Let's search the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in English) online II

[Ismail]

It's been two years since the last thread so yeah.

Wiki: Great Soviet Encycopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Soviet_Encyclopedia).

The online version in English is a bit inconsistent (some articles appear to have been written as early as 1970, some are as late as 1982), but yeah. The articles will always have a "Warning" on top saying that they come from the GSE and therefore might be biased. Sometimes you'll have to scroll down a bit since there can be different articles from different encyclopedias. GSE articles will always have a warning on top of them saying it "might be outdated or ideologically biased."

Here's a start: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/United%20States%20of%20America.

(note the dot in the URL, it's because the article is so large it cannot coexist with other, non-Soviet encyclopedia articles on the USA on that website)

Names follow the format of surname and then first name, and some have middle names as well, particularly Slav names, thus: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Lenin%2c+Vladimir+Ilyich

If the Soviet encyclopedia doesn't look like it has an article, check to make sure. Scroll all the way down and look under "Full Browser," the articles with green squares next to them may be the Soviet encyclopedia titles, and occasionally under "Mentioned In." Also note that all of them will be under the green square (aka Encyclopedia.) So for instance entering "American Civil War" won't get you anything, but entering "Civil War in the United States, 1861–65, and the Reconstruction of the" will.

Since this was a comprehensive encyclopedia you can pretty much expect anything that existed as of 1982 to be in it, including unique stuff like various Marxist terms and figures.

Also, since the USSR took up its very own volume, you can find parts of it by searching terms like History, Economy, Foreign Policy, Constitution and Government, etc. Note also that some figures (like Trotsky, Bukharin or Yezhov) simply do not have articles.

[Rusty Shackleford]

One way you will never see the Civil War taught in any schools in the US.


Civil War (1861–65) and Reconstruction (to the end of the 1870’s). The abrupt sharpening of the contradictions between “two social systems—the system of slavery and the system of free labor” (K. Marx, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 15, p. 355) led to the bourgeois revolution of 1861–77. The revolution consisted of two stages: the Civil War (1861–65), during which slavery was abolished and a military defeat was inflicted on the counterrevolutionaries, and Reconstruction (1865–77), during which the struggle to complete the bourgeois-democratic changes in the South continued.

The revolution changed the social structure of the South and resolved in a democratic manner the agrarian question in the western part of the country, granting settlers the right to acquire lands from the public domain. Throughout most of the USA a final victory had been gained in the farmers’ path of capitalist development in agriculture. All power passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie. In the struggle against the planters, the leading role belonged to those among the bourgeoisie who recognized the necessity of abolishing slavery and, after prolonged hesitation, embarked upon the path of revolutionary action. However, the decisive contribution to the defeat of the rebels was made by the popular masses: it was their lengthy and insurmountable pressure that made the transition to revolutionary war inevitable.

During Reconstruction the revolution proceeded with less intensity and a narrowed base, localized mainly in the South. The former slaves, who had struggled for their social and political rights, became the most revolutionary force. The democratic resolution of the agrarian question in the South was one of the principal tasks of the revolution. The bourgeoisie, however, having used the struggle of the Negroes in order to strengthen its own political power, refused to resolve the agrarian question, proceeded to work out an accommodation with the planters, and subsequently attempted to “restore everything possible, and do everything possible and impossible for the most shameless and despicable oppression of the Negroes” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 27, p. 142).

The abolition of slavery and the undermining of the power of the southern planters opened the way for rapid capitalist development as early as the first decade after the war. It was during this period that the industrial revolution in the USA was completed. Intensive railroad construction made possible the establishment of permanent economic ties throughout the country and the expansion of the domestic market. Between 1867 and 1873 about 54,000 km of railroads were built.

The socioeconomic development of the USA, accompanied by an intensified exploitation of the toiling masses, caused a sharpening of the contradictions between labor and capital. In 1866, W. Sylvis organized the National Labor Union, which was active until the early 1870’s. The first national trade labor union in American history, the National Labor Union, supported ties with the First International. After the Civil War the influence of the socialists increased. In 1867 sections of the First International were organized, and in 1872 the General Council of the First International moved its headquarters to the USA.

US foreign policy during Reconstruction was characterized primarily by an effort to strengthen US influence on the American continent and to weaken the influence of Great Britain and the other European powers. In 1867 tsarist Russia, burdened by the vestiges of serfdom and incapable of defending remote Russian settlements, sold Alaska and the Aleutian Islands to the USA.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Browsing through the article on quantum theory, I notice that the contributions of Soviet scientists to the late Copenhagen school are not mentioned at all, and that the article generally leans on the side of the idealist-instrumentalist early Copenhagen interpretation. Odd.