Influence of the Period 1910-1920

The issue of which decade should be considered the more influential creates a dilemma, for the 1990s are simply too recent to be judged properly, while the influence of the period from 1910 to 1920 is much more apparent and clearly reached far. The two decades are related primarily because the years between them constitute the lifespan of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union came into existence with the Russian Revolution in 1917 and ended with the breakup of the union in 1989. We know what effect the founding of the Soviet Union had on the next seventy years of history and on much of the world, while the consequences of the breakup are only beginning to be discerned and have only had a decade to make any difference at all. By any measure, socially, politically, economically, and artistically, the period from 1910 to 1920 was certainly more influential than the 1980s, which may prove more influential in the long run, but which have not done so yet.

The Revolution was the culmination of a long period of ferment, not the beginning. For half a century Russia had been in some turmoil: "Until 1861 Russia had for 300 years been a predominantly agricultural system maintained by the labor and taxes of peasant-serfs." The peasant-serfs were tied to the land in a system that endured for three centuries, but in the nineteenth century the system was seen as increasingly inefficient. The Industrial Revolution did not affect Russia until the last quarter of the century. The result

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ensions in Europe over the next two decades and led inevitably to World War II. The Treaty imposed a fifteen-year occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the demilitarization of a zone 30 miles wide on the right bank. The Allies also sought to prevent Germany from ever again becoming a major military power and so forbade the country from building offensive weapons, including airplanes and submarines. The German army was limited to a professional force of 100,000 men, and there was an even more drastic ceiling placed on the navy, with the added provision that Germany had to surrender the larger part of its merchant fleet. The German people were to bear the costs of occupation. As noted, one of the primary effects of World War I was World War II. A.J.P. Taylor writes, "The Second World War was, in large part, a repeat performance of the first." The Germans at the end of the war were forced to surrender large amounts of war material, to withdraw their forces behind the Rhine, and to hand over their fleet for internment. The armistice as used by the Allies changed the shape of Europe and shifted power away from Germany: "They were anxious to ensure that the German nation acknowledged defeat. . ." Taylor finds that t

Category: History - I