BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the lands that later became the powerful state of Prussia were inhabited by various Germanic tribes. In the medieval era, the borders of the Prussian territories changed frequently, but Prussia was roughly divided between the regions of Brandenburg-Prussia, East Prussia and West Prussia. After the mid-10th century, Brandenburg and West Prussia were incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, but East Prussia remained separated from the rest of Germany by Poland.
MoreKIEVAN RUS
Kievan Rus, which was considered the first Russian state, was formed in a land characterized by forbidding forests and an absence of natural barriers to the menace of hostile invasion, the summer's heat or the winter's cold. Although the territory had long been inhabited by various tribal groups, the Slavic tribes dominated the area after about the 6th century. This was also the time when the common Slavic language began to evolve the subgroups, West, South and East Slavic, to which Ukrainian belongs. Over time, the Slavs, who were northern agriculturalists originally from the Carpathian Mountains and the Vistula valley, engaged in trade with Arab and Byzantine merchants.
MoreKARL MARX
In 1848, a great wave of revolutions, fueled largely by the resentment felt by the ever-growing lower classes toward those who held power, swept across Europe. The Communist Manifesto, which was written by Karl Marx on the eve of the Revolutions of 1848, is representative of the ideas of many of Marx's contemporaries, including the viewpoint that history is determined by class conflict.
MoreSOVIET UNION
The
Soviet Union, which was established after the
Russian Revolution of 1917, replaced the autocratic Imperial Russian Empire. The Russian revolutionary tradition has a long and diverse history. In the 1860s, the Russian intelligentsia began to voice their discontent with the autocratic and despotic Imperial Government. Writers such as
Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy, and
Dostoevsky used their novels both as a form of personal expression and as a means to spread a political message.
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