Sunday, February 23, 2020

The Russian Revolution Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Russian Revolution - Essay Example Why did the revolution occur and what was the result? This is what this paper is going to focus on. The kind of revolution envisaged by Marx and Engels was to be as a result of workers consciousness or bourgeois intelligentsia. In many countries workers started forming trade unions to fight against employers and the government so as to pass labor legislations that improve their conditions. However, for Beeler and Clark the Russian revolution was â€Å"a natural and inevitable outcome of development of ideas among revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.†1 For them, socialist movements such as the trade unions are not enough to get the kind of social democracy needed otherwise the proletariats attempts would fail just like the first revolution that removed tsar from office did not work. The mistake that socialists such as Alexander Kensky made after seizing power in Russia was failure to confiscate large landholdings and give it to peasants who had fought hard to free themselves from exploitation.2 These leaders were not intelligent enough to lead a revolution like Lenin. In other words, Beeler and Clark would say they lacked revolutionary professionalism thus not revolutionary social democrats. ... The food shortage experienced in 1917 due to the war led to violent street demonstrations and an unplanned uprising occurred and in March 12, 1917 the Duma took over leadership and declared a provisional government.3 This government emphasized equality before the law, freedom of religion, speech and assembly as well as the rights of unions to organize and strike but it shared power with Petrograd soviet of workers and soldiers leading to a state of anarchy.4 The government was also unable to remove Russia from the war thus giving an opportunity to Lenin to wage his campaigns and attract huge masses of people. The provisional government rule was not successful since the leaders lacked leadership skills. For a revolution to be successful it has to be led by professional revolutionaries and not trade unionists or socialist intellectuals. It needs radical revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky who are always preoccupied with social democratic activities. Lenin called for â€Å"dis ciplined workers who are controlled by small, dedicated elite of intellectual and professional revolutionaries† as opposed to masses.5 The group was referred as Bolsheviks and though they failed in their first attempt to seize power from the provisional government, the army skills of Trotsky and support of soldiers and workers tired of the war made the second attempt to be successful. The Bolshevik majority declared all power for the soviets and Lenin as head of government thus displacing the provisional government.6 However, to end the war he had to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litorsk thus ceding Russian territories to central powers. Civil war ensued thereafter but the

Friday, February 7, 2020

Explanatory synthesis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Explanatory synthesis - Essay Example Social psychology challenges the most basic assumptions of human behaviour and nature, and to a big extent the predictability of the social world. Psychologists look at the different kinds of situations in the world in a very distinct and different way from that of other people and they apply the beliefs and insights of psychology to the unfolding social events around them. Individuals respond differently to social influences by either choosing to comply, identifying, complying or internalizing. Compliance is seen as a form of agreement to the particular situation at hand, but deep from within the person might be in no way convinced. Situations in a big way determine the kind response a person will extend to particular situation. In the text, Ross argues that the type of information about personality that most of the people would possess before predicting personality proves to be of relatively little value. Research has indicated that when faced in certain situations such as these, i t is not possible to predict with accuracy how particular people will respond. Situational behaviour in relation to an individual’s actions can be demonstrated in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The story is about a Jewish man who was travelling to Jericho, but bandits attacked him and left him lying half-dead by the roadside. A priest passes him and offers him no help, until a Good Samaritan whose stereotype hated the Jews stopped by and offered the man assistance. The study experimenters of social philosophy recruited 67 students from the Princeton Theological Seminary, telling them that it a study about religious education and vocations (Hoyk, Hersey 49). Unknown to these participants, they were to be subjected to their own personal Good Samaritan attributes. The requirement was that they would fill questionnaires on their personality then walk to a nearby room to give their talk. On the doorway, a man was lying doubled over with his eyes closed and coughing. All the pa rticipants would not escape the site of the distressed man and the biggest question was, would they be willing to offer any assistance to the man? In their assumption, the experimenters thought that it would be dependent on how much the participants were hurried, and thus devised a way of manipulating them, by giving each a map and one of the instructions which either stated that the participant was late and had been a few minutes late. Another stated that the assistance was waiting for the participant, yet the other stated that it would take another few minutes before the interviewers were ready, but had the option of proceeding over. This created conditions of high, medium, and low hurry and thus some students left the office thinking that they needed to be quick, others less while the rest felt relaxed. Each of the three conditions were was also divided into two, half of them were required to give a talk on the Good Samaritan and the other half on prospects for seminary graduates . This helped the experimenters to assess both the effects of hurry and the talk they were to give on students’ helping behaviours. The outcome of the experience was classified into two classes, which included in a hurry and could not stop and judge on context. From the results, only 40% of the students offered some form of assistance to the people, with a few stepping over the apparently injured man, but it was evident that the amount of hurry they were in had a