Hello blog readers, 

I’m back. It’s been a while since I’ve posted. This blog post is a sort of inaugural blog post for grade 10. And the topic is the best part. (You might be able to guess the topic)

 

Introduction

We finished studying World War I at the end of last year, and soon we will be studying World War II. But, there’s some stuff that happened in between those two wars. This period of time is often referred to as the Interwar Years. As a class we learnt about the roaring 20’s (if you want to see a really interesting video about that watch the one below).

We also learnt about the Great Depression, mostly focusing on its impacts in Canada and the United States. This is an article that sheds some light on the Great Depression (click here).

But, alas, there was more to cover in the interwar years, There were so many  topics to cover to the point where we couldn’t all learn it together or we’d be in high school much longer than anyone should be. So, we each chose a topic to do research on, individually. And then wrote an essay about said topic. I chose: The Rise of Communism (in the USSR).

 

Understanding my topic

This is a topic I have since become obsessed with. The rise of Communism is a highly interesting and complex topic. The first step in understanding how Communism rose to power, was to understand what Communism was. I really should know how to explain that to you, in fact I’m fairly certain I could, but it’s a lot easier to understand what the concept of Communism is through a video with some visual aids.

 

To fully understand the topic of Communism I read a bunch of articles, watched videos and listened to podcasts and compiled them into an annotated Bibliography.

 

Then came the big essay, and here it is! (I would recommend reading it, as it will make the next part more understandable)

The Rise of Communism in the USSR

Behind the scenes

I spent a lot of time thinking about the perspective I wanted to take on in my essay. It was about the Rise of Communism so, of course, I had to include these 3 very important people: 

• Karl Marx, the creator of Communism 
• Vladimir Lenin, the first man to create a Communist party 
• Joseph Stalin, the “destroyer” of Communism 

I centered the talking points of my essay around these three highly influential individuals. What I really wanted to learn and talk about was the how the theory of Communism  and the execution of that theory differed. If that seems hard to understand, I don’t blame you. This metaphor might help you: 

“It’s a good idea to buy an electric car, it’s better for the environment and often a better working vehicle. But in practice not everyone can afford that, and even just making a vehicle is detrimental to the environment.”

 

 That’s the angle I was taking in my essay, but to be able to explain and go into depth about certain specific points, I had to be able to boil down what the main players in the Rise of Communism did and they contributed.

 

Post Essay

After finishing our essays we had to find a good way to present them. I created this short timeline of the significant events that led to the rise of Communism:

After my  keynote presentation, I handed out this Communist Crossword, you can give it a shot and let me know how you did in the comment section!

 

 

Reflection

At the end of the day I have learnt an incredible amount about Communism. I never had really thought about the theory of Communism, I wouldn’t have guessed that the actual Communist Manifesto had some good points. That’s partially because of how the ideas of Communism were executed. Because, at least for me, when I think of Communism, I think of the atrocities committed under the name of Communism by people like Stalin. If I have learnt anything, it’s that this is not true at all. 

If you want to see a really funny and interestingly done video that is about the Communist reign in the USSR you can watch it below. It’s one of my favorite things to watch. *DISCLAIMER: This video does have vulgar and rude language in it*: 

I hope you’ve learnt something about the Rise of Communism, it’s impact on the world is prevalent to this day. I also hope you have learnt about the difference between theory and execution. I’ll see ya next time.