Melissa's Global Blog

Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of communism

2008-05-05T05:12:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the Soviet Union by adding more churches. He wanted the people to start talking more about their society. He had an idea that was made in 1985 called "Glasnost."
The Glasnost is when the people talked about the Soviet Union's issues. These issues consisted of economic and political problems.
Gorbachev wanted to hear how the society's had to say and wanted to hear their opinions. He also wanted the people to come together.Another idea Mikhail Gorbachev had was "Peristrokia." This organization was an idea to reform the economic and the political system. By forming Glasnost and the Peristrokia, Gorbachev was able to open the Soviet Union and end communism.

Collapse of Communism

2008-05-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

During the Cold war there was a wall that was built to separate the communists countries and the democratic countries. This wall was called The Berlin Wall.The collapse of Communism started with Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika. He thought these policies would help the USSR in the long run. Communism collapsed because it was weak in economic system and it just wasn't working. This was for the USSR and Eastern Europe. These countries started running out of money.

The reason why people tore down the Berlin wall was because they were shocked that they weren't able to go to the other side of their own country in Germany. The Berlin wall would separate Germany into two parts. East Germany was communist and West Germany wasn't. The Berlin wall stopped people from crossing the border for 28 years. The people who did attempted to cross over were killed,shot or put through gas. After the countries got their own independence people were getting jobs that payed a lot more because the government wasn't in control with the economy. When the USSR was no longer communist everyone felt more relieved and no one had to fear that the Soviet Union would attack their country because they weren't communist.

Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

2008-05-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

To me Apartheid is any system or practice that separates people according to race. Apartheid was racism made law, a system dictated in the minutest detail as to how and where the majority of blacks would live, work and die. Nelson Mandela was a strong African man who wanted his people and himself to be treated and respected as normal people and not have to bow down to the unfair government system. Nelson was a strong lifelong warrior in the battle to free South Africans. He was a leader of an underground political congress also known as ANC. ANC was part of a dramatic demonstration against the white ruled government.

In 1964 he was sentenced to life in jail and while in jail he was still having hopes that one day his people will be free from apartheid. In 1990 Mandela was released from prison and less than five years after he was released, he was elected president of South Africa. He ended the Apartheid and freed his people from being treated differently and he also was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now everyone in South Africa has equal opportunities at home and work to make themselves feel comfortable.

African Independence

2008-05-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

African changed so much from 1955 to 1975 because it gained more independent countries in 1975. Africans formed a movement to celebrate African culture, heritage, and values, it was called the Negritude movement.In 1947, there was a new leader called Kwame Nkrumah who worked to liberate the Gold Coast African colony. Kwame Nkrumah was elected Prime Minister and tried to build better roads, better schools, and to expand health facilities later on Kwame Nkrumah was elected Prime Minister and tried to build better roads, better schools, and to expand health facilities. Every African country gained there independence at different years.

Some leaders of Africa independent leaders were, Patrice Lumumba who was the first leader of the Congo after Belgium was granted their independence. Jomo Kenyatta was another strong leader who helped his respective nation gain independent from Britain. Marcus Garvey had a goal to lead Europeans out of Africa and have Africa ruled by Africans. Ahmed Ben Bella the Leader of FLN, he was named Prime Minister and first President of Algeria. He estasblished national order, began land reforms, and developed new plans for education.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

2008-04-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba during the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world's ever came to a nuclear war. This crisis ranked with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold war and it's often regarded as the moment in which the Cold war became very very close to becoming a nuclear war.The United States challenged the Soviet Union and they want the Soviet Union to remove the missiles. President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev told the Soviet to leave the island and take their missile with them before both the USA and USSR attacked them.

This Cuban missile crisis started right after the failed bay of pigs attack. Fidel Castro the dictator of Cuba felt that there was another attack coming from the United States so he approved of the Khrushchev plan. Khrushchev wanted to avoid the war with the Western nation but yet at the same time wanted to increase economic competition between Communist and Non-Communist countries. Khrushchev's determination to keep peace paid off when he finally got the Americans to remove the missiles from Italy and Turkey and got a public pledge that stated the United States would not invade Cuba. President John F. Kennedy and his organization feared when he found out what the Soviet Union was doing in Cuba. Therefore Kennedy threatened that if any missiles were to be launched from Cuba, he would hold the Soviet Union responsible.The Cuban Missile Crisis was considered “the hottest moment in the Cold War” because it was the only war which consisted of nuclear bombs and was a war that could've destroyed the world.

"The Right Stuff"

2008-04-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

In the movie "The Right Stuff" the US and the USSR were competing over space. The USSR was winning this competition because they were the first to send a satellite into space. The United States didn't like the idea that the USSR had already sent something out to space and we haven't. We had decided to send a man out into space but we also had in mind of sending a monkey instead. We trained i think two monkey as we were training our astronauts. We eventually decided on sending seven well trained astronauts out with no monkey and that was a success.The USSR had thought they were winning because they were the first to send a man out into space but little did they now we were planing to be the first to send a man to the moon. And so we did, the man who was the first to experience the moon was Neil Armstrong.
The scene that i remember was when they were testing the rockets out and every time they would think the rocket was gonna be a success,the rocket would turn out to be a disappointment. They tried so many times to send out a rocket and each time they would test a new rocket it would go higher into the sky then the last one did except on the last testing. On the last testing the rocket did absolutely nothing besides throw the top of the rocket off apart from the actual rocket.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

2008-03-31T05:14:00.000-07:00

NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The NATO's were an organization that includes countries in Europe and North America.The NATO organization included countries in Europe and North America. NATO is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. The reason for forming the NATO was so if the countries involved wanted a mutual defense alliance so that if one of them were attacked all of the other countries in NATO would come and help them and this was also a response to spread communism.

The Warsaw was officially named the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship,Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. This treaty was created in 1955 in Warsaw, Poland. The Warsaw pact was an organization of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe.This pact was created to counter NATO and West Germany. Hungary, East Germany, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Soviet Union were the founding members. The Warsaw was also known as the period of conflict, tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

Film Lesson: "Night and Fog"

2008-03-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Night and Fog was a documentary film about the Holocaust. The Night and Fog illustrates the lives of the Jew's and how they were treated by the Germans. This film showed the different ways Germany tried to kill the Jews as of using a gas chamber, shooting at the Jew's and the use of using the oven to burn the bodies. Night and Fog was more detailed and had better images of what went down during the Holocaust and explaining step by step what happened. Many Jewish people started to work for the Nazi's because they wouldn't be killed anytime soon because they were helping the Germans. The Nazi took everything they could find that belonged to the Jews from jewelry, to hairs, to shoes, and to their clothes leaving the Jews with nothing.

Both of these movies illustrated different point of views of the Holocaust. I think the movie illustrated the Holocaust better because they showed the beginning of the Jewish lives and in the movie they got straight to the point. It showed how Germany's army invaded the Jewish property and privacy and took full control very fast. The movie version made it easier to understand because they showed step by step but the documentary movie was much more powerful because it showed what happened after the end of World War II it didn't show the moment of the event.

Film Lesson: "Schindler's List"

2008-03-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Schindler's List was a Hollywood version of the Holocaust. It shows how the Jewish people were treated and killed. In this movie it shows the basic important things but it does not show good details. In Schindler's List it shows how the Jewish people went from living life in the Krakow ghetto to life in the the concentration camp. The Nazi's would go around killing Jew's for no reason and they killed millions of helpless souls.

The images that stood with me was when this little girl in a bright red coat was walking right passed the Nazi's. The Nazi's were shooting and torturing the Jew's and this little girl just kept on walking as if nothing was going on and she didn't see anything that was going on around her. She walks passed an officer who is lining up the adult Jew's and she pushed a door open and walked inside. As she enters she walks up the stairs to a bedroom and hides underneath a bed and pushed herself as far as she can to the wall.

Another image that stood with me was all the dead bodies being thrown around into big wholes and bodies being pilled up on top of one another. I thought it was disrespectful to the dead people even though they were already dead it was still disrespectful that their bodies were bring bulldozed and dumped into a whole surrounded by other lost helpless souls who's lives where taken away all because of the Nazi's.

The Treaty of Versaillese (Ended WW I)

2008-02-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty that officially ended World War 1 between the Allied and Associated powers and Germany. The Treaty of Versailles was signed exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Germany had been blamed for World War 1 and had been forced to pay compensation to the Allies under the war guilt clause of the treaty. The War guilt clause made Germans accept responsibility for the war but also cost them a large amount of property lost. Germany lost about 10 % of lands, All of Germany's overseas colonies were taken from them and split between the allies, and a massive 12.5 % of the German population lived outside of the new German borders.

Germany's economy was ruined because most of the produce and profit had to be send to the allies as reparation payments, meaning Germany's economy was unable to recover itself. Germany had a good amount of military power taken away and people from Germany felt bitter that they were excluded from the league of nation and enforced to live by other peoples rules. All of these problems caused a result in disillusionment and animosity entering German politics. In 1922 Germany fell behind with reparation repayments and suffered the humiliation of French troops entering the Ruhr to secure payments.The government of Weimar endorsed strike led to the deaths of 100 workers shot by the French.

The treaty led to either direct or indirect to a situation in Germany where the people felt let down and they wanted to blame someone. This problem of wanting to blame someone led to the economic problems and a lack of food and jobs. This lead into further economic problems and eventually the German hyperinflation of the mid twenties. Over all Germany lost 13% of its national territory, All of its overseas colonies including, Kamerun, German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, Togoland and German New Guinea,12.5% of its population, 16% of its coalfields, and half its iron and steel industry and the Union with Austria Anschluss forbidden.

I agree with the historians because World War 1 was not just Germany. The fight initially involved England, France, Britain, Germany, and Austrian - Hungary empire and I don't think Germany should have been the only one's who got punished. I do think the Treaty of Versailles was unfair because Germany had to suffer many punishments and couldn't do anything about it. Hitler and many German's got agree at the fact of bring the only one's getting blamed and punished and thats how World War 2 started. Germany was determined to gain power back.

Mustaf Kemal and the Modernization of Turkey

2008-02-08T05:06:00.000-08:00

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the founder of the turkish republic and its first president. He used a theory of kemalism to modernize turkey. Ataturk goal was to modernize Turkish life style in order to give his nation a new sense of dignity, equality, and happiness.He started with secular government and education programs. He made sure that everyone had freedom and equality.

To modernize the Ottoman Empire, Ataturk made his people change more about themselves than the government.He also wanted people to know that this nation was for their them and would be run by them.Atatürk resolved to lead his country out of the crumbling past into a brave new future. Modernizing a secular government and education program played a major role. Making religious faith a matter of individual conscience, he created a truly secular system in Turkey. A small majority of Christian and Jewish minorities and a decent amount of Moslems were free to practise their faith resulting the reformation of Turkey had a full secular institutions.

Giving his nation a different out look European hats replaced the fez, women stopped wearing the veil, all citizens took surnames and the Islamic calendar gave way to the Western calendar.One of the most important that formulation was the Revolutionism. This means that Turkey made reforms and the country replaced traditional institutions with modern institutions.This transformation took place in the Urban and rural life.

What is Secular? Secular or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal.

Film Lesson: "Gandhi"

2008-02-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

Born in 1869 in Porbander West Indian, Gandhi also known as Mahatma Gandhi meaning "great soul" became very popular in the Indian history. Gandhi traveled to London, Bombay,South Africa and later on returned back home to India. Gandhi believed that being or bringing violence to one's nation was unexectable and only provoked a negative reaction. Mohandas Gandhi led the Indian National Congress, and launched a series of civil disobedience campaigns that were completely non-violent. He organized large numbers of people and created unity among different cultures, religions, and political beliefs.

He encouraged Indian people to boycott British goods and start providing their own goods, which only made the British government to punish the Indian people when they refused to do as Britain instructed making the Indians support the Indian National Congress movement. Gandhi also influenced the people of India to make there own clothes that started to take a lot of money away from Britain because the Indians were no longer buying there clothes.Gandhi was sent to jail many times and still insisted on trying to help India gain the independence from Britain. When Gandhi was released he noticed that the once unified group that he had created was beginning to split and the bond wasn’t as strong. He performed a three-week fast and many other attempts to strengthen the splitting group, but he saw little success.On March 21,1930 Gandhi marched a 248 miles during the infamous Salt March.

He was opposing and striking against the tax on salt. Gandhi was joined by thousands of Indians who joined him on his march to the sea to make his own salt.The march was one of the most successful campaigns and had a result in over 60,000 people being imprisoned. Gandhi had a quote that he believed was very true, "An eye for an eye makes the world blind" and he didn't want to continue the violence that has already been influenced. In August 1947, the Indian Independence Act was signed. This separated the Muslim majority areas from India to create the independent state of Pakistan.

This new state was split in two, the two parts being 1000 miles apart. The act was not easy to put into action. In January 1948, a Hindu assassinated Gandhi. In a gesture that summed up the whole problem of India, the Hindu detested Gandhi’s tolerance towards Muslims.Do you think India's Independence was all about Gandhi? Or do you think it would have happened anyway?
I think India's Independence was all about Gandhi because if he never stepped up to play the roll of being the leader the Indian's would have kept on fighting causing the British to fight back.