Assignemnt: The Rise and Fall of Classical Communism
Instructions:
5 pages, Answer each aspect of the question below as a comprehensive essay, NOT as short-answer responses, as thoughtfully and thoroughly as you can, and using specific references from the readings to support your response.
In "The Tasks of Economic Executives" of 1931 and in "The Results of the First Five-Year Plan," Parts I, II and III of 1933, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin outlined the motivations and the result of his policy of rapid industrialization of the USSR. Discuss the reasons given by Stalin in "The Tasks" as to why it was imperative that the Soviet Union industrialize as quickly as possible and what were the initial results of Stalin's policy as expressed in his speech on "The Results of the First Five-Year Plan," Parts I, II and III? How, according to Stalin, did the rest of the world view these results?
After Stalin's death, however, Soviet leader Khrushchev denounced him for a long list of crimes. What according to this denunciation were Stalin's crimes, why in Khrushchev's view did Stalin behave in this was manner, and what were some of the consequences of those crimes?
Finally, examine the fall of European communism as discussed in the 2009 reflections of Mikhail Gorbachev in The Nation magazine on the resignations of Communist regimes in Europe between 1989-91 and in chapter 14 of Edward Berenson's Europe in the Modern World. What were the reasons behind the decline and fall of European Communism according to Merriman's chapter on the subject? Why did Soviet leader Gorbachev decide to not interfere in the collapse of European Communist regimes outside the Soviet Union? What do these readings about the largely non-violent surrender of power by European Communists in most countries where they ruled indicate about the evolution of those societies and regimes by the time they came to an by the early 1990s?
Joseph Stalin, The Tasks of Economic Executives, 1931.
Joseph Stalin, Results of the First Five Year Plan, 1933, parts I, II and III.
Khrushchev's Speech Denouncing Stalin, 1956.