In my blog post, I am going to describe the changes the Soviet Union went through in the post world-war 2 era. Immediately after world war 2, Stalin adopted policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He tightened their grip on the liberated nations of Europe, moved the country back towards dictatorship, revived labor camps of the 1930’s, purged Culture and art, and tried to make Russia anti-western. In addition, he launched a violent verbal attack against Jews and reasserted communist control of the government. These changes created a wave of confusion with the people because they occurred so fast and they were a step back from progression. Thankfully, Khrushchev changed some of this by launching an attack against Stalin and his crimes, stopping the foreign policy and going against stain, that wars were not unavoidable. He also got independence in 1955 for Austria. One would think that a change was about to come, yet shortly after, Brezhnev reversed Khrushchev’s policies because his communist colleges saw de-Stalinization as a serious threat to the dictatorial authority of the party. The party had to tighten up a lot, which included reversing all of Khrushchev’s policies, leaving the Soviet Union in a state of disarray.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a growth of the urban population, a rise of highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists, and education and freedom for experts in their special areas helped foster the growth of soviet public opinion. By the 1970s the worst aspects of stains dictatorship were eliminated, and it strengthened the regime and almost all western experts concluded that rule by a self-perpetuation communist party elite in the soviet union was solid. This was a step in a new direction for the Soviet Union, and they were finally able to progress after Stalin left.
