
(to delay inevitable?)
• Annexed eastern Poland, Baltics,
Bessarabia (Moldavia)
• Invaded Finland (Winter War)
• Nazis invade USSR, June 1941
• Stalin allies with Brits, U.S.
WW II, 1941-45
• Germans besieged
Leningrad through winter
• Failed to seize Moscow
(government moved east)
• Halted at Stalingrad,
before Caspian Sea
• 20 million Soviets dead,
country devastated
Russian nationalism in WWII
• Stalin used “Mother Russia” to rally USSR
• “Traitorous” minority ethnic groups
– Some initially welcomed
Germans (or outdid them)
– But Nazis wanted
Lebensraum (Living Space)
– Stalin relocates ethnic
Germans, Chechens, etc.
USSR after WWII
(Re)annexed territory
Baltics, Moldavia, E. Poland.
Took E. Prussia (Kaliningrad)
Troops stay
East Germany, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria
Independent Communist
“partisan” states
Yugoslavia, Albania,
China (1949)
Poland, 1945
USSR annexes
eastern Poland,
which takes
eastern Germany
Ivan’s border changes
Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (before WWI)
Grew up in Czechoslovakia (after WWI)
Fought in Hungary (during WWII)
Grew old in the Soviet Union (after WWII)
Died in Ukraine (after 1991)
All without leaving his hometown of Mukachevo
Iron
Curtain
1946-89
• Churchill speech, 1946
• Divided West from
all Communist states
• Berlin Airlift 1948
Cold War
Massive refugee
Crisis, poverty
Marshall Plan
for recovery in West
Western military
“containment”
Proxy wars
in Greece, etc.
NATO vs. Warsaw Pact
W. Germany
in NATO
Warsaw Pact
formed 1955
NATO-Soviet
nuclear race
Revolts in
Eastern Europe
• East Germany, 1953
• Hungarian
Revolution, 1956
• Broad-based opposition
to Stalinism
Nikita Khrushchev, 1953-64
• Russian from Ukraine
• “Destalinization”: less repressive
• Consumer goods emphasis
• “Virgin Lands” settlement
• Visited, confronted U.S. but
backed down in Berlin, Cuba
Leonid Brezhnev, 1964-82
• Stalin & Khrushchev policies
– Economic stagnancy
– Military superpower
• Invaded Czechoslovakia, 1968
• Rivalry with China; clash 1969
• Détente with U.S., 1972
• Invaded Afghanistan, 1979
Polish Solidarity, 1980-81
• Poles revolted 1956, 1968, 1970
• Poland looser than others, 1970s
– Hungary also “Goulash Communist”
– Polish Pope, 1978
• Workers strikes spread
from Gdansk, 1980
• Polish military crackdown, 1981
Last days of USSR • Yuri Andropov
(ex-KGB), 1982-84
• War fears, spending on
“Euromissile” race
• Konstantin Chernenko
(Brezhnev clone), 1984-85
• Mikhail Gorbachev
(glasnost) 1985-91
Soviet era in your region?