The Cold War

WEEK 13
The Cold War and Decolonization
Two of the most important processes to emerge
out of World War II were:
• The cold war or the geopolitical and ideological rivalry
between the Soviet Union and the United States and
their respective allies, and
• Decolonization or the relinquishing of all colonial
possessions by imperial powers.
These processes fundamentally reshaped the late
twentieth-century world—particularly in cases
where they intertwined.
The Cold War and Decolonization
• This week we will focus on the Cold War.
• We will discuss decolonization next week – the
final week of classes.
THE FORMATION OF A
BIPOLAR WORLD
The Cold War
The cold war was a strategic struggle that
developed after World War II between
• the United States and its allies; and
• the USSR and its allied communist countries.

The cold war was also a tense encounter between

• rival social and economic systems, and
• competing political ideologies.
The Cold War
The cold war was a contest in which neither of the
of the new superpowers–the United States or the
Soviet Union–gave way.
However, in the end both superpowers always
avoided a direct clash of arms.
• Therefore, this contest was called cold war.
• Nevertheless, this era witnessed numerous armed conflicts
among smaller powers, with many of the belligerents backed
either by the Americans or the Soviets.
The Cold War
The Soviet Union and the United States had
emerged as the two superpowers after the war.
• Each now played a central role in shaping, influencing,
and rebuilding the postwar world.
• Both sought to create a postwar world in their own
respective images.
The Cold War
Therefore, the cold war was also a Soviet-
American struggle to align postwar nations on one
side or the other
• Initially, the cold war centered primarily on areas
liberated by the Allies at the end of the war either from
the Germans in Europe or from the Japanese in the
Asia-Pacific region.
• However, it would ultimately spread to the whole world.
The Cold War
The cold war and the atomic age – that also began
almost as soon as World War II ended –
inaugurated a new global order.
• The United States and the Soviet Union gained
geopolitical strength during the early years of the cold
war as they competed for global influence.
• However, this long-drawn-out conflict soon divided
humans and nations as sympathetic either to the Soviet
Union or to the United States.
• It thus spread seeds for political, ideological, and
economic hostility among rival blocs of nations around
the globe.
The Cold War
The cold war
• lasted almost five decades – from about 1945 to the end
of the 1980s/early 1990s, and
• affected every corner of the world.

The cold war was responsible for

• the formation of military and political alliances,
• the creation of client states, and
• an arms race of unprecedented scope.
The Cold War
Moreover, the cold war
• engendered diplomatic crises,
• spawned military conflicts,
• stimulated social change, and
• brought at times the world to the brink of nuclear
annihilation.
THE BEGINNING OF THE COLD WAR
The Yalta Conference

Some tensions among the Allies began to surface at the second

wartime conference among the Allied leaders, which was held at the
city of Yalta in the Soviet Union (4-11 February 1945).
• The first such conference was held in Tehran, Iran in late 1943.
The Yalta Conference

By the time this conference convened, the Soviets were

only 64 kilometers (40 miles) away from Berlin, and they
controlled a lot of territory in eastern Europe.
The Yalta Conference

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt could do little to
alter Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s plans for eastern
Europe.
The Map of Europe
Immediately After the Nazi Surrender (May 1945)
Postwar Europe
Stalin’s policies eventually ensured that the Red
Army’s presence would dictate the future of states
liberated by the Soviets in eastern Europe,
• In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria
and elsewhere in eastern Europe, the Soviets
• suppressed noncommunist political parties,
• prevented free elections, and
• eventually installed communist governments.
The Potsdam Conference

In the meantime, tensions among the Soviet Union, the United States and
Britain had become more obvious at the third and final wartime conference,
held at Potsdam, near Berlin (16 July-2 August 1945).
• At Potsdam, the new US President, Harry Truman, fixed the pro-capitalist, pro-
democracy stance of the United States.
• The successful test of the atomic bomb while Truman was at Potsdam stiffened his
resolve, and tensions over postwar settlements intensified among the Allies.
Dismemberment of Germany
In the end, all that the Allies
agreed on in Potsdam was
the dismemberment of the
Axis states and their
possessions.
• The Soviets took over the
eastern sections of Germany,
and the United States, Britain,
and France occupied the
western portions.
• The German capital, Berlin, deep
within the Soviet area, remained
under the control of all four
powers.
The “Iron Curtain” Speech

In March 1946, Churchill (no longer Prime Minister at the

time) proclaimed that an “iron curtain” had come down on
Europe, separating the Soviet-controlled nations of the east
from the capitalist nations of the west.
The Postwar Division of Asia

A somewhat similar
division occurred in
Asia.
• The United States
occupied Japan alone.
• Korea remained occupied
half by the Soviets and half
by the Americans.
The Truman Doctrine
The enunciation of the Truman
Doctrine on 12 March 1947
crystallized the new U.S.
perception of a world divided
between free and enslaved
peoples.
• The doctrine was articulated partly
in response to crises in Greece
and Turkey, where communist
movements seemed to threaten
democracy and U.S. strategic
interests.
The Truman Doctrine

In a speech to the U.S.

Congress, Truman
explained:
“I believe that it must be the
policy of the United States to
support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation
by armed minorities or by
outside pressures.”
“Containment”
Thus, the United States committed itself to an
interventionist foreign policy dedicated to the
“containment” of communism.
• This meant preventing any further expansion of Soviet
influence.
As a result of this attitude, the world was polarized
into two armed camps.
• Each camp was led by a superpower that provided
economic and military aid to nations within its sphere of
influence.
GLOBAL
RECONSTRUCTION AND
THE UNITED NATIONS
The Marshall Plan
As an economic adjunct to the
Truman Doctrine, the U.S.
government also developed a
plan – the European Recovery
Program – to help shore up the
destroyed infrastructures of
western Europe.
• This program is also commonly called
the Marshall Plan after U.S. secretary
of state George C. Marshall.
• It proposed to rebuild European
economies to forestall Soviet influence
in the devastated nations of Europe.
The Marshall
Plan
Beginning in
1948, the
Marshall Plan
provided more
than $13 billion
to a number of
countries (in
green color on
the map) to
reconstruct
western
Europe.
COMECON
In response, the Soviet
Union established the
Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance
(COMECON) in 1949.
• It offered increased trade
within the Soviet Union
and Communist-led
eastern Europe as an
alternative to the Marshall
Plan.
NATO
In 1949 the United
States established the
North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) as
a regional military
alliance against Soviet
aggression.
• The intent of the alliance
was to maintain peace in
postwar Europe through
collective defense.
•

The original members of NATO included Belgium, Canada,

Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States.
The Warsaw Pact

• In 1955, NATO admitted

West Germany and
allowed it to rearm.
• As a countermeasure,
the Soviets immediately
formed the Warsaw Pact
– a military alliance of
seven communist
nations in eastern
Europe.
The United Nations
Despite their many
differences, the
superpowers were among
the nations that agreed in
1945 to the creation of the
United Nations (UN), a
supranational organization
dedicated to keeping world
peace.
• This commitment to establish a
new international organization
derived from Allied cooperation
during the war.
The San Francisco Conference
In 1945 the final version of the United Nations
charter was hammered out by delegates from fifty
nations at the United Nations Conference in San
Francisco.
• The United Nations Organization was dedicated to
maintaining international peace and security and
promoting friendly relations among the world’s nations.
• It was, in effect, the successor to the League of Nations,
which had been established at the end of the First World
War (see week 10) but had failed to prevent the outbreak
of the Second World War (see week 12).
The United Nations and the Cold War
However, the United Nations, too, just like its
predecessor, the League of Nations, failed to
deliver international peace and security.
• Instead, the emerging cold war eventually came to
dominate postwar reconstruction efforts.
The Nuclear Arms Race
•

Moreover, the Soviet Union broke the U.S. monopoly on

the atomic bomb in September 1949.
• From that point on, the world held its collective breath at the
possibility of a nuclear war between the two superpowers.
THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE:
DIVIDED GERMANY
Reminder: The Cold War in Europe

The cold war’s initial arena was

war-torn Europe.
• The division of Europe into competing
political, military, and economic blocs
—one dependent on the United
States and the other subservient to
the USSR—separated by an “iron
curtain” was among the first
manifestations of the cold war.
• Each bloc adopted the political
institutions, economic systems, and
foreign policies of one of the two
superpowers.
A Divided Berlin

Agreements made by the U.S., Soviet and British leaders at the Yalta
conference in 1945 had established specific travel corridors from
Berlin, running through the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.
• These corridors would give the French, British, and Americans access from
their sectors in Berlin to their respective zones of occupation in western
Germany.
The Berlin Blockade
In 1948, the western powers (the
USA, Britain and France) decided
to merge their occupation zones
in Germany—including their
sectors in Berlin—into a single
economic unit.
The Soviets saw this move as a
threat to their own zone of control.
• In retaliation, they announced on 24
June 1948 that the western powers
no longer had jurisdiction in Berlin.
• They also immediately blockaded
road, rail, and water links between
Berlin and western Germany.
The Berlin Airlift

• Two days later, on 26 June 1948,

the Americans and British
responded to the Soviet blockade of
west Berlin with an airlift designed
to keep the city’s inhabitants alive,
fed, and warm.
• For eleven months, American and
British aircrews flew around-the-
clock missions to supply West
Berlin with the necessities of life
• Finally, the Soviet leadership called
off the blockade in May 1949.
• The airlift continued until
September, however.
Divided Germany and Berlin
• In the meantime, the U.S., British, and
French zones of occupation coalesced
in May 1949 to form the Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany)
with its capital in Bonn.
• The Soviets responded by creating the
German Democratic Republic (East
Germany) in their own zone.
• As regards Berlin:
• The Soviet sector formed East Berlin
and became the capital of the new East
Germany.
• The remaining three sectors united to
form West Berlin, which became a West
German city.
The Berlin Wall

By 1961 the communist East German state was hemorrhaging from a

steady drain of refugees who preferred life in capitalist West Germany.
• Nearly 3.5 million Germans migrated from East to West in 1949-1961.
In August 1961, the communists erected a fortified wall – replete with
watchtowers, searchlights, and border guards – between East and
West Berlin.
The Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall largely accomplished its purpose
of stemming the flow of refugees out of East
Germany.
• The cost for East German leaders, however, was an
open demonstration to outsiders that the Communist
regime lacked legitimacy among its own people.
Nevertheless, several thousand East Germans still
managed to escape to West Germany between
1961 and 1989 – after the erection of the wall.
• Moreover, several hundred others died trying to cross
the border illegally.
THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE
The Nuclear Arms Race
A central feature of the cold war world was a costly
arms race and the terrifying proliferation of nuclear
weapons. Throughout the cold war years,
• The United States was determined to retain military
superiority.
• The Soviet Union was equally determined to reach parity
with the United States.
During the roughly 45 years of the cold war, both sides
• amassed enormous arsenals of thermonuclear weapons,
and
• developed a multitude of systems for deploying these
weapons.
The Nuclear Arms Race
By 1970, the USA and the USSR had reached
parity in the nuclear arms race.
• They had acquired the capacity for mutually assured
destruction (MAD).
Ironically, this balance of terror also had the effect
of restraining the contestants – the United States,
the USSR and their respective allies – and
stabilizing their relationship.
SPACE RACE
Space Race

The Soviets took the cold war into space.

• On 4 October 1957, they announced the launching into
space of the first satellite, Sputnik.
Space Race

The Soviet head start in this “space race” provoked

a panic in the U.S.
• This panic intensified in April 1961 when the Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit
Earth.
Space Race

The U.S. responded to Soviet successes in space

with its own program.
• It launched the satellite Explorer I in 1958.
• It sent astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1962.
Space Race

When the U.S. president John F. Kennedy took office in

1961, he dedicated himself and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) to the task of landing a
man on the moon.
• Indeed, on 20 July 1969 Apollo XI gently set down on the moon.
COLD WAR SOCIETIES
Cold War Societies
The cold war had dramatic effects on the domestic affairs
of the United States, the Soviet Union, and their European
allies.
• Societies in both camps underwent dramatic transformations as a
result of the international competition between capitalism and
communism.
• Domestic policies and international affairs became linked.

Societies both in the Soviet Union and the United States

• imposed domestic censorship policies, and
• strived for cold war supremacy.
Domestic Containment in the United States
In the United States, cold war concerns about the
spread of communism reached deeply into the
domestic sphere.
• Politicians, FBI agents, educators, and social
commentators warned of communist spies trying to
undermine the institutions of U.S. life.
Joseph McCarthy

Senator Joseph
McCarthy became
infamous in the early
1950s for his
unsuccessful quest to
expose communists in
the U.S. government.
Domestic Containment in the United States
• Thousands of U.S. citizens who supported any radical or
liberal cause—especially those who were or once had
been members of the Communist Party—lost their jobs
and reputations after being deemed risks to their nation’s
security.
• Conforming to a socially sanctioned way of life and
avoiding suspicion became the norm during the early,
most frightening years of the cold war.
• Some scholars have dubbed this U.S. retreat to the home and
family “domestic containment,” indicating its similarity to the U.S.
foreign policy of the containment of international communism.
U.S. Prosperity
At the same time, people in the United States
enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and leisure
during the early decades of the cold war.
• Access to automobiles, Hollywood movies, record albums,
and supermarkets lessened some of the pain of atomic
anxiety and international insecurity.
Soviet and East European Society in the Last Years of Stalin

In the Soviet Union and eastern

Europe, cold war ideologies also
profoundly influenced domestic
realities.
• After the war, Stalin imposed Soviet
economic planning on governments
in eastern Europe.
• He expected the peoples of the
Soviet Union and eastern Europe to
conform to anti-capitalist ideological
requirements.
• Following Stalin’s lead, the new
communist regimes in eastern
Europe also denounced or silenced
rebellious artists and novelists.
Soviet Society under Khrushchev

After Stalin’s death in 1953,

this policy of Soviet
repression at home and in
eastern Europe relaxed
somewhat.
• Stalin’s successor—Nikita
Khrushchev—pursued a
slightly more liberal path with
respect to domestic society.
The
Hungarian
Challenge
However,
there were
limits to this
Soviet
liberalization
under
Khrushchev:
• Soviet troops
cracked down
on Hungarian
rebels in 1956.
Boris
Pasternak
Soviet novelist
Boris Pasternak,
author of the
novel Dr.
Zhivago, was not
allowed to
receive his Nobel
Prize for
Literature in
1958.
• Soviet censors
had disliked its
content and
banned its
publication at
home.
Soviet Society
Social conditions and material wealth in the
communist bloc were worse than those in the
United States and western Europe.
• For many years, consumer items like dishwashers,
automobiles, fashionable clothing, and high-quality
manufactured goods remained out of the reach of most
ordinary people in the USSR and other communist
states.
CONFRONTATIONS IN
KOREA AND CUBA
The Global Cold War on the Global Arena

The tensions of the cold war

also spilled from Europe out
into the global arena.
• In April 1949, the State and
Defense departments in the USA
drafted the famous NSC-68
document, which outlined the
U.S. government’s strident
commitment to do whatever it
took to block the Soviet Union
from extending its control
anywhere in the world.
Confrontation in Korea

At the end of World War II, the leaders of the Soviet

Union and the United States had partitioned previously
Japanese-occupied Korea along the 38th parallel of
latitude into a northern Soviet zone and a southern U.S.
zone.
Confrontation in Korea
In 1948 the superpowers consented to the
establishment of two separate Korean states:
• the Republic of Korea or South Korea (conservative,
anticommunist; capital city: Seoul); and
• the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea or North
Korea (revolutionary, communist; capital city: Pyongyang).

After arming their respective clients in North and

South Korea, Soviet and U.S. troops withdrew
from Korea in 1948 and 1949, respectively.
The Korean War
• Each of these two Korean
republics claimed sovereignty over
the entire country, however.
• Hostilities between these republics
broke out on 25 June 1950.
• The North was determined to unify
the country by force.
• It ordered more than 100,000
troops across the 38th parallel in a
surprise attack.
• It captured the southern capital,
Seoul, on 27 June.
The U.S. Enters the Korean War
• The U.S. leadership viewed the North
Korean aggression as part of a larger
communist conspiracy to conquer the
world.
• The U.S. military went into action, armed
with United Nations support,
• Within two weeks, by the end of
September 1950, U.S. forces pushed
North Koreans back to the 38th parallel.
• Thereafter, the U.S. leadership tried to
unify Korea under a pro-U.S.
government.
• American troops now pushed on into
North Korea, occupied Pyongyang, and
advanced toward the Chinese border.
China Enters the Korean War
• The communist government of the
People’s Republic of China (see
later in this session) feared that
the U.S. incursion across the 38th
parallel would threaten Chinese
national interests.
• Thereafter, some 300,000
Chinese soldiers surged into
North Korea beginning in
November 1950.
• A combined Chinese-North Korean
force now pushed U.S. troops and
their allies back into the south.
The Korean War

• With the Chinese

intervention, the Korean war
settled into a protracted
stalemate near the original
border at the 38th parallel.
• Two more years of fighting
resulted in three million deaths
—mostly of Korean civilians.
• Finally, both sides agreed to
a cease-fire in July 1953.
The Globalization of Containment
In 1954 U.S. president Dwight D.
Eisenhower built on the policy of
containment by articulating the
famous “domino theory.”
• This theory held that if one country
became communist, neighboring
countries would collapse to
communism the way a row of
dominoes falls sequentially.
Thereafter, subsequent U.S.
administrations extended the policy
of containment to the entire world.
• They applied it to local or imagined
communist threats in Central and
South America, Africa, and Asia.
The Cuban Revolution

The cold war confrontation that

came closest to unleashing
nuclear war took place on the
island of Cuba.
• In 1959 a revolutionary movement
headed by Fidel Castro overthrew the
autocratic Fulgencio Batista (see
photo).
• Batista’s regime had gone to great lengths
to maintain the country’s traditionally
subservient relationship with the United
States.
The U.S. and Cuba
Castro (see photo) denounced
American imperialism and seized
foreign properties and businesses,
most of which were U.S. owned.
• He also accepted assistance from the
Soviet Union.
Washington retaliated to Castro’s
moves by
• cutting off Cuban sugar imports to the
U.S. market;
• imposing a severe export embargo of
U.S. goods on Cuba;
• cutting diplomatic relations with Cuba;
and
• secretly planning an invasion of the
island.
The U.S.S.R. and Cuba

The severing of ties between Cuba and the United States gave the Soviet Union
an unprecedented opportunity to contest the dominant position of the United
States in its own hemisphere.
• Castro’s regime accepted a Soviet offer of massive military and economic aid, including an
agreement to purchase half of Cuba’s sugar production.
• In return, Castro loudly declared his support for the USSR’s foreign policy.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet
Union spurred President
Kennedy to approve a plan to
invade Cuba and overthrow
Castro.
• In April 1961, a force of 1,500 anti-
Castro Cubans trained, armed, and
transported by the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) landed in Cuba at a
place called the Bay of Pigs.
• The invasion was a complete failure,
however.
• It ended up strengthening Castro’s
position in Cuba as well as his
commitment to communism.
The Soviet
Missiles in
Cuba
It is likely that
the abortive Bay
of Pigs invasion
in 1961 also
encouraged
Castro to accept
a Soviet offer to
deploy nuclear
missiles in Cuba
as a deterrent
to any future
invasion.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The next year, on 22 October 1962
Kennedy informed the public about
the U.S. discovery of offensive
nuclear missiles and launch sites in
Cuba.
• He said that these missiles represented
an unacceptable threat to U.S. national
security.
• He called on the Soviet leadership to
withdraw all missiles from Cuba and
stop the arrival of additional nuclear
armaments.
• He also imposed an air and naval
quarantine against Cuba that went into
effect two days later.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The superpowers seemed poised for nuclear confrontation.
• For a week at the end of October 1962, the world’s peoples held their
collective breath.
• Understanding the seriousness of a nuclear show down over Cuba,
Khrushchev agreed to Kennedy’s demand that he withdraw the missiles
on the condition that the United States pledges not to invade Cuba.
• He also received a private promise from Kennedy that U.S. missiles in Turkey
(close to the southern border of the USSR) would be removed.
• Khrushchev informed the public of the end of the crisis in a worldwide
radio broadcast on 28 October, and global tension began to ebb.
Nonetheless, the Cuban missile crisis revealed the dangers of
the bipolar world—especially the ways in which cold war
rivalries so easily drew other areas of the world into their orbit.
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Reminder: China before World War II
China was not formally ruled by an imperial power
during the age of colonization.
• However, many European countries and Japan impinged
on its sovereignty in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries (see weeks 10-12).
During the 1920s, two groups–the nationalists and
the communists–attempted to reassert Chinese
control over internal affairs.
• When World War II broke out in 1939, these two groups
were already engaged in a civil war (see week 11).
China after World War II
After the Japanese defeat in World War II, the
Chinese communists gradually pushed their
nationalist rivals into the defensive.
• On October 1, 1949, the Chinese Communist Party,
proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic
of China.
Jiang Jieshi in Taiwan
In December 1949, with the
communist People’s
Liberation Army controlling
most of mainland China, the
nationalist government
under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang
Kai-shek) sought refuge on
the island of Taiwan.
• After this retreat, Jiang Jieshi
continued to proclaim that his
government, now based in
Taiwan, was still the legitimate
government of all China.
The People’s Republic of China
After 1949, political power was
monopolized on the Chinese
mainland by the Communist
Party and a politburo chaired
by Mao Zedong.
• The new government created
new political, economic, and
social organizations that
completely reorganized all
aspects of Chinese society.
• It also ruthlessly repressed all forms
of opposition.
• It sought to imitate Soviet socialism
and initially forged a close
relationship with the Soviet Union.
Mao and Stalin in December 1949
Economic Transformation
In 1955 China introduced its own first Five-Year Plan –
to encourage rapid industrialization and collectivization
of agriculture on the Soviet model (see week 11).
• This plan emphasized improvements in infrastructure
and expansion of heavy industry at the expense of
consumer goods.
• At the same time, a series of agrarian laws confiscated
the landholdings of rich peasants and landlords and
redistributed them among the people.
• At first, virtually every Chinese peasant had at least a small plot of
land.
• Quickly, however, state-mandated collective farms replaced private
farming.
Social Transformation in Communist China
In the wake of economic reforms came social
reforms.
• Many of these social reforms challenged or eliminated
Chinese family traditions.
Chinese authorities supported equal rights for
women. They:
• introduced marriage laws that eliminated such practices
as child or forced marriages,
• gave women equal access to divorce,
• legalized abortion, and
• outlawed foot binding, a symbol of women’s subjugation.
Chinese-Soviet Cooperation
Moscow and Beijing drew closer during the early years of
the cold war in the 1950s.
• The two communist countries were unhappy with the American-
sponsored rehabilitation of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in east
Asia and the north Pacific.
At this stage, Beijing recognized Moscow’s undisputed
authority in world communism in exchange for Russian
military equipment and economic aid.
• The Soviet Union rendered valuable assistance to China’s program
of industrialization in the form of economic aid and technical
advisors.
• By the mid-1950s the Soviet Union had become China’s principal
trading partner.
Cracks in the Chinese-Soviet Alliance
Before long, however, cracks appeared in the
Soviet-Chinese alliance.
• The Chinese believed that Soviet aid programs
• were far too modest, and
• had too many strings attached.
• The Chinese were also furious when
• the Soviets announced their neutrality in the conflict between China
and India over Tibet in 1961; and
• they gave a loan to India that exceeded any similar loan ever
granted to China.
China, India and Tibet
Cracks in the Chinese-Soviet Alliance
By the end of 1964, the rift between the Soviet
Union and the People’s Republic of China had
become embarrassingly public.
• Both nations now engaged in name-calling.
• They openly competed for influence in Africa and Asia,
especially in the nations that had recently gained
independence.
At the same time, Communist China’s successful
nuclear tests conducted in 1964 enhanced its
prestige.
The Soviet-Chinese Split and the Cold War
An unanticipated outcome of the Chinese-Soviet
split was that many countries gained an
opportunity to pursue a more independent course
in the global cold war
• by playing capitalists against communists, as well as
• by playing Soviet communists against Chinese
communists.
After Beijing’s split with Moscow, relations between
China and the United States were normalized in
the 1970s.
Social and Economic Transformations
Mao gradually succeeded in transforming
European communist ideology into a distinctly
Chinese communism.
• He embarked on two programs designed to accelerate
development in China and distinguish Chinese
communism from Soviet communism:
• the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961); and
• the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
• Both were far-reaching policies
• However, they hampered the political and economic development
that Mao so urgently sought.
The Great Leap Forward
Mao envisioned his Great Leap Forward to overtake
the industrial production of more developed nations.
• To that end he worked
• to collectivize all land; and
• to manage all business and industrial enterprises collectively.
• He abolished private ownership.
• Farming and industry became largely rural and communal.
• However, the Great Leap Forward failed.
• Peasants could not meet quotas set by the state, and
• A series of bad harvests contributed to one of the deadliest famines
in history.
• Between 1959 and 1962 as many as twenty million Chinese may have
died of starvation and malnutrition.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
In 1966 Mao tried again to mobilize the Chinese and reignite
the revolutionary spirit with the inauguration of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
• It was designed to root out foreign, bourgeois, or anticommunist
values in Chinese life.
• It subjected millions of people to humiliation, persecution, and death.
• The Red Guards were youthful zealots empowered to cleanse
Chinese society of opponents to Mao’s rule.
• They primarily targeted the elite.
• Their victims were beaten and killed, jailed, or sent to corrective labor
camps or to toil in the countryside.
The Cultural Revolution cost China years of stable
development and gutted its educational system.
• It remained undiminished until after Mao’s death in 1976.
Red Guards

A public
appearance of
Mao Zedong and
his designated
successor Lin
Biao among Red
Guards, in
Beijing, during
the Cultural
Revolution (Nove
mber 1966)
Deng’s China
One of Mao’s heirs, Deng
Xiaoping, came to power in
1981.
• During the 1980s, he moderated
Mao’s commitment to Chinese self-
sufficiency and isolation.
• He engineered China’s entry into
the international financial and
trading system.
• To push the economic development
of China, he opened the nation to
the influences that were so suspect
under Mao—foreign, capitalist
values.
Deng’s China
• Deng oversaw impressive
economic growth and
development in the 1980s
by selectively opening
society to global trade.
• However, he did not
hesitate to crack down on
elements in Chinese society
that sought democratic
reform—as he did against
students in Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Crackdown of Tiananmen Protests (1989)
China after Deng
• Deng retired in 1992 and died in 1997.
• His successors have since managed to maintain
massive economic growth without giving up,
however, the centralized, communist political
control established by Mao in 1949.
FROM DISSENT TO DISSOLUTION
IN THE COLD WAR
The Soviet Union during the Cold War
During the cold war, the authority of both the
United States and the Soviet Union was
challenged on a variety of fronts, both at home and
abroad.
• The desperate competition for military superiority between
the superpowers ultimately fell more heavily on the
shoulders of the Soviet Union.
• The Soviet Union struggled with the economic demands such
competition with the USA imposed.
• Decades of oppression within the Soviet bloc led many under its
power to desire greater freedom.
De-Stalinization under Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization
entailed
• ending Stalin’s reign of terror after his death in
1953; and
• allowing partial liberalization of Soviet society.

During the de-Stalinization period, which

lasted from 1956 to 1964:
• Portraits of Stalin were removed from public
places;
• Localities bearing Stalin’s name were renamed;
• Historians were commissioned to rewrite
textbooks to deflate Stalin’s reputation.
Moreover, the same period
• saw the release of millions of political prisoners;
and
• brought a “thaw” in government control.
Khrushchev’s Foreign Policy
With respect to foreign policy, Khrushchev
emphasized the possibility of “peaceful
coexistence” between different social systems.
• He argued that a nuclear war was more likely to lead to
mutual annihilation than to victory.
Under Khrushchev, communist leaders in eastern
Europe were tempted to experiment with domestic
reforms and seek a degree of independence from
Soviet domination.
The Hungarian Challenge
• In Hungary, when the communist regime
embraced the process of de-Stalinization,
large numbers of Hungarian citizens went
further and demanded both democracy
and the breaking of ties to Moscow and
the Warsaw Pact.
• In the wake of massive street
demonstrations joined by the Hungarian
armed forces (see slide 61), the
communist Imre Nagy gained power and
visibility as a nationalist leader.
• He announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the
Warsaw Pact on November 1, 1956.
The Hungarian Challenge
The Hungarian Challenge

Soviet officials viewed Hungary’s demands as a

threat to national security.
• On November 4, they sent tanks into Budapest and crushed
the uprising within a week.
The Prague Spring
In 1968 the Communist
Party leader in
Czechoslovakia,
Alexander Dubcek,
launched a liberal
movement known as
the “Prague Spring.”
• He promised his fellow
citizens “socialism with a
human face.”
The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia
Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid
Brezhnev, feared that reforms like
those in Czechoslovakia might
undermine Soviet control in
eastern Europe.
• In August 1968, Brezhnev sent in the
Soviet military to bring an end to the
Prague Spring.
• He justified the invasion by the
“Brezhnev doctrine,” which reserved
the right of the USSR to invade any
socialist country that was deemed to
be threatened by internal or external
elements “hostile to socialism.”
Detente and Cooperation
Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union
improved in the late 1960s.
• Both agreed on a policy of détente, or a reduction in hostility, trying
to cool the costly arms race and slow their competition in
developing countries.
Between 1972 and 1974, U.S. and Soviet leaders
exchanged visits.
• They also signed agreements calling for cooperation in areas such
as health research, environmental protection, space ventures, and
cultural exchange programs.
U.S. and Soviet negotiators concluded their Strategic Arms
Limitations Talks (SALT) in 1972 with two agreements.
• They reached another accord – SALT II – in 1979.
Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
• The spirit of détente deteriorated
markedly in the early 1980s, in large part
due to the Soviet military intervention in
Afghanistan.
• In 1978, a pro-Soviet coup in Afghanistan
sparked widespread resistance from
anticommunist Afghans.
• By the summer of 1979, antigovernment
rebels controlled much of the Afghan
countryside.
• They were poised to oust the pro-Soviet
government from power.
• At that point, the Soviet Union intervened,
installing Babrak Karmal as president.
• However, a national, anti-Soviet
resistance movement soon spread
throughout Afghanistan.
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
Between 1979 and 1989, well-equipped Soviet forces
fought a brutal, unsuccessful campaign against Afghan
mujahideen, or Islamic warriors.
• The mujahideen were aided by weapons and money from the
United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and China—all of
whom wished to block Soviet influence in the area.
• They gradually gained control of most of the countryside.

The participation of the superpowers in the Afghan conflict

ensured a long, bloody war that could not be easily won by
either side.
• Finally, in 1986, the Soviets decided to pull their troops from
Afghanistan.
• The Soviet withdrawal was completed in 1989.
THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Gorbachev and the End of the Cold War

The new Soviet leader, Mikhail

Gorbachev, who came to power
in 1985, sought both economic
and political reforms.
• However, his efforts eventually failed
and the Soviet system in Europe
soon collapsed with stunning speed.
• Between 1989 and 1990, through a series
of mostly nonviolent revolutions, the
peoples of eastern and central Europe
broke away from Soviet control, instituted
democratic forms of government, and
adopted market-based economies.
• The USSR itself disintegrated into fifteen
sovereign states in late 1991.
Reagan and the End of the Cold War

The collapse of the Soviet system was partly

encouraged by U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s
insistence on massive military spending.
• This forced the Soviets to spend lavishly on defense as
well, at a time when they could least afford it.