Oleksander Yaroslav was a member of the 80% of the population of Ukraine that owned farmland in the 1930’s. Oleksander had heard about the Russian grip tightening on his country in the mistaken fear that his fellow citizens of Ukraine were planning a secession from the USSR. Soon, men started coming to his door demanding that he remove himself from his property and turn his farmland over to the control of the Soviet Socialist Republic. He had heard in the town banter that the Russians were planning on cutting off all food from the country with intentions of quelling any intentions of revolt by the way of a “man-made famine”. Oleksander refused to willingly leave his home and let his fellow countryman starve in protest of the corrupt genocide. The men quickly stopped talking and became violent. They demanded that Oleksander turn over his land or face the consequences of his actions. Oleksander never questioned his stance and remained unwaveringly steadfast in his position despite the great tempest that was the USSR. Oleksander, one night while sleeping in his home in the small village of Pavlopil in eastern Ukraine, was awoken by men bursting into his bedroom. Amidst the noise of the gathering crowd outside and the screams of his small family, Oleksander was beaten, dragged into the street, and promptly executed in front of his wife, children, and friends. The gunshot that rang out across the village on that brisk, autumn night was used as a warning to all who would disobey the commands of the Joseph Stalin and the demands of the USSR. Oleksander Yaroslav is a name that would soon be lost in the archives of the almost 7.5 million nameless Ukrainian souls that perished by the hands of Stalin in just one of his many “killing sprees”. Many people, knowing such stories like this, would argue that the reign of Joseph Stalin was one of the worst things for Russia and the surrounding countries and had some very negative effects for everyone involved with the country at the time. …show more content…
Although some of these arguments are very valid there is still a lot of evidence to prove the exact opposite. There were quite a few good outcomes buried underneath the thousand of atrocious acts that Stalin and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics carried out in only a very short period of time. Despite the many negative things, including the death of almost 50 million Russians, that extended from the Cold War as well as Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship over the USSR there are quite a few positive outcomes of this time period including advancements in technology, industry, and politics. With both a want for power and a desire to get revenge on those who aided the Third Reich after the second world war, Joseph Stalin pushed his political and military influence into Eastern Europe. (1) “During World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed several countries effectively handed over by Nazi Germany in the secret protocol Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. These included Eastern Poland, as well as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland and eastern Romania.” (Roberts 55) The United States viewed Stalin’s power grab in Eastern Europe as a statement for advancement of Communism (or Marxism) into other western countries. Written shortly afterward, by the United States, was the Truman Doctrine. “The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical spread during the Cold War.” (McCullough 547-9) Thus the Cold War had started and the Russian-American nuclear arms and space race had begun. The Cold War ushered in one of the greatest eras of development and production of nuclear and atomic weapons. This time period also saw many excellent, world-changing new inventions. The Cold War era produced things called “hydrogen bombs”, weapons of mass destruction capable of one thousand times the power and destruction as was first witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki only a few years prior. Russia and the United States kept these weapons constantly aimed at each other for launch in case words came to blows. The United States prepared for a strike in