Revolutions in Russia

In 1929 Stalin came into the Soviet Union and changed the entire game. After suffering much humiliation from Germany, Joseph Stalin rose to power of the communist party with a loaded agenda to turn the tables around. Stalin began making changes to his nation state through rapid industrialization.  He constructed 5 year plans which aimed to increase the output of products such as iron, steal, coal and machinery. The Communist party built cities from the ground up and brought in peasants to work in mines, factories and offices. To cover the costs of these expenditures and feed the new working regime Stalin merged thousands of privately owned farmlands into large governmentally owned fields. Obviously not everybody would approve of this radical change. The Party had to deploy soldiers to force the kulaks, the more wealthy peasants, into the collective agricultural fields. The kulaks burned and destroyed everything they owned from their fields to their own livestock and equipment in retaliation. Furious, Stalin commanded the poor peasants to rise up against their wealthier counterparts and eventually most of the kulaks were killed in concentration camps. Famine plagued the nation after most of the government's resources were destroyed in the uprising.

What became of the USSR after the massive industrial boom was due to the widespread infiltration of fear and suspicion. This is the part that interests me. Stalin had personal paranoia issues according to our textbook. He exercised his strength and power as a dictator and had many high officials removed and put on trial out of his extreme suspicion or distaste for a particular person. And a snowball effect trickled down thereafter onto the common people, who would accuse innocent neighbors and coworkers. Many were put into jails without trials, but Stalin's popularity only increased when the job market was opened up to more and more citizens who were thus far suppressed by superiors.

I wonder if inspiring such terror can only be achieved in communist societies, and what kind of affect that had on the USSR's nationalism. Stalin wrongly murdered and accused millions of his citizens, yet he was so loved by his people. How could people love their government who was taking away their neighbors and fellow people? I can imagine nationalism had a large part to do with it; how the people could be literally torn apart from each other yet still feel proud and unified. And how better to keep that illusion than through propaganda? I found some interesting pieces. 

[1926] The first poster reads "Liberated women, build up socialism!" This poster reminds women that they have been given new rights at the price of bolstering their socialistic society. It says to me, "Now that you hold the same rights as men, you must engage in the same livelihood." There is not the same air of freedom of choice that accompanied the women's equality movement in the United States.

"Long Live the Mighty Aviation of the Socialism Country!" [1939] This poster envolves many elements that boast the nation's unity and strength in both the land and sky. The people have all rallied together in the streets and are being protected by their fleet of airplanes overhead. Overall this poster is dripping in modesty.

"We will keep the Kulaks from the Collective farms" [1930]

This poster is undoubtedly in favor of the peasants rising up against the Kulaks after Stalin declared the purge of the Kulak class from society.

Globalizations and How it's Failing.

As the world shrinks, a great divide between assimilation and hatred is opening up. Something that troubles me is terrorism. Reading about all these attacks in Europe in section four and five in Chapter 10 of Sources of European History makes me uneasy-- and terrified! Obviously.

These writers discuss why the immigrating Muslims aren't integrating into society well. Laqeur says the unrest in British Muslims is due to the poorer state of their living conditions and low quality of life. These young Muslims have little employment opportunities and are surrounded by prejudice. Looking for acceptance, they join the underground movements that follow the foreign Imams who preach Anti-Western sentiments and eventually become as adamant as the radical religious leaders. They group up and spend more time on the streets than on studies and even form gangs like the German Turks. Laqeur says they engage in minor crimes and get away with them. This is simply the snowball affect in action.

Once the assimilation fails, the Jihad movement strengthens and terrorism swells. These outcasted Muslims are under the impression that the West has exploited their faith and thinks poorly of them; which is exactly what these extremist religious leaders feed the youth.

China is similarly undergoing this clash of cultures and beliefs right now, and in a rather violent manner. Their fighting over the DiaoYu islands with Japan has escalated towards an entire racism towards Japanese people and products all together. Japanese cars are being smashed, libel everywhere, marches of thousands of Chinese in all the major cities too. Where is all this hate coming from?

I feel as if it all comes down to a matter of nationalism and pride. Besides opening up the world to equality and opportunity, Globalization is also breading elitists. The ever present threat of terrorism in America today is instilling racist tendencies and attitudes, which goes against our Western "core values". So this vicious circle continues on. People are eager to explore the world and know whats out there beyond the domestic life, and find that the opportunity can't be more accessible. But once you step foot out of America, there's that prejudice and hatred discussed in the beginning of this chapter, particularly in Europe. Foreigners aren't welcome anymore despite economic dependence on tourism and our (so-called) lauded opinion of globalization. Americans will get funny looks wherever the world they go, as if we can be sniffed out.

But really, why are Americans so hated? It can't be because of our sudden development as a world super power, I refuse to believe jealousy can withstand hundreds of generations. Is it because Americans are content with staying in America, and aren't entirely curious about the mysterious abroad? Could be. "Ignorant Americans" and whatnot. Europeans can travel immensely without extreme prejudice. Why can't we anymore?

And I just realized that ties into this Islamic extremism again. (Hooray I actually got somewhere with this tangent.) Being frowned upon for throwing yourself out there into the world generates the resentment and anger called for in the Jihadist movement.

Expectations

So I've always wanted to know more about this whole Vietnam thing. It's been that one lurking event in America's history that was always shrouded in mystery for me; every other major war was referenced some way or another in Saturday morning cartoons and stories. Growing up, the history lessons just stopped after the mid 20th century. It seemed like society was reluctant to discuss the topic all together.

Well I understand why now. Our reading thus far in The Things They Carried has filled in the holes of curiosity left by the 1979 film Apocalypse Now (the extent of my personal research on the Vietnam war). The horror (pun intended) of the stories O'Brien has shared have already inspired mixed emotions in me. O'Brien starts off his exposition with a very in depth analysis of the lives of the soldiers stationed in Vietnam, and by telling the story of the irrational Lieutenant Cross. His mind flips from longing thoughts to his lover back home and the gruesome war he is leading his men into. O'Brien doesn't even style his writing into first person until later when he begins telling his own story, like his experience as a young man shortly after being drafted. He explains his inner turmoil and his trip to the Rainy River. To establish ethos with the audience, O'Brien breaks down and clarifies the differences between true and false war stories, and starts telling his own.

I feel as if there is meaning in the haphazard nature of Tim O'Brien's writing style and story telling patterns. As far as structure goes, his lack thereof seems to embody the Vietnam war in its entirety. To paraphrase, he describes the war from his pre-war self as lacking a singular purpose, without distinct plans, and sloppy. O'Brien's style of storytelling is (so far) random--- I'm expecting it to all come together in the end. Well what I actually expect is for all of his irregularities and varying chapter lengths to form a greater picture of the war, as a means of representation. It would be insufficient and unsatisfying to tell one's story in a traditional chronological order. From what I've gathered so far, the war didn't feel like a day by day experience in retrospect. It was nights of waiting in silence in the brush, brief moments of gazing into the clouds from the foxhole in the ground under rain of flak and artillery, it was counting breaths and hearing the same stories over and over again, and being lost in thought for hours until an explosion brings you back to that moment and kills your comrade. Days for the soldiers didn't have the same numbers as the days of their pen pals. It wouldn't make any sense to write down your Vietnam war story in such a way, you wouldn't capture the meaning of it all.

My reaction to it all-- taken aback? Not quite. I was hoping a diary of mad stories and utter insanity. This was the content I was looking for that nobody wants to tell. Grandpa doesn't want to tell stories of Vietnam, and the same goes for the American media as a whole, for that matter. We like to relish in our glory; it's human nature. We tell stories of killing Nazis and giving the suppressed their human rights back and overthrowing dictators. Not how when the American boy soldier in Vietnam threw a grenade at the most feeble looking enemy boy soldier treading softly down the path on rubber sandals.

One last thing too. I'd like to dwell on what I was not expecting.

I guess I still have on my fiction reading cap, because at the end of every chapter I expect that one little sentence with the delicious bait on the end. You know, the cliffhanger. But out of self defense I'd like to say it's a deep, subconscious expectation. Can't find the right word to describe the tiny disappointment inside when the chapter ends and there's no redemption for Mary Anne, or no flashy sentence that makes me long to read more. Sometimes it's a line by Kiowa, but it's never what I want. Which is again that kind of intended emotion O'Brien is trying to condition in the reader. War stories aren't like that-- they aren't flashy or heroic or top selling movie material. It takes a while to assimilate, the notion of the glitterless reality. It's all the evolution of the boy soldiers thrown into the last place they'd ever want to be, and in the most maddening circumstances. They don't evolve into heroes. They turn into Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, and they shoot baby buffalos and cry.