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Stalin
Stalin turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state controlled by a powerful and complex bureaucracy. He filled labor camps with "enemies of the state" and seemed ready to launch new purges when he diedin 1953.
HS: He spread communisum throughout multiple areas. -
United Nations
Worlds largest and most prominate international organization. It was founded after WWII to replace the League of Nations,
HS: to stop wars between countries and to provide a platform for dialogue. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain symbolized the conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas. The East was communist and the West was democratic.
HS: The Iron Curtain showed how the Soviet Union isolated and repressed countries on the Eastern side. -
Truman Doctrine
It was a policy set foruth by US president Harry Truman on March 12 1947 which stated that the US wold support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere.
HS: Start of the Cold War. -
The Marshall Plan
American program to aid Europe. Which the US gave economic support to help support European economics after the end of WWII
HS: to prevent the spread of Soviet communisum. -
European Economic Cooperation
The European Economic Cooperation was established to run the US-financed Marshall Plan for reconstruction of a continent ravaged by war.
HS: The European Economic Cooperation paved the way for a new era of cooperation that was to change the face of Europe. -
Berlin Airlift
Stalin tried to force the Western Allies out of Berlin by sealing off every railroad and highway into the Western sectors of the city. The Western powers responded to the blockade by mounting a round-the-clock airlift. For more than a year, cargo planes supplied West Merliners with food and fuel.
HS: The Berlin Airlift was air power's most decisive contribution to The Cold War. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The NATO alliance was with Europe's democracies. Its an agreement to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.
HS: This agreement helped to protect the US -
Peoples Republic of China
Their were four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie, and the national-capitalists. This organization was led by Mao Zedong.
HS: China was funally under Communist control. -
Korean War
Korea was split in two by rival forces after WWII. The two Koreas found themselves on opposite sides of the Cold War. North Korea was with the Soviet Union while South Korea was with the US. In 1953, both sides signed an armistice, or end to fighting.
HS: Nearly two million North Korean and South Korean troops remained dug in on either side of the demilitarized zone, near the 38th parallel. The armistice held for the rest of the Cold War, but no peace treaty was ever negotiated. -
Explosion of the first hydrogen bomb
Ivy Mike was the code name for the first hydrogen bomb. It was set off by the US in the Pacific Ocean. The fireball was 3.25 miles wide, and the mushroom cloud rose to 57,000 feet in less than 90 seconds.
HS: The hydrogen bomb has much more destruction than atomic bombs. -
KGB (Committee for State Security)
The KGB was the main security agency for the Soviet Union. The KGB managed internal counterintelligence and international espionage for the USSR.
HS: The KGB helped keep the Soviet Union protected from its enemies. -
Geneva Accords
Known as the agreement on the settlement of the situation relating to the Democratic Republic of Afganistan. One of the agreements was the contained provisions for the timetable of the withdrawl of Soviet troops from Afganistan.
HS: The Geneva Accords focused primarily on resolving the war between French forces and those of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. -
Warsaw Pact
Mutual defense treaty between eight communist states of central and eastern Europe in exsistence during the Cold War.
HS: It was a Soviet military reaction to the integration of west Germany into NATO. -
Vietnam
It was a Cold War era military conflict that occured in Vietnam, laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975
HS: It called into question the US Army Doctrine, we were unsuccesful. By wars end, 58,220 American soliders had been killed. -
Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev was the new Soviet leader after Stalin's death. Khrushchev maintained the Communist Party's political control, but he closed prison camps and eased censorship. He called for a "peaceful coexistence" with the West.
HS: He was reponsible for the de-Stalinization and for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program. -
Suez Canal/ Nasser
Connects the Meditarranean and the Red Sea. It became the foucs fo the major world conflict.
HS: The colonial tradition of Britain and France began to crumble after the Suez Canal crisis. -
Sputnik
The Soviet Union rebuilt its shattered industries after WWII, using equipment stripped from Germany. The government poured resources into science and technology, launching Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite.
HS: They were winning the race against the US. -
Period: to
Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev was Nikita Krushchev's successor. Under Brezhnev, critics faced arrest and imprisonment.
HS: Under his rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time. However, he has often been criticised for marking the begining of an era of economic stagnation. -
Berlin Wall is erected
Berlin was split into democratic West Berlin and communist East Berlin. Low-paid East Germans who were unhappy with communism fled into West Berlin. To stop the flight, East Germany built a wall that sealed off West Berlin.
HS: The wall showed that workers, far from enjoying a communist paradise, had to be forcibly kept from fleeing. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Soviet Union sent nuclear missiles to Cuba. President John F. Kennedy responded by imposing a naval blockade that prevented further Soviet shipments. President Kennedy demanded that the Soviet Union remove the missile from Cuba, and for a few days, the world faced a risk of nuclear war over this issue. On October 28, Khrushchev agreed to remove the Soviet missiles.
HS: The Cuban Missile Crisis was a turning point in the nuclear race and the Cold War. -
Tet Offensive
Military campain during the Vietnam war. It was an attack by North Vietnam against south Vietnam and the US during a period in which no attacks were supposed to take place.
HS: It shocked the US government. -
Ho Chi Minh
In Vietnam, the French face guerrilla forces led by Ho Chi Min. he was a natinalist and communist who had fought the Japanese. He then fought the French in what is known as the First infochina War.
HS: An unexpected Vietnamese victory at the bloody battle of Dienbienph in 1954 convinced the French to leave Vietnam. -
Helsinki Accords
The Helsinki Accords guarenteed such basic rights as freedom of speech, religion, and the press as well as the rihts to a fiar trial, to earn a living, and to live in safety.
HS: The significance of the Helsinki Accords was that it raised the issue of human rights within the USSR. -
Iranian hostage crisis
It was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days.
HS: Its aftereffects changed the political and diplomatic landscape between the United States and Iran for decades to come. -
Russian Invasion of Afghanistan
Russian paratroopers landed in Kabal, the capital of Afghanistan in Christmas of 1979. The country was already almost in a civil war.
HS: After the war, they were imposing very strict Muslim law on the Afghanistan population. -
Moscow Olympics
The US and their allies boycotted the Moscow Olympics because the Soviet Union did not withdrawl from Afghanistan. Some of the countries participated in the Olympic Boycott Games in Philadelphia.
HS: This boycott led to the Soviet Union boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics. -
Lech Walesa and the Solidarity Movement in Poland
It is a Polish trade union federation that was under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa. It won millions of members and demanded political as well as economic changes.
HS: This was the first non–communist party-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country -
Los Angeles Olympics
The Soviet Union and 14 other alies boycotted in the 1984 Olympics. They held their own Games known as the Frienship Games. It was attended by almost 50 countries.
HS: The Soviet Union viewd this as states with fewer genuine weapons at their disposal used sport with correspondingly greater passion. -
Perestroika and Glasnost
These were Gorbachev's watchwords for the renovation of the Soviet body politic and society. Glasnost meant openness. Perestroika meant restructuring.
HS: Gorbachev's reforms brought economic turmoil. -
Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev was the new leader of the Soviet Union. With the economy in such bad shape and the war dragging on, he was eager to bring about reforms. However, the changes he rged soon spiraled out of control. he sought to avoid Cold War confrontations. He encouraged people to discuss the country's problems openly.
HS: His reforms brought economic turmoil. His policies also fed unrest across the Soviet empire. -
Chernobyl
An accident at the Chernobly nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union cause people, crops and animals to be exposed to deadly radiation over a wide area.
HS: Accidents like this have caused industries and governments to develop better safety measures. -
Tiananmen Square
In the center of Bejjing, China. It was a protest in China.
HS: Focal point of the Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, a pro democracy movement which ended with the Declaration of Marshal Law in Bejjing by the governement and the death of possibly several thousands of civilans. -
Berlin Wall is torn down
In 1989, as Soviet communism declined, Germany moved toward reunification. Without the help of the Soviet Union, East German communist leaders were unable to maintain control. They were forced to reopen thier western borders.
HS: On the day the Berlin Wall was torn down, the decades long symbolism of oppression was immediately transformed into symbolism of peace, unification, and hope. -
Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian federation serving from 1991 to 1995.
HS: He vowed to transform Russias socialist economy into a free market economy. -
End of USSR
At the end of 1991, the remaining Soviet republics separated to form 12 independent nations, in addition to the three Baltic States. The largest was Russia, then Kazakhstan, and then Ukraine. After 69 years, the USSR did not exist.
HS: Since a huge threat was gone, many countries warmed up to former enemies. -
Putin
He was elected president in Russia's second free election. He projected toughness and competence, promising to end corruption and build Russia into a strong market economy. Putin also secured Russia a consulting status with NATO.
HS: THe international community began to question his policies, concerned that he was becoming more autocratic than democratic.
