Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

At the Second Congress of the Russian Democratic Labor Party, it was agreed upon that Russia was in need of a revolution as the workers and peasants of the country were becoming dissatisfied with the Czar and the government. The end goal of the revolution was to be socialism. However, Congress split into two parties: the Bolsheviks (the majority) and the Mensheviks (the minority). The main disagreements revolved around party membership, with the Mensheviks arguing for a broad-based membership…

Boris Groys. The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Translated by Charles Rougle. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992. 126 pp., $13.49 (paper). The Total Art of Stalinism is not only a historical book on art, but it is also a political provocation of the well-known histories of 20th century Soviet art and literature. Originally published in German, this book was the first major work of Groys to have been translated into English. This…

A young woman is sitting down to write a novel. She has written several in the past, but, this time when it is about to be published the government bans her from doing so. Although in this book it has the possibility to give people everywhere the feeling of security and can be seen as something beneficial. It incorporates conflicts that can be seen as promiscuous and includes the Holocaust, which causes tension in some, that is why it’s banned. This happens everyday in America, in China, almost…

When the word “war” pops up in one’s head a few things that come to mind are death, fighting, and bloodshed. The Cold War was different than all other wars the United States has participated in. The Cold War had physical fighting, but it was more of a war of intimidation and superiority. Since the Cold War was a war over intimidation and superiority one thing that both the United States and the Soviet Union depended on is propaganda. One type of propaganda that was used frequently was radio…