In 1931 the global economic crisis was still raging on… Across the Western world, domestic political stability was now a thing of the past. Governments were coming and going in quick succession and in Spain they even had a revolution which swept away the monarchy. In their power-consolidating effort, the political parties were trying hard to form broader coalitions. In some countries the governments were already ruling by decree sidestepping parliaments. All this political maneuvering, however, still left in place the main problem of how to end the crisis and defuse the dangerously fraught social tensions. The crisis was also brushing off on international relations because, instead of looking together for a way out, the Western governments were shirking their obligations. This lack of cooperation had a ruinous effect on relations between the Great Powers, paralyzing their ability to maintain the status quo. Japan was the first to capitalize on this riding roughshod over the Washington Conference accords on China. The Japanese invaded the northeastern Chinese province of Manchuria turning it into a springboard for their future aggression against China and the Soviet Union. The half-hearted attempts by the League of Nations to censor the Japanese only encouraged them to quit their membership of the organization altogether.
In 1931 two people were born in the Soviet Union who eventually played a pre-eminent role in the history of this country. The lives and headspinning political careers of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin look very much alike. Both of them come from ordinary families and worked their way up to the top. High-ranking Communist party bureaucrats during the Soviet days, Gorbachev and Yeltsin realized the need for democratic reforms but eventually fell out mostly over Yeltsin's growing criticism of the Party apparatus and his decision to end his membership of the Communist party. Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to reform the country in line with the Communist idea and he still remains a devout proponent of Communism. Mikhail Gorbachev was the first and last president of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin became the first president of independent Russia which emerged in the wake of the 1992 Soviet collapse.
On October 31 of 1931 there came the sad news of the death, at the age of 83 years, of the great American inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Throughout his many years' work at the Menlo Park Laboratory in New Jersey and later at West Orange, New Jersey, Thomas Edison made a wealth of inventions, most notably of the incandescent lamp in 1979, a system of electricity distribution, of the telephone and the phonograph.
1931 was a watershed year for the State of Nevada in western USA bringing about the state's two main businesses, big-time gambling in Las Vegas and one-day divorce registration in Reno. These two businesses were paying off like crazy which was a real boon for America's depression-stricken economy.
Also in 1931 the famous Belgian-French novelist George Simenon invented his world-acclaimed police Inspector Maigret who was the main character of the many detective stories written by this critically-acclaimed author .

THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.


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