Pseudonym
A pseudonym or alias is a name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which can differ from their first or true name. Pseudonyms include stage names and user names, ring names, pen names, aliases, superhero or villain identities and code names, gamer identifications, regnal names of emperors and other monarchs, they have taken the form of anagrams and Latinisations, although there are many other methods of choosing a pseudonym. Pseudonyms should not be confused with new names that replace old ones and become the individual's full-time name. Pseudonyms are "part-time" names, used only in certain contexts – to provide a more clear-cut separation between one's private and professional lives, to showcase or enhance a particular persona, or to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists' tags, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre, computer hackers' handles. Actors, voice-over artists and other performers sometimes use stage names, for example, to better channel a relevant energy, gain a greater sense of security and comfort via privacy, more avoid troublesome fans/"stalkers", or to mask their ethnic backgrounds.
In some cases, pseudonyms are adopted because they are part of a cultural or organisational tradition: for example devotional names used by members of some religious institutes, "cadre names" used by Communist party leaders such as Trotsky and Lenin. A pseudonym may be used for personal reasons: for example, an individual may prefer to be called or known by a name that differs from their given or legal name, but is not ready to take the numerous steps to get their name changed. A collective name or collective pseudonym is one shared by two or more persons, for example the co-authors of a work, such as Carolyn Keene, Ellery Queen, Nicolas Bourbaki. Or James S. A. Corey; the term is derived from the Greek ψευδώνυμον "false name", from ψεῦδος, "lie, falsehood" and ὄνομα, "name". A pseudonym is distinct from an allonym, the name of another person, assumed by the author of a work of art; this may occur when someone is ghostwriting a book or play, or in parody, or when using a "front" name, such as by screenwriters blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s.
See pseudepigraph, for falsely attributed authorship. Sometimes people change their name in such a manner that the new name becomes permanent and is used by all who know the person; this is not an alias or pseudonym, but in fact a new name. In many countries, including common law countries, a name change can be ratified by a court and become a person's new legal name. For example, in the 1960s, black civil rights campaigner Malcolm Little changed his surname to "X", to represent his unknown African ancestral name, lost when his ancestors were brought to North America as slaves, he changed his name again to Malik El-Shabazz when he converted to Islam. Some Jews adopted Hebrew family names upon immigrating to Israel, dropping surnames, in their families for generations; the politician David Ben-Gurion, for example, was born David Grün in Poland. He adopted his Hebrew name in 1910, when he published his first article in a Zionist journal in Jerusalem. Many transgender people choose to adopt a new name around the time of their social transitioning, to resemble their desired gender better than their birth name.
Businesspersons of ethnic minorities in some parts of the world are sometimes advised by an employer to use a pseudonym, common or acceptable in that area when conducting business, to overcome racial or religious bias. Criminals may use aliases, fictitious business names, dummy corporations to hide their identity, or to impersonate other persons or entities in order to commit fraud. Aliases and fictitious business names used for dummy corporations may become so complex that, in the words of the Washington Post, "getting to the truth requires a walk down a bizarre labyrinth" and multiple government agencies may become involved to uncover the truth. A pen name, or "nom de plume", is a pseudonym adopted by an author; some female authors used male pen names, in particular in the 19th century, when writing was a male-dominated profession. The Brontë family used pen names for their early work, so as not to reveal their gender and so that local residents would not know that the books related to people of the neighbourhood.
The Brontës used their neighbours as inspiration for characters in many of their books. Anne Brontë published The Tenant of Wildfell Hall under the name Acton Bell. Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre under the name Currer Bell. Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights as Ellis Bell. A well-known example of the former is Mary Ann Evans. Another example is Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, a 19th-century French writer who used the pen name George Sand. In contrast, some twentieth and twenty first century male romance novelists have used female pen names. A few examples of male authors using female pseudonyms include Brindle Chase, Peter O'Donnell and Christopher Wood. A pen name may be used if a writer's real name is to be confused with the name of another writer or notable individual, or if their real name is deemed to be unsuitable. Authors who write both fiction and non-fiction, or in different genres, may use
Containment
Containment is a geopolitical strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. It is loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire, used to describe the geopolitical containment of the Soviet Union in the 1920s; the strategy of "containment" is best known as a Cold War foreign policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. As a component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to the Soviet Union's move to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. Containment represented a middle-ground position between rollback; the basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by U. S. diplomat George F. Kennan during the post-WWII administration of U. S. President Harry S. Truman; as a description of U. S. foreign policy, the word originated in a report Kennan submitted to U. S. Defense Secretary James Forrestal in 1947, used in a magazine article. There were major historical precedents familiar to Europeans. In the 1850s, anti-slavery forces in the United States developed a free soil strategy of containment, without using the word, to stop the expansion of slavery until it collapsed.
Historian James Oakes explains the strategy: The Federal government would surround the south with free states, free territories, free waters, building what they called a'cordon of freedom' around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own internal weaknesses forced the slave states one by one to abandon slavery. Between 1873 and 1877, Germany intervened in the internal affairs of France's neighbors. In Belgium and Italy, Bismarck exerted strong and sustained political pressure to support the election or appointment of liberal, anticlerical governments; this was part of an integrated strategy to promote republicanism in France by strategically and ideologically isolating the clerical-monarchist regime of President Patrice de Mac-Mahon. It was hoped that by ringing France with a number of liberal states, French republicans could defeat MacMahon and his reactionary supporters; the modern concept of containment provides a useful model for understanding the dynamics of this policy. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, there were calls by Western leaders to isolate the Bolshevik government, which seemed intent on promoting worldwide revolution.
In March 1919, French Premier Georges Clemenceau called for a cordon sanitaire, a ring of non-communist states, to isolate the Soviet Union. Translating that phrase, U. S. President Woodrow Wilson called for a "quarantine." Both phrases compare communism to a contagious disease. The World War I Allies launched an incursion into Russia, ostensibly to create an eastern front against Germany. In reality, the policy was anti-Bolshevik as well, its economic warfare took a major toll on all of Russia. By 1919, the intervention was anti-communist, although the unpopularity of the assault led it to be withdrawn; the US engaged in covert action against the new Soviet government, involving the work of a young Allen Dulles. While the campaigns were pro-democracy, they supported the White Terror of former Tsarist generals like GM Semenov and Alexander Kolchak; the U. S. refused to recognize the Soviet Union, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt reversed the policy in 1933 in the hope to expand American export markets.
The Munich Agreement of 1938 was a failed attempt to contain Nazi expansion in Europe. The U. S. tried to contain Japanese expansion in Asia in 1937 to 1941, Japan reacted with its attack on Pearl Harbor. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 during World War II, the U. S. and the Soviet Union found themselves allied against Germany and used rollback to defeat the Axis Powers: Germany and Japan. Key State Department personnel grew frustrated with and suspicious of the Soviets as the war drew to a close. Averell Harriman, U. S. Ambassador in Moscow, once a "confirmed optimist" regarding U. S.-Soviet relations, was disillusioned by what he saw as the Soviet betrayal of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising as well as by violations of the February 1945 Yalta Agreement concerning Poland. Harriman would have a significant influence in forming Truman's views on the Soviet Union. In February 1946, the U. S. State Department asked George F. Kennan at the U. S. Embassy in Moscow, why the Russians opposed the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
He responded with a wide-ranging analysis of Russian policy now called the Long Telegram: Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does not work by fixed plans, it does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, it is sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can withdraw—and does when strong resistance is encountered at any point. According to Kennan: The Soviets perceived themselves to be in a state of perpetual war with capitalism. Kennan's cable was hailed in the State Department as "the appreciation of the situation that had long been needed." Kennan himself attributed the enthusiastic reception to timing: "Six months earlier the message would have been received in the State Department with raised eyebrows and lips pursed in disapproval. Six months it would have sounded redundant." Clark Clifford and George Elsey produced a report
James Forrestal
James Vincent Forrestal was the last Cabinet-level United States Secretary of the Navy and the first United States Secretary of Defense. Forrestal was a supporter of naval battle groups centered on aircraft carriers. In 1954, the world's first supercarrier was named USS Forrestal in his honor, as is the James V. Forrestal Building, which houses the headquarters of the United States Department of Energy, he is the namesake of the Forrestal Lecture Series at the United States Naval Academy, which brings prominent military and civilian leaders to speak to the Brigade of Midshipmen, of the James Forrestal Campus of Princeton University in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey. Forrestal was born in Matteawan, New York, the youngest son of James Forrestal, an Irish immigrant who dabbled in politics, his mother, the former Mary Anne Toohey raised him as a devout Roman Catholic. He was an amateur boxer. After graduating from high school at the age of 16, in 1908, he spent the next three years working for a trio of newspapers: the Matteawan Evening Journal, the Mount Vernon Argus and the Poughkeepsie News Press.
Forrestal entered Dartmouth College in 1911, but transferred to Princeton University in his sophomore year. He served as an editor for The Daily Princetonian; the senior class voted him "Most Likely to Succeed", but he left just prior to completing work on a degree. Forrestal married the former Josephine Stovall, a Vogue writer, in 1926, she developed alcohol and mental problems. Forrestal went to work as a bond salesman for William A. Read and Company in 1916; when the USA entered World War I, he enlisted in the Navy and became a Naval Aviator, training with the Royal Flying Corps in Canada. During the final year of the war, Forrestal spent much of his time in Washington, D. C. at the office of Naval Operations while completing his flight training. He reached the rank of Lieutenant. After the war, Forrestal made his fortune on Wall Street, he became a partner, vice-president, president of the company. He acted as a publicist for the Democratic Party committee in Dutchess County, New York helping politicians from the area win elections at both the state and national level.
One of those individuals aided by his work was Franklin D. Roosevelt. By some accounts, Forrestal was a compulsive workaholic, skilled administrator, introspective, philosophic and insecure. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Forrestal a special administrative assistant on June 22, 1940. Six weeks he nominated him for the newly established position, Undersecretary of the Navy. In his nearly four years as undersecretary, Forrestal proved effective at mobilizing domestic industrial production for the war effort. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ernest J. King, wanted to control logistics and procurement, but Forrestal prevailed. In September 1942, to get a grasp on the reports for materiel his office was receiving, he made a tour of naval operations in the Southwest Pacific and a stop at Pearl Harbor. Returning to Washington, D. C. he made his report to President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the cabinet. In response to Forrestal's elevated request that materiel be sent to the Southwest Pacific area, told Forrestal, "Jim, you've got a bad case of localitis."
Forrestal shot back in a heated manner, "Mr. Secretary, if the Marines on Guadalcanal were wiped out, the reaction of the country will give you a bad case of localitis in the seat of your pants", he became Secretary of the Navy on May 19, 1944, after his immediate superior Secretary Frank Knox died from a heart attack. Forrestal led the Navy through the closing year of the war and the painful early years of demobilization that followed; as Secretary, Forrestal introduced a policy of racial integration in the Navy. Forrestal traveled to combat zones to see naval forces in action, he was in the South Pacific in 1942, present at the Battle of Kwajalein in 1944, witnessed the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. After five days of pitched battle, a detachment of Marines was sent to hoist the American flag on the 545-foot summit of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima; this was the first time in the war that the U. S. flag had flown on Japanese soil. Forrestal, who had just landed on the beach, claimed the historic flag as a souvenir.
A second, larger flag was run up in its place, this second flag-raising was the moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal in his famous photograph. Forrestal, along with Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew, in the early months of 1945 advocated a softer policy toward Japan that would permit a negotiated armistice, a'face-saving' surrender. Forrestal's primary concern was not the resurgence of a militarized Japan, but rather "the menace of Russian Communism and its attraction for decimated, destabilized societies in Europe and Asia," and, keeping the Soviet Union out of the war with Japan. So did he feel about this matter that he cultivated negotiation efforts that some regarded as approaching insubordination, his counsel on ending the war was followed, but not until the atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The day after the Nagasaki attack, the Japanese sent out a radio transmission saying that it was ready to accept the terms of the allies' Potsdam Declaration, "with the understanding that said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty a
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U. S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U. S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, the Truman Doctrine of 1947, ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars; the conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The capitalist West was led by the United States, a federal republic with a two-party presidential system, as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were liberal democratic with a free press and independent organizations, but were economically and politically entwined with a network of banana republics and other authoritarian regimes, most of which were the Western Bloc's former colonies.
Some major Cold War frontlines such as Indochina and the Congo were still Western colonies in 1947. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a totalitarian leader with different titles over time, a small committee called the Politburo; the Party controlled the state, the press, the military, the economy, many organizations throughout the Second World, including the Warsaw Pact and other satellites, funded communist parties around the world, sometimes in competition with communist China following the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. The two worlds were fighting for dominance in low-developed regions known as the Third World. In time, a neutral bloc arose in these regions with the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought good relations with both sides. Notwithstanding isolated incidents of air-to-air dogfights and shoot-downs, the two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat. However, both were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war.
Each side had a nuclear strategy that discouraged an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker—the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, their deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, technological competitions such as the Space Race; the first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The USSR consolidated its control over the states of the Eastern Bloc, while the United States began a strategy of global containment to challenge Soviet power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Western Europe and creating the NATO alliance; the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the conflict expanded.
The USSR and the US competed for influence in Latin America and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. The Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the two sides came to nuclear war. Meanwhile, an international peace movement took root and grew among citizens around the world, first in Japan from 1954, when people became concerned about nuclear weapons testing, but soon in Europe and the US; the peace movement, in particular the anti-nuclear movement, gained pace and popularity from the late 1950s and early 1960s, continued to grow through the'70s and'80s with large protest marches and various non-parliamentary activism opposing war and calling for global nuclear disarmament. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while US allies France, demonstrated greater independence of action.
The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, which ended with the defeat of the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, prompting further adjustments. By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, ushering in a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979; the early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises, both in 1983. The United States increased diplomatic and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was suffering from economic stag
George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War, he lectured and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men". During the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U. S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow during 1946 and the subsequent 1947 article The Sources of Soviet Conduct argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States; these texts provided justification for the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet policy. Kennan played a major role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, notably the Marshall Plan. Soon after his concepts had become U. S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the foreign policies that he had helped begin.
Subsequently, prior to the end of 1948, Kennan became confident that positive dialogue could commence with the Soviet government. His proposals were discounted by the Truman administration and Kennan's influence was marginalized after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949. Soon thereafter, U. S. Cold War strategy assumed a more assertive and militaristic quality, causing Kennan to lament about what he believed was an abrogation of his previous assessments. In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State—except for two brief ambassadorial stints in Moscow and Yugoslavia—and became a realist critic of U. S. foreign policy. He continued to analyze international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death in 2005 at age 101. Kennan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Kossuth Kent Kennan, a lawyer specializing in tax law, a descendant of dirt-poor Scotch-Irish settlers of 18th-century Connecticut and Massachusetts, named after the Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth, Florence James Kennan.
Mrs. Kennan died two months due to peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, though Kennan long believed that she died after giving birth to him; the boy always lamented not having a mother. At the age of eight, he went to Germany to stay with his stepmother, he attended St. John's Military Academy in Delafield and arrived at Princeton University in the second half of 1921. Unaccustomed to the elite atmosphere of the Ivy League, the shy and introverted Kennan found his undergraduate years difficult and lonely. After receiving his bachelor's degree in History in 1925, Kennan considered applying to law school, but decided it was too expensive and instead opted to apply to the newly formed United States Foreign Service, he passed the qualifying examination and after seven months of study at the Foreign Service School in Washington he gained his first job as a vice consul in Geneva, Switzerland. Within a year he was transferred to a post in Germany. During 1928 Kennan considered quitting the Foreign Service to attend college.
Instead, he was selected for a linguist training program that would give him three years of graduate-level study without having to quit the service. In 1929 Kennan began his program on history, politics and the Russian language at the University of Berlin's Oriental Institute. In doing so, he would follow in the footsteps of his grandfather's younger cousin, George Kennan, a major 19th century expert on Imperial Russia and author of Siberia and the Exile System, a well-received 1891 account of the Czarist prison system. During the course of his diplomatic career, Kennan would master a number of other languages, including German, Polish, Czech and Norwegian. In 1931 Kennan was stationed at the legation in Riga, where, as third secretary, he worked on Soviet economic affairs. From his job, Kennan "grew to mature interest in Russian affairs"; when the U. S. began formal diplomacy with the Soviet government during 1933 after the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennan accompanied Ambassador William C.
Bullitt to Moscow. By the mid-1930s Kennan was among the professionally trained Russian experts of the staff of the embassy in Moscow, along with Charles E. Bohlen and Loy W. Henderson; these officials had been influenced by the long-time director of the State Department's division of East European Affairs, Robert F. Kelley, they believed that there was little basis for cooperation with the Soviet Union against potential adversaries. Meanwhile, Kennan studied Stalin's Great Purge, which would affect his opinion of the internal dynamics of the Soviet regime for the rest of his life. Kennan found himself in strong disagreement with Joseph E. Davies, Bullitt's successor as ambassador to the Soviet Union, who defended the Great Purge and other aspects of Stalin's rule. Kennan did not have any influence on Davies's decisions, the latter suggested that Kennan be transferred out of Moscow for "his health". Kennan again contemplated resigning from the service, but instead decided to accept the Russian desk at the State Department in Washington.
By September 1938, Kennan had been reassigned to a job at the legation in Prague. After the occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic by Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II, Kennan was assigned to Berlin. There, he endorsed the United States' Lend-Lease policy, but warned against displaying any notion of American endorsement for the Soviets, whom he considered to be an unfit ally, he was interned in Germany for six months after Germany, followed by
Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxist–Leninist ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In the Stalin era, it penetrated social and natural sciences giving rise to various pseudo-scientific theories such as Lysenkoism, whereas fields of real knowledge, as genetics and comparative linguistics were condemned and forbidden as "bourgeois pseudoscience"; the main Soviet Union censorship body, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials, but "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item". In the Stalin era, deviation from the dictates of official propaganda was punished by execution and labor camps. In the post-Stalin era, these punitive measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, denial of work and loss of citizenship. "Today a man only talks to his wife – at night, with the blankets pulled over his head", said writer Isaac Babel to a trusted friend. According to historian Harris Sparks, "the Russian socialists have contributed nothing to the theoretical discussion of the techniques of mass persuasion.
The Bolsheviks never looked for and did not find devilishly clever methods to influence people's minds, to brainwash them". This lack of interest, says Kenez, "followed from their notion of propaganda, they thought of propaganda as part of education." In a study published in 1958, business administration professor Raymond Bauer concluded: "Ironically and the other social sciences have been employed least in the Soviet Union for those purposes for which Americans popularly think psychology would be used in a totalitarian state—political propaganda and the control of human behavior". An important goal of Communist propaganda was to create a new man. Schools and the Communist youth organizations, like the Young pioneers and Komsomol, served to remove children from the "petit-bourgeois" family and introducing the next generation into the collective way of life; the idea that the upbringing of children was the concern of their parents was explicitly rejected. One schooling theorist stated: "We must make the young into a generation of Communists.
Children, like soft wax, are malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state –, our task."Those born after the Revolution were explicitly told that they were to build a utopia of brotherhood and justice, to not be like their parents, but Red. "Lenin's corners", "political shrines for the display of propaganda about the god-like founder of the Soviet state" have been established in all schools. Schools conducted marches and pledges of allegiance to Soviet leadership. One of the purposes was to instill in children the idea that they are involved in the World revolution, more important than any family ties. Pavlik Morozov, who denounced his father to the secret police NKVD, was promoted as a great positive example.
Teachers in economic and social sciences were responsible for inculcating "unshakable" Marxist-Leninist views. All teachers were prone to follow the plan for educating children approved by top for reasons of safety, which could cause serious problems dealing with social events that, having just happened, were not included in the plan. Children of "socially alien" elements were the target of abuse or expelled, in the name of class struggle. Early in the regime, many teachers were drawn into Communist plans for schooling because of a passion for literacy and numeracy, which the Communists were attempting to spread; the Young Pioneers were an important factor in the indoctrination of children. They were taught to fight the enemies of socialism. By the 1930s, this indoctrination dominated the Young Pioneers. Radio was put to good use to reach the illiterate. During World War II, radio was used to propagandize Germany. Wall posters were used in the early days depicting the Red Army's triumphs for the benefit of the illiterate.
Throughout the 1920s, this was continued. This continued in World War II, still for the benefit of the less literate, with bold, simple designs. Films were propagandist, although they were pioneers in the documentary field; when war appeared inevitable, such as Alexander Nevsky were written to prepare the population. Films were shown from propaganda trains. During the war newsreel were shown in subway stations so that the poor were not excluded by inability to pay. Films were shot with stories of partisan activity, of the suffering inflicted by the Nazis, such as Girl No. 217, depicting a Russian girl enslaved by an inhuman German family. Because all film needs an industrial base, propaganda made much of the output of film. An institution during World War II was the propaganda train, fitted with presses and portable cinemas, staffed with lecturers. In the Civil War the Soviets s
Government of the Soviet Union
The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the main part of the executive branch of government of the USSR. Its head of government was the officeholder known in the West as the Premier of the Soviet Union. However, the USSR was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the power of, derived from the Constitution of the Soviet Union; the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was de facto the most important policy-making organ of the country and made government policy, with the Government being subordinate to the Party. The members of the Soviet Government—- people's commissars and directors of state committees—- were recommended by the Premier and appointed by the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet; the Government of the USSR exercised its executive powers in conformity with the Soviet Constitution and legislation enacted by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. During the period between when the USSR was established on December 30, 1922, the first Government of the USSR was formed on July 6, 1923, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic's government acted as an interim government of the USSR.
The generic term Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics can refer to the following organs of government of the USSR: Council of People's Commissars Council of Ministers Cabinet of Ministers Additionally, during the last period of the Soviet Union, the following interim bodies performed functions of the union government after the Cabinet of Ministers was dissolved by a vote of no confidence: Committee for the Operational Management of the National Economy Inter-republican Economic Committee Interstate Economic Committee However no new full government was formed due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The term was used by the government itself, the press and colloquially to mean the executive part alone, as that part of the government was responsible for ordinary governance of the nation; the Government of the USSR, the main executive power of the Soviet state, were both directed by the premier, who had an unspecified number of first deputy chairmen and deputy chairmen of the government, all of which were given responsibility concerning one specific topic.
These were accompanied by a varying number of government ministers and state committee managers, recommended by the premier and appointed by the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet. The executive branch was responsible for both short- and long-term economic and cultural development; the Government's official residence was at the Kremlin Senate in Moscow. The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics exercised its executive powers in conformity with the Soviet Constitution and legislation enacted by the Supreme Soviet, its structure, operational procedures and decision-making processes were defined by the 1977 Soviet constitution. The Constitution mandated that the Government propose legislation and other documents to the Supreme Soviet, propose the budget and guide the economy, issue decisions and ordinances and verify their execution; the decisions and ordinances of the Council of Ministers of the USSR were binding throughout the USSR. It defined internal policies and oversaw operation of state administration, oversaw the country's economic development, directed the activities and development of public services, performed other activities which conformed to the provisions of the Constitution and applicable legislation.
The Government controlled foreign trade and had directed the "general development" of the Soviet armed forces. The Government managed the internal sphere of the Union of Soviet of Socialist Republics' social policy, it was responsible for implementing procedures which would either promote or ensure the well-being of Soviet citizens by economic and economic development. The government was responsible for monetary, pollution, price wages and social security policies, controlled all All-Union institutions and All-Republican institutions. For instance, the Government controlled the State Bank of the USSR and was responsible for the organisation of state insurance and accounting, it was the Government which drafted the five-year plans for economic and social development, through its control of the State Planning Committee, the country's budget, through its control of the Ministry of Finance. Both the five-year plan and the budget needed approval from the Supreme Soviet to be implemented, it was responsible for public order and the protection of its citizens.
The Government was responsible to the Soviet Parliament, the parliament could in theory force the resignation of the Government as a whole or any Government appointees by a simple majority vote. The Premier and the members of the Government were responsible jointly for decisions passed by the Government and were responsible for their respective portfolios; the Premiers of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet heads of state, appointed government ministers, the appointment was approved by the Supreme Soviet. The Premier could recommend civil servants to the Presidium, which could either pass or reject the nominee. List of heads of state of the Soviet Union Premier of the Soviet Union List of heads of government of Russia List of Governments of the Soviet Union Governments of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1917–1964 and 1964–1991
