The Cold War
This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political
differences.The Cold War was so named because the two major powers—each possessing nuclear weapons and thereby threatened with mutual assured destruction—never met in direct
military combat.Instead in their struggle for globel influence they engaged in on going psychological warfare.
And in regular indirect confrontations through proxy wars. Cycles of relative calm would be followed by high
tension, which would have led to world war.The tenest times were during the Berlin Blockade(1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Suez
Crisis (1956), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam
War (1959–1975), the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Soviet
war in Afghanistan (1979–1989),the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983), and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises (1983). The conflict was expressed through military conditions, strategic conventional force deployments extensive aid
to client states, espionge, massive propaganda campaigns, conventional and nulear arm forces, apeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technology competitions such as the Space Race.o
The US and USSR became involved in political and militaty conflicts in the Third World countries of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Southern Asia. To alleviate the risk of a potential nuclear war, both sides sought relief of political tensions through detente in the 1970's.
In the 1980s,the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid- 1980s, thr new Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reorganization", 1987) and glasnost
("openness", ca. 1985). Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Eurpoe, especialy Poland. They reached a breaking point when Gorbachev refused to use Soviet troops to support the fattering government of East Germany in late 1989.
Learn more > www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/coldwar.html
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