The “March on Rome” was a popular movement in support of Mussolini and Fascism. It caused the collapse of the Italian government. King Victor Emmanuel III granted Mussolini dictatorial powers for a year. Once made dictator, Mussolini was able to pass laws that ensured his continued control of the Italian state long after his year appointment had finished.

In the years following World War I (and World War II), the British Empire gradually lost the vast majority of its territory to independence movements. The Statute of Westminster, passed in 1931, sought to legally codify the independence of the Commonwealth nations (like Canada and Australia) and define their relationship with the British Crown moving forward. The Statute afforded the Dominions legislative independence, but also ratified their connection to the Crown, requiring all Commonwealth nations to seek each other's approval before making any changes that would affect the monarchical line of succession.

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, millions of people from Europe immigrated to the United States to make a new life for themselves. Italians, Irish, and Germans were the most common immigrants. This all changed, however, when the United States started implementing quotas on the number of people who could emigrate from various countries. These laws favored Northern Europeans (who the American government believed to be more industrious and less likely to commit crime) over Southern and Eastern Europeans.

During the 1930s, France, like much of the rest of the world, was mired in its worst-ever economic depression. This increased class tensions and further polarized the political spectrum. Fascism became very popular in France, as it seemed to promise an end to corporate and political corruption. The "Popular Front" (an alliance of Republicans, Communists, and others) was created with the specific intent of combatting the rise of Fascism in France.

The emancipation of the serfs in the 1860s did not create the independent peasant class that one might theoretically assume it would. The freed peasants were burdened with extreme debts intended to compensate the aristocracy for their losses. This meant that they were serfs in all but name. Following the aborted revolutions of 1905, the debt was forgiven and a wealthy peasant class emerged in Russia for the first time. These “kulaks” gained land and wealth in a very short time, but also gained the ire of their contemporaries who were less wealthy and, more relevantly, they gained the disdain of Josef Stalin and the Communist Party. "Duma" was the name of the legislative assembly in pre-revolution Russia. "Gulags" was the name of the organization that ran Soviet enforced labor camps (and, later, a colloquial name for the camps themselves). "Boyars" were a class of feudal aristocrats from earlier periods in Russia's history.

By the time the Second World War began the working and middle classes enjoyed similar rights and after the war those rights were generally maintained or extended (in Western Europe anyway). What is certainly true is that after World War II class distinctions became far less rigid across European society than they were before. Ability and natural intelligence became more important than family background, and educational opportunities were extended to a wide spectrum of society. While social class inequalities certainly persisted (and continue to persist) in European countries, relative to the rigid class hierarchies of the preceding centuries the distinctions became more subtle.

Nicholas I assumed the throne of Russia in 1825, but in order to do so, he had to first crush the Decembrist Revolt in St. Petersburg. The Decembrist Revolt occurred when a group of army officers and nobles in Russia’s capital supported the claim of Constantine, Nicholas’ younger brother, believing he would be more likely to implement social and political reforms. When Nicholas I defeated this rebellion, he instituted a reactionary policy of “Autocracy, orthodoxy, nationalism” that would reemerge at various points in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the rallying cry of the Tsarist regime. It was vehemently applied after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881.

In 1989, the Congress of People’s Deputies replaced the Soviet legislature as the dominant governing body of Russia. It lasted for less than two years and served as the primary Russian government during the short-lived Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). It guided Russia, politically, during the transition from the Soviet Union to the independent Russian state.

The Serfs were a group of people that were essentially slaves; however, they did not technically belong to any person, but were bonded to a particular plot of land, which was owned by a person. Thus giving that person the right to do whatever they wanted with the Serfs on their land.

The Boyars were the Russian noble class. They were a relatively small group that ruled over the day to day operations of the vast expanses of Russia for the Czar.