LibGuides: VCE History (Modern History) Area of Study 1: Ideology & Conflict: Leading to War: Russia vs America

America - early 1920s

Cliffs Notes: American Foreign Policy in the 20s
The Senate's repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I is often seen as ushering in a period of isolationism in American foreign policy. It was impossible for the United States to withdraw completely from world affairs, however, because American possessions stretched from the Caribbean to the Pacific and because the First World War had transformed the country into the world's leading creditor nation.
Progressive Era to New Era 1900-1929
The early 20th century was an era of business expansion and progressive reform in the United States. The progressives, as they called themselves, worked to make American society a better and safer place in which to live. The 1920s, also known as the "roaring twenties" and as "the new era," were similar to the Progressive Era in that America continued its economic growth and prosperity. The incomes of working people increased along with those of middle class and wealthier Americans. The major growth industry was automobile manufacturing.
Khan Academy: 1920s America
Description of America in the 1920s, including the suffragette movement, urbanisation & immigration, the re-emergence of the KKK, & prohibition.
The decade that roared
The 1920s saw the culmination of fifty years of rapid American industrialization...The 1920s ushered in more lasting changes to the American social scene than any previous decade. Escapism loomed large as many coped with change by living in the present and enjoying themselves. The economic boom that unleashed the transformation and its consequences made the Roaring Twenties an era to remember.

Women's suffrage

The passage of the 19th amendment was the result of centuries of struggle, culminating in the late 19th century in a burst of public activism and civil disobedience that not only secured voting rights for women but also helped define new possibilities for women’s participation in the public sphere.

Women's suffrage campaign scenes, cartoons, & ephemera
The visual materials from the LOC include graphic art as well as photographs, feature family life, men supporting the anti-suffrage and suffrage movements, and parades and processions.

The Progressive Era

"In the late 19th and early 20th century in America, there was a sense that things could be improved upon. A sense that reforms should be enacted. A sense that progress should be made. As a result, we got the Progressive Era, which has very little to do with automobile insurance, but a little to do with automobiles. All this overlapped with the Gilded Age, and is a little confusing, but here we have it. Basically, people were trying to solve some of the social problems that came with the benefits of industrial capitalism. To oversimplify, there was a competition between the corporations' desire to keep wages low and workers' desire to have a decent life. Improving food safety, reducing child labor, and unions were all on the agenda in the Progressive Era. While progress was being made, and people were becoming more free, these gains were not equally distributed. Jim Crow laws were put in place in the south, and immigrant rights were restricted as well. So once again on Crash Course, things aren't so simple."

Video: The untold story of American Isolationism

A TEDx talk from 2018 by historian Christopher Nichols on the origins of American Isolationism and the parallels to "America First" and "Make America Great Again". He explains that history is a vaccine against superficiality. When we take time to unearth the full story, time to understand it, we gain a new depth of insight that can create a better tomorrow.

Old Values vs New Values
Not all Americans embraced the new way of life. Many saw the United States as a civilization in decline. The original purpose of the Puritan city upon a hill seemed to be slipping away in the pursuit of materialism and self-gratification. The morals of the Victorian Age were forgotten in the age of Freud and the flapper. Immigrants brought new cultures, religions, and languages to the increasingly complex American mosaic. The success of the BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION brought a widespread suspicion of socialists, radicals, and labor unions. There were those in America who clung tenaciously to the values of the past. They would not give up without a fight.

The re-emergence of the Klu Klux Klan
Although the KKK had reemerged in the South in 1915, it wasn’t until after the end of World War I that the organization experienced a national resurgence. Membership in the KKK skyrocketed from a few thousand to over 100,000 in a mere ten months. Local chapters of the KKK sprang up all over the country, and by the 1920s, it had become a truly national organization, with a formidable presence not just in the South, but in New England, the Midwest, and all across the northern United States.

Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition was a nationwide ban on the sale and import of alcoholic beverages that lasted from 1920 to 1933.

Russia - early 1920s

The Russian Revolution & Civil War

Epic History TV explains the major events of Russia's two revolutions of 1917– the February Revolution that ended Tsarist rule in Russia, and the October Revolution, that brought the Bolsheviks to power. They explain the causes of Tsar Nicholas II's growing unpopularity. That summer Russia lurched from crisis to crisis, with a Provisional Government that faced riots (the July Days), military revolt (the Kornilov Affair), economic chaos, and constantly dwindling support. Socialist Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, once hailed as Russia's great hope, was unable to restore order, or, in October, prevent the Bolsheviks from launching a coup, organised by Leon Trotsky and led by Vladimir Lenin, that overthrew the Provisional Government and brought the Bolsheviks to power. A brutal civil war followed, leading to the death of more than 10 million Russians.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace agreement that formally ended Russia’s involvement in World War I. It was signed in the Polish city of the same name on March 3rd 1918. The treaty was controversial due to its costly terms, which saw Russia surrender large amounts of territory and people to Germany and her allies. These terms caused debate and considerable division within the Bolshevik party.
The invention of Soviet foreign policy
By 1921, the generally accepted turning point in Soviet policy, Bolshevism had made the transition from a revolutionary movement to a functioning state. The Civil War was won, the New Economic Policy ended the brutal “War Communism” and restored a measure of free market activity to peasants, and the Soviet government was organized along traditional ministerial lines (though subject to the dictates of the Communist Party). Russia was ready—needed—to pursue traditional relations with foreign powers in search of capital, trade, and technology for reconstruction.

Introduced by Vladimir Lenin in 1921, the New Economic Policy (or NEP) was a radical shift in Bolshevik economic strategy. It eased the harsh restrictions of war communism, the Bolshevik economic policy during the Civil War, and allowed the return of markets and petty trade. The NEP was controversial within the Bolshevik party, where some saw it as a back down or retreat from socialism.

Life under the Soviets in Moscow and its surroundings - archive 1928: A diary written from the perspective of an inhabitant of a Soviet 'cell'.

NEP-Period marketplace [1921]. Small-scale private trade brought rural foodstuffs into city marketplaces.

Source: Marxist Internet Archive

Mikhail Cheremnykh: Fuel is the Foundation of the Republic [1922]. And now our main fuel is firewood.

Glavpolitprosvet poster uses verses and illustrations to demonstrate the fuel needs of the country.

Source: Hoover Political Poster Database

Video: What was Lenin's New Economic Policy?

In the wake of the Russian Revolution and mired in a civil war, Vladimir Lenin made major changes to the Russian economy. These changes reflected his awareness of political and social realities (as well as economic ones), but they also reveal Lenin's willingness to adjust when needed.

Lenin's New Economic Policy: What it was and how it Changed the Soviet Union
By the time 1921 came around, Russia’s economy had been maimed by the effects of War Communism. Socialism had not begun on a good note, and Vladimir Lenin was becoming concerned with the unfortunate state of the economy. His response to the poor economy he adopted and how he planned to improve it was called the New Economic Policy, or the N.E.P., which got its name from the fact that it was “new,” in comparison to the “old” Czarist economic “policy.”