Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of Communism

Mikhail Gorbachev was the reason the USSR gave up communism. As i stated in my previous blog, he was elected president in 1985 and started to relax the ideas of commmunism. Gorbachev realized the the USSr could not change without free flow and things like that.

The Collapse of Communism

The collapse of Communism started ater a series of events that occured between the years on 1989 and 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. And he ultimately relaxed the influence of communism. As well as many countries from the warsaw pact started rejecting the idea of communism as well. This negativity towards communism is what lead democratic revolutions and outbreaks that lead to the breakdown of the Soviet Union. With this new tension going around, people forced the old sterlin government out and elected a president. In turn he ordered people to take down the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989.
inspired by people overthrowing their government and the demolition of the Berlin Wall, other countries startedm overthrowing their country, and finally on New years eve of 1991. The USSR collapsed itself. A man named Boris Yeltsin began overpowering communist leaders in the USSr and defeating them. But not wanting the USSR to fall completely he sent in troops to gain order and things and such.

Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

Apartheid is basically another word for segregation. In South Africa, under the Apartheid system, during the middle to late 1900's, Bantu, which were black people, mixed people, and indians, were not on the same level as whites. They could not vote or go to certain places because they were restricted. It was a very rigid system.
Now Nelson Mandela was South Aftricas first black president. He spent 27 years being locked up in a cell, behind bars, on a cold island, missing his family and friends. Mandela had become a leader of the African National congress in which they opposed the white minority and anyone of the white race. The government obviously didnt like that so That was the reason he was arrested. Mandela is recognized as the resistance to racism, he was a political prisoner. Mandela used his knowledge to help take down Apartheid and create a democracy. He was successful in creating a multi-racial democracy and recieved a Nobel Prize in 1993.

African Independence

Between the time of 1955 - 1975 Africa was gaining their own independence. The first country to gain it was Ghana. A man named Kwame Nkrumah played a big part in that. Nkrumah worked hard at liberating the Gold Coast from the British. Between going in and out of jail and traveling to the United States , Nkrumah wanted to create a United States of Africa and ultimately was declared prime minister of Ghana when it became its own country and then the president forever. He quickly started on expanding education and schools, fixing roads, creating or building new healthcare facilities, and much more. But he failed to realize that they werent economically stable enough to handle all these projects so many people critisized him for that. When he left to china in 1966, police and military gained control and ever since then Ghana has been going back and forth between having their own control and their military controling them.

Another great leader was Jomo Kenyatta. British settlers had very good farmland in Kenya. So when the Africans wanted their own country to control the british fought back and fought back rough! By the time Kenya gained their independence in 1963 more then 10,000 black Kenyans had been killed and over 100 white ones. All this because the British didnt want to give up good farmland.

Film Lesson: "The Right Stuff"

The US and the USSR was in a space competition. This was a big part of the cold war. They both wanted to get to space first and do things like that. The USSR was the first to get a satellite into space. US came in second. The ussr was the first to get a man into space. The Us followed with a monkey. The movie portrayed them as being scared to send men into space because of all the mishaps with the rocket ships. They tried to send a rocket ship into space 3 or 4 times. Each time the rocket wouldnt leave the space station, it would go up maybe a few hundred feet and then come right back down and burst into flames. So you could imagine how long it took to re-think the plan, re-build the rocket, and then re-do the test. It took a very long time, which led the USSR to have the first russian man sent into space. So in reality, the USSR beat us into spac ebut we beat them in one thing. We were the first to have a man walk on the moon, basically the first to have any human being place a foot on another planet. The scenes that i will remember about the cold war is the rockets falling down and bursting into flames, the moneky going into space and then coming down in the parachute thing, the USSR arguing about beating us, and the fact that they used test pilots to go into space after rigorous testing. Overall, the USSR and the US were in competition to go into space, the USSR beat them in most tests but we were the first to be on another planet. And thats what makes the cold war.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

The Nato Pact, which stands for North Atlantic treaty Organization, was indeed a pact that consisted of countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, and etc. It contained a total of 28 countries. The Nato Pact was a military alliance created to defend the west side of Europe from a possible Soviet Union invasion. A foundation was created and commands were established.

Now, the Soviet Union saw that these countries were becoming allies and took it as a threat. And in turn created the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union was the dominant one of all countries involved. The SU had military bases and people set up in numerous amounts of them. It kept them running socialists governments and such. Aside all of that, it was undertaken by two men who received power in 1955. The Warsaw Pact was going strong for well over 20 years but political scenes weakened them and in March of 91, they both ultimately ended.

Film Lesson: "Schindler's List"

This was a great movie. It kept me interested and i would recommend it to anyone. This movie showed everything they went through. From before they were sent to Ghettos, to how they were liquidated, to where and how they hid, to what happened to them in the camps, and even how they were killed or what they were killed for. The images that stuck into my head were when they were liquidated form the Krakow ghetto. i clearly remember a little girl with a cute pink jacket on walking around by herself. She runs into a house and crawls under the bed. I dont know what happened to her but i can only imagine. I also remember a guy who was taped to the top of the bottom of his bed. They completely flipped over the bed and shot him over 100 times. That is unbelievable. I think that Schindlers list was way more powerful than Night and Fog. Although Night and Fog had some very grusome pictures, Schindler's List showed how those pictures came about. And while Night and Fog didnt talk about those who didnt die or those who never went to the camps, Schindlers list did. It over all gave me a better view of what happened.