Portrait of a Dictator- Jan 2019

The Portrait of a Dictator

Apprentice

Study and Learn

1- Read Story of the World vol 4 pages 147-149, 223-226, 251-254, and 260-266.

2- Read History of US vol 9  pages 34-36, 111-115, and 134-138.

3.  Read the ebook  The Russian Revolution: History in an Hour

       OR

      If you would rather watch a documentary, here is one by PBS interviewing people who were                actually there.   People's Century 1917 Red Flag. (53 minutes) 

4. Read the ebook Stalin: History in an Hour by Rupert Colley
    
    OR

    Watch the documentary Stalin: Inside the Terror (While not graphic, this film does contain dramatized execution scenes)

5.  Copy these terms and definitions onto your notecards and refer to them as you read. (These may or may not come in handy in class also, just sayin').

6. (Optional but strongly reccommended)
        
              • Watch Dr. Zhivago* (1965 version)

              • And/or watch Nicholas and Alexandra (1971 version)

*While not graphic, this movie does contain infidelity. However, it is a poignant view into the life of people before, during, and after the revolution. Here is the plot summary: "A Russian epic, the movie traces the life of surgeon-poet Yury Zhivago before and during the Russian Revolution. Married to an upper-class girl who is devoted to him, yet in love with an unfortunate woman who becomes his muse, Zhivago is torn between fidelity and passion. Sympathetic with the revolution but shaken by the wars and purges, he struggles to retain his individualism as a humanist amid the spirit of collectivism." 
  

Know/Understand

Choose 1 one of the following inspirements:

• Pretend you are an active member of the Bolshevik Party. Place yourself in one of the events that occurred during the revolution, like the storming of the Winter Palace, and write about your involvement, your feelings, and your goals.

• Choose some Russian Revolution propaganda posters (translated), print them out and mount them on a poster board. Write a short analysis of each one, describing the emotions that the posters are trying to stir in the people and the message they are trying to get across.

• Compare the Russian Revolution to the American Revolution. How are they similar and how are they different?

• What was life like in Russia? Create a poster with a map of Russia. Label the major cities mentioned in the reading. Also draw in the geographical features like seas, mountains, and deserts. Write down the seasonal temperatures, population, languages spoken, describe the culture, as it was in the early 1900s.

• Make a timeline of events that led up to and comprised the Russian Revolution.  

• Make a presentation on the major people involved in the revolution, including Lenin, Tsar Nicholas, Trotsky, and Stalin, and tell us briefly about them and their roles).

• Pretend you are Tsar Nicholas II. Looking back, would you have done anything differently in order to prevent revolution?

• Read Alma 46-50 and do a character study comparing and contrasting Amalickiah and Captain Moroni. Who do you think was the better leader? Why? Do you see any similarities between Stalin and Amalickiah?

• Other Dictators: Read a short life sketch of Benito Mussolini (Fascist Italian dictator that controlled Italy from 1925-1943),  Fransisco Franco (Fascist dictator that controlled Spain from 1939-1975) or Chairman Mao  (Chinese Communist Revoltionary from 1949-1976). Prepare a short presentation for the class discussing similarities and differences between him and Stalin.

• In the Topical Guide in your Bibles, look up Pride. Pray for the Spirit to enlighten your understanding as you read some scriptures listed there and see if you can find the definition of pride, why it is so dangerous, and how we can recognize it in ourselves and others. What effects could pride have in the hands of someone with a lot of power? What is the opposite of pride? Please come prepared to discuss your thoughts and inspirations with the class.


Become/Serve

• Absolute monarchies are those in which all power is given to or, as is more often the case, taken by, the monarch. Examples of absolute power corrupting are Roman emperors (who declared themselves gods) and Napoleon Bonaparte (who declared himself an emperor). Think about this statement by Lord Acton:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Write a page or two about whether or not you agree with this statement. Is it possible to be a great leader without corruption? Can you think of some examples? As a leader what can you do to safeguard yourself from the influences of corruption? Send this to me and your writing mentor.

MASTERS

Read/Study

1. Read Animal Farm by George Orwell


Background: Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novel by George Orwell, published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror.

2. This book is a satire about the Russian Revolution. Orwell said that almost every detail in the story was inspired by actual events and people. Make a list of the characters in the book and what real-life people they represent, as well as a list of the major events in the story and their corresponding real-life events. (If you need help, you can look it up online).

3. Write 2-3 discussion questions about the book to bring up in our class discussion.


Know/Understand
Complete one of the following:

• In 1946, Orwell wrote of Animal Farm: "Of course I intended it primarily as a satire on the Russian revolution..[and] that kind of revolution (violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power hungry people) can only lead to a change of masters [-] revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert." In one-two pages, discuss the book and how it relates to this quote. Do you agree? Compare and contrast the differences between the Russian Revolution and the American Revolution. What were the outcomes of each and why do you think they were different? Send this to me and your writing mentor.

• What do you think about the ending of the book? Write 1-2 pages on what point you think Orwell was trying to get across when the animals, looking into the kitchen window, could not tell the difference between the pigs and the people? Send this to me and your writing mentor.

• Make a poster of the cast of characters. Next to each animal, write what historical person/people they represent, and why you think Orwell chose that particular animal to represent that person. Also analyze the significance of the names of the animals. Bring this to class.

History Journeyman October 2018

This week in Journeyman we will be covering 1880 to 1900

It's only about a twenty year period but a LOT went down... Kinda seems like the world started to fall apart ':)

Soooo... We're going to spend a great deal of time in Journeyman stepping away from American History. But don't worry, you'll still learn plenty in Apprentice and Masters.
Please sign up for a country to present on
Please skim over the information of countries you did not sign up for but pay most attention and do some of your own research for the one you do sign up for! It's alright if we double up.
Sign up away!!
Russia:
Watch this video about Alexander III (the Third). He was the leader of Russia at the time. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGCzmjwfSSs

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were times of crisis for Russia. Not only did technology and industry continue to develop more rapidly in the West, but also new, dynamic, competitive great powers appeared on the world scene: Otto von Bismarck united Germany in the 1860s, the post-Civil War United States grew in size and strength, and a modernized Japan emerged from the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Although Russia was an expanding regional giant in Central Asia, bordering the Ottoman, Persian, British Indian, and Chinese empires, it could not generate enough capital to support rapid industrial development or to compete with advanced countries on a commercial basis. Russia's fundamental dilemma was that accelerated domestic development risked upheaval at home, but slower progress risked full economic dependency on the faster-advancing countries to the east and west. In fact, political ferment, particularly among the intelligentsia, accompanied the transformation of Russia's economic and social structure, but so did impressive developments in literature, music, the fine arts, and the natural sciences.

Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, Russia's economy developed more slowly than did that of the major European nations to its west. Russia's population was substantially larger than those of the more developed Western countries, but the vast majority of the people lived in rural communities and engaged in relatively primitive agriculture. Industry, in general, had greater state involvement than in Western Europe, but in selected sectors it was developing with private initiative, some of it foreign. Between 1850 and 1900, Russia's population doubled, but it remained chiefly rural well into the twentieth century. Russia's population growth rate from 1850 to 1910 was the fastest of all the major powers except for the United States. Agriculture, which was technologically underdeveloped, remained in the hands of former serfs and former state peasants, who together constituted about four-fifths of the rural population. Large estates of more than fifty square kilometers accounted for about 20 percent of all farmland, but few such estates were worked in efficient, large-scale units. Small-scale peasant farming and the growth of the rural population increased the amount of land used for agricultural development, but land was used more for gardens and fields of grain and less for grazing meadows than it had been in the past.

(bonus points if you mention War and Peace)

India:

• 1885 - First meeting of the Indian National Congress

• 1897 - Plague in Bombay; Famine Commission

• 1899 - Lord Curzon becomes Governor-General and Viceroy

• 1905 - The First Partition of Bengal

• 1906 - Formation of Muslim League

I encourage you to look up india on your own :)

Africa (yes, I know it's multiple countries)(not Egypt):

1880 CE

The first Anglo-Boer War occurs between British colonisers and the Boer settlers from the Transvaal Republic.

1881 CE

The Madhist war in Sudan was one of the most serious anti-colonial rebellions of its time. After heavy casualties, the war ended in Britain’s favour, and led to the establishment of the colonial entity the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Administration.

1883 CE

The first Franco-Hova War occurs, during which Madagascar is invaded by the French. The war resulted in the ceding Antsiranana in the north to France and a large payment to the heirs of Joseph-Francois Lambert, with whom the Lamberts charter was controversially signed by Prince Radama II in 1855. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Tamatave in 1886, which gave control over Malagasy foreign policy to the French.

"Afrikakonferenz" by Gartenlaube 1884 Image Source

1884 CE

Improvement of medicines and inventions, such as the machine gun and the steam boat, opens for the European conquest of the interior of the African continent. In 1884, the Berlin Conference is held to divide Africa between the various colonial empires. This begins the scramble for Africa, a decade of rapid conquest by various European powers of the African continent. Ethiopia is the only part of Africa which remains independent.

1895 CE

Italy invades Ethiopia, attempting to create a colonial state. After about a year of conflict, Ethiopia emerges victorious.

The second Franco-Hova War occurs, with the intention of the French to bring the island completely under its protectorate. Starting with the seizing of Tamatave, the French Army marched to Antananarivo (the capital) under General Duchesne. A treaty was eventually signed making Madagascar a full Protectorate of the French Government.

1899 CE

The Second Anglo-Boer War occurs and becomes known as the most destructive modern armed conflict in South Africa’s history.

(boer war is a bit of a tongue twister :P)

France (I only put this down to discuss Louis Le Prince):
Learn about Monet!
And Van Gogh!
Annnnndddd.... LOUIS LE  PRINCE
louis-le-prince-created-the-first-ever-moving-pictures/
I cannot explain why I love this man so much?? Is it the mysterious disapperance??? That he created the camera before Edison??? I don't know. But I just think he's neat

Japan:
Read about Japan
Study and learn on your own :)

Mexico:
In 1865 the US civil war ended and they US govt demanded that France withdraw its troops from Mexico. The French were also threatened by the growing power of Prussia and they were forced to leave. Without French troops to support him Maximilian was in a hopeless situation. His army was defeated in battle at Queretaro in 1867 and he was captured and shot.
Mexico became a republic again under president Juarez. In 1876 Porfirio Diaz staged a coup and became dictator.
Under Diaz some economic progress was made and the population grew rapidly. (By 1910 it was 15 million). Railways were built and mining boomed. Mexico exported sisal, rubber, cochineal, coffee and sugar.
However in the late 19th century many Mexicans continued to live in great poverty and their resentment eventually boiled over into revolution.

In the early years of the 20th century Diaz lost support. In 1910 a Presidential election was held. Francisco Madero stood as a candidate against him. However Diaz imprisoned Madero and won the election with a huge majority. Madero escaped to Texas where he denounced the election as fraudulent and called for a rebellion

Egypt:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/egypt/

There we go! I'm excieted to see everyone in journeyman!