Physiocrats ••• were an 18th-century group of French economists. Their leading member, Francois Quesnay (1694-1774), believed land was the source of all wealth and that agriculture alone produced a clear surplus over the costs of production. Against MERCANTILISM.

Diderot • 1713-1784. French philosopher and writer whose supreme accomplishment was his work on the Encyclopédie (1751-1772), which epitomized the spirit of Enlightenment thought. He also wrote novels, plays, critical essays, and brilliant letters to a wide circle of friends and colleagues.

The Spirit of Laws • 1896-97 A book by Baron de MONTESQUIEU is a comparative investigation of the relationship between the legal and political institutions of a given society and the physical and social environmental conditions--geography, climate, demography, economy, religion, mores--in which they are rooted.

Joseph II ••• (1741-1790) emperor Habsburg monarchy.  Driven by a passion for reason and order, Joseph was intolerant of opposition.  He created a secret police and employed military force to implement the thousands of laws and edicts that flooded out of the Vienna court.  With his curious blend of humanitarian ideals and autocratic methods, Joseph II exemplified all of the characteristics usually associated with 18th-century enlightened despotism.

Edmund Burke •• Irish-born British politician and writer. Famous for his oratory, he pleaded the cause of the American colonists in Parliament and was instrumental in developing the notions of party responsibility and a loyal opposition within the parliamentary system. His major work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), voices his opposition to the excesses of the French experience.

Montesquieu •• Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu. Title of Charles de Secondat. 1689-1755. French philosopher and jurist. An outstanding figure of the early French Enlightenment, he wrote the influential Parisian Letters (1721), a veiled attack on the monarchy and the ancien régime, and The Spirit of the Laws (1748), a discourse on government.

Pugachev •• Yemelian Ivanovich Pugachev, b. c.1742, d. Jan. 22 (N.S.), 1775, was a Russian Don Cossack who led the great peasant rebellion of 1773-74.

philosophes ••• a group of French intellectuals whose ideas formed the core of ENLIGHTENMENT thought in France. The principal figures involved were MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, Denis DIDEROT, Jean Jacques ROUSSEAU, CONDILLAC, ALEMBERT, Baron d'HOLBACH, TURGOT, and CONDORCET. Although their relations were characterized by frequent debate and disagreement, they shared a devotion to reason, philosophical empiricism and scientific inquiry, and a belief in the possibility of human progress.

Marquis de Condorcet •• Title of Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat. 1743-1794. French mathematician and philosopher known for his work on the mathematical theory of probability and for his philosophical study Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795).

Voltaire ••• b.  Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, in Paris,  1694-1778, was the most influential figure of the French ENLIGHTENMENT.  Considered by his contemporaries as the greatest poet and dramatist of the century, he is now better known for his essays and tales.  His precocious wit, his upbringing among a group of libertines, or freethinkers, and his predilection for aristocratic circles were to mark his life, as his classical education by the Jesuits was to form his taste.

For writing some satirical verses, he spent a year imprisoned in the Bastille (1717-18), after which he adopted the name Voltaire.  Subsequently he quarreled with a nobleman, was returned briefly to the Bastille in April 1726, then went into exile in England for 3 years.  There he absorbed the lessons of British liberties, deism, and literature.  Still unwelcome in Paris, he lived at Cirey in Lorraine from 1734 to 1744 with the intellectual and amorous Madame du Chatelet, then at Versailles, Sceaux, and Luneville.  After Madame du Chatelet's death in childbirth in 1749, Voltaire was the honored guest of Frederick the Great at Potsdam, but increasing acrimony led to their abrupt separation in 1753.  After 2 years of wandering, Voltaire settled at Les Delices, a chateau on the edge of Lake Geneva (and now a Voltaire museum). He triumphal returned to Paris in February 1778.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION:

 National Assembly • The States-General met in 1789 in Versailles but were paralyzed by the refusal of the Third Estate to meet separately as a distinct, inferior body.  On June 17 the Commons took the crucial revolutionary step of declaring their assembly to be the National Assembly, thereby destroying the States-General.

Great Fear of 1789 •• The peasants pillaged and burned the chateaus of the aristocracy--destroying the records of their manorial dues.

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted by the Constituent Assembly in August 1789.  It was intended as a statement of the basic philosophical principles that inspired the FRENCH REVOLUTION.  Among the important principles declared by its 17 articles were freedom and equality;  popular sovereignty and the general will; representative government;  punishment only for legally defined offenses;  free communication of thought and opinion;  taxation only by popular consent;  separation of powers;  and the right to private property and just compensation.

Girondins • During the French Revolution, they were the deputies who went to the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Less radical than the Jacobins.

National Convention •• National Convention horrified Europe by establishing a republic (Sept.  22, 1792), inaugurating a policy of revolutionary war, and sending the king to the guillotine on Jan.  21, 1793.

Committee of  Public Saftey ••• In 1793 the king and queen were beheaded.  A Committee of Public Safety, led by the Jacobin Maximilien ROBESPIERRE, suspended the constitution and assumed dictatorial powers. In the spring of 1793, as the military and economic situation deteriorated and a savage royalist rising began. Emergency bodies such as the Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal were then established.

Tennis Court Oath •• The Oath of the National Assembly to continue to sit until they have given France a constitution.

March on Versailles • On October 5, 1789, a march on Versailles forced King Louis XVI (1754-93) to capitulate and accept a new legal structure that would abolish privilege and deprive him of any meaningful legislative power.

Émigrés •• One who has left a native country, especially for political reasons.

“Reign of Terror” •• The Montagnard Convention then had to contend with invasion, royalist civil war, and widespread provincial revolts against "the dictatorship of Paris." Initially, Georges DANTON tried to placate the provinces, and the democratic Constitution of 1793 was approved by plebiscite and celebrated at a Festival of Unity (August 10).  After July, however, Maximilien ROBESPIERRE's influence prevailed, and armies were sent to subdue rebellious cities.  When the city of Toulon voluntarily surrendered to the British, a demonstration in Paris compelled the National Convention to establish (September 5) the repressive regime known as the Terror.

Thermidorian Reaction ••• The Reign of Terror (1793-94), a period of brutal dictatorship under the leadership of Maximilian ROBESPIERRE, was ended by the Thermidorian Reaction of July 1794. Thereafter, France was ruled by a DIRECTORY until the victorious general Napoleon Bonaparte established the Cosulte in 1799. 

Louis XVIII (1755- 1824), became king of France in 1814, when the Bourbon monarchy was restored following the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period.

Capture of the Bastille • July 14, 1789, the French Revolution had begun. The people hated this political prison as a symbol of royal despotism. It also contained supplies of gunpowder that they wanted.

Jacobin • A radical republican during the French Revolution.

“September Massacre” •• Commune of Paris (1792), revolutionary city government of Paris, responsible for September massacres in which some 1,200 royalists, priests, aristocrats, and criminals died.

Sans-culottes •• An extreme radical republican during the French Revolution.

Robespierre • 1758-1794. French revolutionary. Leader of the Jacobins and architect of the Reign of Terror, he was known as an austere and incorruptible man. His laws permitting the confiscation of property and arrest of suspected traitors, many of whom were guillotined, led to his own arrest and execution without trial.

Constitution of 1793 •• Georges DANTON tried to placate the provinces, and the democratic Constitution of 1793 was approved by plebiscite and celebrated at a Festival of Unity (August 10).

Jacques Necker 1732-1804. French financier and politician who advocated the formation of the States-General to effect financial reform. His brief dismissal by Louis XVI (1789) precipitated the storming of the Bastille.

Fouche •• Joseph Fouche was a Jacobin leader during the French Revolution and minister of police under Napoleon I. A spokesman for the radical Jacobins, Fouche served as a convention representative in the Vendee but is better known for his ruthless suppression (1793) of counterrevolutionaries in Lyon.

Bank of France • Napoleon created (1802) the order of the Legion of Honor to reward civil and military merit.  Bonaparte also consolidated the national debt, restored the value of French bonds, balanced the budget, established the Bank of France, and centralized equitable tax collection.

Talleyrand •• Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, b. Feb. 2, 1754, d. May 17, 1838, a French bishop, political leader, and diplomat, served in the top levels of most of the regimes that governed France between 1789 and 1848. Talleyrand and one other bishop, in defiance of papal orders, consecrated the first new bishops of the constitutional church, thereby preserving the apostolic succession.

NAPOLEONIC EUROPE:  

Napoleonic Codes:, was the first successful attempt in modern times to produce a uniform national code of law arranged in logical order and expressed in clear, precise terminology.

Retreat from Moscow •• There he waited in vain for Emperor ALEXANDER I to surrender, while Russian arsonists set the city on fire.  With reinforced Russian armies attacking his outlying positions and signs of winter's approach, Napoleon ordered a retreat in October. Despite the deprivations suffered by his troops, the miserable weather, and the pursuing Russian army, Napoleon held the nucleus of his army together and managed to escape Russian encirclement.

Louis XVIII • 1755-1824. King of France (1814-1824). His reign was interrupted by Napoleon (1815), but he returned to power after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in the same year.

Battler of Waterloo •• The Battle of Waterloo, fought 19 km (12 mi) from Brussels on June 18, 1815, marked the end of the NAPOLEONIC WARS (1803-15).

Confederation of the Rhine • in 1806, Napoleon organized the Confederation of the Rhine, a grouping of German states under French protection.

Metternich ••• Prince Metternich was the foreign minister (1809-48) and chancellor (1821-48) who guided the Austrian Empire to eventual victory in the NAPOLEONIC WARS and established Austria's central position in the 19th-century balance of power in Europe.  Deservedly or not, Metternich became a symbol of repression and a leading target of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848, which drove him from office.

Hundred Days •• period of one hundred days which Napoleon returned to Paris. He was greeted by the French as a hero. It frighten the congress of Vienna.

Nelson •• Viscount Nelson. 1758-1805. British admiral who defeated the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile (1798), thus ending Napoleon's attempt to conquer Egypt, and destroyed French and Spanish naval forces at Trafalgar (1805), where he was mortally wounded.

Alexander I • 1777-1825. Czar of Russia (1801-1825) whose plans to liberalize his country's government were forestalled by wars with Napoleon I.  

end of first semester
______________________________________________________________

Second Semester
AP Modern European History Final Review
the 19th and 20th centuries

Wars and Revolutions
 

1848 - Uprisings throughout Europe
1848 - Communist Manifesto   
1854-1856 - Crimean War
1859-1870 - unification of Italy
1866-1871 - unification of Germany
1914-1918 - World War I
1917 - Bolshevik Revolution
1936-1939 - Spanish Civil War
1939-1945 - World War II

Dates to Remember
1903 - death of Queen Victoria
1905 - Bloody Sunday in Russia
1914 - assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
1918 - end of World War I
1939-1945 - World War II
1962 - Vatican Council II
1989 - Berlin Wall falls
1991 - collapse of the USSR

RELATION VERSUS PROGRESS 1815-1848:

“Kingdom of  Italy” •• in 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed.  Only Venetia and Rome were not included in the new state. Italians at last had their own country.

James Watt •• 1736-1819. British engineer and inventor who made fundamental improvements in the steam engine, resulting in the modern, high-pressure steam engine (patented 1769).

Ricardo’s “Iron Law of  Wages” •• states that all attempts by workers to raise their income are futile: wages will always stay at the subsistence level. This happens, he thought, because wages always rise to cover the cost of necessities but go no higher.

Jeremy Bentham •• 1748-1832. British writer, reformer, and philosopher who systematically analyzed law and legislation, thereby laying the foundations of utilitarianism.

Charles Fourier •• 1772-1837. French social theorist who believed that universal harmony could be achieved by reorganizing society into self-sustaining units called “phalanxes,” groups of 1,500 people who would share labor, wealth, and housing.

Leopold Von Ranke • 1795-1886. German historian who pioneered the modern methods of rigorously analyzing firsthand documentation. His written works include The History of the Popes (1834-1836).

Slavophilism •• A person advocating the supremacy of Slavic culture, especially over western European influences, as in 19th-century Russia.

* “White Terror” • During the ensuing period (1794-95) of the Thermidorian Reaction, government was so weakened that anarchy and runaway inflation almost overwhelmed the republic.  In the southeast the royalists conducted a "white terror,"

Corn Laws •• In British history, the Corn Laws were regulations restricting the import and export of grain, especially wheat.  The general purpose of such laws, which dated from the 12th century, was to ensure a stable supply of domestic grain and, later, to protect the British producers who, as large landowners, dominated Parliament.

“Cato Street Conspiracy” • Ploted to blow up priminster of entire cabnit of England.

July Ordinances •• In July 1830 an insurrection in France forced the abdication of CHARLES X and brought LOUIS PHILIPPE to the throne. The culmination of liberal middle-class opposition to the reactionary Charles, the revolution was precipitated by Charles's issue of the repressive July Ordinances. One of the leading liberal activists was Adolphe THIERS.

Tory Reforms of the 1820’s • Trade unions were partially legalized in 1825. Catholics were admitted to Parliament after a struggle of many years by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Harsh criminal laws were reformed, reducing capital offenses to about a dozen. (In 1800, 200 offenses had been punishable by death.) In 1829 Robert Peel set up, for the first time in history, a civilian police force.

Mines Act of 1842 • Forbid family’s work underground and no children under 10 can.

Lord Palmerston • 1784-1865. British politician remembered for his efforts to maintain the balance of power in Europe. He served as foreign secretary (1830-1834, 1835-1841, and 1846-1851) and prime minister (1855-1858 and 1859-1865).

Classical Liberalism • In the economic sphere, classical liberalism was opposed to direction by the state, arguing with Adam SMITH and David RICARDO that the forces of the marketplace were the best guide for the economy

Radicalism •• Radicalism is a political stance advocating fundamental changes in the existing political, economic, and social order.  The radical posture tends to be rooted in what are perceived to be fundamental values, and its driving purpose is to force, by whatever means necessary, the status quo to conform to those principles.

Nicholas I • 1796-1855. Czar of Russia (1825-1855) who suppressed the Decembrist movement and led Russia into the Crimean War (1853-1856).

John Kay • The English engineer John Kay, b. 1704, d. 1764, invented the flying shuttle, which paved the way for power-loom weaving.

Spinning Jenny • An early form of spinning machine having several spindles.

Adam Smith ••• Often called the founder of modern economics,  Scotland, (723-1790) was a wide-ranging social philosopher and economist whose masterwork, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), is one of the most influential studies of Western civilization.

Smith's major thesis in the WEALTH OF NATIONS was that, except for limited functions (defense, justice, certain public works), the state should refrain from interfering with the economic life of a nation (see LAISSEZ-FAIRE). 

This position is supported in the Wealth of Nations by an elaborate analysis of how economic systems function and develop over time.  Smith sought to show how competition in the marketplace would lead businessmen to supply the goods consumers want, to produce these goods efficiently, and to charge only what they are worth.  He saw monopoly, whether private or state-imposed, as the evil to be combated, and competition as promoting the best interests of society.  He further argued that economic growth, which depends upon capital accumulation and an increased division of labor, would be promoted best by private rather than public efforts. 

Laissez Faire •• An economic doctrine that opposes governmental regulation of or interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free-enterprise system to operate according to its own economic laws.

Robert Owen •• 1771-1858. Welsh-born British manufacturer and social reformer who attempted to establish a cooperative community at New Harmony in Indiana (1825-1828).

Louis Blanc •• 1811-1882. French political theorist whose writings, most notably Organization of Work (1839), are among the most influential early socialist treatises.

Grimm’s Fairy Tales • Grimm's Fairy Tales (German, Kinder- und Hausmarchen, 1812-15) is a collection of German folk tales gathered by Jacob and Wilhelm GRIMM.

Friedrich List • Friedrich List and free-trade economists had advocated the elimination of tariffs, and in 1818 the Prussian customs union abolished all internal duties. In 1828, Prussia extended the union to the first of several neighboring states.

Peterloo Massacre • the Peterloo Massacre (1819) of workers in Manchester.

Ypsilanti’s “Greek” Project •• Father of Greek independance.

Catholic Emancipation Act • in 1829 the government of the duke of WELLINGTON passed the Catholic Emancipation Act sponsored by Sir Robert PEEL. Thereafter, only the crown, certain judicial offices, and places in the established church remained barred to Catholics.

Ten Hours Act of 1847 •• limited to 10-hour working days in factories (1847).

Richard Arkwright •• 1732-1792. British inventor and manufacturer who patented a machine for spinning cotton thread (1769) and established cotton mills that were among the first to use machinery on a large scale.

Power loom •• In 1785 Edmund Cartwright patented a power loom. In spite of the need for it, weaving machinery came into use very slowly. the hand weavers violently opposed its adoption because it threw many of them out of work. Those who got jobs in the factories were obliged to take the same pay as unskilled workers. Thus they rioted, smashed the machines, and tried to prevent their use.

Malthus •• 1766-1834. British economist who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), arguing that population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results, unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease

Free trade •• Free trade refers to commerce that is relatively unrestricted and unaided by government regulations, such as TARIFFS, quotas, and subsidies. The concept of free trade was first delineated in reaction against MERCANTILISM by the French PHYSIOCRATS of the early 18th century and the classical economists, especially Adam SMITH and David RICARDO, in reaction to MERCANTILISM and imperial expansion.

Count de Saint-Simon • (1760-1825), French socialist, born in Paris. in favor of a social organization directed by men of science and industry for the benefit of the whole society.

Carbonari •  Italian, were a secret society founded in southern Italy early in the 19th century. Bound together by rituals possibly derived from Freemasonry, they were liberal patriots dedicated to the overthrow in Italy of the Bonapartist rulers and then of the reactionary regimes established after Napoleon I's overthrow in 1814. They took part in a number of uprisings, notably against FERDINAND I in Naples in 1820. The Carbonari were superseded by Giuseppe MAZZINI's Young Italy movement, founded in 1831.

Hegelian Dialectic ••  one concept, the thesis, is followed by its opposite, the antithesis;  the ensuing conflict between the two is brought together at a higher level as a new concept, or synthesis, which becomes the thesis of yet another triad.

Charles X • 1757-1836. King of France (1824-1830) who attempted to restore absolutism by dissolving the Chamber of Deputies and terminating freedom of the press. He abdicated as a result of the July Revolution of 1830 and later fled to England.

Carlsbad Decrees • The Carlsbad Decrees (1819), discouraging liberal teachings in German universities

Six Acts • Series of repressive legislation, introduce censorship and others. By parliament of England.

Decembrist Revolt •• The Decembrists were members of Russia's first revolutionary movement, which attempted and failed to overthrow the government of NICHOLAS I in December 1825. Chiefly young army officers, the revolutionaries were divided in their objectives; they favored varying degrees of representative government, and some wanted abolition of serfdom.

Factory Act of 1833 •• The Factory Act of 1833 eliminated some of the worst abuses.

Anti-Corn Law League •• This resulted in high bread prices at a time of considerable economic and social disruption following the Napoleonic Wars. It was not, however, until the formation (1839) of the Anti-Corn Law League by John BRIGHT and Richard COBDEN that effective opposition was mounted.  In 1846 the Corn Laws were repealed by the government of Sir Robert PEEL.

Manchester School •• the free-trade economists of the period, including John Bright and Richard Cobden, were called the Manchester school.  The influential liberal newspaper the Guardian (originally the Manchester Guardian) was founded in 1821.

socialism •••  a system of social or state control over production and distribution.

Chartists •• Chartism was a premature political reform movement by hungry British workers afflicted by the stresses of the Industrial Revolution. Active in the 1830s and 1840s, it attempted to secure a democratic constitution and thereby a more egalitarian society. The movement was inaugurated by the London Working Men's Association, which drew up (1838) a six-point People's Charter calling for universal male suffrage, abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament, payment of members of Parliament, and other reforms.

  REVOLUTION AND THE REIMPOSITION OF ORDER 1848-1870:

  Louis-Philipe •• Known as “the Citizen King.” 1773-1850. King of France (1830-1848). He ruled after the overthrow of the Bourbons in the July Revolution (1830) and abdicated during the Revolution of 1848.

Second French Republic • In France the monarchy was overthrown and the Second Republic proclaimed. the republic was soon replaced by Emperor Napoleon III.

Frederick William IV •• 1795-1861. King of Prussia (1840-1861) who crushed the Revolution of 1848 and refused the crown of a united Germany offered to him by the Frankfurt Parliament (1849).

Communist Manifesto •• T(1848), a political pamphlet written by Karl MARX in association with Friedrich ENGELS, is one of the most famous documents in the history of MARXISM and COMMUNISM. Intended as a platform statement for a small international workers' party, the Communist League, and published during the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848, 

Saint-Simonians •• His writings present arguments in favor of a social organization directed by men of science and industry for the benefit of the whole society. The students of Saint-Simon organized and popularized his ideas after his death, and his principles became known as the philosophy of Saint-Simonianism. His major work is Le Nouveau Christianisme (The New Christianity, 1825).

Frankfurt Assembly ••• 1848-1849 Liberal group run by lawyers and university professors. Offered the crown of Germany to Kaiser He said I will not pick up a crown from the gutter. trying to unite Germany. Failed Problems were the way they elected. Most that were elected was not reactionary. Most troublesome was the territory of Germany. Created dispute between Great and Little Germans.

Zollvervain •• Bismarck made a custom union.

utopian socialism •• During the 19th century numerous attempts were made actually to establish utopian communities. Most were experiments in utopian socialism, such as those advocated by the comte de SAINT-SIMON, Charles FOURIER, and Etienne CABET in France, Robert OWEN in England and the United States, and his son Robert Dale OWEN in the United States.

Suez Canal • The Suez Canal, located at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and Africa, is one of the world's most important waterways.  Opened in 1869, the sea-level artificial waterway crosses the narrow Isthmus of Suez joining Africa and Asia and permits oceangoing vessels to travel between the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean via the Gulf of Suez and Red Sea.

Liberal Empire • In the 1850s Napoleon III governed as an authoritarian ruler. Beginning in 1860, however, he gradually transferred power to the legislature, and by 1870 France was essentially a parliamentary monarchy, the so-called Liberal Empire.

Lamartine •• 1790-1869. French romantic poet who served briefly as minister of foreign affairs (1848)

National Workshops • The first outbreak occurred on February 22 in Paris, driving LOUIS PHILIPPE from his throne and bringing in a provisional government dedicated to a democratic franchise and "national workshops" to reduce unemployment.  The election of a French national assembly, however, brought to Paris provincial deputies who opposed the workshops.

  THE CONSOLIDATION OF LARGE NATION-STATES 1859-1871:

Risorgimento •• The period of or the movement for the liberation and political unification of Italy, beginning about 1750 and lasting until 1870.

Seven-Weeks’ War ••• also called the Austro-Prussian War, military conflict (1866) between Austria and Prussia that left Prussia the dominant power in Germany. The war was provoked by the Prussian foreign minister Otto von Bismarck. The Prussians soon gained the advantage.

siege of Paris • In the five-month-long siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), balloons were the only means of communication and transportation between Paris and the rest of France.

Dual Monarchy •• Austria-Hungary was the name of the HABSBURG empire from its reorganization into the Dual Monarchy in 1867 to its breakup in 1918.  (See AUSTRIA.) Its predecessor was known as the Austrian Empire, founded in 1804 during the dissolution of the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE in order to create a single centralized state from the dynasty's diverse provinces.  After 1815 the major parts of Austria-Hungary were the Austrian crown lands of predominantly German population;

Alexander II •• 1818-1881. Czar of Russia (1855-1881) who emancipated the serfs in 1861.

Zemstvos ••• Three other major reforms followed emancipation in Russia.  The first was the introduction (1864) of elected institutions of local government, zemstvos, which were responsible for matters of education, health, and welfare;  however, the zemstvos had limited powers of taxation, and they were subjected to close bureaucratic controls.  

Victor Emmanuel •• 1820-1878. Italian king (1861-1878). He completed the unification of Italy by acquiring Venice (1866) and Rome (1870).

Garibaldi’s Thousand •• The second step toward a united Italy came the next year when the famous soldier of fortune Giuseppe Garibaldi and his thousand red-shirted volunteers stormed the island of Sicily and then the rest of the Kingdom of Naples on the mainland. The people everywhere hailed him as a liberator, and the hated Bourbon king was driven out

Italia irredenta ••• The continuing agitation for Italia irredenta ("unredeemed Italy") was a strong influence on Italian foreign policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries--especially from 1900 to 1914. Although Italy was part of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, it eventually entered World War I on the side of the Entente powers. Consequently, Italy realized most of its irredentist goals at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

Schleswig-Holstein- Provinces in northern Europe which started the German wars in unification

Ems dispatch ••• A telegram sent by King of Prussia to Bismark from conversation with France ambasidor, rewriten by Bismark, tried to offend the French. It worked and caused war.

Treaty of  Frankfurt •• In 1871 the peace treaty ending the Franco-Prussian War was signed there and came to be known as the Treaty of Frankfurt.

* nihilists •• Nihilism, a form of philosophical realism popular in Russia during the 1860s and '70s, reflected a scientific and materialist view of humankind and of its place in the physical world.  Ivan TURGENEV, in his novel Fathers and Sons, was the first to apply the term to the young radicals of the era;  he used it to describe the character Bazarov, who negated everything that could not be proved scientifically.

Alexander III •• Alexander III, b. Feb. 26, 1845, d. Oct. 20, 1894, emperor of Russia, was an ardent adherent of unfettered autocracy. Coming to the throne on Mar. 1, 1881, following the assassination of his father, ALEXANDER II, he began his reign by repudiating the limited constitution his father had signed on the day of his death and by dismissing the more progressive ministers who had served his father.

Commodore Perry •• Promoted (1841) to commodore, Perry commanded (1843-44) the U.S.  African squadron, an implementation of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty designed to suppress the slave trade.

Camillo di Cavour •••• statesman of the Italian RISORGIMENTO who was largely responsible for unifying Italy under the House of Savoy. In 1852 the new king of Sardinia-Piedmont, VICTOR EMMANUEL II, named him premier.

Although Cavour's relationship with Giuseppe GARIBALDI during the latter's invasion of Sicily in 1860 is unclear, he undoubtedly seized this opportunity to weld Italy into one kingdom.

Napoleon III ••• Napoleon III was emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870, when he lost his throne in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.  The period of his reign is called the Second Empire.

 On the death of Napoleon I's only son in 1832, Louis Napoleon asserted his claim to the imperial heritage.  After the overthrow of King LOUIS PHILIPPE in the February Revolution of 1848, Louis Napoleon won election to the National Constituent Assembly;  in September he returned to Paris and took his seat.  He soon announced his candidacy for the presidency of the Second Republic and in December was elected by an overwhelming majority.

A year later he established the Second Empire and took the title Napoleon III.  Maintaining that the government should intervene actively in the economy to promote economic growth and the public welfare, he undertook vast programs of public works, saw to the completion of the national railway network, encouraged formation of modern credit institutions, and negotiated a series of commercial treaties that opened French industry to salutary competition.

In the meantime Napoleon failed to prevent an ominous increase in the power of Prussia, which defeated Austria in the SEVEN WEEKS' WAR of 1866.  In 1870, Napoleon sought to reassert French influence by challenging the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince for the Spanish throne.  He played into the hands of the Prussian chancellor Otto von BISMARCK, who provoked a French declaration of war.  Defeated by the Prussians, Napoleon surrendered on  Two days later republicans in Paris proclaimed the Third Republic, and Napoleon's reign ended.

Crimean War ••• The Crimean War of 1853-56 was one of the long series of RUSSO-TURKISH WARS, but it differed from the others as a result of British and French involvement.  Diplomatic concerns associated with the long-standing EASTERN QUESTION lay behind the conflict.  Tsarist Russia continued to seek expansion of influence in the Balkans at the expense of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE. Britain, in turn, deemed the preservation of the Ottoman Empire vital for British imperial interests in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia.  The worst prospect for British strategic and economic interests was Russian control of Constantinople and the Straits.  France, under NAPOLEON III, emerged as the ardent supporter of Roman Catholic interests in the Holy Places of Turkish-controlled Palestine.  Tsarist Russia, the patron of the Eastern Orthodox population in the Ottoman Empire, viewed French demands in Constantinople for greater concessions--specifically access to certain Christian shrines--as losses for the Orthodox.

German Confederation of 1815 • By the Treaty of Prague (August 23), Prussia annexed several north German states and replaced the German Confederation of 1815, dominated by Austria, with the Prussian-controlled North German Confederation, which excluded Austria. By the Peace of Vienna (October 3), Austria ceded Venetia to Italy.

Danish War • 1864,  Bismark and Austria defeated Danmark.

Battle of Sedan • Defeated by the Prussians in the Battle of Sedan, Napoleon surrendered on Sept.  2, 1870.  Two days later republicans in Paris proclaimed the Third Republic, and Napoleon's reign ended.

Francis Joseph •• 1830-1916. Emperor of Austria (1848-1916) and king of Hungary (1867-1916) who divided (1867) his empire into a dual monarchy, Austria-Hungary. His ultimatum to Serbia after the 1914 assassination of his nephew Francis Ferdinand led to World War I.

mir • Aleksandr BENOIS and Serge DIAGHILEV familiarized the Russian public with leading trends abroad through their magazine Mir Iskusstva (World of Art, 1898-1904) and their art exhibitions.  They also showed Russian art (1906) in Paris and staged seasons of Russian ballet (beginning 1909) with exotic costume designs by Leon BAKST and other Russian painters.

Giuseppe Garibaldi •••• Giuseppe Garibaldi, b.  Nice, July 4, 1807, was Italy's most brilliant soldier of the RISORGIMENTO and one of the greatest guerrilla fighters of all time.  While serving (1833-34) in the navy of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, he came under the influence of Giuseppe MAZZINI, the prophet of Italian nationalism.  He took part in an abortive republican uprising in Piedmont in 1834.

Under a death sentence, he managed to escape to South America, where he lived from 1836 to 1848.  There he took part in struggles in Brazil and helped Uruguay in its war against Argentina, commanding its small navy and, later, an Italian legion at Montevideo.  The handsome warrior achieved international fame through the publicity of the elder Alexandre Dumas.

Wearing his colorful gaucho costume, Garibaldi returned to Italy in April 1848 to fight in its war of independence.  His exploits against the Austrians in Milan and against the French forces supporting Rome and the Papal States made him a national hero.  Overpowered at last in Rome, Garibaldi and his men had to retreat through central Italy in 1849.  Anita, his wife and companion-in-arms, died during this retreat.

Disbanding his men, Garibaldi again escaped abroad, where he lived successively in North Africa, the United States, and Peru.  The "hero of two worlds" could not return to Italy until 1854.  In 1859 he helped Piedmont in a new war against Austria, leading a volunteer Alpine force that captured Varese and Como.

In May 1860, Garibaldi set out on the greatest venture of his life, the conquest of Sicily and Naples.  This time he had no governmental support, but Premier CAVOUR and King VICTOR EMMANUEL II dared not stop the popular hero.  They stood ready to help, but only if he proved successful.  Sailing from near Genoa on May 6 with 1,000 Redshirts, Garibaldi reached Marsala, Sicily, on May 11 and proclaimed himself dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel.  At the Battle of Calatafimi (May 30) his guerrilla force defeated the regular army of the king of Naples.  A popular uprising helped him capture Palermo--a brilliant success that convinced Cavour that Garibaldi's volunteer army should now be secretly supported by Piedmont.

Garibaldi crossed the Strait of Messina on August 18-19 and in a whirlwind campaign reached Naples on September 7.  On October 3-5 he fought another battle on the Volturno River, the biggest of his career.  After plebiscites, he handed Sicily and Naples over to Victor Emmanuel when the two met near the Volturno on October 26.  Angered at not being named viceroy in Naples, however, Garibaldi retired to his home on Caprera, off Sardinia.  Nevertheless, he continued to plot to capture the Papal States.  In 1862 the Italian government, fearing international complications, had to intercept him at Aspromonte, where he was wounded in the heel.  When he led another private expedition toward Rome in 1867, French troops halted him at Mentana.  Subsequently, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Garibaldi led a group of volunteers in support of the new French republic.

Without Garibaldi's support, the unification of Italy could not have taken place when it did.  A gifted leader and man of the people, he knew far better than Cavour or Mazzini how to stir the masses, and he repeatedly hastened the pace of events. Disillusioned in later life with politics, he declared himself a socialist.  He died at Caprera on June 2, 1882.

Otto von Bismarck •••• The Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, sometimes called the "Iron Chancellor," was the architect of German unification and the arbiter of European power politics in the second half of the 19th century.

EARLY LIFE

Bismarck was born at Schonhausen in Brandenburg on Apr.  1, 1815.  His father came of the old Prussian nobility, his mother from the upper bourgeoisie.  Distaste for the study of law and bureaucracy caused Bismarck to turn to management of the family estates in Brandenburg.  There he was converted to the fundamentalist religious views of the Lutheran pietists. During the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848, Bismarck gained political notice in Prussia as an extreme reactionary, who supported suppression of revolt and continued Austrian leadership in Germany.  As Prussian minister to the GERMAN CONFEDERATION in Frankfurt (1851-59), he adopted the independent line of realpolitik, backing a policy based on Prussian interests, without regard for ideology, or humanitarianism.  He now supported the ZOLLVEREIN against Austria, favored cooperation with NAPOLEON III of France, and opposed intervention in the internal affairs of other states in the interest of legitimate sovereigns.  After briefly representing Prussia at St. Petersburg and Paris he was summoned home to become (Sept.  22, 1862) minister president and foreign minister for the Prussian king (later German emperor) WILLIAM I.

UNIFICATION

After proclaiming the policy of "iron and blood," Bismarck defied the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, which was locked in a constitutional conflict with the king, by implementing army reforms, administering without an approved budget, and following an independent foreign policy.  His diplomacy brought victorious wars with Denmark (over SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, 1864) and Austria (the SEVEN WEEKS' WAR of 1866), as a result of which the chamber passed an indemnity bill (in effect forgiving Bismarck's constitutional transgressions) and approved past budgets.  With Austria excluded by force from Germany the North German Confederation was formed (July 14, 1867) under Prussian control.  Under the constitution of the new state the Prussian king retained control of the army and policy-making, and the chancellor (Bismarck) was responsible only to him.  The Bundesrat (federal council) represented the interests of the separate states, while in the parliament, or REICHSTAG, universal adult male suffrage (which Bismarck had discussed with the socialist Ferdinand LASSALLE) was instituted.  In 1870, Bismarck's backing of a HOHENZOLLERN prince as candidate for the Spanish throne, coupled with his inflammatory editing of the Ems Dispatch (a message from William I to Napoleon III), had the desired effect of provoking France into the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.  France was rapidly defeated, the German Empire (including the southern German states) was proclaimed at Versailles on Jan. 18, 1871, and Bismarck was named prince and German chancellor.  The 1867 constitution was retained, and Bismarck also maintained civilian control over the army with William.  He was thus able to block preventive war in the following years.

Imperial Chancellor

Bismarck's foreign policy was now directed at maintaining and strengthening the power of the German Empire, which he saw as satiated territorially.  Its security was ensured by marshaling its political and diplomatic resources in Europe and by isolating France diplomatically.  When the Three Emperors' League (1873) with Russia and Austria disintegrated as a result of rivalry in the Balkans, Bismarck sought to mediate as an "honest broker" at the Congress of Berlin (1878;  see BERLIN, CONGRESS OF).  Increasing Russian hostility brought--against William's wishes--the Dual Alliance with Austria (1879), which became the TRIPLE ALLIANCE when Italy joined it in 1882. Bismarck, however, sought to tie Russia to this alliance by reviving the Three Emperors' League (1881-87) and through the Reinsurance Treaty (1887-90).  He also gained British cooperation.

Domestically in alliance with the National Liberals from 1867 to 1877, Bismarck extended the powers of the imperial government, adopted laissez-faire economic policies, and fought the political power of the Roman Catholic church in the KULTURKAMPF.  The growth of the Catholic Center party and the challenges created by an economic depression (1873-96) brought a break with the liberals and the abandonment of laissez-faire. With Conservative, intermittent Center, and some remnants of National Liberal support, he embarked upon a policy of protective tariffs, suppression of the Social Democrats under August BEBEL, and pioneering social welfare measures, including insurance against illness, accident, and old age.  Increasing socialist strength and the desire of the new emperor, WILLIAM II, to conciliate his people brought Bismarck's dismissal on Mar. 18, 1890.  Until his death on July 30, 1898, he devoted his time to attacking his successors and dictating his savage reminiscences (1898;  trans. by A. J. Butler as Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman, 1898).

Bismarck unified Germany and maintained European peace for a generation, but he also perpetuated the obsolete dominance of the Prussian landed aristocracy (JUNKERS) and upper middle class, as well as a tradition of intolerance of partisan and personal dissent.  Under William II, Bismarck's alliance system (with crucial modifications) contributed to World War I and the collapse of the German Empire.

  EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION 1871-1914:

 Marshall MacMahon • (1808-93), duke of Magenta and marshal of France; born in Sully, near Autun, France; defeated at Sedan 1870; president of the Third Republic of France 1873-79.

Dreyfus Affair ••• The Dreyfus affair began in 1894 when Capt.  Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), an Alsatian Jewish officer on the French general staff, was falsely accused of giving information to the German military attache in Paris.  Subsequent efforts to exonerate Dreyfus led to a prolonged political crisis, perhaps the most important in the history of the Third Republic.  The affair emphasized the conflicts between the republicans and the rightists, who wanted to reestablish the monarchy, and led to renewed hostility and conflict between the Roman Catholic church and the republic.  It also showed the power of anti-Semitism in France.

David Lloyd George •• David Lloyd George was one of the commanding figures in 20th-century British politics and the only person of Welsh extraction to become prime minister.  Born in Manchester, England, on Jan.  17, 1863, he was raised by his uncle, a village shoemaker and sectarian lay preacher in North Wales. In 1878 he was apprenticed to a solicitor (nontrial lawyer), and he opened his own law practice in 1884.  As "the poachers' lawyer," willing to defend clients accused of breaking the harsh game laws, Lloyd George acquired a loyal following among North Wales tenant farmers and quarrymen.  In 1890 he was elected to Parliament as a Liberal, beginning a 55-year career at Westminster.

Kulturkampf •• The Kulturkampf ("cultural struggle") is the name given to the attempt by Otto von BISMARCK to subordinate the Roman Catholic church in Germany to the state. Fearing Catholic political influence, Bismarck imposed (1871-78) a series of restrictive laws on the church. They proved ineffective and after 1878, were rescinded or allowed to lapse.

Reform bills ••• The Reform Acts were a series of British legislative measures (1832, 1867-68, 1885) that broadened the parliamentary franchise and reduced disparities among constituencies. Electoral reform had been urged in the 1780s by William PITT the Younger as well as Charles James FOX, but the reaction against the French Revolution created a more conservative political climate.  By the late 1820s the movement for reform was again strong, and the Whig government of the 2d Earl GREY overcame opposition to the first Reform Bill by threatening to create enough Whig peers to ensure its passage through the House of Lords.  The bill was enacted in 1832.

The first Reform Act eliminated many "rotten boroughs" (depopulated constituencies) and "pocket boroughs" (constituencies controlled by the crown and other landowners), transferring their representation to such previously unrepresented large cities as Birmingham and Manchester and to the more populous counties.  The vote was extended to males who occupied premises valued at 10 pounds annually, bringing the middle class into the political arena, and the introduction of systematic registration procedures spurred the development of party organizations.  Although the act expanded the franchise by 50 percent, still, only 1 out of 30 persons could vote, and the landowning class remained dominant.

Popular agitation spurred by John BRIGHT and others led to a further extension of the franchise in 1867.  After the failure of the Liberals under Lord John Russell (later 1st Earl RUSSELL) to win passage of their Reform Bill, the Conservative Benjamin DISRAELI succeeded with more radical proposals.  The act of 1867 extended the vote to most homeowners and renters and thus enfranchised many urban laborers.  The final Reform Acts, which were passed in 1884 and 1885 under the Liberal government of William GLADSTONE, assimilated the county with the borough franchise and gave the vote to most agricultural workers.

The secret ballot (1872) and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act (1883) were other important 19th-century measures of electoral reform.  The Representation of the People Acts of 1918 and 1928 extended the vote to women;  the act of 1949 eliminated plural voting;  and the 1969 act lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Parliament Act of 1911 •• the Parliament Act of 1911, which abolished the veto power of the Lords; and the Representation of the People Acts of 1918, 1928, 1948, and 1969, which extended the suffrage to women, established the principle of one person one vote, and lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Radical Socialists •• At home, Socialist premier Leon BLUM's Popular Front of Socialists, Communists, and Radical-Socialists in 1936-37 preserved the republic against the threat of fascist groups, such as the ACTION FRANCAISE, and enacted a wide range of social and economic reforms.

Irish Home Rule • The issue of Irish home rule, which had brought Ireland to the brink of civil war in 1914, was placed on the political back stage for the duration of the war;  however, increasing nationalist revolutionary activity and unionist resistance led to the partition (1920) of Ireland and the creation (1922) of the Irish Free State in the south.

William II •. 1859-1941. Emperor of Germany and king of Prussia (1888-1918). Grandson of Queen Victoria, he supported the Afrikaners in South Africa and Austria's demands on Serbia (1914). He was forced to abdicate at the end of World War I.

German Social Democratic Party • Another important controversy broke out in the 1890s within Marxism, involving the German Social Democratic party. This party was divided then between a militant revolutionary left wing, an orthodox center that held to the classical Marxist doctrine of economic determinism, and a right wing moving rapidly toward a position of open reformism.

Fabian Society ••• The Fabian Society is a British organization that was founded in 1883-84 with the aim of spreading socialist ideas among the educated public and ultimately establishing a socialist government. Among its more prominent members have been George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and Annie Besant. The Fabians rejected revolutionary Marxism, favoring a program of education fostered by research, publications, and seminars. After the appearance (1889) of the Fabian Essays, the society became an influential political force. It was a key constituent of the Labour Representation Committee, founded in 1900, which subsequently became the British LABOUR PARTY. It is now a specialized research agency of the Labour party.

Lenin •••• Lenin, Vladimir Ilich  founder of the Russian Communist party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and first head of state of the USSR, was also a masterly political thinker whose theories became a significant component of Communist thought and influenced all factions of the Marxist movement. He practiced law briefly in Samara before devoting himself full time to revolutionary activities.

Communist Theoretician: Between 1893 and 1902, Lenin studied the problem of revolutionary change in Russia from a Marxist perspective and worked out the essential features of what has come to be called Leninism.  It was during this period that he began using his pseudonym "Lenin" (sometimes "N. Lenin").  This phase of Lenin's career culminated with the publication of his pamphlet What Is to Be Done?  (1902) and the organization of the Bolshevik. 

Organizing for the Revolution:  Although he was in forced exile until 1917 in London, Paris, Geneva, and other European cities, he maneuvered for control over party committees and publications.  He condemned his Social Democratic opponents as Mensheviks (the Minority Group) despite being outnumbered by them.

Masterminding the Revolution: In 1917, Lenin published Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. In it he denounced World War I (in which Russia was engaged on the side of the Allies) as a fight among the imperialist powers for control of the markets, raw materials, and cheap labor of the underdeveloped world.  Since neither the Allies nor the Central Powers offered any benefits to the working class, he urged all socialists to withhold their support from the war effort. Following his lead Russian Bolsheviks refused to support their government in its war efforts.

An abortive uprising against the government in July forced Lenin into exile once again (this time to Finland).  It was a short-lived exile, however.  In September, correctly perceiving the increasingly radical mood in Russia, he sent a famous letter to the party's central committee calling for armed insurrection.  He slipped back into Russia and successfully brought the Bolsheviks to power through the "Military Revolutionary Committees";  and during the first week of November (N.S.;  October by the old-style calendar--hence the name October Revolution) he succeeded in bringing down the government of Aleksandr KERENSKY.  On November 7 (N.S.;  Oct. 25, O.S.) the first Bolshevik government was formed;  Lenin became its chairman.  Thus he brought about the final act of the revolution that had begun only months before (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917).

Head of Government: Lenin moved quickly to consolidate Bolshevik power.  He reorganized the various party factions into the Russian Communist party, established a secret police (the Cheka), and totally reconstituted the desperate Russian economy along Marxist principles.  In order to bring the country out of the war, he accepted a humiliating peace treaty with Germany in 1918 (see BREST-LITOVSK, TREATY OF).  That same year civil war broke out, and he was forced to put a Red Army in the field against dissident forces.  The dissidents, known as the Whites, were supported by the Allies and were not defeated until 1921.

By that time the Russian economy was in shambles, and discontent among peasants and workers was dangerously widespread.  He instituted the NEW ECONOMIC POLICY.  He granted economic concessions to foreign capitalists in order to encourage trade;  he placed some light industry and most retail operations back into private hands; and to appease the peasants he permitted them to sell their produce on the open market. 

Although Lenin's power in the government was dictatorial and unquestioned, his control over party affairs was never absolute.  The great rivalry between Trotsky and Joseph STALIN, which was to tear apart the Communist movement in later years, was already being formed at this period.

On May 25, 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.  He also suffered from complications of an assassination attempt dating to 1918.  After a series of strokes, Lenin died on Jan. 21, 1924, at the age of 53.

Friedrich Nietzsche ••• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, b.  Oct.  15, 1844, d.  Aug.  25, 1900, was a German philosopher who, together with Soren KIERKEGAARD, shares the distinction of being a precursor of EXISTENTIALISM.  He studied classics at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig, receiving his doctorate from the latter in 1869.  Because he had already published some philological articles, he was offered the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland before the doctorate was officially conferred on him.In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872;  Eng.  trans., 1968), Nietzsche presented a theory of Greek drama and of the foundations of art that has had profound effects on both literary theory and philosophy.  In this book he introduced his famous distinction between the Apollonian, or rational, element in human nature and the Dionysian, or passionate, element, as exemplified in the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus.  When the two principles are blended, either in art or in life, humanity achieves a momentary harmony with the Primordial Mystery.  This work, like his later ones, shows the strong influence of the German philosopher Arthur SCHOPENHAUER, as well as Nietzsche's affinity for the music of his close friend Richard WAGNER. What Nietzsche presented in this work was a pagan mythology for those who could accept neither the traditional values of Christianity nor those of Social Darwinism.

William Gladstone •• William Ewart Gladstone, four times Liberal prime minister of Britain, was an Olympian figure in 19th-century British politics.  The son of a Liverpool merchant, he was born on Dec. 29, 1809, and educated at Eton and Oxford.  He entered Parliament in 1832 as a Tory.

Joseph Chamberlain •• 1836-1914. British politician who served as the mayor of Birmingham (1873-1876), president of the Board of Trade (1880-1885), and colonial secretary (1895-1903).

Charles Darwin ••• Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, revolutionized biology with his theory of evolution through the process of NATURAL SELECTION.  He also made significant contributions to the fields of natural history and geology.  The theory of evolution, which held that all living species have evolved from preexisting forms, aroused great controversy and brought about a reevaluation of the position of humans in relation to all other living forms. In 1856, Darwin began to write his theory of evolution by natural selection, but before he had finished (1858), he received a paper from naturalist Alfred  WALLACE outlining a theory similar to his own.  Friends arranged for the two men to present a joint paper before the Linnaean Society of London in 1858.  On Nov. 24, 1859, an abstract of Darwin's theory was published under the weighty title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 

Lateran Treaty of 1929 •• The LATERAN TREATY created (1929) the separate state of Vatican City within the city, and, being the papal city, Rome escaped damage during World War II.

Benjamin Disraeli ••• Benjamin Disraeli, who early in his career was written off as a foppish Jewish scribbler of no fixed political abode or principles, "climbed to the top of the greasy pole" of British politics as Conservative prime minister in 1868 and 1874-80. Of Sephardic Jewish descent, he was born on Dec.  21, 1804;  in 1817 his father, the writer Isaac D'Israeli, converted the entire family to Christianity.

After four unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli was elected to Parliament in 1837.  At first he was a disappointed office seeker, but his devastating attacks on the Conservative government of Sir Robert PEEL as an "organized hypocrisy" made him, in fact, the incongruous Commons leader of the majority of Conservatives, who opposed repeal of the CORN LAWS.

Official party leader in the House of Commons from 1850, Disraeli served as chancellor of the exchequer in the minority governments of the 14th earl of DERBY (1852, 1858-59, 1866-68) and finally succeeded Derby as prime minister briefly in 1868. In 1867 he had been largely responsible for the second REFORM ACT, which extended parliamentary suffrage to borough householders.  In the years of opposition after 1868, he worked to win the support of the middle and working classes against the radicalism of William GLADSTONE's Liberal government.  This bore fruit in the elections of 1874, when the Conservatives won their first majority since 1841.

In the government that Disraeli now formed, his ministers used the Conservative majority to put through useful trade union and social reforms, especially in the areas of public health and factory legislation.  Disraeli himself, now old and ill, concentrated on foreign and imperial questions.  His purchase (1875) of a controlling share of the Suez Canal stock strengthened British interests in the eastern Mediterranean, but his handling of the EASTERN QUESTION is controversial--despite his return from the Congress of Berlin (1878) claiming "peace with honor." British imperial interests were loudly proclaimed by Queen Victoria's assumption of the title of empress of India in 1876;  this step greatly pleased the Queen, who adored Disraeli and created him earl of Beaconsfield in 1876.

An economic depression, the unpopularity of the colonial wars in Africa and Afghanistan, and Gladstone's crusade against Turkish atrocities in the Balkans sent Disraeli into opposition again in 1880.  Although he died a pessimist on Apr.  19, 1881, Disraeli remains a source of inspiration to reforming Conservatives, especially in bad times.

Albert Einstein •• The German-American physicist Albert Einstein, b.  Ulm, Germany, 1879, d.  Princeton, N.J., 1955, contributed more than any other scientist to the 20th-century vision of physical reality.

Sigmund Freud •• Sigmund Freud, b. 1856, d. 1939, the creator of PSYCHOANALYSIS, was the first person to scientifically explore the human unconscious mind;  his ideas profoundly influenced the shape of modern culture by altering man's view of himself.  Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor, Czechoslovakia), the oldest child of his father's second wife.

Theodor Herzl ••• Theodor Herzl, b., 1860, d., 1904, was a Hungarian Jew who founded modern political ZIONISM.  After obtaining his doctorate in law from the University of Vienna in 1884, he spent several years writing plays and fiction.  As Paris correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse during 1891-95, Herzl covered the DREYFUS AFFAIR.  He was shocked by the anti-Semitism he observed and became convinced that Jewish assimilation was impossible.  He expressed his views in The Jewish State (1896), in which he advocated the creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine.

Despite the opposition of the chief rabbis of the West, Herzl organized the first World Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897.  The 204 delegates to the congress adopted a program calling for "a publicly recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine." Herzl worked until his death to secure acceptance of his ideas, first from the Jewish philanthropists Edmond Rothschild (see ROTHSCHILD family) and Maurice de HIRSCH, then from Emperor William II of Germany, Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and Pope Pius X.

Following the Kishinev massacre of April 1903, Herzl called for the creation of Jewish nachtasyls (havens) throughout the world.  That same year, he endorsed British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's plan to establish a Jewish homeland in East Africa, but the Zionist Congress rejected this so-called Uganda Plan after two years of squabbling.

In addition to laying the foundation for a sound political program of Zionism, Herzl correctly forecast the Holocaust ("things cannot improve, but must get worse, until the massacres," he said) and predicted that Diaspora Jews would come to take pride in a renascent Israel:  "Let the craven, assimilated, converted Jews remain behind .  .  .  we will even benefit them .  .  .  they will eventually boast of their kinship with us as now they blush at it."

  EUROPE’S WORLD SUPREMACY:

 Imperialism •••• Imperialism is the policy or practice of extending national power over other states or areas of the world, often by annexing territory.  Imperialism has existed in every age.  The Zhou (Chou) and Qin (Ch'in) dynasties in ancient China (c.1027-206 BC) and the Maurya in India (c.321-c.185 BC) provide early examples of empire building.  Attempts by Athens to establish political and military hegemony over the Greek city-states led to its ultimate defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC).  Alexander the Great of Macedonia created an empire reaching beyond Persia in the east that signaled the end of the Greek city-state as the basic political unit of the ancient world.  In the Roman Empire, policies implicit in Alexander's rule were developed further.  Although Rome remained the imperial center, rights of citizenship were extended throughout the empire, in line with Stoic and Christian ideas.  From AD 395 the Roman Empire was permanently divided into eastern and western halves.  In the east, the Byzantine Empire remained in existence until 1453, when it finally fell victim to the expanding Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. The Roman Empire in the west collapsed in AD 476, but the imperial ideal was revived by the Frankish ruler Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor by the pope in 800.  This event is sometimes taken as the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, but the imperial coronation (962) of the German King Otto I marks the beginning of that entity as a continuing institution.  The Holy Roman Empire survived until 1806, although it was a weak confederation for much of the time.

In 16th-century Europe, the centralization of political power in the hands of absolute monarchs was accompanied by the growth of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, or merchant class, and by the quest of European explorers for precious metals and other trade goods in the New World and the Orient. MERCANTILISM, seapower, and the establishment of powerful national armies provided impetus for a new wave of imperialism both within continental Europe and far beyond its boundaries. The Italian diplomat and political thinker Nicolo Machiavelli, writing at the beginning of the 16th-century, interpreted such expansion as a natural expression of human aggression;  the pursuit of power and glory, he believed, is an instinctual and inevitable drive.

The term imperialism is most commonly identified with 19th-century colonialism and the carving of the globe into "spheres of influence" by the European powers.  One of the leading figures of 19th-century imperialism was the British financier and South African statesman Cecil Rhodes.  Colonies in Asia and Africa supplied cheap labor, raw materials, and ready markets for European manufacturing, spurred on by the Industrial Revolution.  They also enhanced the image of European powers;  much of France's empire, for example, was acquired after its defeat by Germany in 1870.  Imperialism was also linked to concepts of racial and moral supremacy, rationalized as "the White Man's Burden"--the so-called duty to bring civilization to backward peoples.  In the Western Hemisphere, much of Latin America came under the sway of commercial and financial interests in the United States.

Economic imperialism, as this type of expansion is called, was first criticized severely by John A. Hobson, who viewed it as the attempt of the capitalist classes in industrial nations to achieve economic gain.  Vladimir Ilich Lenin later elaborated this theory, as did subsequent Marxists.  Marxist theory maintained that imperialism leading to war was the inevitable and final result of economic competition.  A necessary corollary of the Marxist theory explained imperialism as a temporary phenomenon that characterized relations among capitalist states and that would be superseded by a communist world order.  Marxist theory, however, fails to account for imperialism before the existence of capitalism as well as for those imperial policies that the Soviet Union subsequently pursued.

After World War II imperialism took a new form.  The old empires no longer existed;  the former colonies became independent states, often after prolonged national liberation struggles.  Until the 1990s the United States and the USSR competed for influence over these new nations, usually through economic and military aid to their governments.  Direct military intervention was usually a last resort;  certain prominent examples include American intervention in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Panama;  Soviet use of Cuban troops in Africa;  and the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.  Britain and France also continued to exert economic influence over some of their former colonies in Africa.  Less developed countries decry modern economic imperialism (called neoimperialism), asserting that it seriously hampers their efforts toward economic growth and independence.  Many poor Arabs considered the 1991 PERSIAN GULF WAR imperialist, charging that it was waged to ensure that the industrialized world would continue to have access to cheap oil.

 Indian National Congress •• The Indian National Congress, a leading organization in India's independence movement, was the dominant political party in independent India for 30 years.  Founded (1885) in Bombay, it sent petitions to the British government requesting a larger political role for Indians.  In 1907 the Congress split, its moderate wing seeking eventual dominion status, while its radicals demanded immediate self-rule.

Treaty of Portsmouth ••• the government embarked on imperialist adventures in the Far East, provoking a war with Japan (1904-05;  see RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR).  Russia suffered a humiliating defeat, although the peace terms (Treaty of Portsmouth, 1905) were less onerous thanks to the mediation of U.S. president Theodore ROOSEVELT and Japan's exhaustion.

White Man’s Burden •• European society tended to consider non-Western cultures inferior to its own, the notion evolved that it was the "white man's burden" to teach Western traditions and techniques to non-European peoples.

Pan Slavism ••• Pan-Slavism, a 19th-century political, religious, and cultural movement, attempted to unite the Slavs of Eastern Europe by awakening in them a sense of their ethnic kinship.  Its first advocates were those Slavs living within the Austrian and Ottoman empires, but, by the middle of the 19th century, Russian Slavophilism had taken control of the movement (see SLAVOPHILES AND WESTERNIZERS).  Pan-Slavists believed that the predominantly Latin and Germanic culture of the West was dying and it must yield to the young and vigorous Slavic culture. As German nationalism grew, Pan-Slavism became more political. In 1869, Nikolai Danilevsky wrote in Russia and Europe that the struggle for survival among the great civilizations required the unification of the Slavs under Russian hegemony--by force, if necessary.  The threat implied by this form of Pan-Slavism suggested to Western Europeans that there was a Russian design to master all of Eastern Europe;  it led to the widely held but unsupported belief that the subsequent Balkan Wars and even Russian entry into World War I flowed from this design.

David Livingstone • 1813-1873. Scottish missionary and African explorer. He discovered the Zambezi River (1851) and Victoria Falls (1855). Henry M. Stanley found him in Tanzania (1871), and together they attempted to find the source of the Nile.

Berlin Conference of 1885 •••• In 1839, France signed a treaty with local chiefs that gave it powers over the southern coastal regions of Gabon.  The Berlin Conference of 1885 awarded all of the territory discovered by Pierre de BRAZZA to France.  This area was organized (in 1910) into French Equatorial Africa, and the separate colonies of Gabon, Congo, Chad, and Ubangi-Shari were formed.  Gabon achieved its independence from France in 1960, and under the 1961 constitution is a republic with a presidential form of government.  Leon M'ba was the first president of the republic and presided over the unicameral National Assembly.  At the death of M'ba in 1967, Omar Bongo succeeded to the presidency; he introduced a one-party system in 1968.  In 1990 popular protests forced constitutional revisions to legalize multiple parties, with Bongo to remain president until at least 1993. His party was accused of vote-rigging in multiparty elections held in September 1990.

Fashoda crisis •• France and Britain almost came to war, France baked down.

* Napoleon III’s Maxico plan •• NAPOLEON III of France sought to establish a Mexican empire under the Austrian prince Maximilian (see MAXIMILIAN, EMPEROR OF MEXICO).  The liberals, led by Juarez, resisted bitterly.  Although supported by French troops and Mexican conservatives, Maximilian could not consolidate his empire.  The French withdrew in 1867, leaving the ill-fated emperor to meet his death.  Juarez, then president, initiated various reforms to modernize Mexico, but he died in 1872. The liberals made many mistakes, but their accomplishments were impressive.  They destroyed the excessive power of the army, the church, and other conservative elements.  They institutionalized democratic principles in the federal constitution of 1857.  Finally, their struggle against Maximilian created a sense of nationalism previously unknown in Mexico.

Opium wars ••• The Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60), the first major military clashes between China and the West, ended the long Chinese isolation from other civilizations.  For China, defeated in both conflicts, these wars represented the beginning of a century of humiliation by foreign powers through the imposition of unequal treaties that extracted commercial privileges, territory, and other benefits from the Chinese government.

The First Opium War stemmed from China's efforts to bar the illegal importation of opium by British merchants.  Britain scored an easy military victory.  By the treaties of Nanjing (Nanking) in 1842 and the Bogue in 1843, China opened the ports of Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Ningbo (Ning-po), and Shanghai to British trade and residence, ceded Hong Kong to Britain, and granted Britain EXTRATERRITORIALITY, that is, the right to try British citizens in China in British courts.  The other Western powers soon received similar privileges.

The Second Opium War, or Anglo-French War, in China also resulted from China's objections to the opium trade.  A joint offensive by Britain and France secured another victory.  The Treaty of Tianjin (Tientsin) was signed in 1858, but the Chinese refused to ratify it.  Hostilities resumed, and Beijing (Peking) was captured by the Western allies.

In 1860, China agreed to the provisions of the treaty, which opened 11 more ports, allowed foreign envoys to reside in Beijing, admitted missionaries to China, permitted foreigners to travel in the Chinese interior, and legalized the importation of opium.

Battle of Tsushima Strait •• Russia's Baltic fleet, after a cruise around the Cape of Good Hope, was defeated in Tsushima Strait in the battle of the Sea of Japan.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

  First Balkan War ••• The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 were two short wars fought over the disposition of the Ottoman Empire's former Balkan territories. Tsarist Russia supported the efforts of Bulgaria and Serbia in 1911 to establish an alliance that would check Austria-Hungary's advances southeastward into the Balkans.  In the aftermath of the 1908 revolt of the YOUNG TURKS, these two smaller states were additionally interested in dividing the remaining Turkish-controlled territory in Europe, specifically MACEDONIA.  On Mar.  13, 1912, Serbia and Bulgaria signed a treaty of mutual assistance.  Greece joined in a pact with Bulgaria on May 29, 1912, and Montenegro arranged agreements with Bulgaria and Serbia in late September.

Sarajevo Crisis • Serbian nationalist assassinated successor to Austria throne, Archduke Francais Fendinand. Austria delivers ultimatum to Serbia both countries would not back down.

Triple alliance ••• The name Triple Alliance has been applied to several separate coalitions of European powers. The Triple Alliance of 1668, formed by England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic, was aimed at halting encroachment into the Low Countries by France's LOUIS XIV. The Triple Alliance of 1717, made up of France, Britain, and the Dutch Republic, was directed against Spanish aspirations to Italian territory. The Holy Roman emperor's adherence to the pact in 1718 made it a Quadruple Alliance. The Triple Alliance of 1788, consisting of Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia, sought to check French influence in the Netherlands and Russia's ambitions in the Middle East.

Triple Entente ••• The Triple Entente--an alignment of Britain, France, and Russia that led to their alliance in WORLD WAR I--resulted from a series of bilateral diplomatic agreements among them between 1894 and 1907. The Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 stemmed from France's fear of isolation at the hands of Germany, which had formed the TRIPLE ALLIANCE with Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1882. Russia wanted support against Austria-Hungary, its rival in the Balkans. In 1904, Britain, fearing growing German naval power, entered into the Entente Cordiale with France. Thus, the two longtime antagonists terminated their colonial rivalry in Africa. Britain also sought reconciliation with its inveterate enemy Russia, which was amenable following a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 settled their differences by establishing separate spheres of influence in Persia. With this agreement, the Triple Entente, an understanding rather than an alliance, was complete. In World War I the Triple Entente faced the Triple Alliance minus Italy, which defected to the Entente.

Second Balkan War ••• Subsequently, the allies disputed the division of the territorial gains.  Bulgaria challenged, in particular, Greek and Serbian claims to Macedonia.  Overestimating its strength, Bulgaria launched an attack on its former allies on June 30, 1913.  This second Balkan War soon found Romania and Turkey joining the fighting with Greece and Serbia.  Thus attacked from all sides, Bulgaria had to sign an armistice on July 31. The Treaty of Bucharest (Aug.  10, 1913) stripped Bulgaria of some recently conquered territory.  Greece, which in the earlier conflict had taken Crete and some Aegean islands from Turkey, now formally acquired the important port of Salonika (Thessaloniki) and most of coastal Macedonia, while Serbia received north and central Macedonia.  Romania obtained a large section of the DOBRUJA from Bulgaria, which also had to yield the greater part of Thrace to Turkey.

German “blank check” •• Germany back up for Austria. To meant to incurege Austria. Became a start of war.

 Battle of Verdun • The WORLD WAR I Battle of Verdun (Feb. 21-Nov. 26, 1916), an unsuccessful German effort to take the offensive in the west, was one of the longest and bloodiest encounters of the war. Total casualties have been estimated at about 542,000 French and about 434,000 Germans.

Annexation of Bosnia • Austria-Hungary's outright annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1908 further increased tensions with Serbia, and the Bosnian Serbs agitated against Austrian rule.

Central Powers • Central Powers was the name given to the military alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary during WORLD WAR I. Until 1914, the two countries had been part of the TRIPLE ALLIANCE with Italy, but in 1915 the latter entered the war on the other side. Germany and Austria-Hungary were joined by the Ottoman Empire in 1914 and Bulgaria in 1915. The Central Powers were defeated in 1918.

“They shall not pass” • Henri Philippe PETAIN to head the Verdun defense. Petain, fighting under the famous motto Ils ne passeront pas! ("They shall not pass!"), reorganized his command and brought up reinforcements while the weary German troops paused.

Balfour declaration• Britain accept Zionism- home for Israel in Palestine.

Treaty of Brest Litvosk ••• The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on Mar. 3, 1918, by Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one hand and the new Soviet government of Russia on the other, ended Russian participation in World War I.  The Soviets had to agree to massive territorial losses.  Germany and Austria had signed a separate treaty with Ukraine in February.  Both treaties were annulled by the later armistice between Germany and the Western powers (November 1918).

Fourteen Points ••• The Fourteen Points were a program announced by U.S. President Woodrow WILSON before a joint session of Congress on Jan. 8, 1918, as the basis for a just peace settlement following World War I. Wilson hoped to rally liberal opinion throughout the world with his address, but his opening remarks were also designed as a sympathetic response to the new Bolshevik leaders in Russia, who had called upon Russia's western Allies to begin peace negotiations on a program of no annexations, no indemnities. Although many of Wilson's suggestions had been made before, in total effect the speech represented a radical departure from the old diplomacy and called upon future victors and vanquished to liberalize their diplomacy and ideology.

The first 5 points included the following: open covenants, openly arrived at; freedom of the seas; removal of economic barriers in international trade; reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety; and adjustment of all colonial claims on the basis of the self-determination of peoples. Points 6 through 13 dealt with specific territorial settlements. The 14th point became most important to Wilson: a general association of nations for the purpose of providing mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity for all nations.

Widely publicized and acclaimed in the belligerent countries on both sides, the address at once gave Wilson moral leadership of the Allies and became a powerful diplomatic and propagandist weapon. The Allies generally accepted it as a statement of war aims, and when Germany sued for peace it was on the basis of the Fourteen Points.

At the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE (1919-20) the second point was quickly repudiated by Britain, and several others were modified or compromised in spirit by territorial agreements. On the whole, however, the final settlement was nearer the Fourteen Points than Wilson and his major advisors had at first thought possible. Out of the 14th point came the LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Triple Alliance ••• The name Triple Alliance has been applied to several separate coalitions of European powers. The Triple Alliance of 1668, formed by England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic, was aimed at halting encroachment into the Low Countries by France's LOUIS XIV. The Triple Alliance of 1717, made up of France, Britain, and the Dutch Republic, was directed against Spanish aspirations to Italian territory. The Holy Roman emperor's adherence to the pact in 1718 made it a Quadruple Alliance. The Triple Alliance of 1788, consisting of Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia, sought to check French influence in the Netherlands and Russia's ambitions in the Middle East.

The most famous Triple Alliance was that of 1882, composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Its terms provided that if any of the parties were attacked by two or more powers, its allies would come to its aid. Orchestrated by German chancellor Otto von BISMARCK, it originated with the Dual Alliance of 1879, between Germany and Austria-Hungary, to which Italy was added in 1882. Germany was motivated by a desire to isolate France; Austria-Hungary sought support against Russia, its rival in the Balkans; and Italy, although fearful of Austro-Hungarian expansion, wanted help in pursuing its North African territorial ambitions. The alliance was renewed periodically.

Meanwhile, a series of bilateral agreements produced the TRIPLE ENTENTE (1907) among Britain, France, and Russia. Europe was thus divided into the two camps that fought each other in WORLD WAR I, except that Italy renounced the alliance and joined the Entente powers in 1915.

Sinking of the Lusitania •• the German government, fearing American involvement in the war on the side of the Allies, agreed to pay indemnities and guaranteed that submarines would not sink passenger liners without warning. Despite this agreement, another passenger ship, Sussex, was torpedoed by German U-boats on Mar. 24, 1916, and several Americans were killed.

Zimmermann Telegram ••• Perhaps one of the most important cryptanalytic successes ever revealed was that of the British naval intelligence, which in early 1917 transmitted to the United States the text of a German message known as the Zimmermann telegram.  In this message, the German ambassador in Mexico City was asked to approach the Mexican government with an offer of an alliance, the reward for which was Mexican possession of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.  The Zimmermann telegram was possibly one of the most significant events leading to U.S. entry into World War I.

Hindenburg • 1847-1934. German general and politician who as president of the Weimar Republic (1925-1934) appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor (1933).

General Petain • (1856-1951). During World War I the French general Philippe Petain became known as the hero of Verdun. Through his masterful defensive strategy he saved the fortified city from being taken by the Germans. By the end of World War II he was regarded as a traitor by the French people because of his collaboration with the Germans.

General Foch • 1851-1929. French marshal and commander in chief of Allied forces on the western front during WWI.

Schlieffen plan •• The German military officer Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, b. Feb.  28, 1833, d.  Jan.  14, 1913, was the author of the Schlieffen plan, Germany's strategic master plan at the beginning of WORLD WAR I.  Son of a Prussian general, he served (1891-1906) under Emperor WILLIAM II as chief of the general staff, becoming a field marshal in 1911.

T.E.Lawrence • Known as “Lawrence of Arabia.” 1888-1935. Welsh-born British soldier, adventurer, and writer who led the Arab revolt against the Turks (1916-1918) and later wrote an account of his adventures, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).

Battle of Jutland • The Battle of Jutland, from May 31 to June 1, 1916, was the only major naval engagement in WORLD WAR I.

* Secret Treaty of London • In World War I the Entente powers concluded (Apr.  26, 1915) the secret Treaty of London with Italy, which pledged to enter the war in exchange for territorial concessions.  Although Italy fulfilled its obligation, it received only part of the territories promised when peace was concluded (1918-19)

war guilt” clause •• said every damage during World War I was Germany’s fault.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SOVIET UNION

Bolsheiks and Mensheviks •••• The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks emerged as rival factions within the Russian Social Democratic Labor party, a Marxist organization, at its 1903 congress in Brussels and London.  The division stemmed from a dispute over party membership qualifications.  The party's left wing, led by Vladimir Ilich LENIN, wanted a disciplined, centralized organization consisting only of activists.  The moderates, led by Julius Martov, favored a more loosely organized mass party.  Lenin's followers, who gained a short-lived ascendancy in 1903, became known as Bolsheviks (majority), and Martov's backers were dubbed Mensheviks (minority).

Although the cause of the initial split seemed trivial, it reflected a basic difference of approach that became clearer as spokesmen for the two factions elaborated their views in the following years.  The Mensheviks adhered to the belief of veteran revolutionary Georgy PLEKHANOV that a bourgeois-led, democratic revolution bringing Russia into the capitalist era would have to precede the socialist revolution.  Lenin, on the other hand, argued that a revolution of workers and peasants, if properly led, could establish socialism in one stage.  The two factions finally split into separate parties in 1912.

Because the Mensheviks believed in standing aside for the bourgeois revolution, they declined to seek power after Emperor NICOLAS II was overthrown in March (February, O.S.) 1917, although they did accept cabinet posts in the provisional government.  The Bolsheviks, however, gained control of key workers' soviets (councils) and toppled the provisional government in November (October, O.S.) 1917.  Lenin's regime suppressed the Mensheviks shortly after the beginning of the Civil War in 1918, but they were permitted occasional spurts of political activity until the spring of 1921, when all opposition parties were abolished.

Father Gapon •• when an estimated 1,000 workers were killed by Cossacks who fired on peaceful demonstrators, led by a priest, Father Gapon, in Saint Petersburg.

Alexander Kerensky ••• headed the Russian provisional government from July to October 1917, during the interim between the overthrow of the tsar and the Bolshevik Revolution.  A lawyer and a democratic moderate, Kerensky joined the Socialist Revolutionary party in 1905 and was elected to the fourth DUMA in 1912.  As premier, Kerensky was personally identified with Russia's abortive military offensive in World War I, a fact that further weakened his already shaky coalition government.  In a vain effort to maintain control, Kerensky ordered V. I. LENIN's arrest as well as that of the right-wing general Lavr KORNILOV. Beleaguered by radicals and reactionaries alike, he fled Russia in October.  He lived in Paris until 1940, after which he settled in New York City.

November Revolution •• Following the successful November Revolution, Stalin was appointed to seemingly mundane administrative posts such as commissar of nationalities (1917-23) and commissar of workers' and peasants' inspection (1919-23), but in 1922, without fanfare, Stalin became general secretary of the party's Central Committee.

Leon Trosky ••• was second only to Vladimir Ilich LENIN as polemicist and organizer of the Bolshevik phase of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917.  A charismatic orator and superb tactician, he was also a brilliant theorist whose writings greatly influenced socialist movements worldwide.  His practical skills enabled him to plan the Petrograd uprising in November 1917 and to create the Red Army that saved the Bolshevik regime in the ensuing Civil War (1918-20).  But his fierce independence and aloofness prevented him from gaining broad party support after Lenin's death, in his unsuccessful struggle for power with Joseph STALIN.

Stalin •••• became the preeminent Soviet leader after the death of Vladimir I. LENIN in 1924.  From 1929 until his own death in 1953, Stalin held absolute authority.  Outwardly modest and unassuming and intellectually unimpressive, he applied a shrewd, practical intelligence to political organization and manipulation.  Because he rarely appeared to be what he was, Stalin was consistently underestimated by his opponents, who usually became his victims.  He brought his country to world power status but imposed upon it one of the most ruthless regimes in history.

Early Life and Career

Stalin was born Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili on Dec. 21 (N.S.), 1879, in the Georgian hill town of Gori.  His father, a poor, unsuccessful shoemaker, was an alcoholic who beat his son unmercifully and who died in a brawl when the boy was 11 years old.  Stalin's mother, Ekaterina, was a washerwoman, hopeful that her sole surviving child would be a priest.  According to Robert Tucker, a recent biographer, her attentiveness encouraged Stalin toward self-idealization, while the deprivations of his childhood may have made a compensatory fantasy life psychologically indispensable.  In any event, young Stalin was given to identifying with hero-figures.  His early nickname, Koba, was that of a fictional mountain bandit and rebel;  if his family's squalor gave him ambition and an acute class consciousness, his Georgian background also taught him brutality and vengeance.

At the age of 14, Stalin entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary.  By his own testimony, the discipline there was another impetus toward revolutionary activism.  In 1898 he became involved in radical political activity.  The next year he left the seminary without graduating and became a full-time revolutionary organizer.  A member of the Georgian branch of the Social Democratic party by 1901, Stalin roamed the Caucasus, agitating among workers, helping with strikes, and spreading socialist literature.  He had no oratorical skills or charisma but showed great talent at practical organizational activity.  His dull, pockmarked appearance also concealed a genuine intelligence and a particularly acute memory.

When the Social Democrats split (1903) into two groups, the BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS, Stalin supported the more radical Bolsheviks and their leader, V. I. Lenin.  Lenin appreciated Stalin's familiarity with Russian nationality problems and his intense personal loyalty.  Between 1902 and 1913, Stalin was arrested many times but escaped repeatedly to continue working as a Bolshevik organizer.  During these years he also staged robberies to obtain funds for the Bolsheviks.

The Road to Absolute Power

In 1912, Lenin rewarded Stalin by naming him to the Bolshevik Central Committee.  From there, Stalin rapidly gained influence and power among the Bolsheviks and served as the first editor of Pravda, the party newspaper.  He also began to use the name Stalin, meaning "man of steel." Exiled (1913-17) to Siberia by the tsarist government, he returned after the March Revolution had overthrown the monarchy (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917). Stalin played an important organizational role in the party after the first unsuccessful Bolshevik attempt to seize power (the "July days") when the Bolshevik Leon TROTSKY was arrested and Lenin was forced into hiding.  Following the successful November Revolution, Stalin was appointed to seemingly mundane administrative posts such as commissar of nationalities (1917-23) and commissar of workers' and peasants' inspection (1919-23), but in 1922, without fanfare, Stalin became general secretary of the party's Central Committee.

He now controlled appointments, set agendas, and could transfer thousands of party officials from post to post at will.  He was also nourishing a hatred of intellectuals, a disdain for educated "specialists," and an insatiable thirst for power.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin used his control of the party apparatus to crush his opponents.  For his de-emphasis on world revolution under the slogan "socialism in one country" and his moderate economic policies, the general secretary was attacked by Trotsky, who was belatedly joined by Lev KAMENEV and Grigory ZINOVIEV.  By 1928, Stalin had driven this leftist opposition from its party posts.  Then, whether for political or economic reasons, he adopted such leftist programs as agricultural collectivization and rapid industrialization and smashed the party's right, which was led by Nikolai BUKHARIN, for opposing measures that he himself had recently attacked. By the end of 1929, Stalin was the undisputed master of the USSR.

Collectivization and Industrialization

Stalin's program of farm collectivization began late in 1928 when he suddenly ordered the expropriation of the lands of the middle-class farmers, or KULAKS.  The party managed to seize total control of the harvest, deport about 5 million kulaks as "bourgeois residue" from the countryside, and secure enough capital (through the export of the forcibly seized grain) to finance a massive industrialization drive.  Brutally suppressing peasant resistance, Stalin refused to slacken the pace despite a famine in 1932 and mounting opposition within his own party.  Disaffection with Stalin was manifest at the 17th Party Congress in January-February 1934, when Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov, a favorite of moderate delegates, received an ovation equal to Stalin's.  Peasant resistance was quashed, however, and collectivization proved a success in terms of facilitating rapid industrial growth.  Soviet industrialization was achieved by means of three 5-year plans, lasting from 1928 until World War II interrupted the last one in 1941.

The Great Purges

Having mastered the economic front, Stalin felt free to turn on all those who appeared to have doubted his wisdom and ability. In December 1934, Kirov was assassinated, probably at the behest of Stalin, who used the murder as the pretext for arresting--within the year--virtually all major party figures as saboteurs.  From 1936 to 1938 he staged the Moscow show trials, at which prominent old Bolsheviks and army officers were convicted of implausibly monstrous crimes.  By 1937, Stalin's blood purge extended through every party cell in the country.  By 1939 a total of 98 of the 139 central committee members elected in 1934 had been shot and 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th Congress arrested.  The secret-police reign of terror annihilated a large portion of every profession and reached down into the general population.  Deaths have been estimated in the millions, including those who perished in concentration camps.  At the same time, Stalin began promoting a cult of adulation that proclaimed him a genius in every field of human endeavor.  By the time the terror eased in 1938, Stalin's dictatorship had become entirely personal, unrestrained by the party or any other institution.

World War II Leadership

In world affairs, Stalin began to fear the growing power of Nazi Germany.  After abortive attempts to reach an accord with the Western democracies, he concluded (1939) a nonaggression treaty (see NAZI-SOVIET PACT) with Hitler.  After Germany invaded Poland at the start of World War II, Stalin acted to expand Soviet influence in Europe by occupying eastern Poland and attacking Finland (see RUSSO-FINNISH WAR).  The nonaggression pact with Germany, however, proved short-lived when German troops invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Taking personal control of the armed forces, Stalin expended troops as easily as he had executed kulaks, but the USSR's industrial plant produced enormous quantities of sophisticated armament and weaponry.  Much more so than the other principal Allied leaders, U.S. president Franklin D. ROOSEVELT or British prime minister Winston CHURCHILL, Stalin also commanded his army directly on a day-to-day basis, impressing foreign observers tremendously with his grasp of detail.  He proved a skillful negotiator at the major Allied conferences (see TEHRAN CONFERENCE;  YALTA CONFERENCE;  POTSDAM CONFERENCE).

Last Years

In 1945, Stalin was at the height of his power and prestige, regarded as his country's savior by millions of his subjects. The period between 1945 and his death in 1953, however, saw a new wave of repression and some of Stalin's worst excesses. Returned prisoners of war were incarcerated in concentration camps.  New duties on peasants reduced many to the status of serfs, and his imposition of Communist regimes on Eastern European nations helped create the perilous climate of the COLD WAR.  Stalin now turned on many of his closest associates.  In early 1953 he announced that he had uncovered a plot among the Kremlin's corps of doctors;  new arrests seemed imminent, and many feared another great purge.  Stalin suddenly died, however, on Mar. 5, 1953.

Stalin's reputation declined in the USSR after Nikita KHRUSHCHEV revealed many of Stalin's crimes in 1956.  In the post-Khrushchev period, however, notably that of Leonid BREZHNEV, anti-Stalinist rhetoric was downplayed.  In China and part of the Third World he was often regarded as a strong revolutionary leader who modernized his nation's economy.

In the early years of the Gorbachev period, official opinion on Stalin vacillated between praise and criticism.  But in the atmosphere of GLASNOST (a policy of encouragement of candor and openness), artists, intellectuals, and even political figures began to speak openly of the horrors of the Stalin years. Repentance, a 1986 film thinly disguised as fiction, concerned a dictator who was a composite of Stalin and Lavrenti BERIA, the Soviet KGB chief.  In a major speech in November 1987, Gorbachev, addressing 6,000 Communist party officials and others, said that Stalin had been guilty of "enormous and unforgivable" crimes that were a "lesson for all generations." In February 1988, the Soviet government rehabilitated the reputation of Nikolai Bukharin and 19 others purged by Stalin, and in May the government officially announced a posthumous rehabilitation of Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Karl Radek, and others who had been executed.  In Nedelya, a weekly supplement to the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia, an April 1988 article declared that Stalin's policy of forced collectivization between 1929 and 1933 had cost 25 million lives.  Pravda, the Soviet Communist party newspaper, reported in January 1989 that 25,000 victims of Stalin's purges had been posthumously rehabilitated.  TASS, the Soviet news agency, reported in March that a huge mass grave near the city of Kiev contained the remains of as many as 300,000 people, killed in the 1930s under Stalin.

“Bloody Sunday” •• The war triggered widespread disturbances within Russia, including rural violence, labor unrest (in Saint Petersburg troops fired on a large crowd of demonstrating workers;  Bloody Sunday, Jan. 22, 1905), and naval mutinies (most notably, that led by sailors of the battleship Potemkin in Odessa, June 1905).

October Manefesto •• Thousands of revolutionary soviets (councils) had sprung up all over Russia. The Bolsheviks carried on propaganda campaigns among them. By October 1917 the party controlled the majority of the soviets of Petrograd and Moscow.

Rasputin •• 1872?-1916. Russian starets whose magnetic personality and relative success in the treatment of the czarevich's hemophilia gained him favor in the court of Nicholas II. He was assassinated by noblemen who feared that his licentious manner and ignorance would undermine the monarchy.

Cheka •• Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, b.  Sept.  11 (N.S.), 1877, d. July 20, 1926, was the organizer of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police organization.

White Army •• Between 1918 and 1922 the Bolsheviks were confronted with civil war, intervention by foreign troops, and terrible famine. "White" armies of soldiers loyal to the czar challenged the Bolshevik "Red" armies.

Politburo •• The politburo, or political bureau, was the supreme executive body of the Communist party of the USSR.  During the period (1919-90) when the party held a monopoly of power, it was the chief policymaking organ of both party and government, and its members were the real leaders of the nation.

collective farm •• Collective farms are large, state-owned agricultural units found primarily in Communist countries, especially in the Soviet Union, where they were forcibly introduced in the late 1920's, replacing privately owned farms.

Liquidation of the kulaks • Stalin ordered the collectivization of farms. When peasants resisted, he ordered the state to seize their land and possessions. Well-to-do farmers, called kulaks, especially resented collectivization. Determined to root out all opposition, Stalin showed no mercy to the rebellious kulaks. In 1932-33 he created a famine in the Ukraine and liquidated some 3 million kulaks through death by starvation.

NEP ••• A program allowing limited capitalism, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced in the USSR by V.I.  LENIN in 1921 to alleviate the economic failings and political discontent caused by the oppressive centralization of the Civil War policies known as War Communism.  In agriculture, NEP replaced requisitions by force with taxes in kind and allowed peasants to sell their produce in a free market.  Banks and large-scale industry remained state-controlled, but small private enterprises were permitted.  Economic productivity rose substantially, but in 1928 Joseph Stalin abandoned NEP for forced collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization.

  THE APPARENT VICTORY OF DEMOCRACY

Mohandas K. Ghandhi ••• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, leader of the Indian nationalist movement and known in his later life as Mahatma ("great soul"), was one of the greatest national leaders of the 20th century. His methods and philosophy of nonviolent confrontation, or civil disobedience, not only led his own country to independence but influenced political activists of many persuasions throughout the world.

Gandhi was born in Porbandar, India, on Oct.  2, 1869. Although his father was a chief minister for the maharaja of Porbandar, the family came from the traditional caste of grocers and moneylenders (the name Gandhi means "grocer").  His mother was a devout adherent of Jainism, a religion in which ideas of nonviolence and vegetarianism are paramount.  Gandhi stated that he was most influenced by his mother, whose life "was an endless chain of fasts and vows." When, in the company of boyhood friends, he secretly smoked, ate meat, told lies, or wore Western clothing, he suffered intense feelings of guilt. These feelings forced him to make resolutions about his moral behavior that were to stay with him for the rest of his life.

Married by arrangement at 13, Gandhi went to London to study law when he was 18.  He was admitted to the bar in 1891 and for a while practiced law in Bombay.  From 1893 to 1914 he worked for an Indian firm in South Africa.  During these years Gandhi's humiliating experiences of overt racial discrimination propelled him into agitation on behalf of the Indian community of South Africa.  He assumed leadership of protest campaigns and gradually developed his techniques and tenets of nonviolent resistance known as satyagraha (literally, "steadfastness in truth").

Returning to India in January 1915, Gandhi soon became involved in labor organizing.  The massacre of AMRITSAR (1919), in which troops fired on and killed hundreds of nationalist demonstrators, turned him to direct political protest.  Within a year he was the dominant figure in the INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS, which he launched on a policy of noncooperation with the British in 1920-22.  Although total noncooperation was abandoned, Gandhi continued his tactic of civil disobedience, organizing protest marches against unpopular British measures, such as the salt tax (1930), and boycotts of British goods.

Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned by the British and resorted to hunger strikes as part of his civil disobedience.  His final imprisonment came in 1942-44, after he had demanded total withdrawal of the British (the "Quit India" movement) during World War II.

Together with his struggle for political independence, Gandhi fought to improve the status of the lowest classes of society, the casteless UNTOUCHABLES, whom he called harijans ("children of God").  He was a believer in manual labor and simple living; he spun the thread and wove the cloth for his own garments and insisted that his followers do so, too.  He disagreed with those who wanted India to become an industrial country.

Gandhi was also tireless in his attempts to forge closer bonds between the Hindu majority and the numerous minorities of India, particularly the Muslims.  His greatest failure, in fact, was his inability to dissuade India Muslims, led by Muhammad Ali JINNAH, from creating a separate state, Pakistan. When independence was finally achieved in 1947, after negotiations in which he was a principal participant, Gandhi opposed the partition of the subcontinent with such intensity that he launched a mass movement against it.  Ironically, he was assassinated in Delhi on Jan.  30, 1948, by a Hindu fanatic who mistakenly thought his antipartition sentiment was both pro-Muslim and pro-Pakistan.

Koumintang •• 1550 A Chinese nationalist (see NATIONALISM) political party founded by Sun Yat-sen, which gained control of CHINA in the early twentieth century. Later, under the leadership of CHIANG KAI-SHEK, it was defeated by the Chinese COMMUNISTS, and became the ruling party of TAIWAN, the island to which Chiang and his supporters had fled.

Weimar republic ••• The Weimar Republic was the popular name of the German republic established at the end of World War I. Its constitution, adopted on July 30, 1919, was drawn up in the city of Weimar. The republic, which gave Germany its first national experience of democracy, was overthrown by the National Socialists (1933).

Kellogg Briand Pact ••• The Kellogg-Briand Pact was an agreement to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. It was signed in Paris by 15 nations on Aug. 27, 1928. Almost every country in the world soon joined the pact, which was hailed as an important step toward peace. Aristide BRIAND, the French foreign minister, led the way to this pact by proposing that France and the United States renounce war with each other. The U.S. secretary of state, Frank B. KELLOGG, then suggested that other nations be invited to pledge to settle all disputes peacefully. Because the pact did not provide for enforcement, it was useless in stopping undeclared wars, such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

Chiang Kai shek •• 1887-1975. Chinese military and political figure who led the Nationalists against the rising Communist forces and was driven from the mainland to Taiwan (1949), where he served as president of Nationalist China until his death.

* the Long March •• Called one of the most extraordinary marches in history, the Long March was the 10,000-km (6,000-mi) epic journey across China undertaken by the Chinese Communists in 1934-35.  In October 1934 about 85,000 troops and another 15,000 auxiliary personnel of the Red Army escaped from a Nationalist cordon in Jiangxi (Kiangsi) province, in southeastern China.

Locarno Treaties ••• eries of seven agreements designed to promote the security of western Europe at the end of World War I (1914-1918). The treaties were signed by representatives from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Poland in Locarno, Switzerland, on October 16, 1925. The first of the Locarno treaties guaranteed the common boundaries of France, Germany, and Belgium. The Rhineland, an area covering parts of Belgium, France, and Germany, was established as a neutral zone. The British and Italians were involved in the guarantee, but they did not have any new military obligations to ensure the implementation of the treaties. Although France signed security treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, the treaties did not offer the same frontier recognition to the countries on Germany's eastern borders. There were, however, agreements providing for the arbitration of disputes between Germany and its Belgian, French, Czechoslovak, and Polish neighbors. The treaties were to operate within the framework of the League of Nations, which Germany joined in 1926.

Initially the “spirit of Locarno” helped improve relations between France and Germany, but relations worsened again in the 1930s. German leader Adolf Hitler denounced the principal Locarno Treaty and ordered the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936. Germany's aggression, unchallenged by the other signers of the Locarno treaties, brought on World War II (1939-1945).

Mao Tse-Dong •• 1893-1976. Chinese Communist leader and theorist. A founder of the Chinese Communist Party (1921), he led the Long March (1934-1935) and proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949. As party chairman and the country's first head of state (1949-1959) he initiated the Great Leap Forward and the founding of communes. He continued as party chairman after 1959 and was a leading figure in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969). In the 1970's he consolidated his political power and established ties with the West.

Aristide Briand • 1862-1932. French politician who became prime minister for the first of 11 times in 1909. As foreign minister he was the chief architect of the Locarno Pact (1925), which guaranteed the borders of Belgium, France, and Germany. He also drew up the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) and shared the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.

  Sun Yat Sen • 1866-1925. Chinese politician who served as provisional president of the republic after the fall of the Manchu (1911-1912) and later led the opposition to Yuan Shigai.

  DEMOCRACY  AND DICTATORSHIP

general strike of 1926 ••• The Labour party believed full employment could be attained by government ownership of basic industries. The unions called a general strike in 1926 to force through their demands. The strike was quickly ended except for the coal miners, the most distressed of the workers. Stanley Baldwin headed the government during the general strike of 1926, the Ethiopian crisis of 1935, and the abdication crisis of 1936. In the general strike (May 4-12, 1926) the Conservative Baldwin proclaimed a state of emergency. He organized volunteers to maintain essential services and refused to negotiate with labor leaders until the strike ended.

Blackshirts •• Blackshirts was the name of the paramilitary action squads of the Italian Fascist party, organized in 1919. These squads, whose uniforms included black shirts, broke up strikes and made other violent attacks on the opponents of fascism. They staged the March on Rome (1922) that brought Benito MUSSOLINI to power. Members of the German SS (Schutzstaffel), the Nazi party's paramilitary corps, were called Blackshirts.

Munich putsch ••• The unsuccessful coup, or putsch, launched by Adolf HITLER in a Munich beer hall on the night of Nov. 8, 1923, was designed to bring the Bavarian government and, ultimately, the national government of Germany under the control of the National Socialist (Nazi) party.  Munich, the capital of Bavaria, was the cradle of the Nazi movement (see NAZISM) but was also beset by other right-wing elements that challenged Hitler for leadership.  The Munich Putsch (also known as the "beer-hall putsch") was thus aimed at consolidating Hitler's own political position as well as overthrowing the alleged government of Jews and Marxists in Berlin that he viewed as destroying Germany. On November 8, Hitler and Gen. Erich LUDENDORFF announced the "National Revolution," and the next day they led a Nazi march on the Bavarian War Ministry.  Captured and tried for high treason, Hitler astutely used his trial to attract nationwide publicity for the Nazi cause.  He served less than a year of a 5-year prison sentence, during which he wrote MEIN KAMPF.

purge of 1934 •••In a blood purge of 1934 many party leaders were executed for an alleged plot against Hitler. When Hindenburg died, Hitler abolished the office of president and took the title Fuhrer, or "leader."

Himmler, Heinrich (1900-45), German officer and political leader, born in Munich, Germany; joined National Socialist party 1919; deputy leader 1927 and Reich leader of Schutzstaffel (SS) 1929; chief of Gestapo and carried out "purge" 1934; minister of interior and chief of Reich administration, also head of People's army; killed self when captured by British

Mein Kampf •• One of the most important political tracts of the 20th century, Mein Kampf (My Battle, 1924 and 1926; Eng. trans., 1939) is considered the bible of NAZISM. Written by Adolf HITLER while he served a sentence in Landsberg Prison, the book presents Hitler's major ideas on anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, superiority of the Aryan race, German nationalism, the state's superiority over the individual, and Hitler's feelings of hostility for democracy and miscegenation. The importance of the book, which calls for German domination of Europe, is derived from the notoriety of its author rather than from his logical presentation of National Socialist ideas.

Benito Mussolini ••• Benito Mussolini, b. July 29, 1883, d. Apr. 28, 1945, was the founder of Italian FASCISM and premier (1922-43) of Italy, ruling as a dictator from about 1925.  The son of an anticlerical, socialist blacksmith, he was undisciplined and unruly as a child.  He shared his father's views, adding to them ideas picked up from his wide reading of such writers as Louis Auguste BLANQUI, Friedrich Wilhelm NIETZSCHE, and Georges SOREL.  Mussolini became an itinerant schoolteacher and journalist, spent a few years in Switzerland and the Austrian Trentino, and took as his wife a peasant, Rachele Guidi, who bore him five children.

In 1912, Mussolini became editor of the Milan Socialist party newspaper Avanti!  When World War I began in 1914, he at first opposed Italy's involvement but soon reversed his position and called for Italy's entry on the side of the Allies.  Expelled from the Socialist party for this stance, he founded his own newspaper in Milan, Il popolo d'Italia, which later became the organ of his Fascist movement.  He served in the army until he was wounded in 1917.

On Mar. 23, 1919, Mussolini and other war veterans founded in Milan a revolutionary, nationalistic group called the Fasci di Combattimento, named for the ancient Roman symbol of power, the FASCES.  His Fascist movement developed into a powerful "radicalism of the right," gaining the support of many landowners in the lower Po valley, industrialists, and army officers.  Fascist blackshirt squads carried on local civil war against Socialists, Communists, Catholics, and Liberals.

On Oct. 28, 1922, after the Fascists had marched on Rome, Mussolini secured a mandate from King VICTOR EMMANUEL III to form a coalition government.  In 1925-26, after a lengthy crisis with the parliament following the assassination of the Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti (see MATTEOTTI CRISIS), he imposed a single-party, totalitarian dictatorship.  His Corporative State came to terms with Italian capitalism but abolished free trade unions.  He ended conflict with the church by the LATERAN TREATY of 1929, his most enduring legacy to Italy.

In the mid-1930s, Mussolini turned to an aggressive foreign policy, conquering (1935-36) Ethiopia and helping General Francisco FRANCO in the SPANISH CIVIL WAR.  Rapprochement (1936) with Hitler's Germany was expanded into a military alliance (1939).  In April 1939, Mussolini rashly ordered his armies to occupy Albania.  However, he kept Italy out of World War II until June 1940, when the fall of France was imminent and the Germans seemed to be winning the war.

After a series of Italian military disasters in Greece and North Africa, the leaders of his party abandoned Mussolini. The king dismissed him on July 25, 1943, and had him arrested. But on September 12 the Germans rescued him, making him puppet head of a government in northern Italy.  In April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, tried to flee advancing Allied forces.  Captured by Italian partisans at Lake Como, they were shot on April 28 and their bodies were hung in a public square in Milan.  Mussolini was later buried at Predappio, his birthplace.  Although popular with most Italians until the late 1930s, Il Duce ("the leader") lost their support when he dragged his country into a war it was unprepared to fight.  Few expressed regret over either the overthrow of fascism or his death.  Many of Mussolini's speeches and writings, including an autobiography (1939), are available in English.

Sinn Fein Party •• By the end of the war, the influence of the republican Sinn Fein party had supplanted that of the Nationalists. Sinn Fein's revolutionary parliament, Dail Eireann, rejected the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, which provided for home rule with separate parliaments in Northern and Southern Ireland.

Leon Blum •• 1872-1950. French socialist politician who served as premier (1936-1937, 1938, and 1946-1947). He was imprisoned (1940-1945) by the Vichy government during World War II.

Gestapo •• The Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police), known as the Gestapo, was, together with the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Black Shirts) the mainstay of power of the German National Socialists under Adolf HITLER.  Originally formed (1933) by Hermann GOERING as a political police unit in the state of Prussia, it gradually came under the control of Heinrich HIMMLER.

Ramsay MacDonald • 1866-1937. British politician who served as prime minister (1924 and 1929-1935).

March on Rome” ••• Blackshirts was the name of the paramilitary action squads of the Italian Fascist party, organized in 1919. These squads, whose uniforms included black shirts, broke up strikes and made other violent attacks on the opponents of fascism. They staged the March on Rome (1922) that brought Benito MUSSOLINI to power. Members of the German SS (Schutzstaffel), the Nazi party's paramilitary corps, were called Blackshirts.

Reichstag fire ••• the burning of the German parliament building in Berlin on Feb. 27, 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany; helped turn public opinion against opponents of the Nazi party, especially Communists; immediately followed by a decree suspending all constitutional rights and transferring power of parliament to Nazi cabinet; blame for fire placed on an alleged Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who was convicted; fire widely believed to have been planned by the Nazi party for its own benefit.

Nuremberg laws ••• Adolf Hitler's persecution of Jews began as soon as the Nazis came to power in 1933. A strident anti-Semitism had always been part of his party platform (see Hitler). Jewish businesses were boycotted and vandalized. Jews were driven from their jobs in government and universities. By the Nuremberg laws of 1935 they lost their citizenship and were forbidden to intermarry with other Germans. They became nonpersons in their own country with no claim to rights of any kind. Many fled to other European nations or to the United States. Most, however, stayed behind, convinced that as fully integrated German citizens they were safe. In so doing they failed to understand the seriousness of their predicament.

Black and Tans •• The Black and Tans, named for their khaki uniforms with black caps and black armbands, were a group of former soldiers recruited by the British government to help the Royal Irish Constabulary put down the Irish nationalist rebellion in 1920.

Hitler •••• Adolf Hitler was the ruler of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Guided by concepts of elitism and racism, he established a brutal totalitarian regime under the ideological banner of National Socialism, or NAZISM.  His drive for empire resulted in the devastation of World War II, culminating in Germany's defeat and the reordering of world power relationships.

In 1913, Hitler went to Munich, partly to evade conscription into the Austrian army.  There, however, he answered the call to colors at the outbreak (August 1914) of World War I. Serving in the Bavarian Sixteenth Regiment on the western front, he distinguished himself for bravery and was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class.  For the first time in his life Hitler had found a home;  he glorified the raw majesty of life under fire, the beauty of comradeship, and the nobility of the warrior.  His soldierly dreams of victory and fulfillment were shattered, however, by Germany's defeat.  He became convinced that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by Jews and Marxists.

Hitler's rise to power paralleled the unstable course of the Weimar Republic, which replaced the fallen Hohenzollern monarchy.  The abortive Communist revolution in Germany and the dictated Peace of Versailles determined Hitler's decision to enter politics.  In 1919 he joined a small political faction in Munich and within the next year formed the National Socialist German Workers' party (NSDAP).  He directed the organization with an iron hand and used its meetings to deliver forceful rhetorical assaults on Germany's "enemies." In 1923 he led the party into the ill-fated MUNICH PUTSCH.  This action resulted in his imprisonment.

While in prison at Landsberg, Hitler wrote MEIN KAMPF, which became the standard work of Nazi political philosophy.  He defined the enemy as world Jewry, international communism, effete liberalism, and decadent capitalism.  Hitler offered instead pure Aryan blood and the renewal of German nationalism under a fighting elite.  Germany would once more become the leading power on the Continent and gain its living space (Lebensraum) in central Europe and Russia.

The Great Depression opened the way for Hitler's success.  Mass unemployment, Communist insurgency, and an alliance between the Nazis and the industrialist Alfred Hugenberg's Nationalist party all contributed to the NSDAP's electoral breakthrough in September 1930.  It increased its seats in the Reichstag from 12 to 107, becoming the second largest party.  Hitler capitalized on the violent political climate by employing the SA (Sturmabteilung, or Brownshirts), the Nazi paramilitary arm, in the battle for the streets.

His strategy worked.  In April 1932 he only narrowly lost the presidential election to the incumbent Paul von HINDENBURG, and elections in July made the Nazis the largest party in the Reichstag, with 37% of the vote.  The party retained this position despite a decline in its vote in the November elections.  Finally, Hindenburg, having failed to gain stability under the regimes of Heinrich BRUNING, Franz von PAPEN, and Kurt von SCHLEICHER, named Hitler as chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933.

Hitler's consolidation of power was a gradual process that involved both the assumption of dictatorial authority and the elimination of opposition outside and within the Nazi party. The REICHSTAG fire of Feb. 27, 1933, provided a pretext for outlawing the Communist party and arresting its leaders.  The real breakthrough, however, came with the Reichstag's passage of the Enabling Act on Mar. 23, 1933, giving Hitler 4 years of dictatorial powers.

Having won a commanding lead in the last free elections, held in March, Hitler proceeded to dismantle all parties except the NSDAP.  All federal and state institutions and organizations were "coordinated," purged of Jewish influence, and brought under party control.  On June 30, 1934, Hitler liquidated Ernst ROEHM, commander of the SA, along with hundreds of other Nazi radicals.  With the death of Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler also assumed the functions of the presidency.  He adopted the title of Fuhrer, or supreme leader, of the THIRD REICH.

Institutional supremacy was reinforced by an elaborate terror apparatus, established by Reichsfuhrer Himmler, leader of the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Blackshirts), the paramilitary organization that supplanted the SA.  The SS and GESTAPO instituted the notorious system of CONCENTRATION CAMPS. Although other groups and institutions suffered persecution by the Nazis because of their political unacceptability, the Jews were abused solely because of their racial identity.  One decree after another eliminated them from their positions in the professions and bureaucracy.  The Nuremberg Racial Laws of 1935 deprived them of their citizenship.

Propaganda went hand in hand with terror.  Goebbels adroitly orchestrated themes that were synchronized with Hitler's successes in both domestic and foreign affairs.  Germany's economic recovery reinforced the widespread support Hitler enjoyed throughout the Reich during in the 1930s.

The Road to War

Hitler's economic policies were initially geared to recovery from the depression;  thereafter, they were tied to his foreign-policy goals.  By appointing Hjalmar SCHACHT, the architect of Germany's financial recovery in the 1920s, as his economics minister, Hitler reaffirmed his support of conservative economic policies.  He undertook a vast program of public works, including construction of a network of superhighways (Autobahnen), which both returned the unemployed to work and primed the economy.  By naming Goering director of the Four Year Plan in 1936, however, Hitler focused the entire economy on preparations for war.

Hitler's foreign-policy goals were spelled out in Mein Kampf: to overturn the Versailles settlement and unite all Germans in a single Greater Germany, to destroy Bolshevism, and to conquer and colonize eastern Europe.  At first he proceeded cautiously. He withdrew Germany from the League of Nations as early as October 1933, but he offset criticism by repeated declarations of his peaceful intentions and by concluding a series of bilateral agreements, including a nonaggression pact with Poland (1934).  As the indecisiveness of his opponents became clear, Hitler acted more forcefully.  In March 1935 he announced the rearmament of Germany in open violation of the Treaty of Versailles.  He was rewarded by Britain's concurrence in the form of an Anglo-German Naval Pact (June 1935).  The following year, without warning, he remilitarized the Rhineland, and France remained immobile.  The two major European democracies, fearful of war, seemed set on the course of appeasement.

Bolstered by the formation (1936) of the Rome-Berlin AXIS and the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, Hitler outlined his war plans to the German military leaders in a secret meeting in November 1937.  Several of them objected and were promptly dismissed.  In March 1938 he annexed Austria (the Anschluss). Later that year, after an international crisis over alleged abuses to ethnic Germans in the Sudeten area of western Czechoslovakia, Britain and France joined Italy in signing the Sudetenland over to Germany at the MUNICH CONFERENCE.  In March 1939, German troops completed the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.  Belatedly, Britain and France moved to guarantee Poland's integrity.  Hitler, undeterred, concluded (August 1939) the NAZI-SOVIET PACT, which cleared the way for his attack on Poland on September 1.  He was surprised but prepared when France and Britain declared war on September 3. The pact with the USSR provided him the opportunity to crush his enemies in the west piecemeal.

World War II

Hitler became overconfident during the BLITZKRIEG campaigns of 1939-40, when he was lionized as the "greatest military commander of all times." With victories in Poland (1939) and France (1940) he avenged the alleged injustices of Versailles. By June 1940, Axis control stretched from the Arctic to North Africa, from France to central Europe.  Hitler received his first reversal in the BATTLE OF BRITAIN (fall 1940), forcing him to abandon his plan to invade Britain.

The Fuhrer lost no time in establishing the "New Order" in occupied Europe, a system based on terror, forced labor, and concentration camps.  Under the cover of war, he began the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question," which involved the liquidation of European Jewry (see HOLOCAUST).

In June 1941, Hitler cast aside the Nazi-Soviet Pact and invaded the USSR, as he had always planned.  He was rewarded with several major victories in classic battles of encirclement.  The Soviets, however, turned the tide--first at Moscow (December 1941) and later at Stalingrad (winter 1942-43).  Moreover, in December 1941, the United States--a factor that Hitler had barely considered--entered the war.

By mid-1943, Hitler's time of trial had begun.  The bloody retreat from Russia had commenced, North Africa was lost, his Italian ally Benito MUSSOLINI had fallen, and German cities were being demolished by Allied bombing.  In June 1944 the Allies landed on the coast of France, opening the long-awaited second front.  Hitler was the victim of an assassination attempt by a group of his own officers on July 20, 1944, but he miraculously survived.  A physical wreck, he became increasingly bitter and isolated.

With German defenses crumbling in the east and west, Hitler finally realized that his fate was sealed.  Having appointed Adm. Karl DOENITZ as his successor and married his long-time companion Eva BRAUN, he committed suicide in Berlin on Apr. 30, 1945.  This signaled the disintegration of the Third Reich and the end of the Fascist era.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

 Russo Finnish War •A political union, especially the one unifying Nazi Germany and Austria in 1938. [German, annexation, from anschliessen, to enclose, annex : an, on

Stalingrad ••• Stalingrad, now VOLGOGRAD, in the USSR, was the site of a critical WORLD WAR II Soviet victory that reversed Germany's advance to the east.  The first phase of the battle lasted from July 17 to Nov.  18, 1942, when the German 6th Army under Friedrich von Paulus closed in on the heart of the city, which was tenaciously defended by Gen.  Vasily Chuikov's 62d Army. On November 19, Soviet forces under Gen.  Georgy Zhukov attacked north and south of the city, encircling the Germans, who finally surrendered on Feb.  2, 1943.  Soviet losses were 750,000 troops, whereas Germany and its allies lost 850,000.

Teheran Conference ••• World War II meeting of the top Allied leaders to discuss the conduct of the war and postwar political issues. It was held November 28-December 1, 1943, in Tehran, Iran, and was attended by the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and the British prime minister Winston Churchill. The meeting followed the Cairo Conference with the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek and was the first Allied war conference attended by Stalin.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin discussed the scope and the timing of military operations against Germany. Their discussions about the peace settlement were tentative, but all the parties expressed their desire for cooperation following the war. They agreed to guarantee the independence and territorial integrity of Iran, and they promised postwar economic assistance to that nation.

“revisionist” power •• Russia and France, dissatisfied with its provisions, emerged as revisionist powers dedicated to its nullification.

Haile Selassie •• Title of Ras Taffari Makonnen. 1892-1975. Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974). After the Italian invasion of his country (1936), he fled to England, returned to Ethiopia with Allied troops (1941), and was restored to the throne. He was deposed in a military coup (1974).

Nazi soviet Pact ••• In the Nazi-Soviet Pact of Aug.  23, 1939, a vehemently anti-Communist Germany shocked the world by coming to terms with the USSR, a necessary preliminary to Hitler's imminent attack on Poland.  The Soviets, having failed to achieve a working relationship with Britain and France, chose to make a deal with Nazi Germany instead.  The pact, signed in Moscow by Joachim von RIBBENTROP for Germany and Vyacheslav MOLOTOV for the USSR, included a nonaggression and trade agreement, and a secret protocol that provided for a German-Soviet partition of Poland and cleared the way for the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.  World War II started within two weeks, and the pact remained in force until Hitler's invasion of the USSR in 1941.

Dunkirk •• A city of northern France on the North Sea. In World War II more than 330,000 Allied troops were evacuated from its beaches in the face of enemy fire (May-June 1940). Population, 73,120. 2. A city of western New York on Lake Erie southwest of Buffalo. It is in a grape-growing region. Population, 15,310.

Coral Sea and Midway • The Japanese quickly rallied their forces after the defeat at the Coral Sea.  The Naval General Staff, seeking to stretch Japan's outer perimeter eastward and destroy what was left of the U.S.  Navy in the Pacific, decided to strike at the island of Midway.  About 1,800 km (1,100 mi) northwest of Pearl Harbor, Midway was regarded as the sentry for Hawaii.  The Japanese hoped to make it a key outpost of their new perimeter. The Naval Command organized the largest naval operation in its history, assembling a task force of 200 ships and 600 planes.

Battle of the Atlantic • The destruction of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee off Montevideo, Uruguay, in December 1939 was a significant blow, for the ship had already sunk nine Allied ships.  The struggle that later became known as the Battle of the Atlantic would be a long one.  Not until 1943 could the Allies claim to have contained Germany's Atlantic sea power.

invasion of North Africa • Eisenhower commanded the invasion of North Africa in November 1942.  He drew brief but intense criticism when, on the ground of military necessity, he extended recognition to French leaders who had collaborated with the Germans.

Marshal Badoglio • (1871-1956), Italian marshal in World War I; viceroy of Ethiopia 1936; chief of general staff 1940; retired after Greek campaign of 1940; succeeded Mussolini as premier in 1943; resigned in 1944

Atlantic Charter ••• was an Anglo-American statement of common principles issued on Aug. 14, 1941, by President Franklin D. ROOSEVELT and Prime Minister Winston CHURCHILL. They had conferred for four days (August 9-12) aboard the U.S.S. Augusta off Newfoundland. Although the United States had not yet entered World War II, the statement became an unofficial manifesto of American and British aims in war and peace. The charter enunciated eight principles: (1) renunciation of territorial aggression; (2) no territorial changes without consent of the peoples concerned; (3) restoration of sovereign rights and self-government; (4) access to raw materials for all nations; (5) world economic cooperation; (6) freedom from fear and want; (7) freedom of the seas; and (8) disarmament of aggressors. The charter's principles were endorsed by 26 allies in the United Nations Declaration signed in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 1, 1942.

Oder- Neisse boundary •• In 1950 East Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse as the Polish-East German border. West Germany agreed to this boundary definition in 1970.

Lend Lease •• The U.S. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, at President Franklin D. Roosevelt's request, in March 1941.  Designed to allow Britain and China to draw on the industrial resources of the then-nonbelligerent United States in World War II, the measure authorized the president to transfer, lease, or lend "any defense article" to "the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States."

Neville Chamberlain •• 1869-1940. British politician and prime minister (1937-1940) who advocated a policy of appeasement toward the fascist regimes of Europe. He was forced to declare war on Germany after its invasion of Poland in 1939.

Edouard Daladier • 1884-1970. French statesman who signed the Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler in September 1938. He was arrested by the Germans after the fall of France (1940) and remained in captivity until 1945.

General De Gaulle •••• Charles de Gaulle rose to world fame as the symbol of French resistance during World War II, served as president of the provisional government (1944-46), and was the founding president of the Fifth Republic from 1958 to 1969.

In the 1930s, however, a rift developed between de Gaulle and the military establishment when de Gaulle advanced innovative strategic concepts.  In his book The Army of the Future (1934; Eng.  trans., 1940), he criticized overreliance on the MAGINOT LINE and advocated formation of an elite corps of armored divisions similar to the German panzer divisions.  These ideas were not accepted either in military circles or in parliament, where the French politician Paul Reynaud spoke out for them in 1935.

Petain's surrender, led de Gaulle to flee to London and issue a radio appeal on June 18 for the French nation to resist and continue the struggle. De Gaulle's defiance earned him a death sentence in absentia from a military court of the new VICHY GOVERNMENT, but he persisted in building up Free French and resistance forces. Ultimately he secured support from Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, and attended the summit conferences dealing with world issues.  I

As president of the provisional government from 1944 to 1946, de Gaulle worked with the Allies to complete the Nazi defeat and with the Constituent Assembly to govern France and draw up a constitution for the Fourth Republic.  However, he opposed the constitutional draft because of its failure to give significant power to the executive branch.  For this and other reasons he resigned in January 1946.  

In 1958, when the ALGERIAN WAR threatened dire results in Algeria and civil war in France, de Gaulle was asked to form a government.  Assuming the premiership on June 1, he demanded and was given temporary emergency powers and the right to draft a new constitution to be submitted to referendum.  The constitution, which vested the president with strong executive powers, was approved by the electorate in September 1958, and de Gaulle was elected president of the Fifth Republic by an overwhelming majority in December.

De Gaulle's repudiation by the electorate and resignation in 1969 stemmed from the student-worker revolt of May-June 1968. A complex of grievances caused a series of disorders first among the students, then the workers.  He resigned on April 28, leaving his republic to his intimate follower, Georges POMPIDOU.  De Gaulle lived in retirement in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, writing his postwar memoirs until his death on Nov. 9, 1970.

Blitzkrieg • Blitzkrieg (German: "lightning war") is a method of fast-moving, air-and-land warfare first used extensively during World War II.

Vichy France • The Vichy Government (1940-44), a right-wing authoritarian regime, succeeded the Third Republic in unoccupied French territory after Germany defeated France (June 1940) early in World War II.

 Battle of Britain •• The Battle of Britain was the air war (1940-41) fought over Great Britain between the German Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force during WORLD WAR II.  Having decided (June 1940) to invade Britain, Adolf HITLER ordered a preliminary attack by the Luftwaffe to destroy the RAF and neutralize the Royal Navy.

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere • In 1940, Nazi Germany's march into western Europe opened up opportunities for Japan to consolidate its position in China and penetrate Southeast Asia, thereby advancing the Japanese goal of dominating a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Admiral Darlan • 1881-1942. French admiral. A leading member of Marshal Pétain's Vichy government, he was nevertheless instrumental in persuading French territories in northern and western Africa to side with the Allies after 1942.

invasion  of Normandy • Early on the morning of June 6 an invasion fleet of some 7,000 ships landed American and British divisions on Normandy beaches. Airborne divisions dropped behind the German lines. In the air Allies had complete command. This invasion was decisive and the outcome of the war in Europe depended upon its success.

Battle of the Bulge • The Battle of the Bulge, or Battle of the Ardennes, fought from Dec.  16, 1944, to Jan.  31, 1945, constituted Germany's last major attempt to turn back the Allied invasion of Europe in WORLD WAR II.

Casablanca Conference •• From Jan.  14 to Jan.  23, 1943, U.S.  president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British leader Winston Churchill met in Casablanca, Morocco, to settle the future strategy of the Allies in World War II.  The invasion of Sicily was agreed upon, and after the meeting Roosevelt made a controversial demand for the "unconditional surrender" of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

  THE CONTEMPORARY AGE: COLD WAR COMMUNISM AND COLONIAL REVOLUTION:

San Francisco Conference • founded the United Nations

Marshall Plan •• formally known as the European Recovery Program, was a program of U.S. economic and technical assistance to 16 European countries after World War II.  Its objectives were to restore the war-ravaged West European economy and to stimulate economic growth and trade among the major non-Communist countries.

Rome Treaties •• (1957). Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, West Germany founded the European Economic Community (Common Market).

North Atlantic Treaty Organization ••• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established on Apr. 4, 1949, by representatives from 12 nations (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States;  Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982) who gathered in Washington, D.C., to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, which had as its purpose the deterring of potential Soviet aggression in Europe.  The signing of the treaty paved the way for the first peacetime alliance participated in by the United States.

The key article of the North Atlantic Treaty is Article 5: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them...shall be considered an attack against them all." NATO conformed to the provisions of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter--the right of collective defense--but NATO was also supposed to promote political, social, and economic ties among the members.

  “Solzhenitsyn • Born 1918. Soviet writer and dissident whose works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1975), exposed the brutality of the Soviet labor camp system. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970.

“Brezhnev doctrine” ••• which proclaimed that the USSR would not "remain inactive" in the face of "anti-socialist degeneration" in the Soviet bloc. This doctrine was extended to include countries within the Soviet sphere of influence, as demonstrated by the invasion of Afghanistan (1979). This quickly led to the fall of the Eastern European Communist regimes.

“great leap forward” •• A radical program instituted in 1958 by MAO ZEDONG (Mao Tse-tung), the Great Leap Forward was intended to demonstrate that China could "catch up with Britain" in industrial production in 15 years and "bypass the Soviet Union" in creating a truly communal society.  The masses were exhorted to heroic effort, "backyard furnaces" for the production of iron were started, and collective farms were merged into vast communes.  The endeavor, however, was a fiasco.  Even the official claims for agricultural production had to be revised downward the following year.  In 1959, LIU SHAOQI (Liu Shao-ch'i) replaced Mao as the head of state, and although Mao retained leadership of the Communist party, his standing was severely shaken.  He used the CULTURAL REVOLUTION (1966-69) to recover his full power.

Chou En Lai • 1898-1976. Chinese revolutionary and politician. A leader of the Chinese Communist Party, he was the first prime minister (1949-1976) and foreign minister (1949-1958) of China.

Nehru • 1861-1931. Indian nationalist politician who was an associate of Mahatma Gandhi and an influential leader in the years leading to India's independence. His son Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), also greatly involved in the movement for self-governance, was the political heir to Gandhi and the first prime minister of independent India (1947-1964).

Ho Chi Minh • 1890-1969. Vietnamese leader and first president of North Vietnam (1954-1969). His army was victorious in the French Indochina War (1946-1954), and he later led North Vietnam's struggle to defeat the U.S.-supported government in South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh died before the reunification of Vietnam (1976).

Arab League • The League of Arab States was formed in Cairo on Mar. 22, 1945, by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan (now Jordan), and Yemen.  The main aim of the league is to coordinate the political action and safeguard the sovereignty of the Arab states.

Arab Israeli wars •• Since the United Nations partition of PALESTINE in 1947 and the establishment of the modern state of ISRAEL in 1948, there have been four major Arab-Israeli wars (1947-49, 1956, 1967, and 1973) and numerous intermittent battles.  Although Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979, hostility between Israel and the rest of its Arab neighbors, complicated by the demands of Palestinian Arabs, continued through the 1980s and into the new decade.

Berlin Blockade ••• The Allies divided Berlin, as well as Germany, into four occupation zones under an Allied Control Council. In 1948 France, Great Britain, and the United States merged their zones into one economic unit. The Soviet Union withdrew from the council in protest and began a blockade of Berlin's rail, highway, and water communications with the West. The United States and Britain, however, supplied nearly 2 million tons of coal, food, and industrial goods to West Berlin by air. The airlift involved more than 200,000 flights and lasted more than 11 months, until the Soviets relented.

Warsaw Pact ••• formally the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance), military alliance of seven European Communist nations, enacted to counter the rearmament of West Germany, officially called the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and its admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The treaty was signed in Warsaw, Poland, on May 14, 1955, by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), East Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany), Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The alliance was dominated by the USSR, which kept strict control over the other countries in the pact. In 1961 Albania broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR because of ideological differences and in 1968 withdrew from the pact.

From the mid-1950s through the 1980s, two major bodies carried out the functions of the Warsaw Pact: the Political Consultative Committee and the Unified Command of Pact Armed Forces, both headquartered in Moscow. Under the terms of the treaty, the Political Consultative Committee coordinated all activities, except those purely military, and the Unified Command of Pact Armed Forces had authority over the troops assigned to it by member states. It was agreed that the supreme commander would be from the USSR. The Warsaw Pact's only military action was directed against Czechoslovakia, a member state. (In the autumn of 1956, the USSR took unilateral military action against Hungary, another Warsaw Pact member state, killing thousands of Hungarians and causing 200,000 to flee the country.) In August 1968, after the Czech government enacted reforms offensive to the USSR, forces of the USSR, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Bulgaria invaded Czechoslovakia and forced a return to a Soviet-style system. Romania opposed the invasion and did not participate, but remained a member.

Although the Warsaw Pact was officially renewed in 1985 for another 20 years, the political transformation of Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s profoundly weakened the organization. The USSR began withdrawing its troops from other Warsaw Pact countries, and East Germany pulled out to join West Germany as the reunified nation of Germany in October 1990. All joint military functions ceased at the end of March 1991, and in July leaders of the remaining six member nations agreed to dissolve the alliance.

Marshal Tito ••• 1892-1980, became Yugoslavia's political leader in 1943 as president of the National Liberation Committee. A soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, he was imprisoned in Russia but fought there for the revolution. He returned to Croatia, became (1927-28) a trade unionist, and then joined the illegal Communist party, acquiring the code name "Tito" when he became a member of the politburo in 1934. A recruiter (1936-38) for the International Brigade in Spain's Civil War, and an organizer of Yugoslavia's partisan forces after Germany's invasion during World War II, Tito led the highly effective Partisan Resistance Movement against Axis occupation of Yugoslavia. With the support of the USSR, the United States, and Great Britain, Tito officially became (1945) head of the new federal government. Although his regime was essentially a communist dictatorship, Tito's resistance to Soviet control led to a major split between himself and Stalin, and in 1948, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Soviet bloc. Tito then followed an independent course in foreign affairs--maintaining good relations with the East European socialist states, while establishing ties with the Western powers and nonaligned nations. Made marshal of Yugoslavia and elected president in 1953, Tito became president for life in 1974.

Brezhnev •• Leonid Ilyich. 1906-1982. Soviet leader. He served as the chairman of the Presidium (now the Politburo) and secretary of the Communist Party before becoming president of the U.S.S.R. in 1977. In 1968 he enunciated the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserts that the U.S.S.R. may intervene in any Warsaw Pact country in which the Communist government is threatened. Soviet adherence to this doctrine was evidenced by the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1977).

Nasser •• Nasser overthrew King Farouk of EGYPT in the early 1950s and soon became president. He urged Arab nations to unify against both ISRAEL and European and American influence in the MIDDLE EAST. He took control of the Suez Canal for Egypt in 1956, provoking a British military attack. In 1967, he launched a brief and unsuccessful war against Israel, the SIX-DAY WAR. Upon his death in 1970, he was succeeded by ANWAR SADAT.

Six Day War •• Israeli Premier Levi ESHKOL, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, and Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak RABIN approved preemptive Israeli strikes at Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi airfields on June 5, 1967.  By the evening of June 6, Israel had destroyed the combat effectiveness of the major Arab air forces, destroying more than 400 planes and losing only 26 of its own.  Israel also swept into Sinai, reaching the Suez Canal and occupying most of the peninsula in less than four days. In a little more than two days of fierce fighting, Syrian forces were driven from the Golan Heights, from which they had shelled Jewish settlements across the border.  The Six-Day War ended on June 10 when the UN negotiated cease-fire agreements on all fronts.

neocolonialism •• A policy whereby a major power uses economic and political means to perpetuate or extend its influence over underdeveloped nations or areas: “Strong elements of neocolonialism persist in the economic relations of the rich and poor countries” (Scientific American).

Truman Doctrine ••• On Dec. 31, 1946, President Truman declared an end to the period of World War II hostilities. Early in 1947 the British said they could not support the Greek government after March 31. Many diplomats feared that the Soviet Union would then spread its power throughout the Middle East. President Truman met the problem by asking Congress for 400 million dollars to aid Greece and Turkey. Congress appropriated the money. This policy of aid, popularly known as the Truman Doctrine, was an American challenge to Soviet ambitions throughout the world.

Euopeean Coal and Steel communinty ••• A plan for a united Europe was first put forward by the French statesman Jean MONNET after World War II.  In 1950, French foreign minister Robert SCHUMAN proposed a plan that resulted in the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952.  The first of the organizations that eventually constituted the European Community, the ECSC pooled resources and harmonized industrial policies and activities in the coal, iron ore, and steel sectors of France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.  A single economic market (a customs union and a free trade area) was established for these limited economic sectors and operated without being subjected to national regulations or restrictions (tariffs or quotas).  The ECSC was managed by a supranational institution known as the High Authority.

“Iron curtain” • a phrase applied after World War II to the economic, social, and military barriers created against the West by the USSR and the Communist countries of Eastern Europe.

Khrushchev •• 1894-1971. Soviet politician. A Stalin loyalist in the 1930's, he was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party in 1953. As Soviet premier (1958-1964) he denounced Stalin (1956), thwarted the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and improved his country's image abroad. He was deposed (1964) for his failure to establish missiles in Cuba (1962) and improve the Soviet economy.

Sputnik •• series of Soviet satellites sent into Earth orbit, especially the first, launched October 4, 1957.

THE CONTEMPORARY AGE: CRISES AND COEXISTANCE

 Bretton Woods Agreement ••• Although the Bretton Woods agreement enabled countries to raise their currency values, in practice almost all currency changes since then have been devaluations. The British pound sterling, for example, was devalued in 1949 and again in 1967.

Konrad Adenauer •• 1876-1967. First chancellor of West Germany (1949-1963), under whom the country began economic reconstruction and became a member of NATO and the Common Market.

“German miracle” •• so-called guest workers (German Gastarbeiter) came from Italy, Spain, and Turkey. The result was the period of rapid industrial expansion and prosperity known as the Wirtschaftswunder (German for “economic miracle”).

Irish Republican Army • The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a paramilitary force that opposes the connection of Northern Ireland to Great Britain and refuses to recognize the Irish government in Dublin.

Nuremberg Trials ••• At the end of World War II the victorious Allies (the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR) established an international military tribunal to try the surviving Axis leaders for WAR CRIMES.  The trials took place in the German city of Nuremberg from November 1945 to October 1946.

In the main trial 22 German Nazi leaders were tried.  Of these, 12 were sentenced to death, including Wilhelm KEITEL, Joachim von RIBBENTROP, Alfred ROSENBERG, Martin BORMANN (who was tried in absentia), and Hermann GOERING (who committed suicide); three, including Rudolf HESS, were given life sentences;  four, including Karl DOENITZ and Albert SPEER, were sentenced to up to 20 years' imprisonment;  and three, including Franz von PAPEN and Hjalmar SCHACHT, were acquitted.  Lesser criminals were tried in 12 subsequent trials.  The conviction of individuals for acts that were sanctioned by the government of the country they served raised legal issues that have made the Nuremberg Trials the subject of controversy.

thirty eight parallel •parallel of latitude that in East Asia roughly demarcates North and South Korea.

“domino” theory ••• -which held that if one Southeast Asian country were allowed to fall under Communist control, others would follow like a row of dominoes --and by an increasing concern for the credibility of U.S. opposition to communism after the Castro government came to power in Cuba (1959).  Responding to Diem's request for help, U.S. president John F. Kennedy gradually increased the number of U.S. advisors to more than 16,000.

Georges Pompidou • Georges Pompidou, b. July 5, 1911, d. Apr. 2, 1974, a close associate of Gen. Charles DE GAULLE, was premier (1962-68) and president (1969-74) of France's Fifth Republic.

Federal Republic of Germany •• Germany, a unified country from 1871 to 1945, was divided after World War II into two states:  the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).  In 1990, following the collapse of the East German Communist regime, East Germany voted for unification with the Federal Republic.

Willy Brandt ••• Willy Brandt, b. Karl Herbert Frahm on Dec. 18, 1913, d. Oct. 8, 1992, was chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974.  The illegitimate son of a Lubeck ship assistant, Brandt fled to Norway in 1933 when his activities as a socialist brought him to the attention of the Gestapo.  He became a citizen of Norway, but following the German invasion of that country in 1940, took refuge in Sweden.  In 1945 he returned to Germany as a Scandinavian press correspondent and became friendly with leaders of the German Social Democratic party (SPD).  With their influence he regained German citizenship and in 1949 was elected an SPD member of the Bundestag.

On Oct. 3, 1957, Brandt was elected mayor of West Berlin, a position that gave him international prominence.  He was elected (1964) SPD leader, and in 1966 he joined the coalition government of Kurt Kiesinger as foreign minister.  When the SPD won the 1969 federal elections, Brandt became chancellor on October 21.  Initiating a policy of conciliation toward Eastern Europe, he signed (1970) a treaty with Poland recognizing the Oder-Neisse line as Poland's western border and began negotiations to normalize relations with East Germany.  In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for these endeavors.  On May 6, 1974, Brandt was forced to resign, after the discovery that an East German spy was serving on his personal staff.  In the late 1970s he headed the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, which issued the report North-South: A Program for Survival.  He continued as SPD chairman until 1987, when he was made honorary chairman.

Humanae Vitae ••• The prohibition of “artificial” means of birth control was reiterated by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968). This document provoked objections in some theological and even episcopal circles—a unique phenomenon for the modern papacy. Although its import continues to be debated, it is certainly the most authoritative statement on the issue.

Jean Paul Sartre • Renowned as a philosopher, literary figure, and social critic, Jean Paul Sartre, b. Paris, June 21, 1905, d. Apr. 15, 1980, was probably most famous as a representative of EXISTENTIALISM, a philosophical approach that emphasizes, among other things, the ultimacy of human freedom.

Fidel Castro • Born 1927. Cuban revolutionary leader who overthrew the corrupt regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and established a socialist state. He has supported other liberation struggles in Latin America and Africa and maintained close ties with the Soviet Union.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution •• resolution passed on August 7 by the U.S. Senate (the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution), authorizing increased military involvement,

Helsinki Agreements ••• In 1975, the U.S. signed the Helsinki Agreement, which ratified post-World War II European borders and supported human rights.

Walter Ulbricht ••• Walter Ulbricht, b. June 30, 1893, d. Aug. 1, 1973, was dictator of East Germany. He joined the German Communist party when it was established in 1918. Trained at the Lenin School in Moscow in the early 1920s, he was a member of the German parliament, the Reichstag, from 1928 to 1933. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Ulbricht left Germany, serving as a Comintern agent and working with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and with the Russians during World War II. At the end of the war, he laid the foundations in the Soviet zone of occupation for the East German satellite state formally established in 1949 as the German Democratic Republic. Ulbricht became deputy prime minister in 1949 and secretary of the Socialist Unity (Communist) party in 1950. His harsh regime provoked an open rebellion in 1953 and a stream of refugees to West Germany, stopped only by the Berlin Wall, built in 1961. As the result of strikingly successful economic reforms introduced during the last decade of Ulbricht's rule, East Germany achieved the highest standard of living in the Communist world. Ulbricht relinquished the powerful party secretaryship in 1971 but remained chairman of the Council of State, retaining, until his death, the titular dignity of German head of state.

Soren Kierkegaard • b.  1813, d. 1855, was a Danish philosopher and religious thinker whose reaction against the depersonalization of society and against the established church of Denmark took the form of brilliant literary and philosophical essays.

Sites for studying for the AP Test

http://www.thecaveonline.com/APEH/studyguide.html - excellent study guide by eras with timelines

http://www.historyteacher.net/EuroProjects/ExamReviewSheets/MatchingQuizzesForFinalReview-2001/FinalReviewQuizzesForAPEuro-2001.htm - Series of questions with multiple-choice answers from a history teacher

 http://www.historyteacher.net/EuroProjects/ExamReviewSheets/APEuroMainReviewPage.htm -

 http://members.cox.net/jpharmon/euro.html - Jay Harmon's  Advanced Placement* European History

http://www.historyteacher.net