Eastern Bloc

Origins began in 1947 and ending in 1991. It all started 2 years after WWII when the U.S used the containment policy against the soviets. The containment policy was issued to prevent the spread of communism, which was mostly for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. This helped create the NATO, which stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a defense pact. (www.historychannel.com). It was an alliance made between countries to help defend if one was being attacked by another country. The…

The Soviet Union was established in 1922 and lasted until approximately 1991. From 1940 to 1991, the Soviet Union was made up of fifteen republics.Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Russia began to expand its territory. Then in 1922 the Bolsheviks controlled Russia and formed the Soviet Union, a communist state comprised of fifteen republics. Russia was th largest and most powerful of these. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia were among the republics of the…

After World War II, the United States and the USSR came out as the world's major powers. The war caused many nations to become politically and economically unstable, such as Europe and Asia. "The Second World War had a deeply unsettling effect on the international system" (Norton, Mary Beth. Chapter 24: The Cold War and American Globalism 1945-1961. In A People & A Nation, p. 718). The two superpowers had very different views on how to fix the global economy and soon became a competition on…

One of the most iconic speeches from Ronald Regan’s presidency is his direct challenge to the first Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, to tear down the wall that separates East and West Berlin. President Regan, on his second visit to Berlin, takes the opportunity to provide his views on the city, Europe in general and the ongoing ideological differences between the east and west. President Regan opens to thunderous applause as he acknowledges some common truths that ring true to all mankind.…

The United States did release many different documents of foreign policy in an attempt to either expand and better themselves or just prop up other nations. The Truman Doctrine was one of these polices to affect the relationship with Europe as a whole. This was meant to help countries such as Greece and Turkey to give them aid so they could try and subdue the threat of Communism.14 Applebaum sees this as America making an attempt to fight not just the Communist threat but more than anything, the…

The Cold War was supposed to be intended to contrast American Independence for the Nazi oppression. In 1947, President Truman devoted the United States to the restrictions of the Soviet influence. Both sides would spy on each other in order to gain information regarding military weapons among other things about one another. Although the superpowers never fought directly with one another they did have several encounters with nuclear threats. The United States was able to rise up with great power…

“Containment” is a geopolitical strategy that was predominantly used by the United States, and its allies, during the Cold War against the Soviet Union to impede the spread of communism. Following the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman, and his advisers, lacked a consensus of foreign policy necessary to deal with the Soviet threat and establish American hegemony. To help clarify the Russian perspective, diplomat George F. Kennan sent an eight-thousand-word telegram to Washington, D.C…

Because of World War II there was an agreement between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union called the Yalta agreement. This agreement was not to be as it was originally viewed. The agreement was brought to view to bring the Soviet Union to declare war on Japan, thus becoming an ally with the United States and Great Britain. The agreement promised the Soviet Union to gain back control of the European territories that the Soviet had lost during a different war in 1905 known as…

In the late 1970’s there was a hot bed of political activity throughout the world, which fed into the Cold War. The Soviet-Afghanistan War was a battlefield in which the Cold War super powers never faced each other but fought each other through different avenues like many other conflicts. Years earlier, the American military fought a counterinsurgency in Vietnam in which the Soviets helped the North Vietnamese fight the Americans. Even though the Americans won the major battles within the war…

The cold war was a result of technological changes in weaponry (mostly nuclear) and space technologies that led to tension on who had the most power and a general feeling of mutually assured destruction in case of an invasion or assault. Joseph Stalin started the cold war he was an evil dictator; he was not an honest person because he failed to keep the agreement he made to the Western Allies about holding free elections after the battle in countries occupied by the Soviet Army. The two…