Mikhail Baryshnikov

the desire to humiliate and hurt Grushnitsky seemed to be his only motive throughout the entire chapter. He thinks of himself as a fatalist and views hope as an unnecessary part of life. As before, fate has “chosen” Pechorin to be the way he is. Mikhail Lermontov often alludes to the fact that society has molded Pechorin’s behavior; that the vices of Pechorin are the vices of the society. While that may have some merit in explaining how his behavior continues for so long, Pechorin takes…

program was being funded and developed. Though many of the components of the initiative were too advanced for the time, Gorbachev was still nervously skeptical of the program’s unreliability saying, “What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars” (Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes). Gorbachev’s political democratization efforts coupled with his fear of the United States’ capabilities, defensively and otherwise, ultimately precipitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. After the end of the Cold…

Stubborn, headstrong, adamant and rigid, all synonyms for one term: Wooden- headedness. This phenomenon shows up multiple times throughout human history and has single handedly changed the world in many ways. Wooden-headedness is something that affects all factors of life, and in historian Barbara Tuchman’s piece March of Folly she correctly identifies its prevalence in human actions and decisions. America during the 50s was an era of wooden-headedness. This was a time when communists were…

Caleb Gonzales Professor Marks US Government 2305 8 December 2015 Strategic Defense Initiative Long time ago in a galaxy not to far away, President Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, as coined by critics. The initiative was formed on the 23rd of March in the year of 1983. The initiative was proposed at the time as a U.S. strategic defense system against Soviet Union Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, by intercepting the missiles or warheads at…

towards the progression of freedom was given. It took place in west Berlin when former president Ronald Reagan made his famous “Tear Down This Wall” speech. The speech, though not hostile, was a speech directed towards the leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan wanted freedom and good to prosper in a country in which it was not allowed. Thus the message of his speech was that even in the worst of situations freedom and equality will continue to push through until they prosper. This…

When the Soviet Union officially dissolved in December, 1991, many Westerners, Soviet dissidents, and Russian citizens believed that the feared Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (KGB) would be dismantled forever. Russian and Western observers viewed the toppling of the “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky statue in August 1991 as the symbolic end of the era of Soviet political police repression. Subsequently, Gorbachev appointed Vadim Bakatin to reform the KGB. But what constituted reform? In December…

know what to do with the government which created havoc in political, social, and economical affairs. Once dead a reformer by the name of Nikita Khruhchev came into power and started to change the entire system. Then after he was gone, others like Mikhail Gorbachev and Lenoid Brezhnev stepped into power to fix the Soviet nations overall state. Failing to do so, their terms ended with the Soviet Union in pieces scattered across the grounds it used to stand upon. After Stalin’s death, Nikita…

The events that took place subsequent to Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 transformed the Soviet Communism and way of life in many different ways. Essentially, the transformation of Soviet life after the Thaw can be said to have undergone three phases: introduction of reforms during Khrushchev’s era, the Brezhnev stagnation, and Gorbachev reforms that ultimately led to the Soviet Union dissolving in 1991. When Nikita Khrushchev rose to power, he made significant reforms including policies of peace…

On June 12, 1987, former President Ronald Reagan gave one of his famous speeches, “Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate.” On a superficial level, Reagan uses the speech to petition to the Soviet Union for peace, nuclear and chemical arms reduction, and the demolition of the Berlin Wall. He also highlights the progress and prosperity that have arisen in the western world since the division between communism and democracy was established. Beyond the surface, Reagan subtly disparages communism while…

Within decades the Soviet slowly started to fall, with Regan we saw the massive military buildup, basically outspend your enemy. Focusing mostly on the allocation of resources and economic managing sections of the fall. Soviet Union agriculture was not entirely horrible, on theory it made sense. A whole collective, farm that unifies smaller plots of land, to one has a whole. This allows the use of a tractor to be used effectively, while in the contrary to the US farmer that used the capital…