During the mid-1920s Joseph Stalin's grip on power was strengthening
by the day. By the summer of 1925, his political archenemy Lev Trotsky
had lost all sway on political dicisionmaking and, even though he formally
remained at the top of the Communist party ladder, his authority had been
significantly weakened by the removal of his many high-powered friends.
Left high and dry, Trotsky, as a politician, was in his twighlight years…
During the 1920s, Europe started falling victim to fascism, an
ugly political attitude which puts the nation-state or the race, its power
and growth in the center of life and history. The new movement gained quick
following among the masses of people still hurting from the social unrest
and moral confusion which followed the First World War. Small traders and
entrepreneurs, craftsmen, small-time bureaucrats and war veterans, they
eventually formed the bulk of the so-called ruling fascist elite. Neither
Adolf Hitler nor his Italian brother-in-arms Benito Mussolini, their associates
and parents were aristocrats or wealthy people. Violence was the main principle
around which the fascists wanted to build the future world order and which
was their main vehicle to power. They formed armed units to fight their
enemies. In Germany these were the SA brownshirt stormtroopers and the
SS blackshirt elite guards. In Italy the job was being done by Mussolini's
black-shirted followers. The fascists were against capitalist free competition
which they said was undermining a nation's unity. They despised Communists
and social democrats for exactly the same reason and also for being their
main rivals in the struggle for power. Espousing a mix of Communist and
rightwing ideas, the fascists were trying to introduce themselves as a
"third" force into the political life of their countries.
Across the Atlantic, Robert Kennedy was born in Brookline, New
York, and, as a true member of his clan, he knew it all along that some
day he would become a politician, just like his father and elder brother
John. In 1960 he managed his brother's nomination and election campaigns.
Five years after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Robert
announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president only
to be shot and fatally wounded on June 5 in Los Angeles, California...
In the same year of 1925 Margaret Thatcher was born in Britain.
Coming to power in 1979, she steered the nation through eleven years of
Conservative rule. A seasoned parliamentary tactician, she was master at
resolving disputes both with the opposition and within her own party's
ranks. In 1992 the Iron Lady was awarded life peerage and the title of
a Baroness.
Unlike his British peer who was so good at resolving political
differences through negotiation, the Cambodian leader Pol Pot forced a
regime of ruthless terror on his nation killing millions of innocent civilians
before being ousted by a Soviet-backed Vietnamese invasion in 1979. Hiding
for years deep in the jungle, Pol Pot died there late last year…
The world-famous Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya was also
born in 1925. At the age of 18 she made her debut on stage at the Bolshoi
Theater and for a whole 52 years she stunned audiences worldwide with her
absolutely inimitable dancing. Maya Plisetskaya marked her 70th birthday
offering some really brilliant performances of many classical parts.
In 1925 the outstanding American writer Theodore Dreizer published
his American Tragedy which for many years was one of the best selling novels
in the world. In Russia, Sergei Eizenstein finished work on The Battleship
Potyomkin which, shown at the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, immediately
topped the list of the 12 best films of all time.
One of Charlie Chaplin's best films, The Gold Rush, also came
out in 1925. The world's best-loved comic, Chaplin drew much inspiration
from the great French actor Max Linder. Making his first film at the Pate
studios in 1905, Linder became hugely popular but, hating to see his popularity
fading, he killed himself in 1925, just like the great and equally popular
Russian poet Sergei Yesenin.
In 1925 Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize for literature. The
plays penned by this great Irish comic dramatist, most of them politically
and philosophically charged comedies, are still very popular in the world
and are extensively performed here in Russia .
THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series
of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.
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