Unit X:The Cold War & Beyond

OriginsHeirs to Traditional Power Politics:

Fear & Misinterpretation:• West’s role in 1919 & the 30s• Failure to open a second front, halting Lend-Lease, & refusing a 6 billion dollar loan• Stalin was bitter at Potsdam• Security was the issue!

Ideological differences:• economic imperialism vs. international socialism

Early Stages1946: Iron Curtain Speech• Kennan’s Long Telegram

1947: communist revolutions threaten Turkey & Greece• Truman Doctrine

1948: Marshal Plan• West Germany founded• Berlin Blockade & Airlift

1949: NATO created • Soviets counter w/ Warsaw Pact• Soviet A-bomb & Red China• arms race & the Red Scare Berliners cheer US planes

Post-war USSR

1945-53: spectacular recovery• Five Year Plans again• purges & gulags• falling out w/ Tito’s Yugoslavia

1953: Stalin died; destalinization

1953-63: Nikita Khrushchev• Secret Speech (1956)• inspired Hungarian Uprising• attempted economic reforms• removed after Cuban Missile Crisis

Hungarian Uprising

The 50s, 60s & 70s

1950-53: Korean War

1956: Hungarian Uprising• Imry Nagy executed

1961: Berlin Wall built

1962: Cuban Missile Crisis

1968: Dubcek’s Prague Spring

1959-75: Vietnam War

Fall of Saigon - 1975

Cuban Missile Crisis

1962: Cuban Missile Crisis

• reaction to the Bay of Pigs

• threatened “mutually assured destruction”

• missiles removed from Cuba (and Turkey), a hotline established & Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Prague Spring1968: Prague Spring• Alexander Dubcek introduced

freedom of speech, press and travel

• “Communism with a human face”

• reformers wanted more and withdrawal from Soviet bloc

• Soviets invade & crush movement Prague 1968

Vietnam War1959-75: Vietnam War

• French colony, Japanese occupation & French colony again

• US supported the Diem regime in South Vietnam

• Strong nationalistic regime in the north led by Ho Chi Minh

• limited war• guerilla war; no front line

Fall of Saigon - 1975

Monolithic Communism?

The Post-war WestDecolonization:

Christian Democrats:• combined capitalism, socialism & Christianity

Great Britain:• the national welfare state• Margaret Thatcher (1980s)

West Germany:• Adenauer’s “economic miracle”

France:• De Gaulle & the Fifth Republic• Algerian Independence

1968 – student protests Student protestors in Paris

Culture & SocietyEducation:

The Women’s Movement:• De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex• Friedan’s N.O.W.

Catholic Church:• reaction to Pius XII’s conservatism; Vatican II (1962)

Permissive Society:• homosexuality, pornography, divorce & abortion became legal

Simone de Beauviour

Culture & Society

Existentialism: Camus & Sartre“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

Art: Pollack’s abstract expressionism & Warhol’s pop-art

Technology: jet travel, television & nuclear energy

Pollack’s Lavender Mist

Detente1963: Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

& hotline established

1972: Nixon’s trip to China• SALT agreement• Brandt’s Ostpolitik

1973: Vietnam War ended

1975: Helsinki Accords

1979: Afghanistan invadedNixon with Mao Zedong

Decline of Communism• USSR experienced .5 of U.S.

economic growth in the 1970s and zero in the 1980s

• Failure of central planning

• Didn’t deliver materially & political practices discredited moral claims

• Misjudged human nature-caused massive apathy

• Inertia kept it together Eastern Bloc Architecture

The Decline Begins…1964-82: Leonoid Brezhnev• economic stagnation; - “no experimentation”• pollution• declining public health; alcoholism• loss of faith in government• party privileges were obvious• military budgets made social reform difficult

1979-89: Afghanistan;• “The Soviet’s Vietnam”

1984: Reagan’s “Evil Empire” & “Stars Wars” speeches

1986: Chernobyl

Birth defects from Chernobyl

Gorbachev1985-91: Mikhail Gorbachev• witnessed Khrushchev’s secret speech

• a direct, frank and pragmatic approach

• a staunch communist who wanted to reform the central

planning of the Soviet economy

GorbachevGlasnost – “openness”• addressed Chernobyl• admitted to Katyn Forest Massacre & Nazi-Soviet Pact• freed political dissidents like Andrei Sukharov (H-bomb)• supported Bukharin’s gradual collectivization

Victims of the Katyn Forest Massacre

GorbachevPerestroika – “restructuring”• multi-candidate elections• economic decisions made by local-level leaders

• REDUCED military spending!

• signed arms treaty w/ US

• declined to send troops to prop up Eastern Bloc

The Berlin Wall

1989

Poland: gov’t (Gen. Jaruzelsky) accepted talks w/ Lech Walesa & Solidarity; they in turn supported the gov’t to keep the Soviets out

Hungary: had been experimenting w/ reforms; “socialism with a human face”

• cut the barbwire fences with Austria; people flooded out

Especially from East Germany…

The Chain Reaction

East Germany:• Honecker’s government was now left with a

choice; repress emigration violently or open the Berlin Wall

• Berlin Wall opened on November 9, 1989

Eric Honecker

The Chain Reaction (con’t)

• Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution under Vaclav Havel

• Romania was the only violent collapse; Nicolae Ceausescu attempted to use force and was brutally killed

Prague - 1989

The Chain Reaction (con’t)1990: Germany reunited under Kohl

1991: USSR - hardliners attempt coup

• hasten dissolution; 15 republics• Yeltsin President of Russia

– organized crime & oligarchies– loss of empire

1991: Yugoslavia dissolved violently• Milosevic & Serbs

1992-95: Bosnian Crisis• Srebrenica Massacre• Clinton/NATO; Dayton Accords

1999: Kosovo

The European Union (EU)1957: Rome Treaty• 7 countries form the

European Economic Community (EC);

• eliminated tariffs & barriers

1994: Maastricht Treaty• EC became the EU• free trade & the

Euro

Contemporary Issues

Xenophobia

Immigration

Terrorism

Americanization

Globalization

Neo-Nazi March – Sweden 2010