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| Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Well-known as an orator, strategist, and politician, Churchill was one of the most important leaders in modern British and world history. He won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature for his many books on English and world history. |
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| Was leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. His attempts at reform helped to end the Cold War, and also ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and dissolved the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. |
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(April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933, and "Führer" (leader) of Germany from 1934 until his death. He was leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
One of history's most brutal leaders, he converted Germany, a defeated nation, into a fully remilitarized society, and launched World War 2. With anti-Semitism and racism the cornerstone of his ideology and policies, he conquered and dominated most of Europe over five years, and ordered the deaths of millions of Jews and others whom he considered inferior. |
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1870–1924, Russian revolutionary, the founder of Bolshevism and the major force behind the Revolution of Oct., 1917.
the first head of the Soviet Union Communistic State. |
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| President of Cuba. After commanding the revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Castro is frequently described by opponents as a dictator and accused of gross human rights violations, including the execution of thousands of political opponents . Other groups hail Castro as a charismatic liberator. |
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| Polish politician, a former trade union and human rights activist, and also a former electrician. He co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995 |
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1879–1953, Soviet Communist leader and head of the USSR from the death of Lenin (1924) until his own death, His real name was Dzhugashvili , he adopted the name Stalin (man of steel) about 1913.
Conducted a campaign of tyranny and terror, falsification of history, and self-glorification resulting in the deaths and imprisonment of millions. |
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| 1893–1976, founder of the People's Republic of China. Mao was one of the most prominent Communist theoreticians and his ideas on revolutionary struggle and guerrilla warfare have been extremely influential, especially among Third World revolutionaries. |
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| 1887–1975, Chinese Nationalist leader. He was also called Chiang Chung-cheng. Loses to Communists and retreats to Taiwan where he lives out the rest of his days as President of Taiwan. |
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| 1856 – 1924) was the 28th President of the United States. Elected President as a Democrat in 1912. Lead a Democratic Congress to pass major legislation including the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, etc. Re-elected in 1916, his second term centered on World War I. He tried to negotiate a peace in Europe but when Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping he called on Congress to declare war. He went to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles. |
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| FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms. A central figure of the 20th century was leader during the Great Depression and most of WWII. |
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| There were fundamental contrasts between the visions of the United States and the Soviet Union, between the ideals of capitalism and communism. Those contrasts had been simplified and refined in national ideologies to represent two ways of life, each vindicated in 1945 by previous disasters. Conflicting models of autarky versus exports, of state planning against private enterprise, were to vie for the allegiance of the developing and developed world in the postwar years. |
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| economic system in which the production and distribution of goods and services takes place through the mechanism of free markets guided by a free price system (Capitalism) rather than by the state in a planned economy (Communism). |
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Elimination of the potential for class warfare, Ultimately there would develop a harmonious classless society.
Central planned economy inefficient
Lack of incentive to increase productivity, quality, innovate, etc |
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| A meeting at Yalta, in the Crimea, during World War 2 (4–11 Feb 1945), between the Allied leaders Churchill, Stalin, and Franklin D Roosevelt. Among matters agreed were the disarmament and partition of Germany and Austria, the Russo–Polish frontier, the establishment of the United Nations. |
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| The policy adopted by the USA and thereafter her Western allies aimed at containing, by political, economic, and diplomatic means, the ‘expansionist tendencies’ of the USSR. The policy, first advocated in 1947, also involved the provision of technical and economic aid to non-communist countries. |
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| Berlin Blockade and Airlift |
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| first major crises of the new Cold War, when the Soviet Union blocked railroad and street access to West Berlin. The crisis abated after the Soviet Union did not act to stop American, British and French humanitarian airlifts of food and other provisions to the Western-held sectors of Berlin; this was referred to as Operation Vittles by the Americans and Operation Plainfare by the British. |
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| Marshall Plan or European Recovery Program, project instituted at the Paris Economic Conference (July, 1947) to foster economic recovery in certain European countries after World War II. The Marshall Plan took form when U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall urged (June 5, 1947) that European countries decide on their economic needs so that material and financial aid from the United States could be integrated on a broad scale. |
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| The continual accumulation in terms of numbers and capacity of military weapons by two or more states, in the belief that only by maintaining a superiority will their national security be guaranteed. Many maintain that, in such a situation, the continual growth in weapons becomes a threat to security by increasing international tension and distrust. |
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| The Space Race was an informal competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted roughly from 1957 to 1975. It involved the parallel efforts by each of those countries to explore outer space with artificial satellites, to send humans into space, and to land people on the Moon. |
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| Berlin Wall, 1961–89, a barrier first erected in Aug., 1961, by the East German government along the border between East and West Berlin, and later extended along the entire border between East Germany and West Germany. It was built to halt large numbers of defections and to prevent E. Berliners commuting to the West. |
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| A term used to describe the separation of certain E and C European countries from the rest of Europe by the political and military domination of the Soviet Union. The term was first used by Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels in 1945 and quoted in translation by the British press. It became widely known after Churchill used it in a speech in Fulton, USA, in 1946. |
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| U-2 incident, in U.S. and Soviet history, the events following the Soviet downing of an American U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960. President Eisenhower's initial claim that he had no knowledge of such flights was difficult to maintain when the Soviets produced the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, who had survived the crash. |
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| The world's first artificial satellite. Sputnik 1 was launched by the USSR (4 Oct 1957) from Tyuratam launch site; weight 84 kg/185 lb; battery powered; it transmitted a radio signal for 21 days. |
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| Acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was established as a military alliance to defend W Europe against Soviet aggression. The treaty commits the members to treat an armed attack on one of them as an attack on all of them, and for all to assist the country attacked by such actions as are deemed necessary. |
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| East European Mutual Assistance Treaty. The pact established a unified military command for the armed forces of all the signatories. All members were committed to giving immediate assistance to any other party attacked in Europe. It was a communist response, in part, to the formation of NATO by the West, and was formally dissolved in 1991. |
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| Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. On Apr. 17, 1961, an armed force of about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the south coast of Cuba. The rebels intended to foment an insurrection in Cuba and overthrow the Communist regime of Fidel Castro. The Cuban army easily defeated the rebels, most were either killed or captured. |
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| A United States foreign policy designed to contain Communism by stopping its spread to Greece and Turkey. Gaining the support of the Republicans who controlled Congress, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed the Doctrine on March 12, 1947. It stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet orbit. |
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| United Nations (UN), international organization established immediately after World War II. It replaced the League of Nations. In 1945, when the UN was founded, there were 51 members; 192 nations are now members of the organization. |
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| The Chinese Civil War was a conflict in China between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CCP). It began in 1927 after the Northern Expedition when the right-wing faction of the KMT, led by Chiang Kai-shek, purged the Communists from a KMT-CCP alliance. The primary conflict ended in 1950 with an unofficial cessation of major hostilities, with the Communists controlling mainland China and the Nationalists restricted to their remaining territories of Taiwan, Penghu, and several outlying Fujianese islands. |
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| in the People's Republic of China was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the People's Republic of China to the brink of civil war. It was launched by Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong on May 16, 1966 to regain control of the party after the disasters of the Great Leap Forward led to a significant loss of his power to rivals such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. |
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| Young radical Maoist activists (mostly students) who spread the 1966 Cultural Revolution across China, destroying whatever was ‘old’, and rebelling against all ‘reactionary’ authority. The first Red Guards were a group formed in Qinghua University in Beijing on whom Mao bestowed his blessing at a mass rally in the capital in 1966. |
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| The Congo Crisis (1960-1965) was a period of turmoil in the First Republic of the Congo that began with national independence from Belgium and ended with the seizing of power by Joseph Mobutu. At various points it had the characteristics of anti-colonial struggle, a secessionist war with the province of Katanga, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, and a Cold War proxy battle between the United States and the Soviet Union. |
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| Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan |
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The Soviet forces in Afghanistan Civil War was a nine-year year period involving the Soviet forces and the Mujahideen insurgents that were fighting to destroy Afghanistan's Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government.
The initial Soviet deployment into Afghanistan took place on December 25, 1979, and the final troop withdrawal February 2, 1989. |
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| The continued shortage and expensiveness of food and housing led to strikes in 1980, first at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk and then in other cities. The striking workers formed an illegal labor union, Solidarity, led by Gdańsk shipyard worker Lech Wałęsa. |
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On the night of August 20 - August 21 1968, Eastern Bloc armies from five Warsaw Pact countries invaded the country.
During the attack of the Warsaw Pact armies, 72 Czechs and Slovaks were killed (19 of those in Slovakia) and hundreds were wounded (up to September 3, 1968). |
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| The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the Communist government of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from October 23 until November 10,1956. It began as a student demonstration which attracted thousands as it marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building. They were fired upon by the State Security Police (ÁVH) from within the building. The news spread quickly and disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital. |
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| glasnost, Soviet cultural and social policy of the late 1980s. Following his ascension to the leadership of the USSR in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev began to promote a policy of openness in public discussions about current and historical problems. The policy was termed glasnost [openness]. |
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| Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist party organization. |
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Demokratizatsia
(Democratization) |
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| Democratization is the transition from an authoritarian or a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic political system. |
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| Political liberalization in the late 1980s, associated with the decline of the Soviet Union, led to relaxed border restrictions in East Germany, culminating in mass demonstrations and the fall of the East German government. When a government statement that crossing of the border would be permitted was broadcast on November 9, 1989, masses of East Germans approached and then crossed the wall, and were joined by crowds of West Germans in a celebratory atmosphere. The Wall was subsequently destroyed by a euphoric public over a period of several weeks, and its fall was the first step toward German reunification. |
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