Glossary of 20th Century Historical Terms
Autarky
A form of state organization that aspires to self-sufficiency in policy and economics. It seeks to minimize imports and produce inside the country everything it consumes.
Bolshevik
A member of the group within the Russian Social Democratic Party led by Lenin. They defended the need to promote a social revolution in Russia.
Black Caps
Paramilitary groups that purported to restrain the power of the labor movement. Based in unions, they would violently attack workers and their leaders.
Collaborationism
During World War II, European countries were reordered according to German industry, and many people were forced to move to Germany. Germans and collaborators were found among the civilian population. However, many who did not accept the new order organized illegal Nazi resistance.
Black Thursday
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also called the Stock Market Crash, began on October 24, 1929. Many shareholders, aware that share prices would not continue to rise, created distrust. A huge sell-off hit the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone wanted to sell shares, and nobody wanted to buy. The wide range of actions caused their value to collapse and triggered the stock market crash of 1929.
Duce
The name Mussolini gave himself when he announced the establishment of an authoritarian regime in Italy. In this regime, the state and the fascist party were intertwined, and Mussolini claimed leadership (guide or leader).
Duma
Any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and throughout Russian history. In the Russian Empire, the State Duma was the lower house of parliament.
Führer
The name Hitler gave himself to gain full power after the death of Hindenburg in 1934. (Guide or leader).
Great Depression
The 1929 stock market crash spread panic among citizens. Within a few years, the stock market crisis spread to much of industry, commerce, and agriculture, leading to a widespread economic recession.
Hitler
A German dictator of Austrian origin and one of the most powerful dictators of the 20th century. He led the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and was Chancellor of the Third Reich. His main objectives were to “purify” the German people of non-Aryan elements, regain the territories lost in World War I, and ultimately achieve world domination.
Holocaust
The inherent racism in Nazi ideology led to a monstrous crime that marked 20th-century history. The Holocaust, namely, the extermination of millions of human beings guilty only of their origin, of having been born Jewish.
Irredentism
A political attitude that advocates the incorporation of a territory into another nation to which it is believed to belong.
Lenin
The undisputed leader of the Russian Revolution and the first leader of the Soviet Union. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1903, which later split into two factions: the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Lenin headed the Bolsheviks.
Menshevik
A member of the faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party that remained in the minority at the party’s second congress (1903). They defended the alliance of the Socialists with progressive elements of the bourgeoisie to implement political democracy in Russia.
Mussolini
The head of state of the dictatorship in Italy from 1922 until 1943. He was the creator of an undemocratic regime called Fascism, from which he received the nickname Duce (guide or leader).
New Deal
In 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidential election. He proposed a new program to promote economic recovery and lead the country out of crisis. It was called the New Deal, which defended state intervention to revive the economy.
NATO
An international organization established in 1949 to collaborate on defense in the political, economic, and military spheres. It was designed to guarantee the security of Western European states against the Soviet Union and its allies.
Anti-Comintern Pact
A pact signed in 1936 between Germany and Japan against the USSR.
Warsaw Pact
Established in 1955 to counter NATO after the admission and possible rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. As it was near the height of the Cold War, NATO forces acted only as a deterrent force.
Putsch in Munich
A failed coup attempt made between November 8 and 9, 1923, in Munich, featuring members of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. As a result of the failed putsch, Hitler was imprisoned.
Weimar Republic
In 1918, at the end of World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his position, and a republic was proclaimed. The Weimar Republic established its capital in Weimar and was based on a democratic constitution.
Soviet
A term that refers to organizations of councils of workers, peasants, and soldiers, who demanded the withdrawal of the Tsar from World War I and the end of autocracy.
Stalin
The leader of the USSR between 1924 and 1953. He joined the Bolshevik Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and proposed the construction of socialism in one country, the USSR. Under his rule, the USSR became a great power.
Iron Curtain
An expression that arose after World War II. It defined the symbolic border separating the USSR and its allied states, with their communist ideology, from the rest of Europe, which had capitalist economies and was allied with the United States.
USSR
In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created. It was a federal state uniting all the nationalities of the old Tsarist empire. The USSR was ruled by a parliament (Supreme Soviet) and one party, the CPSU, which controlled all aspects of life.