Thursday 5-20-10

[4Nathan]

Today Duy is continuing to present on how China became communist. Marxism was started by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The study of Marxism in China was started by Mao. It gave people hope and promised great riches for China. Marxism influenced many people to support Mao and his study of communism. The communist society brought down the nationalists and communism became China's official government. THe Great Leap Forward was a campaign by the Communist party that made everyone work in the steel factories. Farmers left their farms, which was 85% of the economy, and it lead to a huge famine. Millions of people were starving and Mao's approval rating was falling. People started to protest. The Cultural Revolution was started by Mao so he could get rid of the people that were betraying him.

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Ben is now going to present on NATO. NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was signed on April 4, 1949. The headquarters of NATO are in Brussels, Belgium. It is a defensive alliance. If a country is attacked that is a member of NATO and another coutries attacks it the countries that are in NATO would go help out the country that got attacked. The Korean war was crucial for NATO because it raised the threat level greatly. NATO was the alliance of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. De-Stalinization was the process of eliminating the cult of personality. The cult of personality is when an individual uses mass media to create an idealized and heroic public image. The Cult of Personality was created by Joseph Stalin. Nikita Kruzhev was the person that started De-Stalinization. It was pretty much started to counteract all the bad things that Joseph Stalin did. Peaceful Co-Existence. It influenced communist states that they could peacefully coexist with capitalists states. It was developed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union applied this concept with the United States and other NATO countries.