HSC Modern History: Power and Authority, Russia & USSR, Indochina, and Civil Rights in the USA

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key concepts, legislation, prominent individuals, and events across Power and Authority in the Modern World, Russia and the Soviet Union, Conflict in Indochina, and the US Civil Rights Movement.

Georges Clemenceau

French premier known as the 'Tiger' at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) who sought revenge and aimed to keep Germany economically and militarily weak.

Article 231 (War Guilt Clause)

Clause in the Treaty of Versailles placing full responsibility for World War I on Germany and its allies, generating widespread German resentment toward the settlement as a 'Diktat.'

Article 48

Emergency decree provision of the Weimar Constitution allowing the Reich President to rule without parliamentary consent, which was heavily used after 1930 and exploited by Hitler in 1933 to establish his dictatorship.

Article 22 (Weimar Constitution)

Constitutional provision establishing proportional representation in the Reichstag, which caused parliamentary fragmentation and made forming stable coalition governments difficult.

Reichstag Fire Decree (28 February 1933)

Emergency decree issued by President Hindenburg under Article 48 following the Reichstag fire that suspended personal liberties, allowing the regime to arrest over 20,000 political opponents by late March 1933.

Enabling Act (23 March 1933)

Constitutional amendment passed by a two-thirds Reichstag majority granting Hitler the legal power to enact laws alone without parliamentary approval for 4 years.

Gleichschaltung

The Nazi policy of total coordination implemented from 1933 to systematically align all German political, social, and cultural institutions with Nazi ideology.

Night of the Long Knives (30 June 1934)

Violent purge in which Hitler used the SS to execute SA leader Ernst Röhm and approximately 400 SA members on fabricated charges, eliminating internal party opposition and securing the loyalty of the German army.

Editorial Law (4 November 1933)

Legislation placing all German media under Nazi control (Gleichschaltung), permitting only party-approved messages and incorporating anti-Semitic propaganda into publications such as Der Stürmer.

Führerprinzip

The core Nazi leadership principle holding that Adolf Hitler's authority was total, unconstrained by written law, and demanded unconditional obedience across all spheres of German life.

Aryan Paragraph

Nazi regulation introduced in April 1933 used to exclude Jews and other non-Aryans from civil service organisations, professions, and public life.

Nuremberg Laws (1935)

Anti-Semitic legal statutes comprising the Reich Citizenship Law (limiting citizenship to persons of German blood) and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (banning marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans).

Lebensraum

The Nazi foreign policy objective of acquiring 'living space' through military expansion into Eastern Europe and the USSR to sustain the Aryan race.

Volksgemeinschaft

The concept of a harmonious, classless 'people's community' uniting all racially pure Germans across traditional social divides through duty, struggle, and devotion to the Führer.

Kraft durch Freude (KdF)

The 'Strength through Joy' state organisation operated by the German Labour Front (DAF) that provided subsidised holidays, sports events, and leisure activities to foster worker loyalty.

Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938)

State-sponsored anti-Jewish pogrom organized by Hitler, Goebbels, and Heydrich that resulted in the destruction of 7,500 businesses, burning of 400 synagogues, killing of 91 to 100 Jews, and deportation of 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

Lytton Commission

A League of Nations investigative commission formed after the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria that rejected Japan's self-defence claim, prompting Japan to withdraw from the League in 1933.

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

An imperial concept announced by Japan in August 1940 following the conquest of Indochina, framed as liberating Asian nations from European colonial rule while securing oil and raw materials for the Japanese Empire.

Sovnarkom

The Council of People's Commissars established in 1917 as the supreme government cabinet of the Soviet state under Bolshevik leadership.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918)

Peace treaty signed between the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers, ending Russian participation in World War I at the expense of forfeiting 1/3 of its arable land, 55 million citizens, and territories including Finland, Ukraine, Georgia, and Poland.

War Communism

Emergency Bolshevik economic policy during the Russian Civil War (1918–1921) characterised by extreme state centralisation, nationalisation of industry, prohibition of private trade, and compulsory grain requisitioning.

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Economic policy introduced by Lenin at the 10th Party Congress in 1921 as a 'tactical retreat,' reintroducing private trade, currency, and market mechanisms to stimulate agricultural and industrial recovery.

Scissor Crisis (1923)

Economic divergence under the NEP where the price of manufactured industrial goods continuously rose while agricultural prices fell, leading peasants to hoard grain.

Ban on Factions (1921)

Resolution passed at the 10th Bolshevik Party Congress prohibiting organized internal opposition or factional groups within the Communist Party, later weaponised by Stalin against his rivals.

Nomenklatura System

Administrative system formalized from 1921 to 1923 whereby the Communist Party elite strictly controlled appointments and promotions to all key bureaucratic and state positions.

Socialism in One Country

Ideological doctrine introduced by Stalin at the 14th Party Congress in 1925 advocating for modernising and building a self-reliant socialist economy within the USSR, directly opposing Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution.'

Lenin Enrolment (1923–1924)

Mass recruitment drive initiated after Lenin's death that admitted over 100,000 proletarian workers into the Communist Party, establishing a compliant political base beholden to Stalin as General Secretary.

Gosplan

The Soviet State Planning Commission responsible for centrally managing the command economy, formulating production quotas, and supervising the Five-Year Plans.

Kolkhoz

A Soviet collective agricultural farm established under Stalinist collectivisation where peasants worked consolidated landholdings under state quotas.

Dekulakisation

State campaign initiated in 1929 to liquidate wealthier peasants (kulaks) as a class through land expropriation, arrest, execution, and mass deportations to the Gulag.

Holodomor (1932–1933)

Man-made famine in the Soviet Union—primarily affecting the Ukrainian 'breadbasket'—caused by forced collectivisation and grain requisitioning, resulting in an estimated 3.5 to 5 million peasant deaths.

Stakhanovite Movement

Productivity campaign initiated in 1935 following the state-promoted feat of miner Alexei Stakhanov, designed to motivate Soviet workers to exceed output targets through incentives and prestige.

Kirov Decrees (1934)

Emergency anti-terror directives enacted following the assassination of Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov, drastically expanding NKVD powers to expedite arrests and executions of suspected political opposition.

Yezhovshchina (1936–1938)

The most intense phase of Stalin's Great Purges, overseen by NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, characterised by arrest quotas, mass executions, show trials, and pervasive surveillance.

Socialist Realism

The compulsory artistic method mandated by the Soviet Union of Writers in 1934 requiring literature, art, film, and theatre to present didactic, optimistic, and heroic representations of Soviet socialist achievements.

Treaty of Rapallo (1922)

Landmark diplomatic accord signed between Weimar Germany and Soviet Russia that ended diplomatic isolation, renounced financial and territorial claims from WWI, and established commercial cooperation.

Lao Dong Party

The Vietnamese Workers' Party, founded by Ho Chi Minh, which exercised single-party rule in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) to establish a socialist state and pursue reunification.

Agricultural Reform Tribunals (1954–1956)

North Vietnamese land redistribution campaign designed to eliminate landlords (dia chu) and 'feudal elements,' resulting in intense violence and approximately 50,000 to 100,000 deaths before the Rectification of Errors campaign in 1956.

Ho Chi Minh Trail

Extensive 12,000-mile logistical network through Laos and Cambodia constructed and maintained by Group 559 from 1959 to transport North Vietnamese personnel, weapons, and supplies into South Vietnam.

Personalism

The official political ideology of Ngo Dinh Diem's South Vietnamese regime, intended as a third path between Western capitalism and Eastern communism under authoritarian rule.

Strategic Hamlets Program (1962)

Counterinsurgency initiative implemented by the Diem administration and the US that forcibly relocated rural peasants into fortified villages to isolate them from Viet Cong influence, which disrupted ancestral traditions and increased rural peasant discontent.

National Liberation Front (NLF)

Communist-dominated nationalist insurgent coalition established in South Vietnam in December 1960 to rally rural support, execute guerrilla warfare, and overthrow the Diem regime.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August 1964)

Joint congressional resolution granting US President Lyndon B. Johnson executive authority to take 'all necessary measures' in Southeast Asia, providing the legal foundation for direct military escalation and the Americanisation of the war.

Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–1968)

Sustained US aerial bombardment campaign against North Vietnam aimed at destroying infrastructure, stopping northern infiltration, and pressuring Hanoi to the negotiating table.

Tet Offensive (January 1968)

Large-scale coordinated conventional surprise attack launched by Viet Cong and PAVN forces across South Vietnamese urban centers; while a tactical military defeat for the communists, it created a devastating psychological defeat for the US and intensified the credibility gap.

Vietnamisation

US policy introduced by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to gradually withdraw American ground combat troops while transferring tactical military responsibilities and heavy equipment to the South Vietnamese ARVN.

Angkar

The shadowy, all-powerful revolutionary organisation at the center of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime that exercised total control over Cambodian society and demanded absolute obedience.

Tuol Sleng (S-21)

Former high school in Phnom Penh converted by the Khmer Rouge into an interrogation and detention facility where approximately 20,000 suspected political enemies were tortured and killed between 1975 and 1979.

De Jure Segregation

Racial segregation enforced through formal legal statutes and state codes, typical of the Jim Crow laws across the American South following Reconstruction.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Landmark US Supreme Court decision ruling unanimously that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,' overturning the 'separate but equal' doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Civil rights organisation established in 1957 by Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in Atlanta, Georgia, coordinating non-violent direct action protests rooted in Christian teachings through Black churches.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Grassroots student civil rights organisation founded in 1960 at Shaw University under the guidance of Ella Baker to coordinate sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration drives across the South.

White Citizens' Councils (WCC)

Network of segregationist civic groups founded in Mississippi in July 1954 that used economic retaliation, voter disenfranchisement, and political boycotts to resist civil rights and school desegregation.

Freedom Rides (1961)

Interracial non-violent direct action campaign organised by CORE and SNCC in which activists travelled on interstate buses into the Deep South to test the enforcement of Supreme Court desegregation rulings, enduring brutal mob violence in Alabama.

Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964)

Civil rights voter registration campaign organized by COFO in Mississippi that established Freedom Schools and was marked by the murder of activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by the KKK.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Landmark federal statute passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson that outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations, schools, and employment.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Federal legislation outlawing discriminatory voting qualifications, such as literacy tests, and authorizing federal oversight in counties with low voter participation, leading to dramatic rises in Black registration.

Fair Housing Act (1968)

Federal civil rights law passed by Congress days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that prohibited racial discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964)

Famous political speech delivered by Malcolm X in April 1964 warning that if the American government continued preventing African Americans from exercising their voting rights, armed resistance would become necessary.