Russian History, Marxism, and Cold War Geopolitics

Vocabulary flashcards covering Tsarist autocracy, the Russian Revolution, Marxist and Stalinist implementations, and Cold War geopolitics based on lecture transcript notes.

Geopolitics

How geographical factors (size, location, resources) influence international politics and foreign policy.

Natural Borders

Physical features like mountains, oceans, or deserts that provide a country with built-in defense.

Buffers

Neutral or controlled territories situated between a major power and its potential rivals to absorb military blows.

Autocracy

A system of government where a single ruler holds absolute power, unrestricted by laws, parliaments, or constitutions.

Divine Right

The religious belief that a monarch’s authority comes directly from God, making them unaccountable to earthly citizens.

Romanovs

The imperial dynasty that ruled Russia for over 300 years, from 1613 until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

The Russian Tsar who ruled from 1881 to 1894 and fiercely championed reactionary, anti-reform policies.

Alexander III

Okhrana

The secret police department of the late Russian Empire tasked with maintaining state security.

Gulags

A vast system of forced labor camps used to imprison political opponents, criminals, and social outcasts.

The Duma

An elected legislative assembly or parliament established in the late Russian Empire.

The Orthodox Church

The established state church and dominant religious institution of the Russian Empire that acted as a pillar of the autocracy.

Censorship

The government control and suppression of speech, press, books, and artistic expressions deemed politically dangerous.

Nicholas II

The last Tsar of Russia, ruling from 1894 until his forced abdication in March 1917.

Bloody Sunday

A massacre on January 22, 1905, where imperial troops fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors marching to present a petition to the Tsar in St. Petersburg.

Social Structure

The strict hierarchical division of a population into distinct social classes with varying levels of rights, wealth, and power.

Industrialization

The shift to machine-driven manufacturing economies.

Revolutionary Movements

Organized efforts to overthrow existing governments.

Karl Marx

German philosopher who co-authored The Communist Manifesto and provided the ideological blueprint for Russian radicals.

Vladimir Lenin

Revolutionary leader of the radical Bolshevik party who directed the organized Marxist push for revolution.

Bolsheviks

The radical majority faction of Russian Marxists who favored disciplined, professional revolutionaries seizing immediate power.

Mensheviks

The moderate minority faction of Russian Marxists who favored a broad, democratic alliance before building socialism.

Russo-Japanese War

A 1904–1905 military conflict over imperial territory that exposed Tsarist military and logistical weakness.

A spontaneous 1917 popular uprising in Petrograd that forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate his throne.

February Revolution

The Vanguard Party

Lenin's concept of a highly disciplined, centralized party of professional revolutionaries created to lead workers who lacked political consciousness.

New Economic Policy (NEP)

A pragmatic economic policy introduced by Lenin that temporarily allowed limited private trade and capitalism to revive the economy.

Five-Year Plans

Stalinist economic policy that abandoned market mechanisms to launch rapid, state-directed industrialization with strict production quotas.

Collectivization

The policy where the state abolished private farms and consolidated land into massive, state-run collective farms (kolkhozy).

 "Socialism in One Country"

The doctrine promoted by Stalin arguing that the Soviet Union must strengthen and isolate communism strictly within its own borders before exporting revolution globally.

Socialist Realism

The sole state-approved artistic method in the U.S.S.R. legally requiring creative works to glorify the working class, praise industrial progress, and portray Stalin heroically.

Cold War

An intense state of geopolitical, ideological, and economic rivalry between superpowers that stops short of direct, large-scale military conflict.

Iron Curtain

An ideological and physical boundary coined by Winston Churchill, separating Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe from Western democracies.

Containment & Truman Doctrine

The U.S. foreign policy designed to stop the global spread of communism by committing resources to assist nations resisting Soviet expansion.

Domino Theory

The American belief that if one country fell to communism, neighboring nations would follow like a chain reaction.

NSC-68

A top-secret U.S. policy paper advocating for a massive expansion of the U.S. military budget and hydrogen bomb development to counter the Soviet threat.

George Kennan

The diplomat who authored the "Long Telegram," laying the intellectual groundwork for containment through firm diplomatic and economic pressure.

Glasnost

Gorbachev's reform policy of openness that allowed unprecedented political criticism, inadvertently fueling regional nationalism.

Perestroika

Gorbachev's policy of structural restructuring that introduced minor capitalist elements to the Soviet command economy without successfully transitioning to a market system.

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

The U.S. "Star Wars" missile defense program that pressured the Kremlin into costly military technology research.