Stalin and Lenin photo correction

   

The Water Commissar

   This image taken by the Moscow canall was taken when Nikolai Yezhov was water commissar. After he fell from power, he was arrested, shot, and his image removed by the censors.

Nikolai Yezhov

Yezhov was born in Saint Petersburg and from 1915 to 1917, Yezhov served in the Tsarist Russian army. He joined the Bolsheviks on May 5, 1917, in Vitebsk, a few months before the October Revolution. During the Russian civil war 1919–1921 he fought in the Red Army.

 After February 1922, he worked in the political system rising in 1934 to the Central Committee of the Communist Party; in the next year he became a secretary of the Central Committee. From February 1935 to March 1939 he was also the Chairman of the Central Commission for Party Control.

In 1935 he wrote a paper in which he argued that political opposition must eventually lead to violence and terrorism; this became in part the ideological basis of the Purges. He became People's Commisar for Afairs  (head of the NKVD) and a member of the Presidium Centra Executivel Committee on September 26, 1936. Under Yezhov, the purges reached their height, with roughly half of the Soviet political and military establishment being imprisoned or shot, along with hundreds of thousands of others, suspected of disloyalty or "wrecking" Yezhov himself fell out of Stalin's favour and on April 10, 1939, he was arrested and on February 4, 1940, he was executed

 

Lenin's speec

Leon Trotsky On May 5, 1920, Lenin gave a famous speech to a crowd of Soviet troops in Sverdlov Square, Moscow. In the foreground was Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev. The photo was later altered and both were removed by censors.

Leon Trotsky (Russian: Лeв Давидович Трóцкий) was a Ukrainian born Bolchevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was an influential politician in the early days of the Soviet Union, first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and later as the founder and commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo

He became an enemy of the State and was erased from Soviet history after leading the failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and the increasing bureaucratization of the Soviet Union. Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and deported from the Soviet Union in the Great Purge. As the head of the Fourth International , he continued in exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico by Ramon Mercader, a Soviet agent who used an ice axe to fatally stab Trotsky. Trotsky's ideas form the basis of Trotskiyism, a variation of communist theory, which remains a major school of Marxist thought that is opposed to the theories of Stalinism.

Women in World War 1

The day the world changed was the day World War 1 began. The war began in August 1914. Not only was it a pivotal step for Canada and the men that fought for our country, but also for the women who contributed behind the soldiers of the front lines.

World War 1 was a pivotal time for women. This is because it gave women an opportunity to prove themselves in a male-dominated society, doing more than cleaning the house and tending to the children. 

With so many men going to war, there was a large gap in employment and, in response, women came in to replace the men.

Some of the more well-known roles of women in WW1 include: nurses, munitions factory workers, sewing bandages, and selling war bonds, shipyards and spies. The Women's Royal Air Force was created, which is where women worked on planes as mechanics. 

By 1917 its was surveyed that 68% of women had changed jobs since the war began, 16% had moved out of domestic service, 22% that were unemployed in 1914 now had work and 23% had changed factories (from one factory to another).

Mariana Pineda

Mariana de Pineda y Muñoz, generally known as Mariana Pineda, (Granada, 1 September 1804– Granada, 26 May 1831) was a Spanish liberalist heroine.

At a very young age, Mariana married Manuel Peralta Valte, a liberal army officer, but was widowed in 1822 with two children. After her husband's death, Mariana became very involved in liberal causes. In 1828 she assisted in Captain Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor's escape from prison. He was a noted liberal who had been condemned to death for taking part in GeneralRafael Riego's insurrection, and also Mariana's cousin.In a search of her house in 1831, a flag was discovered with the embroidered slogan 'Equality, Freedom and Law' and Mariana was arrested and accused of conspiracy. After a failed escape attempt, she was detained in the Santa María Egipciaca convent in Granada. During the trial, the Judge tried to convince her to betray her accomplices in exchange for leniency, but she refused. Mariana was publicly executed by the garrote on May 26th.

In 1925 the playwright Federico García Lorca based his play Mariana Pineda on her story, propelling the popular heroine into legend and myth. Between 1965 and 1969 the Frenchcomposer Louis Saguer (1907–1991) composed an opera on the subject. The work premiered in 1970 in Marseille and was awarded the Grand Opera Prize of Monaco (1970).

Another Spanish playwright, José Martín Recuerda, a native of Granada, wrote "Las arrecogías del Beaterio de Santa María Egipciaca" based on the imprisonment of Mariana Pineda. The play was adapted and translated into English by Robert Lima as "The Inmates of the Convent of St. Mary Egyptian" and premiered on March 17, 1980 with a professional cast at The Pennsylvania State University. Upon its publication in DramaContemporary: Spain (1985), edited by Marion Peter Holt, the play was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by the Oxford Theatre Group in 1988.

After Fernando VII sentenced her to death, she was publicly executed near the Plaza de Triunfo with the brutal garrotte, a Spanish iron collar used to strangle and break the neck:

“The memory of my suffering will do more for our cause for liberty than all the flags in the world.”

The importance of Mariana Pineda’s role and the majesty of her birth home, “House of the Pinedas,” has been refurbished into a 4-star hotel, with special recognition as a museum-hotel (Palacio de Mariana Pineda). The chance to show travellers a little bit of Spanish history and to transport them through a dream to the time of “the heroine of liberty,” to the time of Mariana Pineda.

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution brought new trends in employment. Steam-powered machines increased production but were large and cumbersome. Factories were built to house the new machinery. All the tools and machines used in the manufacturing process were housed in one building - the factory. Factories were built all over Britain, close to natural resources and transport. In a process called urbanisation, workers moved to the cities for employment opportunities provided by the new factories.

The reality, however, was very different from workers' expectations. Factories were dangerous and hot. Working hours were long. Work was repetitive and exhausting. The difficult working conditions were made worse by poor living conditions, with many workers living in slums. Some groups of workers, such as the Luddites, opposed the Industrial Revolution. Gradually, the plight of the workers was improved by government legislation and individual industrialists.

Factories were built all over Britain. Different areas of Britain had different factories, depending upon the location of natural resources, raw materials and transportation. 
Cities grew around factories. Populations increased dramatically as workers moved from the country to the city in search of new employment and prosperity. In the 1770s, Manchester had a population of 25 000. By 1850, Manchester's population had grown to 350 000. By the mid-19th century, more than half the population of Britain lived in cities.






Workers spent twelve to fourteen hours a day, six to seven days a week, in the factories. Workers were carefully supervised by managers. Twelve-hour working days were not unknown in Britain.

Factory owners employed children in order to teach them factory skills. Children learned factory skills more easily than adults.Women were also encouraged to work in the factories as they could be paid less than men while still producing the same quality of products. Women made a major contribution to the labour market. It was not unusual for married women to work full-time in the factories