In 1917, Russia was crumbling into pieces. World War I was draining all of Russia’s resources. Through out the country there were massive food shortages, which left people starving. At the battlefront, millions of Russian soldiers were dying, because they did not possess many of the powerful weapons that their opponents had, like machine guns or the modern tanks, and Czar Nicholas the second’s government was disintegrating. In 1917, Lenin and his communist followers known as the Bolsheviks, overthrew Czar Nicholas II and set a communist government in Russia.
Throughout history we have seen many tyrants create and even maintain conflict just to further their own ends, resulting in the loss of many innocent lives. The likes of Muammar Gaddafi, Joseph Kony, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. These self-obsessed leaders have only come to power by being corrupt and creating conflict causing thousands of innocent people to suffer, they have used their high authority to steal land, money and even force their religious views/options. Roughly 66,000 innocent children have been abducted and made to kill their parents by Kony; 20,000 people were killed during Gaddafi’s reign; 300,000 people were murdered by Benito Mussolini and 7 million were executed or worked to death by Hitler. In total, at least 7386,000 people were murdered all because tyrannical, self-obsessed leaders wanted to further their own ends.
His army also consisted of millions of poor, starving peasants with bad equipment, poor supplies of rifles and ammunition. In 1916, two million soldiers were killed or seriously wounded, and one third of a million taken prisoners. The Russian population was horrified. They considered the Tsar irresponsible for taking over the army and held him responsible for everything; as a result instability was growing at an alarming rate for the Tsar who had once held himself so assuredly in power. Nicholas II took this course of action to assure himself he still had complete control of Russia.
An example is in the Rwandan Genocide in which 800,000 Tutis were killed by Rwandan extremists. The Hutu controlled the radio stations which encouraged them to kill the Tutis “cockroaches”. The group were dehumanised in which their members were seen as worthless and not worthy of moral consideration. The last idea is that of situational variables. ZImbardo argues that the powerful influence on situation can have on people’s
Soviet Union leader Stalin is deporting people he believes to be anti-Soviet sending to prison war camps, forcing them into slavery, and/or to be murdered. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, military servicemen, writers, business owners, musicians, artists, and also librarians were all considered enemies and were added to the list for complete genocide or extermination in other words. The first deportations took place on June 14, 1941. In the meantime the USSR wiped out Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia from the map during Stalin’s reign. Between the Soviet and Nazi forces these countries did not exist during the period of the Genocide.
Americans were appalled by the truth in their meat products, including how dead rats were ground together and sold as sausage, and how guts were packaged and sold as “potted ham.” When President Theodore Roosevelt read it, he was disgusted, among with other U.S citizens. This sent America into the rush to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which provided federal inspection of meat products in the United States. This also started the Meat Inspection Act, which required the United States Department of Agriculture to inspect all of the animals raised in order to be slaughtered and sold for people to eat. The book made many people in the United States convert to vegetarianism. Before The Jungle came out, .72% of Americans were vegetarian, which was about 548,726 people.
Prisoners were also forced to watch others get hanged. Every now and then there had been selection where the prisoners had to run. If there number had gotten written down, they were lead into gas chambers and died. In the middle of a snowstorm, the prisoners had been forced to march to Gleiwitz. Many died and were trampled because they gave out.
Andy is sentenced to two life sentences to be served one after the other at Shawshank state prison, a fictional penitentiary in Maine. Once Andy arrives a the prison he meets, Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding, a convict who gets” things’ from the outside for a price and considers himself the “only’ guilty man at Shawshank. At first impression Red thinks Andy is soft and won’t last long inside the prison wall, however as time goes on his theory is proven wrong and two become close friends. When Andy first enter Shawshank, all the older inmates put out bets on which new prisoner is going to cry about not belonging there. Red of course bets on Andy but to his dismay, it was another newbie whose time was short lived.
Stand at attention in rain and snow forbidden to talk or move, some prisoners have been known to drop dead right there from sickness, fatigue or malnourishment. The days in camp are filled with exhausting work, little food and water and a chance of being beaten or killed for just about any reason. When waking up at 4 a.m. in the morning, the first thing the prisoners would have to face is seeing all the people that didn’t make it through the night and then pray that someone didn’t steal their shoes. If someone took their shoes and they couldn’t find any that would fit they would be severely beaten or killed because they would not be able to work. Once they find their shoes, they would
Five- Year Plans of the Soviets Launched in 1928 with the third and final one ending in 1938 with the interruption of World War II, the Five-Year Plans were put into place by Josef Stalin in the name of Communism. With this plan Stalin seized assets that included agricultural machinery to reorganize the economy. Although many were not directly affected, it would appear to these people Stalin was proactive in his leadership of the country. These efforts were disastrous for the Russian people living throughout the countryside with hundreds of thousands dying of starvation. Any persons who challenged or question Stalin’s tactics were sent to gulags or put to immediate death.