Word: leninization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lines have appeared among several republics as glasnost allowed the non-Russian peoples to speak their hidden thoughts and demokratizatsiya opened the door to new organizations and popular movements. National fronts were formed in almost every part of the country to advance ethnic, linguistic and cultural causes. Marx and Lenin had held that life under socialism would submerge such differences in the sea of workers' internationalist unity. As has so often been the case, Marxist-Leninist theory was wrong...
Moscow is visibly scrambling to find a way to contain this spreading chaos without resorting to repression. Like every Soviet leader since Lenin, Gorbachev faced a nationalities problem; he simply did not know how to solve it. A special party Central Committee meeting on the issue was repeatedly delayed. When it finally convened last September, it was evident that the postponement had done little good, and Kremlin planners continued to underestimate the strength of rising nationalism. The policy they put forth was a vague collection of homilies on the inadmissibility of secession and the importance of economic integration. "Our party...
...most of the few thousand full-time mullahs in the Soviet Union, their new sense of authority is a sharp break with the past. Despite assurances from Lenin and later Stalin of religious and cultural freedom for Soviet Muslims, the group suffered as much as Soviet Christians did during communist crackdowns, especially under Stalin. In 1932 the dictator announced a Five- Year Plan to eliminate religious belief. All but a tiny handful of the 26,000 mosques that flourished before 1917 were closed, destroyed or turned into nightclubs and warehouses. Thousands of mullahs were shot or sent to the Gulag...
...understand today's events, we must go back to the beginning. It is December 1922, and Lenin has just retired into his final illness. But his mind is still pulsing. On Dec. 30 the First Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R. is scheduled to devise a structure for the union. Joseph Stalin is pushing for national groups to join the Russian Federation as autonomous republics. But Lenin wants all the regions, including Russia, to sign a treaty of equality and form a union. His view will ultimately prevail...
...Lenin immediately begins to have second thoughts. Perhaps the union will still have too much power over the republics. He dictates a letter -- one can only call it apocalyptic -- in which he laments that he has "failed the Russian workers for not interfering strongly enough in the so-called issue of autonomy." Lenin concludes that the next Congress of Soviets should amend the plan once more so that the union would retain only its diplomatic and military functions...