What is a Fable?

A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which anthropomorphizing (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim. A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind. Example: An example of a Fable is Animal Farm By George Orwell Tsar Nicholas Born on 19 May, 1868 was the first child of Tsarevitch Aleksandr III and his wife, Maria Fyodorovna. He was christened His Imperial Highness Nicholas Aleksandrovitch Romanov, Grand Duke of Russia. He was followed by three brothers and two sisters: Grand Duke Aleksandr (1869-1870), Grand Duke Georgy (1871-1899) Grand Duchess Ksenia (1875-1960), Grand Duke Michael (1878-19180 and Grand Duchess Olga (1882-1960). Upon his accension as the emperor of Russsia, he was coronated with the following title: His Highness the Tsar Nicholas Aleksandrovitch Romanov, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Tsar of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakhan, of Poland, of Siberia, of Tauric Chersonese, of Georgia, Lord of Pskov, Grand Duke of Smolensk, of Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia and Finland, Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalia, Samogotia, Bialostock, Karelia, Tver, Yougouria, Perm, Viatka, Bulgaria, and other countries; Lord and Grand Duke of Lower Novgorod, of Tchernigov, Riazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslav, Belozero, Oudoria, Obdoria, Condia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and, all the region of the North, Lord and Sovereign of the countries of Iveria, Cartalinia, Kabardinia and the provinces of Armenia, Sovereign of the Circassian Princes and the Mountain Princes, Lord of Turkestan, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig Holstein, of Storman, of the Ditmars, and of Oldenbourg. In November of 1894, he married Her Ducal Highness Princess Alix Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice of Hesse-Darstadt and By Rhine. They had five children: Grand Duchess Olga (b. 1895-1918), Grand Duchess Tatiana (b. 1897-1918), Grand Duchess Maria (b. 1899-1918), Grand Duchess Anastasia (b. 1901-1918) and Tsarevitch Aleksey(1904-1918). Karl Marx Karl Marx, the son of Hirschel and Henrietta Marx, was born in Trier, Germa ny, in 1818. Hirschel Marx was a lawyer and to escape anti-Semitism decided to abandon his Jewish faith when Karl was a child. Although the majority of people living in Trier were Catholics, Marx decided to become a Protestant. He also changed his name from Hirschel to Heinrich. After schooling in Trier (1830-35), Marx entered Bonn University to study law. At university he spent much of his time socialising and running up large debts. His father was horrified when he discovered that Karl had been wounded in a duel. Heinrich Marx agreed to pay off his son's debts but insisted that he moved to the more sedate Berlin University. The move to Berlin resulted in a change in Marx and for the next few years he worked hard at his studies. Marx came under the influence of one of his lecturers, Bruno Bauer, whose atheism and radical political opinions got him into trouble with the authorities. Bauer introduced Marx to the writings of G. W. F. Hegel, who had been the professor of philosophy at Berlin until his death in 1831. Marx was especially impressed by Hegel's theory that a thing or thought could not be separated from its opposite. For example, the slave could not exist without the master, and vice versa. Hegel argued

that unity would eventually be achieved by the equalising of all opposites, by means of the dialectic (logical progression) of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This was Hegel's theory of the evolving process of history. Heinrich Marx died in 1838. Marx now had to earn his own living and he decided to become a university lecturer. After completing his doctoral thesis at the University of Jena, Marx hoped that his mentor, Bruno Bauer, would help find him a teaching post. However, in 1842 Bauer was dismissed as a result of his outspoken atheism and was unable to help. Vladimir Lenin He is the founder and the guiding spirit of the Soviet Republics - a communist philosopher, ardent disciple of Karl Marx, leader of the Bolshevik Party and the mastermind of the 1917 October Revolution. Some consider him a prophet, others a tyrant; there are those who call him a saint, many more a devil. What is certain is that Lenin played an enormous role in the history of the 20th century. He reshaped Russia and had millions of people bent to his will. Lenin applied communist ideas to real life and his experiment forever changed the face of the world. Joseph Stalin (born Dec. 18, 1879, Gori, Georgia, Russian Empiredied March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet politician and dictator. The son of a cobbler, he studied at a seminary but was expelled for revolutionary activity in 1899. He joined an underground revolutionary group and sided with the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party in 1903. A disciple of Vladimir Lenin, he served in minor party posts and was appointed to the first Bolshevik Central Committee (1912). He remained active behind the scenes and in exile (191317) until the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought the Bolsheviks to power. Having adopted the name Stalin (from Russian stal, steel), he served as commissar for nationalities and for state control in the Bolshevik government (191723). He was a member of the Politburo, and in 1922 he became secretary-general of the party's Central Committee. After Lenin's death (1924), Stalin overcame his rivals, including Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolay Bukharin, and Aleksey Rykov, and took control of Soviet politics. In 1928 he inaugurated the Five-Year Plans that radically altered Soviet economic and social structures and resulted in the deaths of many millions. In the 1930s he contrived to eliminate threats to his power through the purge trials and through widespread secret executions and persecution. In World War II he signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939), attacked Finland ( Russo-Finnish War), and annexed parts of eastern Europe to strengthen his western frontiers. When Germany invaded Russia (1941), Stalin took control of military operations. He allied Russia with Britain and the U.S.; at the Tehrn, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences, he demonstrated his negotiating skill. After the war he consolidated Soviet power in eastern Europe and built up the Soviet Union as a world military power. He continued his repressive political measures to control internal dissent; increasingly paranoid, he was preparing to mount another purge after the so-called Doctors' Plot when he died. Noted for bringing the Soviet Union into world prominence, at terrible cost to his own people, he left a legacy of repression and fear as well as industrial and military power. In 1956 Stalin and his personality cult were denounced by Nikita Khrushchev. The Bolshveiks Revolution The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was initiated by millions of people who would change the history of the world as we know it. When Czar Nicholas II dragged 11 million peasants into World War I, the Russian people became discouraged with their injuries and the loss of life they sustained. The country of Russia was in ruins, ripe for revolution. Mensheviks On the Seizure of Power and Participation in a Provisional Government, April 1905

The decisive victory of the revolution over Tsarism may be marked either by the establishment of a provisional government - issuing from the victorious popular uprising - or by the revolutionary initiative of one or another representative institution which will decide, under the direct revolutionary pressure of the people, to organise a national constituent assembly. In either case, such a victory will inaugurate a new phase in the revolutionary epoch. . . . Social democracy must strive to retain for itself, throughout the entire (bourgeois) revolution, a position which would best afford it the opportunity of furthering the revolution, which would not bind its hands in the struggle against the inconsistent and self-seeking policies of the bourgeois parties, and which would prevent it from losing its identity in bourgeois democracy. Therefore, social democracy should not set itself the goal of seizing or sharing power in the provisional government but must remain the party of the extreme revolutionary opposition. . . . In only one case should social democracy take the initiative and direct its efforts towards seizing power and holding it as long as possible - and that is if the revolution should spread to the advanced countries of western Europe where conditions for the realisation of socialism have already attained a certain degree of maturity. In such a case, the limited historical scope of the Russian revolution may be considerably broadened and it may become possible to set out on the path of socialist reforms. The Russian Revolution 1905- 1917 The assertion of a working-class movement, the brutal suppression of a miners' strike, a collapsing Duma, and shrewd political maneuverings all led to the Bolshevik revolution and the fall of Imperial Russia. The eminent historian Leopold Haimson examines these radical shifts in political power and class identity in late Imperial Russia, offering new perspectives on crucial revolutionary figures and the events leading up to the Russian Revolution. The book focuses on two pivotal, interrelated developments: the last massive wave of labor unrest before World War I and the growing differences between two political figures, Lenin, the future head of the Soviet Union, and Iulii Martov, the leader of the democratic opposition to Bolshevism within Russian Social Democracy. Inspired by the 1912 massacre of two hundred striking miners in the gold fields of Lena, in eastern Siberia, the Russian working class crystallized as a self-aware and politically engaged movement in pursuit of its own rights and dignity. This new sense of class solidarity spread to industrial urban workers, who asserted their demands for better working conditions and became increasingly skeptical of outside groups using them for their own political gain. As Haimson demonstrates, both the Duma (Russia's parliament) and the revolutionary intelligentsia struggled to find an appropriate response to these developments. Drawing on publications and the private papers of Martov and Lenin, Haimson analyzes the differences between the revolutionaries regarding the realization of political goals and the role of the working class. He demonstrates how ideology and personal proclivities framed their actions as the revolutionary tide mounted. Thus, while Martov believed that the revolution should be allowed to create itself under the democratic guidance and leadership of workers, Lenin saw the state and political power as the key to historical transformation. Communism communism [kom-yuh-niz-uhm] Show IPA noun 1. a theory or system of social organization based on theholding of all property in common, actual o wnership beingascribed to the community as a whole or to the state. 2. ( often initial capital letter ) a system of social organization inwhich all economic and social activ ity is controlled by atotalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

3. 4.

( initial capital letter ) the principles and practices of theCommunist party. communalism.

Satire 1: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn 2: trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly See satire defined for English-language learners See satire defined for kids Allegory 1.a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning throughconcrete or material forms; figurative tre atment of onesubject under the guise of another. 2. 3. a symbolical narrative: the allegory of Piers Plowman. emblem ( def. 3 ) .

Dystoria a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression,disease, and overcrowding.