After today’s class I found myself thinking about the number of casualties that ensued from the Second World War. Upon researching it more, I discovered that the estimated lives lost in World War 2 were more than 63 million people. Of these 63 million, a whopping 23 million of these people were from the Soviet Union. Despite war being one of my favorite subjects, these numbers were absolutely appalling to me as that is a staggering loss of human life.

This got me thinking as to what a war of this proportion would cost in modern times. In the approximately 70 years since World War 2 the weapons and armor used by modernized nations has drastically improved (or gotten worse depending on your point of view). The more I think about it, the more worried this makes me as we now truly have the capacity to destroy ourselves. At the time 63 million people constituted about 2.5% of the worlds population and that was achieved with the “primitive” weapons of the time. With the world in the political state that it is in, I feel like we should be incredibly careful in what moves we make as we could easily wreak havoc on the world if another world war were to break out.

In Stalin’s reply to Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, he gives the common people agency by stating that they have opinions and the ability to stand up for themselves.  I find it interesting that in this speech he speaks of pride in the common man’s power in accordance to socialist ideology, but this type of person is not the one responsible for victory in WWII because Stalin is no longer the common man.  By elevating himself to the godlike figure of state religion and separating from the reality of labor, Stalin had no ties to the people from which he rose except to say that he is speaking in their interest.  His other 1946 speech shows his continual manipulation of the system, not blaming the inexperience of Soviet diplomacy for starting the war, the “statesmen’s blunders”, but instead placing the fault on the rise of capitalism.  I think that he realized that since he had risen from the common people, he could just as easily be overthrown by a figure like himself, so he has to continually deflect the blame for incidences in which he really played a large role.  This, however, also contradicts with the statement I mentioned earlier, in which he gives the people agency to decide what is best.

I also think it is interesting that Stalin mentions that one positive aspect of the war was that it allowed the Soviets to examine their system, but, of course, upon examination he find the Soviet Union to be perfectly structured, needing only to rebuild what had already existed.  He credited the success of the Soviets to its organization as a “people’s social system,” but in the same way as the capitalist countries sent men to fight, Stalin worked his people into the ground to prepare for war and then sent them to die.  His support for the common man seemed only nominal since his rise to power.

On Wednesday’s class we discussed Russia’s involvement in pre-WWII politics. One of the themes of that class that most interested me was Russia’s involvement in rising leftist regimes around the world. As we discussed, Stalin was initial more in favor of a mass improvement within the State rather than focusing than the globalization of communism. However, Russia provided “aid” to countries such as China in order to promote the rise of leftist governments. After observing the balance of political perspectives in class, my question is this. Was Russia’s size beneficial or detrimental in spreading communism?

Russia was already an enormous country at this point. Obviously, an enormous country has it’s benefits. For example, they had millions of soldiers to utilize in battle. From what we’ve learned, however, the country was still not very stable at this point. Even if it is large, how could Russia “help” other countries given it’s lack of organization? While this is an extremely negative comparison, Germany managed to conquer an enormous amount of land through war efforts during the same era.

As usual, it seems as through Russia was striving for idealism rather than realism in this case. They wanted to promote leftist regimes, but how would that be possible after a civil war and before/during WWII?

I want to focus on the “Beat Generation” for my final paper. The “Beat Generation” was a group of poets and authors who came to prominence in the 1950’s. The most famous authors associated with this movement are Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. This movement is generally characterized as a move away from set standards of written work.

I want to focus in on the Beatnik movement specifically, which was a group of poets within the Beat generation who had the same set of values. In my Poetry of the Mad Men Era class we have spent a lot of time reading some of these poets, and their interesting language and sentence structure really intrigues me.

I plan on researching this movement by researching the movement as a whole and learning more about it and then read some of the poets and authors specifically connected to the movement and seeing how they used the values of the generation within their work.

I found an interesting article on CNN’s website concerning Russia and it’s involvement with  the conflict between North Korea and the modern world. The basic premise of the article (here is the link http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/07/to-tackle-north-korea-focus-on-russia-and-china/?iref=allsearch ) is that neighboring countries should take an interest in preventing North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. However, the article states that the largest concern (or necessary point of change) is the enabling behavior of Russia and China. Essentially, the author believes that we need a little team work.

This seems like a daunting task. We have spent very little time in class discussing Russia in the context of current political events, but if we step back and examine the social culture of the country in the context of the 20th century, Russia has been too hard headed to be a team player. Russia’s idea of unification and strengthening itself internally has been something that has kept it cut off from the rest of the world in many ways. Even the revolutionary art stemmed from the concept that Russia has already created enough art on it’s own and that there is no need for foreign influence.

I would be curious to further observe points in history when Russia opted out of “joining others.” Is this one of Russia’s biggest flaws?

This morning, I came across an article form the BBC about the hero status of Stalin in his home country of Georgia. In his hometown of Gorgi, the city council recently allocated funds to re-erect a statue of Stalin that was removed only three years ago. The town is allegedly divided in their reactions: while one 65-year old man says he has “only ever heard good things” about Stalin, another resident believes that Georgia will hurt its global public image if it pays tribute to the Soviet dictator. On a national scale, research findings from Tibsili University reveal that 45% of Georgians have a “positive view” of Stalin.

Reading this article, I was confused as to how these two drastically different historical narratives could coexist. On one side, it seems that the Soviet policy of socialist realism still seems to play a role in shaping the perceptions of those living in the former USSR. Another Gorgi citizen says that Stalin is particularly revered among older generations, who view him as a “great statesman with small mistakes.” Looking at this narrative of Stalin’s rule, it seems that socialist realism did its job: Stalin’s accomplishments have been inflated, and his transgressions (ie a campaign of terror and the unjust imprisonment and murder of millions) are mostly overlooked. On the other side of the spectrum there exists another kind of historical revisionism: outright denial. Some argue that through removing monuments to Stalin, Georgians are trying to hide their past, and that in re-erecting his large monument they are coming closer to confronting it honestly.

To me, it seems that Georgians need to alter the context of their historical artifacts, documents, and monuments to strike a harmony between their painful (and inextricable) association with Stalin and the desire (among some) to condemn him and his policies. For example, removing a monument on the main street of Gorgi is understandable, as it was likely installed there to create the illusion of Stalin’s omnipresence and omnipotence and alter the psychology of townspeople (as was common of Soviet city planning.) However, the items in the Stalin museum (which is the town’s main tourist attraction) ought to remain open for educational purposes. Georgia cannot erase its connection to Stalin, but they can inform their citizens and visitors to their country by the creation of an objective and factually accurate museum.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21656615

Sarah Davies, in her essay about social identity in Soviet Russia, talks about how, despite the new Marxist language that was encouraged, the working class and “peasants” in Russia tended to talk about the injustice in their lives using old, familiar language. They described the problems that they faced as struggles between good and evil, darkness and light. Along with this language, they also idealized the Russian people as a patient people, whose souls could bear much injustice. They saw their suffering as a mark of their honesty and goodness. This relates to a 19^th century short story I am reading in my Russian language class, “The Living Relic”, by Turgenev.

In the story, a nobleman stumbles upon a strange creature in a shed in one of his distant farms he rarely visits.  He realizes that it is a peasant, a woman he once knew. She is now withered and frail, unable to move and in constant pain, as result of a mysterious injury. She tells him that it is not so bad lying there, year after year, that she has learned how to avoid thinking, to simply become part of her surroundings. Eventually she dies, to the sound of heavenly bells. Reading this, I am struck by the persistent idea of the suffering of the lower class in Russia and their apparent acceptance of this suffering. Despite Soviet attempts to have the workers see class struggle in Marxist terms, the old ideology persisted in the Soviet Union and colored people’s social identity.