Stalin’s journey to the top could not be completed without allies. He found one with Kamenev and fellow pallbearer at Lenin’s funeral, Zinoviev who spoke out for him. His further rise to power is also attributed to Trotski’s decline “to take the fight to the ‘troika’ of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev” (Service, Stalin 223). Although Stalin did not chair the Politburo after Lenin’s death, he strategized in how to secure his future. According to Robert Service, Stalin replaced his rivals if they failed to show up with appointees to his liking. He also continued to build his group of supporters in the Central Committee where he first received his appointed position from Lenin. These supporters were loyal to Stalin and from them, he demanded efficiency…
Pravda was a daily newspaper that tried to prove labor activism and expose the working conditions in Russian factories. The first paper of Pravda was issued on May 5, 1912 in St. Petersburg by the Bolshevik's of the Russian Social Democratic Party. The paper was closed eight times in the first two years and every time it closed, the Bolsheviks reopened it under a new name "Worker's Truth," etc. Pravda represents Squealer in the book Animal Farm because Squealer tells lies to try to get everybody…
Mr. Molotov’s Life of War According to Nikita Khrushchev, “Molotov took the name hammer just as Stalin had taken the name steel, and Stalin did indeed use Molotov to smash his opposition into submission and to pound his own power base into shapes” showing that Molotov was a tool for construction that Stalin used as he saw fit. Vyacheslav’s original last name was Skryabin, but changed it to Molotov which literally meant the hammer. Molotov was arrested and banished twice in his lifetime, once…
Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake follows the story of a rebellious Bengali boy named Gogol who struggles to find his own identity. While searching for a new identity, Gogol sacrifices his former self and conforms to the beliefs of those around him, causing him to become disconnected from his family and his Bengali roots. The choices that Gogol makes, such as his decisions to change his name, push away from his family, and disconnect himself from his culture, establish the themes of identity, family,…
Gogol and Dostoevsky Theme Paper Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky are two remarkable Russian writers. They both write about Russian society during the 1800’s. Gogol‘s “The Nose” is a short story about Kovaloff who is a Collegiate Assessor that has an obsession with rank and appearance and how he wakes up and discovers that his nose is missing and goes in search of it. Ivan Jakovlevitch, his barber finds a nose in his bread and immediately realizes that it is Kovaloff and tries to conceal it.…
Assimilation is a ceaseless process, and how far it has progressed is difficult to quantify. One area where it can be examined is through the children of immigrants. One such example is in Lahiri’s novel when Ashima Ganguli, Gogol’s mother, has her second child. She gave birth to a girl named Sonali when Gogol was five years old. The changes within Ashima since emigrating to America are immediately visible when Ashima and her husband, Ashoke, decide to do away with the traditional Indian…
In Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster writes an entertaining guide of how to dig deeper into the metaphorical meaning of every piece of literature in hopes to inspire the minds of tomorrow not only to grow in their understanding of symbols but also to trust themselves and the knowledge they already have. In relation to Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Foster lends understanding to such common symbols like sex not being at all about the actual act but representing the…
The objective of this essay is to explore the origins of conflicts in Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. Although, both works differ drastically in tone and structure, the settings are comprised of similar elements. Still, the external effects of these tumultuous settings pale in comparison to the internal conflicts which ensue. As the reader accompanies the protagonists through their lives made of crucial decisions, the philosophical depth in both…
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, born in St. Petersburg, Russia on 22 April 1899, was a Russian-American novelist who was also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin. Nabokov originally began writing in Russian and wrote his first nine novels in Russian. However, Nabokov achieved international prominence after he started writing in English. Vladimir's finest novel Lolita is also considered his most controversial work because of the criticism it received due to its deep and warped erotic theme.…
Throughout our lives, we all struggle to try and figure out who we are or what our purpose is. In the book Jasmine and movie, The Namesake, the main characters have very similar issues. Jasmine and Gogol changed themselves and let their significant other define who they were. Immigration and the stigmas attached to being foreign also play a big role in their difficulties to finding themselves. Although Gogol didn’t experience leaving his home country to come to the United States like Jasmine,…