The Label, the Start, the Players

*** A GREAT timeline of Cold War events can be found at this link...

www.history-timelines.org.uk/events-timelines/03-cold-war-timeline.htm

The term Cold War was derived from part of a speech given by Bernard Baruch- presidential advisor, stating "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war," speaking in regards to the mounting tensions between the USSR and the Allies after WWII.

WHY IT STARTED:

Though the relationships between the USA, Europe and Russia had long since been stressed and hanging loosely by a thread, the Cold War did not set full pace until 1945 when a struggle began over who would be the great power and the moral debate over communism began. The war was between the East and West and was the only war "characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs" with the only actual combat being in the 'proxy wars" of other countries involved in the dispute.

THE HISTORY OF THE CAUSE:

After WWI and the "abdication" of the tsar, The Provisional government was overthrown during the Red October Revolution, giving the Soviets the reigning power with the Bolsheviks as their leaders. In an attempt to strengthen Russia by creating unity under a central power, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution created "the newly-formed government" with the "philosophy of socialism with the eventual and gradual transition to Communism." The Communist system, "eventually transformed into a totalitarian," form of governing, giving them complete control over the nation's affairs and every aspect of the people's lives. This sort of political revision was unpopular with Russia's allies in the West and soon lead Soviet Russia to find itself "isolated in international diplomacy."

This next paragraph taken from the Wikipedia website brings together the many, many actions of the Communist Party in bringing itself many enemies instead of allies in the early years of the Cold War and helps to explain why so many other countries were involved in the dispute.

" Several events fueled suspicion and distrust between the western powers and the Soviet Union: the Bolsheviks' challenge to capitalism; the 1926 Soviet funding of a British general workers strike causing Britain to break relations with the Soviet Union; Stalin's 1927 declaration that peaceful coexistence with "the capitalist countries . . . is receding into the past"; conspiratorial allegations in the Shakhty show trial of a planned French and British-led coup d'etat, the Great Purge involving a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in which over half a million Soviets were executed; the Moscow show trials including allegations of British, French, Japanese and German espionage; the controversial death of 6-8 million people in the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic from famin in 1932-33; western support of the White Army in the Russian Civil War; (1917 - 1923) was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power; the US refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933; and the Soviet entry into the Treaty of Rapallo. This outcome rendered Soviet-American relations a matter of major long-term concern for leaders in both countries."

The next strain on the relationship between nations was Russia's suspicion that the Americans and the British had backed down in the battle against the German Nazis, leaving Russia to ward them off on their own. "Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers."

At the Yalta conference- 1945, the Soviet Union and the Western democracies met to discuss the affects of World War II and the current post-war situations. Tensions continued to rise between nations, especially the USA and the USSR, and were sparked into a full dispute when Winston Churchill warned in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. Joseph Stalin (head of the USSR) "deepened the estrangement between the United States and the Soviet Union when he asserted in 1946 that World War II was an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of "capitalist imperialism" and implied that such a war might reoccur."

WHAT HAPPENED!?

WHAT HAPPENED:

At the Postdam Conference, which started in late July after Germany's surrender, serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and Eastern Europe. In attendance were the US, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union with the correlating representatives being Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. They had gathered on this day to determine how to "punish" the German Nazis after they had been defeated and to settle on an agreement for post-war peace and order between nations. Disagreements regarding the division of German land and resources and the debate over Germany's political and economical future, furthered the mistrust between the "Big three." As the discussion went on, Stalin was surprised to be informed by President Truman of the development of nuclear weaponry, the atomic bomb, by the US that later on was used bomb Japan's cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stalin was further irritated when the US refused to aid the USSR in their battle with Japan.


These are the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.

33^rd President Harry S. Truman

First nuclear weapon


"Fat Man"

After the nuclear bombing in Japan, the country surrendered to the Allied Powers, along with the surrender of Germany, ending WWII.

As suspicions arose and friction between nations worsened, the US began to break ties with the USSR and rallied against the spread of Communism, especially in the European countries that were still trying to recover from the effects of the previous war. The Truman Doctrine was established along with the Mashall Plan that helped Eastern Europe in its post war recovery attempts and vowed that the US would aid any country that was threatened by communism.

The "Long Telegram" of 1946 became the basis for US strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War, stressing the divide between themselves and the USSR.

"During the cold war the general policy of the West toward the Communist states was to contain them (i.e., keep them within their current borders in Berlin) with the hope that internal division, failure, or evolution might end their threat." In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was signed by the US and 11 other nations in an effort against the Soviet Union. As a response to the formation of NATO, the Communist bloc formed the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization in Warsaw, Poland, consisting of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and the U.S.S.R to ward of threats from NATO. Each side attempted to gain more allies in the countries of Asia, Africa and China, but neither succeeded in winning their alliances.

As the Cold War, battled on, it encompassed more nations in war. The Korean War began as a result of the conflict between Communist/North and non-Communist/South forces in Korea from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953 with the UN forces aiding South Korea.

The Berlin Wall (1961-1989), was built to keep people in, as a result of the flood of people from East Germany into the non-communist West. The wall was dismantled in a failed gamble by the Communists to keep power.

Berlin Wall map

In 1962 a tense confrontation occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union after U.S. intelligence discovered the presence of Soviet missile installations in Cuba. Direct conflict was avoided, however, when Premier Khrushchev ordered ships carrying rockets to Cuba to turn around rather than meet U.S. vessels sent to intercept them. The United States, in return, pledged not to invade Cuba, and subsequently secretly removed ballistic missiles it had placed in Turkey. It was obvious from this and other confrontations that neither major power wanted to risk nuclear war

Democrat John F. Kennedy tried to reduce tensions with the USSR following the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in maintaining his anti- cold War platform, he had no intention of pulling out of the containment set by the Truman Doctrine. It was also for these reasons that Kennedy held the line in Vietnam, determined to not let the nation succumb to the Communists, he increased the number of troops from 500 to 16,000. Confronted with the suggestion of pulling out he responded "I think that would be a mistake." Kennedy was involved with Vietnam all the way even until the eve of his own death.

JFK

He promised more money toward the national defense while charging Eisenhower for allowing non-existent "missile gaps" to develop between US and Soviet nuclear arsenals.

The Vietnam War was in some ways a turning point in the Cold War. The United States was forced to realize that military might alone was insufficient to win. The instability inside the US encouraged the Soviet Union to overextend itself around the world-which helped hasten its defeat. Soviet adventurism in Afghanistan was as costly to it as Vietnam was to us. However, the Soviet economy proved much less resilient than the American economy. North won, Vietnam was unified as a communist country.

By 1962, China started to position itself as the 'other' superpower. The US made attempts to meet with China because as the largest power in the world and the controller of the spread of communism, the American people needed the assurance that this relationship was in good standing. Nixon met with Chinese Prime Minister Mr. Chou En-lai and broke the tensions that were building since the beginning of the Cold War and helped dispel the fear that China might get involved by backing up the Vietcong, our enemy.

The Weapons and Tactics

Space exploration: The Space Age dawned on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into orbit around the earth. Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite around earth. (Sputnik is a Russian word meaning "traveler.") Until this point, it had been assumed that the first satellite would be American, not Russian. As Sputnik ushered in the beginning of the space age, many Americans reacted with astonishment. President Eisenhower tried to downplay the situation, even though he had been warned as early as 1955 that "severe psychological shock" would result if the Soviet Union won the race to orbit.

While Americans tried to make sense of the situation, the Soviet Union followed up on its initial success with the launch of Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. Inside Sputnik 2 was a pressurized compartment containing a dog named Laika, who was the first passenger to orbit earth.


NASA was designed to operate separately from the Department of Defense and was also required by its 1958 charter to make its research available to the American public. Through the years, NASA developed its own rockets, spacecraft, and communications networks.

Even after the United States got its first spacecraft into orbit, the lead remained with the Soviets. In 1959, the Soviet space program began its attempts to reach the moon. The first five attempts, and perhaps a sixth, were failures. However, the first to succeed was the Luna 9 which left earth on January 31, 1966, and dropped its round capsule on the lunar surface three days later.

The Apollo 11 mission was the first lunar landing. Nearly a million people jammed Cape Kennedy roads for a view of the July 16, 1969 launch. The Eagle was the lunar landing module aboard which were Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon and said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

ICBM Testing: InterContinental Balistic MIssles were a new range of weaponary that both the United States and The Soviet Union were developing during the Cold War. In the United States, the MX (missle experimental) program was developed in the early 70's. Before then, the U.S. Military believed that the Soviets were dramatically improving on the accuracy and number of missle systems. They thought that the Soviets could attack, even destroy, the concrete missile silos in which U.S. ICBM's were being held.

The US felt that they needed a way to deploy the missles that would be invulnerable to Soviet attack. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter began a full-scale development of the MX but could not resolve the issue of deployment. President Reagen saw how this plan would be very expensive and so he went with a plan of placing the missles deep underground, making them invulnerable to Soviet attack.

The Cambridge Spies: The hardest and most bitterly fought confrontation between the Soviet Union and the western democracies during the 50 years of the Cold War was on the espionage front. In this arena the KGB, the 'sword and the shield' of the USSR, pitted its wits against its principal adversaries - the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

The aim of each was to steal the secrets of the other side, to try to peer inside the mind of the enemy, to fathom his intentions, and to neutralise them before they could be executed. In the early 1930s, the democratic world appeared to be in trouble. The Great Depression had caused widespread unemployment. Fascism was on the march in Germany and Italy. To many young students at Cambridge University, privileged though they were, this was worrying and unacceptable.


The four most remarkable spies of the Cold War, four larger-than-life Englishmen: HAR (Kim) Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, all of whom betrayed their country to spy for Moscow.


They believed that the democracies would prove too weak to stand up to Hitler and Mussolini, and they knew that many people in Britain did indeed admire these leaders. They also thought that only the Soviet Union would be powerful enough to defeat Fascism. So, when they were approached by a recruiter from Moscow, the four young men agreed to serve the KGB.


The KGB had regarded the SIS (British secret service) as the most sophisticated and ingenious of all the capitalist intelligence services, capable of all sorts of duplicity and convoluted conspiracies.


The KGB files show that a powerful section of the KGB believed that this was the case. Officers argued that it had been all too easy for the Cambridge ring.


Moscow's spymasters argued that they could not be sure they were not having disinformation deliberately fed to them, with the intention of misleading the KGB. And all the while the KGB wasted the agents' valuable time by trying to trip them up, trying to prove that their loyalty really lay with Britain.


Smallpox and Biological Warfare: The weaponisation of smallpox was perfected by the Soviets during the Cold War - and how this biological weapon may still threaten the lives of millions.During World War II, the US and UK considered weaponizing smallpox, but with smallpox vaccines readily available, decided smallpox would be ineffective as a weapon.


During the Cold War, in 1974, the Soviet Union initiated Biopreparat, a civilian pharmaceutical company, as a front for the Soviet biological weapons program. Vladimir Pasechnik, a Soviet microbiologist who defected in 1989, provided information on the Soviet development of India 67 or India 1, a particularly virulent strain of smallpox, as a biological weapon. Scientists used embryonic chicken eggs to cultivate large amounts of smallpox virus. In addition, Dr. Ken Alibek (formerly Kanatjan Alikbekov), the former First Deputy Director of Biopreparat, reported the Soviet development of chimera viruses by inserting genetic material from other viruses into smallpox.

The Ending

Here is a link to a great overview of how/why the Cold War ended.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/soviet_end_01.shtml#top


In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan revived cold-war policies and rhetoric, referring to the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and escalating the nuclear arms race; some have argued this stance was responsible for the eventual collapse of Soviet Communism while others attribute it to the inherent weakness of the Soviet state.





The demise of the Soviet Union began when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as its General Secretary in 1985. Understanding the bad state of the Soviet economic and financial affairs, he brought a message of reform and change. He announced two new policies- glastnost and perestroika-which he thought would save the communist system. However, these new policies would ultimately overturn the Soviet system.

Glasnost
Glasnost did away with the strict censorship, which the government had practiced for decades. Russian for "openness," glasnost allowed Soviet citizens to speak openly about their society's problems. Banned books were made available, and jamming of foreign radio broadcasts was stopped.

Perestroika
Glasnost was only the first step. Next came perestroika, Russian for "restructuring." Perestroika was not an attempt by Gorbachev to destroy communism, but an attempt to end the ineffciency and corruption that were so common. Some features of private enterprise returned under perestroika. Product prices would rise when production costs rose. Local factories had more power of their decisions as planning was decentralized. Finally, multicandidate elections would be held, although each candidate had to be a member of the communist party.

From 1989 to 1991 the cold war came to an end with the opening of the Berlin Wall (On June 12, 1987, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to go further with his reforms and democratization by tearing down the Berlin Wall. In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate next to the wall, Reagan stated: "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, tear down this wall!"



As Gorbachev-inspired waves of reform propagated throughout the Eastern bloc, grassroots organizations, such as Poland's Solidarity movement, rapidly gained ground. In 1989, the Communist governments in Poland and Hungary became the first to negotiate the organizing of competitive elections. In Czechoslovakia and East Germany, mass protests unseated entrenched Communist leaders. The Communist regimes in Bulgaria and Romania also crumbled, in the latter case as the result of a violent uprising. Attitudes had changed enough that US Secretary of State James Baker suggested that the American government would not be opposed to Soviet intervention in Romania, on behalf of the opposition, to prevent bloodshed. 4? The tidal wave of change culminated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which symbolized the collapse of Eastern European Communist governments and graphically ended the Iron Curtain divide of Europe.

The collapse of the Eastern European governments with Gorbachev's tacit consent inadvertently encouraged several Soviet republics to seek greater independence from Moscow's rule. Agitation for independence in the Baltic states led to first Lithuania, and then Estonia and Latvia, declaring their independence. Disaffection in the other republics was met by promises of greater decentralization. More open elections led to the election of candidates opposed to Communist Party rule.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Yeltsin, vowing to transform Russia's socialist command economy into a free market economy, endorsed price liberalization and privatization programs. Due to the method of privatization, a good deal of the national wealth fell into the hands of a small group of people

The Soviet Union's collapse into independent nations began early in 1985. After years of Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development, economic growth was at a standstill. Failed attempts at reform, a stagnant economy, and war in Afghanistan led to a general feeling of discontent, especially[citation needed] in the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe. Greater political and social freedoms, instituted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, created an atmosphere of open criticism of the Moscow regime. The dramatic drop of the price of oil in 1985 and 1986, and consequent lack of foreign exchange reserves in following years to purchase grain profoundly influenced actions of the Soviet leadership.1?

Several Soviet Socialist Republics began resisting central control, and increasing democratization led to a weakening of the central government. The USSR's trade gap progressively emptied the coffers of the union, leading to eventual bankruptcy. The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin seized power in the aftermath of a failed coup that had attempted to topple reform-minded Gorbachev



In August 1991, Yeltsin won international plaudits for casting himself as a democrat and defying the August coup attempt of 1991 by the members of Soviet government opposed to perestroika. He left office widely unpopular with the Russian population as an ineffectual and ailing autocrat.

The Aftermath and Sites Used

The Aftermath: During the Cold War, the superpowers controlled global decisions, and the ideological contest between them constrained the secretary-general. Today we are living in the midst of a worldwide revolution. With the end of the Cold War, an international system that had politically, economically, and strategically involved every country in the world disappeared almost overnight. As international trade and commerce have rapidly expanded, peoples and places have undergone unprecedented change. The explosion of scientific knowledge has produced remarkable inventions, and human horizons appear limitless. With the communications revolution, image is becoming more influential than fact.

Now that the Soviet Union, with its centralized political and economic system, has ceased to exist, the fifteen newly formed independent countries which emerged in its aftermath are faced with an overwhelming task. They must develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes. A number of wars have developed on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the entire region is suffering a period of severe economic hardship. However, despite the many hardships facing the region, bold steps are being taken toward democratization, reorganization, and rebuilding in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Here is a clickable map of the former USSR countries with correlating numbers to country info listed below the map.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USSR_Republics_Numbered_Alphabetically.png

(2003) The Chinese Government revealed few details of its first manned space flight, prior to Wednesday's launch. But the launch of Shenzhou 5 symbolises China's entry to the elite club of space-faring nations at a time when the US is agonising over manned space flight.

According to Douglas Millard, curator of space technology at London's Science Museum, the "ripples" of the Cold War are still passing through us, leaving the old space powers - the US and Russia - in a state of flux.

"We're still riding on the coat tails of the Cold War," he says. "A lot of the old rule books have been thrown away."

There is no doubt that the US is still the heavyweight by far, holding the purse-strings for about 80% of the world space budget and largely financing the International Space Station.

"Big projects like this are a good way for the Chinese leadership to maintain its legitimacy," he says.

The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union changed the global situation fundamentally, leaving the United States as the only superpower. The Cold War justification for foreign military interventions thereby disappeared, but new reasons for such ventures multiplied. In varying scales of magnitude, U.S. armed forces were deployed in Panama (1989), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1999), the latter including a bombing campaign against Serbia. By far the largest overseas operation was the Gulf War of 1991 against Iraq, which involved more than 500,000 U.S. troops to protect the industrial world's oil supply, but motives for the other interventions varied widely. In Somalia, for example, where no visible U.S. interests were at stake, the goal was to remove the obstacles to feeding a starving population, and in Bosnia and Kosovo it was to prevent the out-break of regional war and prevent mass genocide. Some saw the United States as world policeman, others as global bully, but none could deny the reality of the nation's power and influence virtually everywhere on the globe.

RESOURCES:

www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/coldwar.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

www.infoplease.com http://library.thinkquest.org

www.foreignaffairs.com

The Cold War Museum

BBC: The Cold War

www.americanforeignrelations.com

http://commons.wikimedia.org

www.youtube.com