essay on end of cold war

The Cold War Didn’t Have to End. Gorbachev Made It Happen

I f there was one belief shared in 1985 by Western politicians, the leaders and peoples of Eastern Europe, and the Soviet political elite, it was that maintenance of Soviet-type Communist systems in the Warsaw Pact countries was for Moscow non-negotiable. However much Washington politicians talked, especially in the 1950s about rollback of Communism, Communist systems carried on. Western leaders condemned the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, but no American president contemplated a military response. As Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev , who died on August 30 at 91, later agreed, nuclear war could not be won and must never be fought.

What changed? The decommunization of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War was not a consequence of Reagan’s military build-up and his starry-eyed Strategic Defense Initiative. Even Robert Gates joked that “there appeared to be only two people on the planet who actually thought SDI would work—Reagan and Gorbachev”. Gorbachev’s concern was not because he believed this would work in the manner Reagan hoped, but because to nullify a missile defense system meant overwhelming it with the sheer number of incoming missiles, some with nuclear warheads and some without. In other words, an acceleration of the arms race. The Soviet Ministry of Defense were perfectly content with that prospect, but Gorbachev was not.

Reagan’s presidency coincided with the last two years of Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet leadership, the whole of the short Kremlin tenures of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, and the first four years of Gorbachev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Nothing changed fundamentally in Eastern Europe, or for the better in East-West relations, until the last of these four leaders came to power.

In the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. had military superiority over the Soviet Union. Yet, Communism was not only sustained in Eastern Europe, it spread further afield. That makes it all the odder to argue, as some do, that in the mid-1980s when there was a rough military parity between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., a Soviet leadership had no alternative but to seek to end the Cold War.

So long as it remained cold and not hot, this standoff had big advantages for the Soviet party-state bosses. Political isolation made it easier to avoid ideological contamination and to preserve the status quo. Constant warnings of the imperialist threat helped justify strict party control and the vigilance of the KGB against enemies at home or abroad.

Maintaining the military capacity for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) took a larger share of the Soviet economy than a comparable policy did in the larger American economy, but it was a price Soviet leaders were willing to pay, egged on by the most powerful of institutional interests. For Gorbachev to out manoeuvre the military-industrial complex required boldness and political finesse. The way he used the unscheduled and unchallenged flight to the edge of Red Square of a young West German, Matthias Rust, in May 1987 was an example. Gorbachev seized the opportunity to dismiss not only the conservative Minister of Defense but about a hundred other military leaders who were opposed to the concessions he was prepared to make to secure large-scale arms reductions.

Gorbachev made three contributions that were fundamental to ending the Cold War. The first was to remove its ideological foundations. In a break with Soviet Marxism-Leninism, Gorbachev called in 1988 for a “deideologization of interstate relations” and argued for priority to be given to values and interests that united the whole of humanity rather than those of any one class, nation or group. These included “the worldwide ecological threats” which, ahead of most Western leaders, he declared in his 1988 speech at the United Nations to be “simply frightening.”

The second crucial contribution to ending the Cold War was his embrace of fundamental change of the Soviet political system and Soviet society. The new tolerance within the Soviet Union itself—from an end to persecution of religion to a burgeoning freedom of speech and, before long, of publication reduced the sense of Soviet threat. When Gorbachev announced in 1988 that the following year there would be contested elections for a new legislature, this was a decisive step toward making the political system different in kind.

Gorbachev’s third fundamental contribution to ending the Cold War was his recognition that means in politics are as important as ends, and that included his commitment to change by peaceful means. The former head of Soviet Space Research, Roald Sagdeev, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1989, remarked on Gorbachev’s faith in persuasion, and how this, too, differentiated him from previous Soviet political bosses who would just issue an order and expect to have it obeyed.

At the international level, nothing was more important than Gorbachev’s eschewal of the use of force. What had appeared in 1985 too remote for serious consideration—the end of Communist rule in Eastern Europe—was calmly accepted by Gorbachev. Not for a moment did he consider the use of force to prevent this. Indeed, he was in the process of dismantling the Communist system in his own country. Responding to later Russian criticism that he had given up the countries of the Soviet bloc without a fight, his response was, “To whom did we surrender them? To their own people.”

Anyone who thinks that Soviet leaders had no option but to accept the end of their hegemony in East-Central Europe and then the interconnected dissolution of the Soviet Union (East European countries gaining their independence raised the expectations of the most disaffected nations within the Soviet Union itself) need look no further than Ukraine in 2022. The brutal war being waged there is a reminder that the militarily stronger Soviet Union did have the option of preserving their statehood by force. It is confirmation that the values of political leaders—a Gorbachev or a Putin—still matter.

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End of the Cold War

The late Cold War is characterized by a thaw in relations between the US and Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and mostly associated with the figure of Mikhail Gorbachev and his perestroika reforms in the Soviet Union. In the 1980’s, Gorbachev and Reagan conducted a number of summits that led to the reduction of the two superpowers’ nuclear arsenals. In 1989, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, and the revolutionary wave in East Europe replaced communist-backed governments and Soviet allies. At the Malta summit in December 1989, Gorbachev and US President George H.W. Bush declared the end of the Cold War. The next year, the Soviet Union consented to the reunification of Germany. In 1991, the Soviet Union broke up into 15 independent states.

“Tear Down This Wall”: Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War

Written by: bill of rights institute, by the end of this section, you will:.

Explain the causes and effects of the end of the Cold War and its legacy

Suggested Sequencing:

Use this decision point after students have read the introductory essay to introduce foreign policy milestones during Reagan’s presidency. This decision point can be used with The Iran-Contra Affair Narrative; the Ronald Reagan, “Tear Down this Wall” Speech, June 12, 1987 Primary Source; and the Cold War DBQ (1947–1989) Lesson.

In the wake of World War II, a Cold War erupted between the world’s two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. During the postwar era, the contest between their respective capitalist and communist systems manifested itself in a nuclear arms race, a space race, and several proxy wars. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the United States fought the Vietnam War and struggled internally with its aftermath and a faltering economy, the Russians seemed ascendant. Increasing oil prices globally led to a revenue windfall for oil-rich Russia, which paid for a massive arms buildup and supported communist insurrections that Russia backed in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Eventually, the policy of détente decreased tensions between the two countries and led to their signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972. SALT I, the first of two SALT agreements, limited the number of nuclear missiles either country could possess and banned the building of antiballistic missile (ABM) systems used to defend against nuclear strikes. The use of ABMs would have upset the stalemate represented by the possibility of mutual assured destruction (MAD)—the obliteration of both parties in a nuclear war—because it would allow one side to strike first and then defend itself against retaliation.

The December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to prop up a puppet communist regime led President Jimmy Carter to seek increased military budgets and to withdraw from Senate consideration the recently signed SALT II treaty, which would have reduced both countries’ nuclear missiles, bombers, and other delivery vehicles. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he rejected détente and instituted a tough stance with Soviets designed to reverse their advances, topple communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and win the Cold War. His administration supported freedom in Eastern Europe and the Polish resistance movement known as Solidarity; armed fighters resisting communism around the world, including the mujahideen in Afghanistan; and increased military spending to support peace through strength and to bankrupt the Soviet economy if it tried to match the increases. Reagan also launched an ideological crusade against the Soviet regime for violating inalienable rights and liberties.

President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sit at a table and sign documents. Officials stand behind them.

For decades before coming into office, Reagan had criticized the spread of Soviet communism and the danger it posed. He compared communism to Nazism and totalitarianism, characterized by a powerful state that limited individual freedoms. In a 1964 televised speech, Reagan told the American people he believed there could be no accommodation with the Soviets.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we are willing to make a deal with your slave-masters.”

Shortly before he became president, Reagan told an aide: “My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: We win and they lose.”

Reagan also specifically targeted the Berlin Wall, erected by communist East Germany in 1961 to separate East and West Berlin. In a 1967 televised town hall debate with Robert Kennedy, Reagan argued, “I think it would be very admirable if the Berlin Wall should . . . disappear.” He continued, “We just think that a wall that is put up to confine people, and keep them within their own country . . . has to be somehow wrong.” In 1978, he visited the wall and was disgusted to learn the story of Peter Fechter, one of the first among hundreds who were gunned down by East German police while trying to escape to freedom.

Men work on top of a wide, tall wall. Cranes are on the left side of the wall. Two fences surround the wall on the right side.

Americans knew Ronald Reagan was an uncompromising Cold War warrior when they elected him president in 1980. Over the heads of many in the State Department and the National Security Council, he instituted controversial policies that reversed détente because he thought it had strengthened and emboldened the Soviets during the 1970s. He joked that détente was “what a farmer has with his turkey—until Thanksgiving Day.”

Reagan also pressed an unrelenting ideological attack on communism in stark moral terms that pitted it against a free society. In 1981, he asserted at the University of Notre Dame that “The West won’t contain communism, it will transcend communism . . . it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.” In a 1982 speech to the British Parliament, he said communism ran “against the tides of history by denying human freedom and human dignity” and predicted that the Soviet regime would end up “on the ash heap of history.” The Berlin Wall was “the signature of the regime that built it.” During that trip, Reagan visited the wall and said, “It’s as ugly as the idea behind it.” In a 1983 speech that made the supporters of a softer line toward the Soviets cringe, he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”

In June 1987, Reagan was in West Berlin to speak during a ceremony commemorating the 750th anniversary of the city and faced an important choice. The Berlin Wall was one of the most important symbols of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and a symbol of communist oppression. He could confront the Soviets about the injustice of the wall, or he could deliver bland remarks that would satisfy the members of the American foreign policy establishment who wanted to avoid conflict. He decided to deliver a provocative speech demanding an end to the oppression of the wall and of communism.

Many officials in Reagan’s administration and in the allied West German government were strongly opposed to his delivering any provocative words or actions during the speech. The West Germans did not want the speech to be given anywhere near the wall and sought to avoid what might be perceived as an aggressive signal. The German Foreign Ministry appealed to the White House, but to no avail. Some members of the administration were even more concerned. At the time, the United States was in the midst of Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) negotiations with the U.S.S.R., and officials did not want to jeopardize the progress they had made by undermining the Soviet leader so close to home. As a result, Secretary of State George Shultz, Chief of Staff Howard Baker, and the U.S. Embassy in Bonn (the West German capital) read the drafts of Reagan’s speech and repeatedly implored the president and his speechwriters to tone down the language. Deputy National Security Advisor Colin Powell and other members of the National Security Council were particularly adamant and offered several revisions of the speech. Reagan listened to all the objections and unalterably decided, “I think we’ll leave it in.” He would not be deterred from challenging the Soviets and communism.

The stark moral difference between the systems on either side of the Berlin Wall was evident on June 12. Reagan and his team arrived in West Berlin and encountered some protesters who freely voiced their dissent at his appearance. He also spoke to reporters and nervous German officials who feared the fallout over an antagonistic speech. As he told them, “This is the only wall that has ever been built to keep people in, not keep people out.” In East Berlin, in contrast, the German secret police and Russian KGB agents cordoned off an area a thousand yards wide on the other side of the wall from where Reagan was to speak. They wanted to ensure that no one could hear his message of freedom.

Reagan stepped up to the podium to speak, with the Brandenburg Gate and the imposing wall in the background. He told the audience, “As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.” In the middle of the speech, Reagan directly challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who wanted to reform communism in an attempt to save it. He delivered the line that had caused so much consternation among American and German officials: “If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Reagan finished the speech by predicting the wall would not endure. “This wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.” Reagan took responsibility for causing a diplomatic furor because he believed in universal ideals of freedom and self-government. And he understood the power of using a dramatic moment to promote American ideals.

Ronald Reagan delivers a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Wall.

A year later, Reagan addressed the students at Moscow State University. “The key is freedom,” he told them. It was an ideal that had been at the core of his political philosophy and public statements for 50 years, since the dawn of the Cold War. In a statement that reflected his own sense of responsibility for defeating communism and defending freedom, he told them: “It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream—to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters.”

In applying military, economic, moral, and ideological pressure against the system to facilitate its collapse, Reagan was joined by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, and others who fought for democracy and freedom. No one imagined the Berlin Wall would fall only two years later on November 9, 1989, as communism collapsed across Eastern Europe, or that the Soviet Union would formerly dissolve by the end of 1991.

Review Questions

1. The Cold War manifested itself through all the following except

a nuclear arms race
the space race
direct military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union

2. The massive Soviet arms buildup during the 1960s and 1970s was financed by

increased oil prices globally
mineral wealth gained from Afghanistan
increased Soviet industrial productivity
surplus tariffs from the trade war with the United States

3. Tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R. increased in the 1970s with the

signing of the SALT Treaty in 1972
banning of the antiballistic missile system
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
policy of détente

4. The president most often credited with advocating policies leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union was

Richard Nixon
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush

5. The Reagan administration challenged Soviet influence by

supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland
refusing to get involved in the Afghanistan conflict
embracing unilateral nuclear disarmament
continuing the policy of détente

6. For President Ronald Reagan, the “evil empire” confronting the world was

Afghanistan
Communist China
the Soviet Union

7. Events marking the end of the Cold War included all the following except

Eastern European uprisings against communism
the tearing down of the Berlin War
the disintegration of the U.S.S.R.
the end of communist rule in China

Free Response Questions

Explain how détente led to a lessening of nuclear tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
Compare President Reagan’s attitudes and policies toward the Soviet Union with those of his predecessors.

AP Practice Questions

“But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind —too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. And now—now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. . . . There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev—Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, June 12, 1987

Refer to the excerpt provided.

1. The sentiments expressed in the excerpt contributed to which of the following?

An end to the war on terrorism
Conflicts in the Middle East
The fall of the Soviet Union
The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001

2. The Soviet conditions referred to in this excerpt most directly resulted from

the end of World War II
collective security agreements
the creation of the United Nations

3. This excerpt was written in response to

Cold War competition extending into Latin America
postwar decolonization
efforts to seek allies among nonaligned nations
political changes and economic problems in Eastern Europe

Primary Sources

Reagan, Ronald. “Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.” June 12, 1987. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-at-brandenburg-gate/

Reagan, Ronald. “Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.” June 12, 1987. Reagan Foundation Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM

Suggested Resources

Brands, H. W. Reagan: The Life . New York: Doubleday, 2015.

Busch, Andrew E. Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Freedom . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History . New York: Penguin, 2005.

Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980–1989 . New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009.

Lettow, Paul. Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons . New York: Random House, 2005.

Ratnesar, Romesh. Tear Down This Wall: A City, A President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War . New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum website. https://www.reaganfoundation.org/library-museum/

Schweizer, Peter. Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism . New York: Doubleday, 2002.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

59e. The End of the Cold War

The fall of the Berlin Wall. The shredding of the Iron Curtain. The end of the Cold War.

When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the reins of power in the Soviet Union in 1985, no one predicted the revolution he would bring. A dedicated reformer, Gorbachev introduced the policies of glasnost and perestroika to the USSR.

Glasnost , or openness, meant a greater willingness on the part of Soviet officials to allow western ideas and goods into the USSR. Perestroika was an initiative that allowed limited market incentives to Soviet citizens.

Gorbachev hoped these changes would be enough to spark the sluggish Soviet economy. Freedom, however, is addictive.

The unraveling of the Soviet Bloc began in Poland in June 1989. Despite previous Soviet military interventions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland itself, Polish voters elected a noncommunist opposition government to their legislature. The world watched with anxious eyes, expecting Soviet tanks to roll into Poland preventing the new government from taking power.

Gorbachev, however, refused to act.

Like dominoes, Eastern European communist dictatorships fell one by one. By the fall of 1989, East and West Germans were tearing down the Berlin Wall with pickaxes. Communist regimes were ousted in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. On Christmas Day, the brutal Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were summarily executed on live television. Yugoslavia threw off the yoke of communism only to dissolve quickly into a violent civil war.

Demands for freedom soon spread to the Soviet Union. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania declared independence. Talks of similar sentiments were heard in Ukraine , the Caucasus , and the Central Asian states. Here Gorbachev wished to draw the line. Self-determination for Eastern Europe was one thing, but he intended to maintain the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union. In 1991, he proposed a Union Treaty, giving greater autonomy to the Soviet republics, while keeping them under central control.

That summer, a coup by conservative hardliners took place. Gorbachev was placed under house arrest. Meanwhile, Boris Yeltsin , the leader of the Russian Soviet Republic , demanded the arrest of the hardliners. The army and the public sided with Yeltsin, and the coup failed. Though Gorbachev was freed, he was left with little legitimacy.

Nationalist leaders like Yeltsin were far more popular than he could hope to become. In December 1991, Ukraine, Byelorussia , and Russia itself declared independence and the Soviet Union was dissolved. Gorbachev was a president without a country.

Americans were pleasantly shocked, but shocked nonetheless at the turn of events in the Soviet bloc. No serious discourse on any diplomatic levels in the USSR addressed the likelihood of a Soviet collapse. Republicans were quick to claim credit for winning the Cold War. They believed the military spending policies of the Reagan-Bush years forced the Soviets to the brink of economic collapse. Democrats argued that containment of communism was a bipartisan policy for 45 years begun by the Democrat Harry Truman.

Others pointed out that no one really won the Cold War. The United States spent trillions of dollars arming themselves for a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union that fortunately never came. Regardless, thousands of American lives were lost waging proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Most Americans found it difficult to get used to the idea of no Cold War. Since 1945, Americans were born into a Cold War culture that featured McCarthyist witchhunts, backyard bomb shelters, a space race, a missile crisis, détente, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Star Wars defense proposal. Now the enemy was beaten, but the world remained unsafe. In many ways, facing one superpower was simpler than challenging dozens of rogue states and renegade groups sponsoring global terrorism.

Americans hoped against hope that the new world order of the 1990s would be marked with the security and prosperity to which they had become accustomed.

QUIZ TIME: Reagan Years Quiz

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Gorbachev: Conflicted Catalyst of Cold War’s End

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev waves during the May 1 parade in Moscow’s Red Square in 1991.

Mikhail Gorbachev will be remembered in the West for laying the basis for more constructive relations to ease the end of the Cold War, but vilified in Russia for speeding the Soviet Union’s demise.

Article by Thomas Graham

August 31, 2022 10:45 am (EST)

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in 1985 determined to transform a stagnant Soviet Union into a dynamic, prosperous, and powerful socialist country; he never developed a coherent, concrete plan to do that. Rather, he improvised as the political and economic ground shifted around him. That rattled the hard-liners who thought he was destroying the Soviet Union and dismayed the reformers who feared he was moving too slowly to save the country. After six years, the hard-liners had enough: They failed to oust him in an ill-conceived coup attempt in August 1991, but wounded him sufficiently so that the reformers could ease him out of power at the end of that year—as the country he sought to revive collapsed, and a new Russia emerged.

Nevertheless, during his six years in power, Gorbachev accomplished extraordinary things at home and abroad. At the same time, he unleashed forces that he could not control and that would reshape his country and the world, at times in ways he did not desire.

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At home, he ended communism’s stranglehold over Soviet society, though that was not his original intention. Indeed, when he assumed power, he was a resolute communist who thought he could revive the original Leninist spirit, introduce efficiencies into the planned economy, and ensure that the Soviet Union would enter the next century as a superpower. But as reform stalled, he came to see that communism itself was at the root of the problem, and he did not flinch at the implications. He ultimately abandoned Marxism-Leninism and began to dismantle the power of the Communist Party in favor of a more open political system. His insistence that leaders be accountable to the people (he unwisely made an exception for himself) led to the freest and fairest elections in Soviet (and post-Soviet) history.

U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Control

Abroad, Gorbachev understood that he had to reduce Cold War tensions with the United States so that his country could focus on internal reconstruction, including reforming an overblown military-industrial complex that weighed on the economy. But his way of reducing tension broke with Soviet (and Russian) tradition. He rejected the pursuit of military superiority and settled for sufficiency; abandoned the Marxist class-based revolutionary approach to foreign affairs in favor of pursuing common human values; supported a common European home based on shared (he would say “democratic”) norms; and was committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. He recognized every country’s freedom to choose its political future, an implicit renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted that Moscow had the right to use all means necessary, including force, to keep a country in the socialist camp. These steps enabled Gorbachev to find common ground with U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and to negotiate a peaceful end to the Cold War in 1989.

Curiously, Gorbachev’s achievements were enabled by a political blind spot, unusual for a Soviet leader. He never understood the power of nationalism pulsing throughout the vast Soviet sphere. And so he was surprised when nationalists exploited his policy of glasnost—meaning openness or transparency—to revive narratives that challenged Moscow’s control over the ethnic republics that formed the nominal Soviet federation. He thought, naively, that reforms in Eastern Europe would be grounded in an affection for the genuine socialism he was promoting rather than a national sentiment that would seek to escape the oppressive grip of Russia. He was taken aback during the revolution of 1989 when old-time, hard-core Communist leaders were replaced not by reform-minded figures in his own mold but by anti-Communist nationalists. His underestimation of nationalism and the political forces it unleashed ultimately produced the collapse of both the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union itself.

Gorbachev proved to be a unique Soviet (and Russian) leader, in that he refused to use force to save Soviet positions in Eastern Europe or his own position at home. He quickly disassociated himself from Moscow-inspired violence against Georgia and the Baltic states as the Soviet Union started to unravel. More important, he recoiled from using force to preserve the vast buffer zone in Eastern Europe that Joseph Stalin had built at such a great cost in blood and treasure at the end of World War II. Gorbachev was correct in assuming that the use of force would fatally undermine his reform program; nonetheless, no other Soviet or Russian leader would have exercised such restraint during such a politically perilous period.

In the West, Gorbachev will be remembered for his role in helping to end the Cold War , his willingness to break with Soviet and Russian traditions, and his efforts toward more constructive relations with the United States. In Russia, he has been vilified for pursuing policies that led to the demise of a great Russian state in the guise of the Soviet Empire, one that President Vladimir Putin has spent nearly a quarter century trying to rebuild. The treatment there of Gorbachev’s passing will likely underscore the gulf now separating Russia and the West, something that Gorbachev spent his tenure trying to bridge.

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Grade 12 - Topic 4 - The end of the Cold War and a new global world order 1989 to present

There were many reasons why apartheid collapsed. You can read about the crisis of Apartheid in the 1980s in section 5 of the grade 12 material. The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union was another major cause of the end of apartheid.

Under apartheid, South Africa was a fascist state with a capitalist economy. The National Party was strongly anti-communist and said they were faced with a ' Rooi Gevaar' or a 'Red Threat'. The apartheid state used the label 'communist' to justify its repressive actions against anyone who disagreed with their policies.

During the Cold War, there was a contest for influence in Africa, between the US and Western powers on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries on the other. Most of newly independent ex-colonies in Africa received military and economic support from one of the Superpowers.

Despite its racist policies, the South African government was supported by many governments in the West, particularly Britain and the USA. This was because the South African government was anti-communist. The British and American governments used political rhetoric and economic sanctions against apartheid, but continued to supply the South African regime with military expertise and hardware.

The collapse of the USSR in 1989 meant that the National Party could no longer use communism as a justification for their oppression. The ANC could also no longer rely on the Soviet Union for economic and military support. By the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union was in political and economic crisis, and it was increasingly difficult for the Soviet Government to justify spending money in Africa.

In 1989, President F.W de Klerk , the last apartheid Head of State, unbanned the African National Congress , the South African Communist Party and the Pan Africanist Congress . He states that the collapse of the Soviet Union was decisive in persuading him to take this step:

"The collapse of the Soviet Union helped to remove our long-standing concern regarding the influence of the South African Communist Party within the ANC Alliance. By 1990 classic socialism had been thoroughly discredited throughout the world and was no longer a serious option, even for revolutionary parties like the ANC.

At about the same time, the ANC was reaching a similar conclusion that it could not achieve a revolutionary victory within the foreseeable future. The State of Emergency, declared by the South African Government in 1986, and the collapse of the Soviet Union - which had traditionally been one the ANC's main allies and suppliers - led the organisation to adopt a more realistic view of the balance of forces. It concluded that its interests could be best secured by accepting negotiations rather than by committing itself to a long and ruinous civil war." - Quote source: www.fwdklerk.org.za

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World History Project AP®

Course: world history project ap® > unit 8.

ACTIVITY Sourcing — Who Started the Cold War?
ACTIVITY: Simulation – Cold War Crisis

READ: Cold War - An Overview

ACTIVITY: Causation – Cold War
READ: The Cold War Around the World
ACTIVITY: Quick Sourcing – Cold War
READ: Chinese Communist Revolution
ACTIVITY: Quick Sourcing – Communism
BEFORE YOU WATCH: Chinese Communist Revolution
WATCH: Chinese Communist Revolution
BEFORE YOU WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War - Through a Caribbean Lens
WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War - Through a Caribbean Lens
BEFORE YOU WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War - Through an Asian Lens
WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War through an Asian Lens
READ: End of Old Regimes
ACTIVITY: SAQ Practice – Unit 8

Cold War: An Overview

According to the author, what was the basic difference at the heart of the Cold War conflict?
What does this author identify as the three main features of the Cold War?
Why did Stalin want to expand Soviet influence in Eastern Europe?
What was the policy of containment and what does the author use as an example of this policy?
To what extent does this article explain the causes and effects of the ideological struggle of the Cold War?
The Cold War was a conflict that divided nations across the world. Which of the AP themes do you think best describes why the Cold War happened?

What was the Cold War?

A divided europe, the cold war heats up around the world, the end of the cold war, want to join the conversation.

Reagan and Gorbachev: Shutting the Cold War Down

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, strobe talbott strobe talbott distinguished fellow - foreign policy @strobetalbott.

August 1, 2004

Review of Jack F. Matlock Jr.’s book, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended.

Ronald Reagan was widely eulogized for having won the cold war, liberated Eastern Europe and pulled the plug on the Soviet Union. Margaret Thatcher, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Charles Krauthammer and other notables offered variations of The Economist ‘s cover headline: “The Man Who Beat Communism.”

Actually, Jack F. Matlock Jr. writes in Reagan and Gorbachev , it was “not so simple.” He should know. A veteran foreign service officer and respected expert on the Soviet Union, he reached the pinnacle of his career under Reagan, serving first as the White House’s senior coordinator of policy toward the Soviet Union, then as ambassador to Moscow. In both the title of his memoir and the story it tells, he gives co-star billing to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Reagan himself went even farther. Asked at a press conference in Moscow in 1988, his last year in office, about the role he played in the great drama of the late 20th century, he described himself essentially as a supporting actor. “Mr. Gorbachev,” he said, “deserves most of the credit, as the leader of this country.”

This quotation was much cited at the time as an example of Reagan’s graciousness, tact and self-deprecation. But Matlock’s book bears out his former boss’s judgment. The 40th president of the United States emerges here not as a geopolitical visionary who jettisoned the supposedly accommodationist policies of containment and detente, but as an archpragmatist and operational optimist who adjusted his own attitudes and conduct in order to encourage a new kind of Kremlin leader.

During his first term, Reagan denounced the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” The name-calling riled many Soviets (and more than a few Sovietologists) but did little diplomatic harm, since relations between Washington and Moscow were already in a rut. The Kremlin had become a geriatric ward, with Red Square doubling as the world’s largest funeral parlor.

Then, in 1985, soon after Reagan’s second inauguration, the vigorous, 54-year-old Gorbachev ascended to the leadership. He wanted to demilitarize Soviet foreign policy so that he could divert resources to the Augean task of fixing a broken economy. Initially, he expected no help from Reagan, whom he regarded as “not simply a conservative, but a political ‘dinosaur.’”

For his part, Reagan assumed the new general secretary of the Communist Party would be “totally dedicated to traditional Soviet goals.” Nonetheless, he was prepared to test Prime Minister Thatcher’s first impression: ” like Mr. Gorbachev; we can do business together.”

Getting back into the business of diplomacy with the principal adversary of the United States appealed to Reagan, just as it had to six previous occupants of the Oval Office. Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had tried to make the most of Nikita S. Khrushchev’s slogan of “peaceful coexistence”; Lyndon B. Johnson jump-started arms control talks with Aleksei N. Kosygin; Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter signed strategic-arms limitation agreements with Leonid I. Brezhnev. But those Soviet leaders were committed, above all, to preserving the status quo. Sooner or later, each caused a setback or a showdown with the United States through some act of barbarity or recklessness: the crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979, the destruction of a South Korean airliner that had wandered off course in 1983. Breakthroughs in United States-Soviet relations were inherently subject to breakdowns.

Gorbachev altered that dynamic. He was determined to take the Soviet Union in a radically different direction—away from the Big Lie (through his policy of glasnost), away from a command economy (through perestroika) and away from zero-sum competition with the West.

Reagan came quickly to recognize that Gorbachev’s goals, far from being traditional, were downright revolutionary. He also saw that the transformation Gorbachev had in mind for his country would, if it came about, serve American interests.

As a result, without much fuss and without many of his supporters noticing, Reagan underwent a transformation of his own. The fire-breathing cold warrior set about trying, through intense, sustained personal engagement, to convince Gorbachev that the United States would not make him sorry for the course he had chosen.

Matlock describes in telling detail how Reagan rehearsed for his first meeting with Gorbachev, which took place in Geneva in November 1985. Reagan assigned the role of the Soviet leader to Matlock who, for maximum authenticity, played his part in Russian, mimicking Gorbachev’s confident, loquacious style. Matlock also sent Reagan a series of “spoof memos” that were “interlaced with jokes and anecdotes,” based on an educated guess at what Gorbachev’s own advisers were telling him in preparation for the encounter.

Shortly before setting off for Geneva, Reagan dictated a long memo of his own, laying out his assessment of the man he was about to meet. The Reagan game plan was to look for areas of common interest, be candid about points of contention and support Gorbachev’s reforms while (in Matlock’s paraphrase) “avoiding any demand for ‘regime change.’” He cautioned the members of his administration not to rub Gorbachev’s nose in any concessions he might make. Above all, Reagan wanted to establish a relationship with his Soviet counterpart that would make it easier to manage conflicts lest they escalate to thermonuclear war—an imperative for every American president since Eisenhower.

Matlock puts the best light he can on Reagan’s dream of a Star Wars anti-missile system, but he stops short of perpetuating the claim, now an article of faith among many conservatives, that the prospect of an impregnable shield over the United States and an arms race in space caused the Soviets to throw in the towel. Instead, Matlock focuses on Reagan’s attempt to convince Gorbachev that American defense policy posed no threat to legitimate Soviet interests and should therefore not prevent the two leaders from establishing a high degree of mutual trust.

That word figured in Reagan’s mantra, “trust but verify.” It set Gorbachev’s teeth on edge. However, Reagan intended the motto not just as a caveat about dealing with the Soviets but also as a subtle admonition to his relentlessly hard-line and mistrustful secretary of defense, Caspar W. Weinberger. According to Matlock, Weinberger was “utterly convinced that there was no potential benefit in negotiating anything with the Soviet leaders and that most negotiations were dangerous traps.” The rivalry that Matlock describes between Weinberger and Secretary of State George P. Shultz bears an eerie similarity to what we know of the one between Colin L. Powell and Donald H. Rumsfeld. Shultz grew so exasperated with Weinberger’s militancy and obstructionism that he contemplated resigning. Reagan wrote in his diary, “I can’t let this happen. Actually, George is carrying out my policy.”

That policy, as Matlock summarizes it, “was consistent throughout.” Reagan “wanted to reduce the threat of war, to convince the Soviet leaders that cooperation could serve the Soviet peoples better than confrontation and to encourage openness and democracy in the Soviet Union.”

Presidential attachment to those precepts neither began nor ended with Ronald Reagan. It was Jimmy Carter who first put human rights prominently on the agenda of American-Soviet relations. George H. W. Bush skillfully served as a kind of air traffic controller in 1991, when the increasingly beleaguered Gorbachev brought the Soviet Union in for a relatively soft landing on the ash heap of history—a major contribution to the end of the cold war that Matlock dismisses in a footnote as “cleanup” diplomacy.

While Matlock could have been more charitable to Reagan’s predecessors and to his immediate successor, his account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service as well as a contribution to the historical record. It is simultaneously admiring, authoritative and conscientious. It is also corrective, since it debunks much of the hype and spin with which we were blitzed earlier this summer. The truth is a better tribute to Reagan than the myth.

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Book contents

Copyright page
Acknowledgments
Note on Names, Transliterations, and References
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 From High Imperialism to Cold War Division
Part I Elusive Unities
Part II Asia
Part III The Middle East
Part IV Alternative World Visions
Part V Europe between the Superpowers
Part VI European Détente
Part VII The End of the Regional Cold Wars
Introduction to Chapters 20 to 22
20 The Middle East
Chapter 21 Asia
23 The End of the Superpower Cold War
24 Legacies of the Cold War

from Part VII - The End of the Regional Cold Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2020

The three Great Powers at the end of World War II and the two superpowers after the mid 1960s experienced tight limits to their political, economic and military power. They were usually most successful if they were able to influence pre-existing regional developments. Particularly the Middle East defied outside influence. Conflicts and developments usually fell into one of three categories: those without Cold War roots, those dating back to the Bolshevik challenge of 1917, and those caused by the Cold War after World War II. Over the course of four decades until the late 1980s, they collectively affected structural change. However, middle powers and smaller agents enjoyed different levels of agency, ranging from much influence, like communist China, to minute, like the Palestinians. Yet, in general, agency steadily increased over the course of the Cold War.

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Lorenz M. Lüthi , McGill University, Montréal
Book: Cold Wars
Online publication: 19 March 2020
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108289825.033

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Cold War summary

Learn about the cause of the cold war between the u.s. and the soviet union and its impact.

Cold War , Open yet restricted rivalry and hostility that developed after World War II between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The U.S. and Britain, alarmed by the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, feared the expansion of Soviet power and communism in Western Europe and elsewhere. The Soviets were determined to maintain control of Eastern Europe, in part to safeguard against a possible renewed threat from Germany. The Cold War (the term was first used by Bernard Baruch during a congressional debate in 1947) was waged mainly on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. It was at its peak in 1948–53 with the Berlin blockade and airlift, the formation of NATO , the victory of the communists in the Chinese civil war, and the Korean War . Another intense stage occurred in 1958–62 with the Cuban missile crisis, which resulted in a weapons buildup by both sides. A period of détente in the 1970s was followed by renewed hostility. The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

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Gr. 12 HISTORY T3 W1:The end of the Cold War and a new world order 1989 to the present

This essay focus on Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union in 1989 and its impact on South Africa

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The Cold War (1945-1989) essay

The Cold War is considered to be a significant event in Modern World History. The Cold War dominated a rather long time period: between 1945, or the end of the World War II, and 1990, the collapse of the USSR. This period involved the relationships between two superpowers: the United States and the USSR. The Cold War began in Eastern Europe and Germany, according to the researchers of the Institute of Contemporary British History (Warner 15). Researchers state that “the USSR and the United States of America held the trump cards, nuclear bombs and missiles” (Daniel 489). In other words, during the Cold War, two nations took the fate of the world under their control. The progression of the Cold War influenced the development of society, which became aware of the threat of nuclear war. After the World War II, the world experienced technological progress, which provided “the Space Race, computer development, superhighway construction, jet airliner development, the creation of international phone system, the advent of television, enormous progress in medicine, and the creation of mass consumerism, and many other achievements” (Daniel 489). Although the larger part of the world lived in poverty and lacked technological progress, the United States and other countries of Western world succeeded in economic development. The Cold War, which began in 1945, reflected the increased role of technological progress in the establishment of economic relationships between two superpowers. The Cold War involved internal and external conflicts between two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, leading to eventual breakdown of the USSR.

The Cold War: background information

The Cold War consisted of several confrontations between the United States and the USSR, supported by their allies. According to researchers, the Cold War was marked by a number of events, including “the escalating arms race, a competition to conquer space, a dangerously belligerent for of diplomacy known as brinkmanship, and a series of small wars, sometimes called “police actions” by the United States and sometimes excused as defense measures by the Soviets” (Gottfried 9). The Cold War had different influences on the United States and the USSR. For the USSR, the Cold War provided massive opportunities for the spread of communism across the world, Moscow’s control over the development of other nations and the increased role of the Soviet Communist party.

In fact, the Cold War could split the wartime alliance formed to oppose the plans of Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the United States as two superpowers with considerable economic and political differences. The USSR was based on a single-party Marxist–Leninist system, while the United States was a capitalist state with democratic governance based on free elections.

The key figure in the Cold War was the Soviet leader Gorbachev, who was elected in 1985. He managed to change the direction of the USSR, making the economies of communist ruled states independent. The major reasons for changing in the course were poor technological development of the USSR (Gottfried 115). Gorbachev believed that radical changes in political power could improve the Communist system. At the same time, he wanted to stop the Cold War and tensions with the United States. The cost of nuclear arms race had negative impact on the economy of the USSR. The leaders of the United States accepted the proposed relationships, based on cooperation and mutual trust. The end of the Cold War was marked by signing the INF treaty in 1987 (Gottfried 115).

The origins of the Cold War

Many American historians state that the Cold War began in 1945. However, according to Russian researchers, historians and analysts “the Cold War began with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, for this was when the capitalist world began its systematic opposition to and effort to undermine the world’s first socialist state and society” (Warner13). For Russians, the Cold War was hot in 1918-1922, when the Allied Intervention policy implemented in Russia during the Russian Civil War. According to John W. Long, “the U.S. intervention in North Russia was a policy formulated by President Wilson during the first half of 1918 at the urgent insistence of Britain, France and Italy, the chief World War I allies” (380).

Nevertheless, there are some other opinions regarding the origins of the Cold War. For example, Geoffrey Barraclough, an outstanding English historian, states that the events in the Far East at the end of the century contributed to the origins of the Cold War. He argues that “during the previous hundred years, Russia and the United States has tended to support each other against England; but now, as England’s power passed its zenith, they came face to face across the Pacific” (Warner 13). According to Barraclough, the Cold War is associated with the conflict of interests, which involved European countries, the Middle East and South East Asia. Finally, this conflict divided the world into two camps. Thus, the Cold War origins are connected with the spread of ideological conflict caused by the emergence of the new power in the early 20-th century (Warner 14). The Cold War outbreak was associated with the spread of propaganda on the United States by the USSR. The propagandistic attacks involved the criticism of the U.S. leaders and their policies. These attacked were harmful to the interests of American nation (Whitton 151).

The major causes of the Cold War

The United States and the USSR were regarded as two superpowers during the Cold War, each having its own sphere of influence, its power and forces. The Cold War had been the continuing conflict, caused by tensions, misunderstandings and competitions that existed between the United States and the USSR, as well as their allies from 1945 to the early 1990s (Gottfried 10). Throughout this long period, there was the so-called rivalry between the United States and the USSR, which was expressed through various transformations, including military buildup, the spread of propaganda, the growth of espionage, weapons development, considerable industrial advances, and competitive technological developments in different spheres of human activity, such as medicine, education, space exploration, etc.

There four major causes of the Cold War, which include:

Ideological differences (communism v. capitalism);
Mutual distrust and misperception;
The fear of the United State regarding the spread of communism;
The nuclear arms race (Gottfried 10).

The major causes of the Cold War point out to the fact that the USSR was focused on the spread of communist ideas worldwide. The United States followed democratic ideas and opposed the spread of communism. At the same time, the acquisition of atomic weapons by the United States caused fear in the USSR. The use of atomic weapons could become the major reason of fear of both the United States and the USSR. In other words, both countries were anxious about possible attacks from each other; therefore, they were following the production of mass destruction weapons. In addition, the USSR was focused on taking control over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. According to researchers, the USSR used various strategies to gain control over Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the years 1945-1980. Some of these strategies included “encouraging the communist takeover of governments in Eastern Europe, the setting up of Comecon, the Warsaw Pact, the presence of the Red Army in Eastern Europe, and the Brezhnev Doctrine” (Phillips 118). These actions were the major factors for the suspicions and concerns of the United States. In addition, the U.S. President had a personal dislike of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his policies. In general, the United States was concerned by the Soviet Union’s actions regarding the occupied territory of Germany, while the USSR feared that the United States would use Western Europe as the major tool for attack.

The consequences of the Cold War

The consequences of the Cold War include both positive and negative effects for both the United States and the USSR.

Both the United States and the USSR managed to build up huge arsenals of atomic weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.
The Cold War provided opportunities for the establishment of the military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
The Cold War led to the emergence of the destructive military conflicts, like the Vietnam War and the Korean War, which took the lives of millions of people (Gottfried13).
The USSR collapsed because of considerable economic, political and social challenges.
The Cold War led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two German nations.
The Cold War led to the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact (Gottfried 136).
The Cold war provided the opportunities for achieving independence of the Baltic States and some former Soviet Republics.
The Cold War made the United States the sole superpower of the world because of the collapse of the USSR in 1990.
The Cold War led to the collapse of Communism and the rise of globalization worldwide (Phillips 119).

The impact of the Cold War on the development of many countries was enormous. The consequences of the Cold War were derived from numerous internal problems of the countries, which were connected with the USSR, especially developing countries (India, Africa, etc.). This fact means that foreign policies of many states were transformed (Gottfried 115).

The Cold War (1945-1989) essay part 2

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History Discussion

The ideas suggested by Mikhail Gorbachev had a pernicious impact on the USSR and the whole communist society. The fact is that these new policies contradicted the ideological principles of the Soviet Union that had been fundamental for its existence and evolution for decades. Additionally, the majority of communist leaders were not able to accept these alterations because of their radical character and contradictory nature (Sanders, 2014). The principles of glasnost and democratization were introduced with the primary aim to reduce the power of the Communist party which was central to the state (Sell, 2016). In such a way, the principles mentioned above destroyed the basis of the USSR and preconditioned its further collapse.

The Cold War was one of the most important and complex periods in the history of human civilization. The confrontation between two superstates resulted in the appearance of numerous security concerns. Additionally, the emergence and fast evolution of nuclear weapons posed a new threat to the whole world. Incidents like the Caribbean Crisis proved the existence of critical discrepancies between the USSR and the USA (Sell, 2016). In such a way, the given period of history preconditioned the evolution of the modern world and the formation of peoples mentalities and the modern international discourse. That is why the Cold War period impresses by its fundamental role in the newest history.

Analyzing Gorbachevs actions and his incentives in the economy of the USSR, it is possible to conclude that the primary aim of these actions was the destruction of the welfare of the country, the growth of peoples dissatisfaction, gradual decline, and collapse. For instance, Gorbachevs anti-alcohol campaign resulted in colossal financial problems as about 100 billion rubles were lost during these years (Sell, 2016).

Correctly realizing the importance of this item of income for the budget he wanted to undermine the power of the USSR and trigger the growth of peoples dissatisfaction with the existing state. For this reason, using this factor and some other pieces of evidence, one can conclude that Gorbachevs primary intention was to destroy the USSR.

At the end of the Cold War, the USSR experienced significant economic problems caused by unwise Gorbachevs reforms and attempts to liberalize the Soviet society. Additionally, the focus on the rapprochement between the Eastern and Western camps accompanied by the proliferation of nuclear weapons resulted in the decrease in the level of tension between these superstates (Sanders, 2014). In such a way, the combination of these factors and the growth of peoples dissatisfaction in the state stipulated the peaceful resolution of the opposition and breakup of the Soviet Union.

Perfectly realizing the fact that the reformation initiated by Gorbachev would serve American interests, Reagan supported the First President of the USSR in his incentives. Being a vigorous anti-communist, Reagan reconsidered his attitude to soviet policy and tried to convince the USSR that cooperation remains the only choice for positive outcomes (Matlock, 2008). In such a way, both these leaders contributed to the peaceful resolution of the Cold War by engaging in close cooperation and demonstrating supportive behaviors.

Speaking about the final phase of the Cold War, we should admit the critical difference in relations between the leaders of the USSR and the USA if to compare with the previous ones. The fact is that both Reagan and Gorbachev made steps in the same direction which was unusual for these states Presidents (Matlock, 2008). At long last, it accelerated the collapse of the USSR and the peaceful resolution of the Cold War.

Matlock, J. (2008). Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War ended . New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Sanders, T. (2014). The world in the twentieth century: From empires to nation s (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Sell, L. (2016). From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet relations and the collapse of the USSR . Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.

The Period of the Ronald Reagan Government
The Political Rise of Ronald Reagan
Soviet Union's Fall and New Russia's Start
Modern Era: Historical and Philosophical Arguments
Cuban Missile Crisis and Administrations Negotiation
English and American Colonies
The Industrial Revolution Changes and Effects
Nation-States Creation and Empires' Falls
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, March 23). The End of the Cold War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-end-of-the-cold-war/

"The End of the Cold War." IvyPanda , 23 Mar. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-end-of-the-cold-war/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'The End of the Cold War'. 23 March.

IvyPanda . 2021. "The End of the Cold War." March 23, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-end-of-the-cold-war/.

1. IvyPanda . "The End of the Cold War." March 23, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-end-of-the-cold-war/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The End of the Cold War." March 23, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-end-of-the-cold-war/.

The Cold War

Cold war essay questions.

Origins of the Cold War

1. Explain the objectives of the communists who seized power in Russia in 1917. What kind of society did they hope to create? What methods did they use to capture power and rebuild Russia?

2. Research and discuss the ‘First Red Scare’ in the United States. What ideas and factors fuelled this scare? How legitimate were these fears?

3. Describe the relationship between the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union during World War II. What was the basis of their alliance?

4. Discuss the outcomes of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences regarding the post-war world. What was agreed or promised?

5. “Joseph Stalin was the leader most responsible for initiating the Cold War.” To what extent is this statement true?

6. Explain why eastern European nations ended up with socialist governments after World War II. Refer to three specific nations in your answer.

7. Summarise the ideas and views expressed by American diplomat George Kennan. How did these views shape US policy during the Cold War?

8. What was the Truman Doctrine? Referring to specific policies or statements, provide examples of how the Truman Doctrine was implemented between 1947 and 1952.

9. What conditions did the US place on aid provided by the European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan? What did American policymakers hope to achieve?

10. Explain why the Korean peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel in 1945. What were the consequences of this division?

1. Why did Germany evolve into two separate states between 1945 and 1949? What people, policies and events contributed to this separate development?

2. Describe how the Allies responded to the Berlin Blockade in 1948. What were the outcomes and political effects of this response?

3. Investigate conditions in West Berlin between 1945 and 1949. What problems were faced by residents of the city?

4. Why was James F. Byrnes’ September 1946 address called the “Speech of Hope”? What ideas did it convey to the people of Berlin?

5. What did Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev mean when he described Berlin as the “testicles of the West”? Evaluate Khrushchev’s policies and statements with regard to Berlin.

6. Discuss the relationship between East Berlin and West Berlin, between 1946 and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Explain how movement, communication and trade was conducted between the ‘two Berlins’.

7. Research three attempts to escape the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Why did those concerned seek to escape to the West? What methods did they use and how successful were they?

8. Why did the East German government erect a wall in Berlin in 1961? Explain why this wall became a defining symbol of the Cold War.

9. Summarise the economic policy of East Germany between 1949 and 1989. Was the East German government able to construct a successful socialist economy? What challenges and difficulties did it face?

10. Describe the society of East Germany during the Cold War. How did socialism shape the lives of ordinary East Germans?

11. Evaluate the government, economy and society of West Germany between 1949 and 1989. Was the “economic miracle” in West Germany mostly a result of Western aid – or were there other factors?

12. What was Ostpolitik and who were its main exponents? How did Ostpolitik change the relationship between East and West Germany?

The Red Scare and McCarthyism

1. What was the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC? What was its intended purpose? In your answer, refer to three examples of individuals who appeared before HUAC.

2. Who were the “Hollywood Ten” and what was their fate? Why did HUAC seek to identify communists and communist sympathisers in the worlds of film and literature?

3. Evaluate the extent of Soviet espionage in the United States and Britain in the first decade of the Cold War. Was the paranoia of McCarthyism justified?

4. Explain how a junior Senator like Joseph McCarthy became an important Cold War figure in the early 1950s. What was the basis of McCarthy’s power and influence?

5. Research three individuals who criticised or stood against McCarthyism. What arguments did they use? How successful were they in convincing others?

6. How and why was Joseph McCarthy discredited? Summarise the developments and events that led to his downfall.

7. Referring to three specific movies or television programmes, explain how Cold War ideas and fears were represented and conveyed on the screen.

8. Locate and analyse three items of propaganda warning Western civilians about communism. What were the dangers of communism, according to this propaganda? What were the ‘warning signs’ for spotting communists or communist activity?

9. Depictions of ‘normal’ Americans, families and behaviour were an important part of Cold War propaganda. What was considered ‘normal’ in the 1950s? Discuss how ideas of normality were represented in popular culture, such as television.

10. Explain the role of J. Edgar Hoover in perpetuating Cold War ideas and values in the United States. Refer to at least three specific documents, actions or methods used by Hoover.

1. Describe the objectives of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Why did Fidel Castro want to overthrow the Batista regime? What kind of society did he seek to create?

2. Evaluate the political ideology of Fidel Castro. To what extent was Castro a communist?

3. What was the Bay of Pigs campaign and what did it seek to achieve? How did the outcomes of the Bay of Pigs shape the presidency of John F. Kennedy?

4. Summarise the Vienna summit between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in May 1961. What was discussed at this summit? What impressions did the two leaders form of each other?

5. Research the political and paramilitary activities of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. What were Guevara’s values and goals? What role did he play in Castro’s Cuba?

6. Why did Moscow agree to install ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba? Why was this move unacceptable to the United States?

7. What is brinkmanship? Why is the handling of the Cuban missile crisis referred to as an example of brinkmanship?

8. Evaluate John F. Kennedy’s leadership between January 1961 and his assassination in November 1963. Did Kennedy’s presidency escalate or ease Cold War tensions?

9. Summarise the United States’ Cuba policy after the missile crisis. Did the US really wage “undeclared war” on Cuba, as Castro has claimed?

10. Research and describe life in Cuba after 1960. Was Castro’s Cuba a communist utopia, an oppressive dictatorship or something else?

Waging the Cold War

1. Explain how nuclear weapons shaped policy and attitudes during the Cold War. What was the doctrine of “Mutually Assured Destruction” and how effective was it at avoiding conflict?

2. In October 1949 Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party emerged as the new leaders of China. How did this event influence and change the Cold War?

3. Describe and evaluate the Domino Theory. How did this idea shape Western policy in the Cold War? How valid was this theory?

4. Investigate civil defence measures of the 1950s and 1960s. What precautions did governments take to protect their civilian population during and after a nuclear strike? How were civilians trained to respond to a nuclear attack?

5. How did the death of Joseph Stalin and the rise of Nikita Khrushchev change the Cold War? Did this change of leadership improve US-Soviet relations?

6. Describe the governments and policies of both Yugoslavia and Romania during the Cold War. How did socialism in these countries compare to that in Soviet bloc nations?

7. How did propaganda shape public attitudes during the Cold War? Referring to specific sources, explain how propaganda depicted life in both capitalist and socialist nations.

8. Research two or three ‘proxy wars’ during the Cold War. Explain and evaluate the involvement of major powers in these proxy conflicts.

9. Investigate three missions or operations conducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Cold War. What tactics or methods did the CIA and its agents employ? Were these missions successful in advancing American interests?

10. What did the ‘Kitchen Debate’ reveal about the ideas, values and leadership of the United States and the Soviet Union?

11. What were the ramifications of the Soviet capture of Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane in 1960?

12. Chart the course of American involvement in Vietnam. Why did the US become involved in Vietnam? How and why did this involvement increase during the 1960s?

13. How did Cold War tensions shape events in the Middle East between 1945 and 1979? Which Middle Eastern nations were influenced by the superpowers and which steered their own course?

14. Explain how sport was used for political advantage during the Cold War. Refer to at least three specific people or events in your answer.

15. Research three peace or disarmament movements that were active during the Cold War. What were the objectives of these groups? What methods and tactics did they use?

1. Describe the United States’ relationship with the People’s Republic of China between 1949 and 1972. How and why did this relationship change in 1971-72?

2. What factors contributed to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s? How did the breakdown in Soviet-Chinese relations affect the broader Cold War?

3. What caused the US oil crisis in 1973? How did this crisis impact on the Cold War?

4. Discuss how economic factors and conditions contributed to the policy of Détente in the late 1960s and 1970s.

5. Investigate the two arms limitation treaties (SALT I and SALT II) of the 1970s. How successful were these treaties at easing Cold War tensions?

6. Why did the Soviet Union invade and occupy Afghanistan in late 1979? What were the short and long-term ramifications of this action?

7. What was the Reagan Doctrine? Referring to at least three specific examples, explain how Reagan sought to undermine and weaken communism around the world.

8. Why did Ronald Reagan order US forces to invade Grenada in 1983? Why was this operation controversial?

9. Explain the purpose of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Why was this policy controversial?

10. Discuss how the Korean air disaster and the Soviet response to this disaster affected the US-Soviet relationship.

11. Why did the 1980s see a resurgence in nuclear paranoia, particularly in popular culture? How justified were these fears?

12. Evaluate the Reagan administration’s strategy during the Cold War. Did Reagan “win the Cold War”, as is often claimed? And if so, how did he achieve it?

The end of the Cold War

1. Poland was one Soviet bloc nation to experience popular opposition to the socialist government. Who initiated the reform movement in Poland? What were their grievances and objectives?

2. Evaluate the role of Pope John Paul II in undermining socialism and ending the Cold War in Europe.

3. How effective was the United Nations in minimising conflict and easing tensions during the Cold War? Identify some notable ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ of the UN.

4. Discuss how popular music contributed to the decline of the Cold War. How did music challenge or change ideas and attitudes? Refer to specific artists and performances in your answer.

5. What was the Chernobyl disaster? What impact did it have on the Soviet Union and the Cold War?

6. Evaluate the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. How was Gorbachev different to his predecessors? How did his actions and policies contribute to ending the Cold War?

7. What factors led to popular uprisings against socialism in eastern Europe in 1989? Referring to two specific countries, explain how popular movements led to political reform.

8. What brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? Discuss the people, events and factors that contributed to this significant event.

9. Why was there an attempted coup d’etat against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991? Why did this coup fail?

10. What factors brought about the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. What was created to replace it?

Content on this page is © Alpha History 2018-23. This content may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, Brian Doone, Jim Southey and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: J. Llewellyn et al, “Cold War essay questions”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/cold-war-essay-questions/.

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The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted for decades and resulted in anti-communist suspicions and international incidents that led two superpowers to the brink of nuclear disaster.

Operation Ivy Hydrogen Bomb Test in Marshall Islands A billowing white mushroom cloud, mottled with orange, pushes through a layer of clouds during Operation Ivy, the first test of a hydrogen bomb, at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Cold War History

The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted for decades and resulted in anti-communist suspicions and international incidents that led the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear disaster.

Senator McCarthy Attending US Army Hearings (Original Caption) Senator Joseph R. McCarthy chairman of the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, is shown as he took center stage again to comment on the latest developments in his dispute with the White House and Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens.

Joseph McCarthy

The Cold War In the years after World War II ended, events at home and abroad seemed to many Americans to prove that the “Red menace” was real. In August 1949, for instance, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. Later that year, Communist forces declared victory in the Chinese Civil War and established […]

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Essay on the Cold War: it’s Origin, Causes and Phases

After the Second World War, the USA and USSR became two Super Powers. One nation tried to reduce the power of other. Indirectly the competition between the Super Powers led to the Cold War.

Then America took the leadership of all the Capitalist Countries.

Soviet Russia took the leadership of all the Communist Countries. As a result of which both stood as rivals to each other.

Definition of the Cold War:

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In the graphic language of Hartman, “Cold War is a state of tension between countries in which each side adopts policies designed to strengthen it and weaken the other by falling short by actual war”.

USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War: Crash Course World History #39 ...

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Infact, Cold War is a kind of verbal war which is fought through newspapers, magazines, radio and other propaganda methods. It is a propaganda to which a great power resorts against the other power. It is a sort of diplomatic war.

Origin of Cold War:

There is no unanimity amongst scholars regarding the origin of the Cold War In 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia, Roosevelt the President of USA sent armaments to Russia. It is only because the relationship between Roosevelt and Stalin was very good. But after the defeat of Germany, when Stalin wanted to implement Communist ideology in Poland, Hungery, Bulgaria and Rumania, at that time England and America suspected Stalin.

Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England in his ‘Fulton Speech’ on 5 March 1946 said that Soviet Russia was covered by an Iron Curtain. It led Stalin to think deeply. As a result of which suspicion became wider between Soviet Russia and western countries and thus the Cold War took birth.

Causes of the Cold War:

Various causes are responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War. At first, the difference between Soviet Russia and USA led to the Cold War. The United States of America could not tolerate the Communist ideology of Soviet Russia. On the other hand, Russia could not accept the dominance of United States of America upon the other European Countries.

Secondly, the Race of Armament between the two super powers served another cause for the Cold War. After the Second World War, Soviet Russia had increased its military strength which was a threat to the Western Countries. So America started to manufacture the Atom bomb, Hydrogen bomb and other deadly weapons. The other European Countries also participated in this race. So, the whole world was divided into two power blocs and paved the way for the Cold War.

Thirdly, the Ideological Difference was another cause for the Cold War. When Soviet Russia spread Communism, at that time America propagated Capitalism. This propaganda ultimately accelerated the Cold War.

Fourthly, Russian Declaration made another cause for the Cold War. Soviet Russia highlighted Communism in mass-media and encouraged the labour revolution. On the other hand, America helped the Capitalists against the Communism. So it helped to the growth of Cold War.

Fifthly, the Nuclear Programme of America was responsible for another cause for the Cold War. After the bombardment of America on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Soviet Russia got afraid for her existence. So, it also followed the same path to combat America. This led to the growth of Cold War.

Lastly, the Enforcement of Veto by Soviet Russia against the western countries made them to hate Russia. When the western countries put forth any view in the Security Council of the UNO, Soviet Russia immediately opposed it through veto. So western countries became annoyed in Soviet Russia which gave birth to the Cold War.

Various Phases of the Cold War:

The Cold War did not occur in a day. It passed through several phases.

First Phase (1946-1949 ):

In this phase America and Soviet Russia disbelieved each other. America always tried to control the Red Regime in Russia. Without any hesitation Soviet Russia established Communism by destroying democracy in the Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungery, Yugoslavia and other Eastern European Countries.

In order to reduce Russia’s hegemony, America helped Greece and Turkey by following Truman Doctrine which came into force on 12 March 1947. According to Marshall Plan which was declared on 5 June, 1947 America gave financial assistance to Western European Countries.

In this phase, non withdrawal of army from Iran by Soviet Russia, Berlin blaockade etc. made the cold was more furious. After the formation of NATO in 1949, the Cold War took a halt.

Second Phase (1949-1953 ):

In this phase a treaty was signed between Australia, New Zeland and America in September, 1957 which was known as ANZUS. America also signed a treaty with Japan on 8 September, 1951. At that time by taking armaments from Russia and army from China, North Korea declared war against South Korea.

Then with the help of UNO, America sent military aid to South Korea. However, both North Korea and South Korea signed peace treaty in 1953 and ended the war. In order to reduce the impact of Soviet Communism, America spent a huge amount of dollar in propaganda against Communism. On the other hand, Soviet Russia tried to be equal with America by testing atom bomb.

Third Phase (1953-1957):

Now United States of America formed SEATO in 1954 in order to reduce Soviet Russia’s influence. In 1955 America formed MEDO in Middle East. Within a short span of time, America gave military assistance to 43 countries and formed 3300 military bases around Soviet Russia. At that time, the Vietnamese War started on 1955.

To reduce the American Power, Russia signed WARSAW PACT in 1955. Russia also signed a defence pact with 12 Countries. Germany was divided into Federal Republic of Germany which was under the American control where as German Democratic Republic was under Soviet Russia. In 1957 Soviet Russia included Sphutnick in her defence programme.

In 1953 Stalin died and Khrushchev became the President of Russia. In 1956 an agreement was signed between America and Russia regarding the Suez Crisis. America agreed not to help her allies like England and France. In fact West Asia was saved from a great danger.

Fourth Phase (1957-1962):

In 1959 the Russian President Khrushchev went on a historical tour to America. Both the countries were annoyed for U-2 accident and for Berlin Crisis. In 13 August 1961, Soviet Russia made a Berlin Wall of 25 Kilometres in order to check the immigration from eastern Berlin to Western Berlin. In 1962, Cuba’s Missile Crisis contributed a lot to the cold war.

This incident created an atmosphere of conversation between American President Kenedy and Russian President Khrushchev. America assured Russia that she would not attack Cuba and Russia also withdrew missile station from Cuba.

Fifth Phase (1962-1969 ):

The Fifth Phase which began from 1962 also marked a mutual suspicion between USA and USSR. There was a worldwide concern demanding ban on nuclear weapons. In this period Hot Line was established between the White House and Kremlin. This compelled both the parties to refrain from nuclear war. Inspite of that the Vietnam problem and the Problem in Germany kept Cold War between USA and USSR in fact.

Sixth Phase (1969-1978 ):

This phase commencing from 1969 was marked by DETENTE between USA and USSR- the American President Nixon and Russian President Brezhnev played a vital role for putting an end to the Cold War. The SALT of 1972, the summit Conference on Security’ of 1975 in Helsinki and Belgrade Conference of 1978 brought America and Russia closer.

In 1971, American Foreign Secretary Henry Kissinger paid a secret visit to China to explore the possibilities of reapproachment with China. The American move to convert Diego Garcia into a military base was primarily designed to check the Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean. During the Bangladesh crisis of 1971 and the Egypt-Israel War of 1973 the two super powers extended support to the opposite sides.

Last Phase (1979-1987 ):

In this phase certain changes were noticed in the Cold War. That is why historians call this phase as New Cold War. In 1979, the American President Carter and Russian President Brezhnev signed SALT II. But in 1979 the prospects of mitigating Cold War were marred by sudden development in Afghanistan.

Vietnam (1975), Angola (1976), Ethiopia (1972) and Afghanistan (1979) issues brought success to Russia which was unbearable for America. American President Carter’s Human Rights and Open Diplomacy were criticised by Russia. The SALT II was not ratified by the US Senate. In 1980 America boycotted the Olympic held at Moscow.

In 1983, Russia withdrew from a talk on missile with America. In 1984 Russia boycotted the Olympic game held at Los-Angeles. The Star War of the American President Ronald Regan annoyed Russia. In this way the ‘New Cold War’ between America and Russia continued till 1987.

Result of the Cold War:

The Cold War had far-reaching implications in the international affairs. At first, it gave rise to a fear psychosis which resulted in a mad race for the manufacture of more sophisticated armaments. Various alliances like NATO, SEATO, WARSAW PACT, CENTO, ANZUS etc. were formed only to increase world tension.

Secondly, Cold War rendered the UNO ineffective because both super powers tried to oppose the actions proposed by the opponent. The Korean Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War etc. were the bright examples in this direction.

Thirdly, due to the Cold War, a Third World was created. A large number of nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America decided to keep away from the military alliances of the two super powers. They liked to remain neutral. So, Non-Alignments Movement became the direct outcome of the Cold War.

Fourthly, Cold War was designed against mankind. The unnecessary expenditure in the armament production created a barrier against the progress of the world and adversely affected a country and prevented improvement in the living standards of the people.

Fifthly, the principle ‘Whole World as a Family’, was shattered on the rock of frustration due to the Cold War. It divided the world into two groups which was not a healthy sign for mankind.

Sixthly, The Cold War created an atmosphere of disbelief among the countries. They questioned among themselves how unsafe were they under Russia or America.

Finally, The Cold War disturbed the World Peace. The alliances and counter-alliances created a disturbing atmosphere. It was a curse for the world. Though Russia and America, being super powers, came forward to solve the international crisis, yet they could not be able to establish a perpetual peace in the world.

Essay on the Cold War, 1945
Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO): Structure, Principles and Other Details
History of The Cold War: Origin, Reasons and Other Details
Truman Doctrine: A Policy Statement Made by US during the Cold War

Cold War: Origins, combatants and leaders

The Cold War was a decades-long diplomatic and military standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States

Cold War Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. president Ronald Reagan at a Soviet/US Summit in 1985

Who started the Cold War?

The arms race, the korean war, the space race, berlin and the cold war, mccarthyism and the red scare, the cuban missile crisis, the global cold war, what was détente, soviet war in afghanistan, the reagan administration, perestroika and glasnost, fall of the berlin wall, the end of the cold war, additional resources, bibliography.

The Cold War was an ideological conflict between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union , and their respective allies. Despite being called a war, it was not a direct military confrontation between the two sides. Merriam Webster defines a cold war as a "conflict over ideological differences carried on by methods short of sustained overt military action and usually without breaking off diplomatic relations."

Tensions and hostilities between the two superpowers fluctuated throughout the 20th century, becoming stronger at the end of World War II, before the conflict finally collapsed in the early 1990s.

The Cold War was not a war in the traditional sense, though it did feature outbreaks of armed conflict such as in Vietnam and Korea. According to Odd Arne Westad, professor of history at Yale University, the instigator of the Cold War is tricky to identify, because the conflict emerged gradually from ideological differences.

"To me, the Cold War is primarily a conflict about how best to organize society between liberal capitalist ideas and socialist ideas that come out of the period of industrialization in the late 19th century," Westad told All About History magazine . "Sometime during the Second World War this ideological conflict became a conflict centred on two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union."

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima following the detonation of the atomic bomb

In August 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . This event signaled the end of World War II, following VE day earlier in the year.

By 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb. No longer the world's only nuclear power, the U.S. began building its stockpile of nuclear bombs and developing larger, more destructive weapons. President Truman approved the development of the hydrogen bomb only for the Soviet Union to once again quickly catch up, according to History Today .

Men of the 187th US Regimental Combat Team prepare for battle during the Korean War

The first hotspot of the Cold War, when the two sides came into military conflict — albeit indirectly — was the Korean War, which took place between 1950 and 1953. At the end of World War II, Korea, a former territory of Japan, was divided along its 38th parallel, and an internal border was established between the communist North Korea backed by the Soviet Union and the Western-leaning South Korea, according to the Imperial War Museum .

On June 25, 1950, North Korea, with support from the USSR (including covert operations and providing aircraft and medical support), invaded South Korea. The United Nations quickly arranged support for the south, and troops from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa, among others, were sent to oppose North Korea. In 1951, China , another communist nation, sent troops in support of North Korea, and the two sides reached a stalemate. In 1953 an armistice was agreed that established a new border close to the 38th parallel.

A Soviet poster celebrating Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space

As the arms race continued on the ground, another technological race was taking place to reach space. The space race began in 1955 when the U.S. announced that it intended to launch its first satellite. The Soviet Union responded by declaring it intended to also launch a satellite, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich .

In 1957 the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 was successfully launched into orbit. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel to space, orbiting the Earth once and returning safely in the spacecraft Vostok 1.

However, in 1969 the U.S. achieved one of the most significant victories in the space race when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon . The space race came to a symbolic end in 1975 when the first joint U.S.-Soviet mission was launched and Tom Stafford and Alexi Leonov shook hands in space.

Following the defeat of the Nazis on VE Day — the end of World War II in Europe — Germany and Austria were divided into four separate zones governed by France, the U.K., the U.S. and the Soviet Union, according to the National Army Museum in London.

Berlin was similarly divided into four zones of occupation, despite the city falling within the Soviet Zone of the country. In June 1948, the first major international crisis of the Cold War occured when the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin from the rest of the country following controversial currency reforms, according to the Imperial War Museum in London. With food supplies running out in West Berlin, a massive airlift was organized by the U.S. and its allies, which continued until May 1949 when the blockade was lifted. In total, the U.S. and its allies delivered about 2.3 million tons of cargo.

According to NATO , between 1949 and 1961 3 million citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the Soviet-operated zone fled into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), which was formed in 1949 when the American, British and French zones of Germany were unified. The loss of so many workers caused major economic issues for East Berlin, so in response to this exodus the Soviets constructed the Berlin Wall in the early hours of Aug. 13, 1961, which physically divided the city and stopped East Berliners from leaving freely.

"This is a city that has to be taken apart and put back together again," journalist Mildred Raynolds Trivers wrote in The Virginia Quarterly Review in 1962. "Berlin is not even one city, it is two cities, each with its separate government, separate currency, separate telephone systems, separate transportation systems."

Senator Joseph McCarthy who initiated the 'Red Scare'

Senator Joseph McCarthy, a right-wing Republican caused a nationwide panic during the late 1950's when he launched a number of probes into communist infiltration of various state departments and organisations, including the White House and the U.S. Army, according to The Miller Centre . What resulted was not just a governmental panic, but a witch hunt across the entire United States.

One of the most highly publicised aspects of the 'Red Scare' was the impact upon Hollywood. McCarthy's House of Un-American Activities investigated a number of Hollywood artists suspected of having communist links. The 'Hollywood Ten' were the ten most prominent figures, who were placed on a blacklist and forbidden from working in Hollywood until they were cleared of charges.

According to Stanford Business , artists who worked with those who had their name on the blacklist saw their chances of employment dropping by 13%. The effect of the blacklist would only be broken when one of its key victims, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, was hired to write the screenplay to the 1960 Kirk Douglas film Spartacus, according to The Guardian .

A US navy squadron pictured off the coast of Cuba during the blockade imposed by Kennedy

In 1959, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba following a long revolution against the island’s capitalist government and aligned his country with the Soviet Union. This intensified tensions between Cuba and the U.S., and the U.S. responded by becoming involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion — an attempt by exiled Cubans backed by U.S. intelligence services to land in Cuba and overthrow Castro’s government.

According to John T. Cortell at the U.S. Department of Defense , U.S. spy planes first discovered Soviet nuclear missile bases in Cuba on Aug. 29, 1962 and then discovered ballistic missiles in October. These followed a number of intelligence reports gathered over the preceding years which provided further evidence of missiles on the island. The missiles were discovered to be able to reach U.S. shores.

U.S. president John F. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, and on Oct. 22 he briefed the nation on the gravity of the situation, according to the JFK Library .

"Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace," Kennedy said in his address to the nation . The naval blockade was underpinned by a threat of military retaliation and Kennedy was supported by a number of nations.

After a tense five-day standoff, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba. However, in a deal that remained secret, the U.S. similarly agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its bases in Turkey. "Kennedy privately offered a hedged promise on 27th October to withdraw the Jupiter Missiles from Turkey at a future time," Barton J. Bernstein, professor emeritus of History at Stanford University, wrote in 1980 in the journal Political Science Quarterly . The years following the crisis saw a distinct relaxation of tensions, at least directly, between the USSR and the U.S., and led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty which prohibited the testing of Nuclear Weapons.

The Cold War wasn’t just a conflict between two superpowers; instead, the two superpowers each had a sphere of influence that drew multiple countries into the conflict, and the war’s effect reached almost every corner of the globe. "Some of the most significant effects of the Cold War were outside of Europe and the two superpowers, in Africa, in Asia and in Latin America," Westad told All About History. "Not in a sense that the Cold War came in from the outside but because it had some kind of effect everywhere. It influenced most things, and mostly for the worse, particularly during the latter phase of the 20th century," he said.

One of the key aspects to the global Cold War was the interventions in other countries undertaken by the United States, the USSR and other powers. But what forms did these interventions take? "They are diplomatic and propagandist and you also have a lot of covert operations which are not just military operations," Westad explained. "So when we talk about intervention we are not talking purely about military intervention. Perhaps the most noticeable one from today's perspective, as the after effects have not entirely gone away, is the combined British and American operation in Iran in the early 1950s. The aim was to unseat the government there and replace it with a government led by the then Sha, much more to Western liking. There was a covert operation with people on the ground but also a massive propaganda campaign and economic pressure," Westad said.

President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev pictured in the White House

During the 1970s the Cold War entered a phase known as détente, described as "an improvement in the relationship between two countries that in the past were not friendly and did not trust each other," according to the Cambridge online dictionary .

Détente represented a new chapter in diplomatic relations between the superpowers. "During the first half of the 1970s Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford responded to the aftermath of Vietnam by avoiding the extremes of the era: massive military retrenchment (left) and massive military escalation (right)," Julian E. Zelier, professor of political history at Princeton University, wrote in the journal Diplomatic History in 2009. Instead, a middle ground was reached, and there was significant warming of tensions between the East and the West occurred.

In May 1972, according to the Nixon Foundation , Nixon met with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev for the first of three major summits. In particular, as the Office of the Historian noted , this period was particularly important in terms of arms regulation and led to several important treaties, including the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties I and II.

By the end of the 1970s détente was beginning to wane, and hostilities between the two superpowers became more intense. One of the key events that led to this cooling of relations was the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. The USSR sent 1000,000 troops into the country to support the communist government that was under threat from mujahideen rebels, covertly supported by the United States. After a nine-year war in which 122,500 people were killed, the Soviet Union was forced to withdraw.

Many historians have named the Soviet Union’s failed intervention in Afghanistan as the event that marked the beginning of the end for the USSR. "Failure in Afghanistan led to the abandonment of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which mandated Soviet intervention to save communism from counter-revolution in neighboring states,” David C. Gompert, a former U.S. diplomat and acting director of national intelligence, wrote in " Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn " (RAND Cooperation, 2014). “It also set the stage of Mikhail Gorbachev's futile attempt to reform Soviet Politics and economics, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the abandonment of communism and the dissolution of the USSR," Gompert wrote.

Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States

In response to the war in Afghanistan, President Ronald Reagan, who was elected on Nov. 4, 1980, sought a more aggressive approach to Soviet-U.S. relations.

Reagan's strategy was to intensify the arms race. On June 18, 1980, prior to his election, he told staff at the Washington Post that, "it would be of great benefit to the United States if we start a build up [of nuclear weapons]," believing that the USSR would be unable to compete, Lou Cannon, a journalist and biographer, wrote for The Miller Center . Once elected, Reagan openly pursued a more hardline approach toward the USSR, and in a famous speech on March 8, 1983, he referred to the Soviet Union as an " evil empire ."

In 1983, Reagan also proposed the Strategic Defence Initiative, a space-based anti-missile system nicknamed "Star Wars" and described by the Atomic Heritage Foundation as "an anti-ballistic missile program that was designed to shoot down nuclear missiles in space." Although never developed, the concept was intended to threaten the USSR by demonstrating both technological and financial advancement.

Mikhail Gorbachev took over as president of the Soviet Union in 1985 and ushered in a number of reforms, perhaps the most famous of which was the policy of glasnost. The word glasnost is a,"Russian word, commonly translated in English as 'openness',” Joseph Gibbs, journalism professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, wrote in " Gorbachev's Glasnost: The Soviet Media in the First Phase of Perestroika " (Texas A&M University Press, 1999). “Gorbachev aggressively promoted glasnost as a component of his program of reconstruction, or perestroika, of the USSR's sagging economy and inefficient governmental system," Gibbs wrote.

Glasnost allowed Soviet citizens to reflect critically on the country’s own past for the first time, particularly the October Revolution of 1917. "The policy of glasnost in the perestroika era and its continuing, unstoppable momentum allow us to look at ourselves with open eyes, providing us with new knowledge about the many-sided nature of October and its consequences, and enabling us to reflect on many aspects of post-October developments in their true dimensions and significance," Gorbachev wrote in "On My Country and The World" (Columbia University Press, 1999).

Glasnost and the other reforms were intended to modernize the USSR, but they ultimately helped bring the Soviet Union to an end. The policy soon "expanded into pressure for democratization of the Soviet political system," a report from the research organization RAND said in 1990 .

East German soldiers preparing to pass through a hole in the Berlin wall as crowds celebrate

Due to Glasnost and Gorbachev’s policies, by 1989, Cold War tensions had begun to thaw across Europe, including in East and West Germany. An increasing number of public protests had led to the decision to loosen border restrictions between east and West Berlin, though the intention was never completely. On the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, East German official Gunter Schabowski announced that border restrictions between East and West Berlin would be permanently relaxed.

"East Germans will be able to obtain exit visas without delay, allowing them to cross into the West through all border points within Berlin and along the border with West Germany. Tourists who want to return to East Germany can also obtain immediate permission," journalist Anna Tomforde reported in The Guardian at the time.

However, excited Berliners did not wait for visas. By 9pm local time crowds had flocked to the wall, and at midnight the borders were opened fully and people began to chip away at the wall.

Eleven months later the reunification of Germany occurred and it would not be until 1991 that the Soviet Union collapsed, but for many the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolically marked the end of the Cold War. "Ordinary people demanding change took matters into their own hands. They brought down the wall, not armies or world statesmen. And then they danced upon it," Michael R. Meyer, former dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at Aga Khan University in Kenya and speechwriter for U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon, wrote in " The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall " (Scribner, 2009).

By 1990, Gorbachev had acquiesced to the reunification of Germany and removed all Soviet soldiers from the country. By this time the Soviet Union had also been forced to grant many of its satellite countries independence, such as Ukraine in 1991, according to the Wilson Center . An unsuccessful coup against Gorbachev by communist hardliners further increased support for Boris Yeltsin, who was standing for the pluralist movement and advocated increased liberalization and reforms. Yeltsin led a short campaign of civil resistance which ended the Coup and simultaneously weakened Gorbachev’s influence. On Dec. 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned — effectively ending the Soviet Union, and the conflict with the U.S.

"The Cold War, within the international system of states, ended very clearly with the collapse and fall of the Soviet Union," Westad said.

The John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum contains a number of articles and papers relating to JFK's time in the White House and the Cuban Missile Crisis. For those interested in the role played by nuclear weapons during the Cold War, Atomic Heritage Foundation has a variety of interesting sources. The Hoover Institution contains a wealth of information regarding the Red Scare.

History Today
Imperial War Museum
Royal Museums Greenwich
National Army Museum
"Building the Berlin Wall" NATO official site
The Virginia Quarterly Review
The Miller Centre
U.S. Department of Defense
JFK Library
Political Science Quarterly .
Nixon Foundation
Office of the Historian
David C. Gompert; " Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn " (RAND Cooperation, 2014)
Joseph Gibbs; " Gorbachev's Glasnost: The Soviet Media in the First Phase of Perestroika " (Texas A&M University Press, 1999)
Michael R. Meyer; " The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall " (Scribner, 2009)

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Callum McKelvie is features editor for All About History Magazine . He has a both a Bachelor and Master's degree in History and Media History from Aberystwyth University . He was previously employed as an Editorial Assistant publishing digital versions of historical documents, working alongside museums and archives such as the British Library . He has also previously volunteered for The Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum , Gloucester Archives and Gloucester Cathedral .

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Here’s Why Ukraine Should Seek Peace

A seated man in a suit holds flowers across his lap.

By A. Walter Dorn

Dr. Dorn is a professor of defense studies at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and the Canadian Forces College in Toronto.

After more than two years of death and destruction, neither side in the war in Ukraine appears close to victory: Russia will not achieve its imperial conquest of Ukraine, and Ukraine will most certainly not be able to regain control of all the territory occupied by Russia. Sooner or later, both sides will have to agree to a cease-fire and come up with a peace agreement.

That is a welcome prospect. An accord will not only reduce the killing, suffering and enormous cost of the war but will also, in the long run, make Ukraine stronger and better able to defend itself and its democracy. Crucially, it will reduce the chance of a dangerous escalation.

Many in the West argue that making concessions to Russia for a peace agreement would amount to appeasing an aggressor and only encourage further attacks. But it is not appeasement. Ending the war will allow Ukraine to rearm and integrate further into Europe and the West, actually increasing deterrence. Russia has already failed to achieve its initial war aims and will need to make significant concessions of its own as part of any agreement.

The peace conference in Switzerland this weekend, convened by Ukraine to muster diplomatic support for its cause, can provide a much needed opportunity to examine whether an accord is reasonable and achievable. Russia has expressed willingness to negotiate , though it has not been invited to the conference because Ukraine suspects that Russia will just use the meeting for show. But the host, Switzerland , envisages that Russia will be at future conferences.

No one will know how peace negotiations will fare unless the process is started. When compared with a never-ending war that is swallowing lives and resources at an alarming rate, even an imperfect settlement would be better. So, what could Ukraine reasonably hope to achieve and what kind of concessions would it have to make?

Ukraine has pledged never to cede territory. This is supported by international law that forbids the seizure of territory by force, and Ukraine should not surrender its lawful claim to its land. But to secure a lasting cease-fire, it may need to recognize that Russia has control, though not sovereignty, over portions of four Ukrainian regions and Crimea — and halt its quest to seize back occupied areas by force.

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DOI: 10.29000/rumelide.1502248
Corpus ID: 270565709

The Political Unconscious in Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam: The Post-Cold War Paradigm Shift and Morality in the Era of the Late Capitalist Market

Cihan Yazgı
Published in RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Ara… 20 June 2024
Political Science

6 References

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Juneteenth events celebrate the end of slavery in the United States

Singer Gladys Knight performs during the Juneteenth Concert at the White House on June 10. Photo by Ting Shen/POOL/EPA-EFE

June 19 (UPI) -- Juneteenth holiday events across the nation celebrate and memorialize June 19 in 1865, when 250,000 slaves in Texas were granted their freedom following the Civil War.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued a proclamation honoring the Juneteenth day of observance. Advertisement

"Today, we recognize that Juneteenth not only marks the end of America's original sin of slavery, but also the beginning of the work at the heart and soul of our nation -- making the promise of America real for every American," Biden said.

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Juneteenth celebrates the final triumph of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves in the former Confederate states and the eventual ratification of the 13th Amendment that abolishes slavery everywhere in the United States and its territories. Advertisement

President Abraham Lincoln and more than 618,000 soldiers gave their lives during the struggle to abolish slavery.

Congress passed a resolution that Lincoln on Feb. 1, 1865, signed the 13th Amendment , which then went to states for ratification.

The 13th Amendment reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to its jurisdiction."

The White House hosted an early Juneteenth celebration on June 10th. The nation's capital is hosting several holiday activities on Wednesday and through the weekend.

The Juneteenth events include an exhibit of painter William H. Johnson's "Fighters of Freedom" series honoring Black activists and others, including Harriet Tubman , George Washington Carver and Marian Anderson. The free exhibit is located at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art is hosting a "Five Murmurations" visual-essay exhibit by filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah. The exhibit commemorates much of the seminal events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter unrest in works of art and film clips. Advertisement

Additional Juneteenth events in the nation's capital include those scheduled at Tudor Place, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and The Phillips Collection.

Most of the Juneteenth events in Washington D.C. are free.

Some 1,400 miles away in Galveston, Texas, a 45th Annual Juneteenth Proclamation Reading was held late Wednesday morning at Ashton Villa. The event also honored former Texas State Rep. Al Edwards, who sponsored legislation that made Juneteenth Day a state holiday in 1979.

Galveston is notable because that is where federal Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and federal troops read the Emancipation Proclamation and effectively freed the state's 250,000 slaves on June 19, 1865.

Granger's actions were the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation and made former slaves in Texas aware that Lincoln officially freed them 2.5 years earlier.

Vice President Kamala Harris headlined a Juneteenth Block Party in Atlanta on Tuesday. A rodeo in nearby Marietta on Wednesday honored the legacy of Black ranchers, farmers, cowboys and cowgirls. Advertisement

Other events feature concerts, beauty pageants, parades and other community events to honor the official abolishment of slavery throughout the United States and its territories.

While countless Juneteenth events are scheduled Wednesday and through the weekend, previously scheduled celebrations on city properties in Akron, Ohio, are canceled .

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik on Friday announced the cancellations after eight Akron City Council members expressed their concerns about holding the events so soon after a recent mass shooting .

One or more unidentified shooters killed one and wounded 28 while shooting from an SUV into a crowd celebrating a birthday party at a private residence after midnight on June 2.

Abraham Lincoln
Harriet Tubman
George Floyd
Kamala Harris
George Washington
Black Lives Matter