1	THE COLD WAR 1945 To 1991
2	Cold War Origins The wartime alliance was based on aversion to a common enemy, not on philosophical consensus or similarity of social system or way of life. At the Potsdam Conference Stalin offended the United States and Great Britain by making demands they held to be in excess of the needs of Soviet national security. Despite the animosity, the Allies reached agreement on the general lines of the occupation. Within several years, the Soviet Union violated many of these agreements.
3	The Iron Curtain In late 1946 the former British prime minister, Winston Churchill, remarked that an “iron curtain” was descending across the middle of Europe. The Soviets used force and threats to press their advantage and by 1947 and 1948 gave Communist groups in Eastern Europe the green light to govern in roughly the same repressive way the USSR itself was ruled. In July 1947 Soviet foreign minister Molotov served notice that the USSR would not participate in the Marshall Plan. The globe-girdling political, diplomatic, and economic conflict between blocs—for the most part between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union—known as the Cold War had begun.
4	Takeover in Eastern Europe Political structures were reorganized in stages with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and East Germany. Local Communists first cooperated in coalition governments. This was followed, beginning in 1947 by the institution of “people’s democracies.” Communist Governments. Opposing political factions were isolated and then destroyed. Large land holdings were confiscated, With the exception of Poland, farms were collectivized. Virtually all industry was nationalized.
5	Berlin Blockade Communist regime led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito, resisted Soviet efforts to dictate to it and was expelled from Communist Information Bureau. Developments in Eastern Europe, and the nine-month Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948-1949, alarmed the United States and Western Europe and led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in April 1949.
6	Relations with China In August 1945 the Soviet Union concluded a treaty of friendship and alliance with the Republic of China’s Kuomintang (KMT) government Although the Soviets promised to respect KMT they stripped the region of nearly all of its industrial machinery resisted efforts by the Chinese government to reestablish its authority Gave arms taken from captured Japanese soldiers to the Chinese Communist Party. When Soviet troops withdrew, all Manchuria fell to the CCP.. The subsequent victory of the Chinese Communists over the KMT in 1949 altered the balance of power in Asia to the momentary advantage of the Soviet Union.
7	The Khrushchev Era 1953-1964
8	The Death of Joseph Stalin Stalin, although increasingly erratic and paranoid as he grew old, remained in control until his death in March 1953. A collective leadership took power after his death. It was headed briefly by Georgy Malenkov, who was chosen first secretary and premier of the government. Molotov (reinstated as foreign minister) Beria (minister of internal affairs) Nikita Khrushchev (party secretary) Kaganovich and Nikolay Bulganin (first deputy premiers) Kliment Voroshilov (ceremonial head of state). The ruling group soon fell out among themselves.
9	The Power Grab Malenkov lasted as chief organizer of the party for only one week and was eclipsed there by Khrushchev, whose title was elevated to first secretary in September 1953. Minister Beria was arrested in June and denounced for “criminal and antiparty activities”; in December 1953 the Kremlin announced he had been tried for treason, found guilty, and shot. Secretary Malenkov was demoted in February 1955 and replaced as head of government by Bulganin, a confederate of Khrushchev.
10	The Khrushchev Era Begins By 1960 Khrushchev was in complete control, receiving much praise about his leadership at party gatherings. The struggle for power finally resulted in the triumph of Khrushchev. He packed the government with officials friendly to him.
11	Domestic Policies In 1953 Khrushchev reduced the power of the political police. Many inmates of the Gulag camps were freed in 1954 Tribunals restored the reputations of many of those murdered under Stalin. At the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev delivered an address to a closed meeting of the delegates asserting that Stalin had replaced the legitimate Soviet leadership with a “personality cult” and that this had done harm to the party and the country. The “secret speech,” soon leaked out to the press and stunned many Communists in the USSR and throughout the world. Khrushchev proceeded to implement a policy of de-Stalinization. portraits of the late dictator were removed from public places institutions and localities bearing his name were renamed textbooks were rewritten to deflate his reputation. Stalin’s body was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow where it had rested beside that of Lenin.
12	Problems with Khrushchev’s Policies No legal protections for free expression and political activity were enacted. Khrushchev took offense when intellectuals overstepped the permitted bounds. He intensified political education and increased pressure on religious believers. There was some initial successes with Khrushchevs farm program, but harvests deteriorated in the early 1960s.
13	Khrushchev’s Failures One effect of de-Stalinization was to reduce the level of fear within the Soviet leadership. That ment more people spoke up about Khrushchev’s failures. Policy failures Included poor harvests the Cuban missile crisis his division of the government into parallel industrial and agricultural hierarchies.
14	Khrushchev’s Fall In October 1964 the party leadership, having conspired for some time behind his back, stripped him of both his party secretaryship and the premiership. The plot was led by three members of Khrushchev’s inner circle: Leonid Brezhnev, a veteran party administrator and as of July 1964 the second-ranking party secretary Nikolay Podgorny, a fellow CP secretary Aleksandr Shelepin, the head of the KGB
15	The Cold War The Brezhnev Era (1964-1982) and Soviet Foreign Affairs after Stalin
16	Brezhnev Takes Control Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as first secretary of the party in 1964. Overtime, Brezhnev would assert his dominance over his fellow leaders very cautiously. Using his powers of appointment, he rewarded supporters with seats in the Politburo and other party organs. A Brezhnev personality cult blossomed in the late 1970s, as his memoirs were printed in huge editions and his patchy war record was extolled.
17	From Stability to Stagnation The watchword of Brezhnev’s 18 years in office was stability. Changes in government operations were combined with severe and mounting intolerance toward preference of more fundamental changes. The Prague Spring of 1968, in which liberal Communists in Czechoslovakia tried to change communism, was put down by a Soviet-led invasion force, with Brezhnev’s authorization.
18	Foreign Affairs An innovation of the post-Stalin years was the widening of contacts with the developing nations of the Third World, which Moscow saw as fertile ground for extension of its military, political, and economic influence. Formation of the Warsaw Pact in 1955 gave the Soviet bloc a counterpart to NATO, increased military coordination.
19	USSR and East Germany East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR), constituted as a sovereign state in 1949, remained of special concern to Moscow. In June 1953 Soviet troops helped put down a rebellion of workers in East Berlin. Thousands of East Germans continued to flee through the divided city of Berlin. In August 1961 the Soviet Union and the East German government built the infamous Berlin Wall.
20	Eastern European Integration Tito’s Yugoslavia, refused to cave in to Stalin in 1948 and stuck to its separate identity by not joining the Warsaw Pact. Relations improved after the death of Stalin, only to decline again in the 1960s. The principal instrument for economic integration of the Soviet bloc was COMECON. Each country was to produce what it was best prepared for and purchase other products from the other countries. Pipelines carrying Soviet oil and gas to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany further integrated the economies of these nations with that of the USSR.
21	Polish and Hungarian Crises Soviet control of Eastern Europe was most seriously jeopardized in 1956, during the relaxation following the first wave of de-Stalinization. Popular discontent and rallies in Poland caused the continuance of Soviet troops in the country. In Hungary, student and worker demonstrations led to a change of government, a Soviet military intervention which killed thousands, and the formation of a new pro-Soviet government.
22	The Prague Spring Crisis, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, reflected the looser Soviet system of review after 1960 and the pressure for economic and social change within the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Clamor for reform resulted in the peaceful replacement of Antonín Novotný as head of state by Alexander Dubcek a Communists long loyal to Moscow. Soviet leaders were alarmed, particularly by the termination of censorship and talk of closer economic relations with the West. After weeks of pressure failed to get the Czechs to drop the reform program, 600,000 troops from the Soviet Union, and token troops from all other Warsaw Pact countries invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia on the night of August 20, 1968. Passive resistance—such as changing street signs to confuse the invading troops—lasted throughout the occupation, but the Warsaw Pact forces gradually won their way. Dubcek was removed in April 1969, and the hated controls were reimposed.
23	Relations with China Both the USSR and China supported North Korea in the Korean War (1950-1953). Ties between the two largest Communist countries deteriorated after 1960 mostly on over the interpretation of Marxism and border clashes. The Soviet Union immediately recognized the People’s Republic of China, established under Communist leader Mao Zedong in 1949. They allied with, and backed China’s demand to be seated in the UN in place of the government of the Republic of China, which was forced to relocate to Taiwan.
24	Vietnam The USSR supported the Communist forces of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam In 1954 the USSR participated in the Geneva Accords that divided the country into North Vietnam and South Vietnam As the Vietnam War (1959-1975) worsened during the 1960s, the Soviets staunchly supported North Vietnam and its guerrilla allies in the south against the US supported South.
25	India and Pakistan In the 1971 a war between India and Pakistan ended with the formation of the state of Bangladesh. The Soviet Union supported victorious India. Both China and the United States sided with Pakistan.
26	Afghanistan In December 1979 the Soviet Union sent a large military force across the border into Afghanistan in an attempt to shore up a faltering Marxist government there. The war eventually cost about 15,000 Soviet lives and the lives of between 700,000 and 1.3 million Afghans before the Soviet withdrawal in the late 1980s.
27	Relations with African Nations Early attempts to gain influence in Africa were met with problems. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Soviet-supported Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was killed in an uprising in 1961. In Ghana, President Kwame Nkrumah and his socialistic government were overthrown in 1966. In the 1970s the Soviet Union, with the aid of Cuban troops, helped a communist government come to power in Angola. The USSR backed the antigovernment Patriotic Front in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The Soviets backed the (ANC) African National Congress in South Africa in the 1980’s.
28	Egypt In 1971 the two countries signed a 15-year treaty of friendship. The following year Egypt, concerned with interference in its internal affairs, ordered Soviet military advisers to leave. Soviet criticism of President Anwar al-Sadat’s peacemaking visit to Jerusalem in 1977 further alienated the USSR and Egypt. The Soviet Union had close relations with Egypt, the largest of the Arab states, in the 1950s and 1960s. It supported Egypt when it nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. It helped Egypt build the Aswan High Dam The USSR backed Egypt in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
29	Relations with Western Europe In 1955 the Soviet Union, an occupying power in Austria, agreed to the independence and neutrality of that country. The same year it established full diplomatic relations with West Germany. The Soviet Union championed East Germany against West Germany and caused repeated crises in their relations. The problem of West Berlin, surrounded by East German territory, was particularly a constant worry.
30	Relations with the Untied States The Cuban Missile Crisis The dangers of the arms race forced the superpowers to maintain contact and continue to negotiate over differences. In 1962 the two countries had a dangerous clash over Soviet activities in Cuba. When the Soviets stationed nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in Cuba in October 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy demanded their withdrawal. After a period of extreme tension, Khrushchev yielded and ordered the rockets removed.
31	US - USSR Arms Control A series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the two powers, begun in 1969, resulted in agreements in 1972, 1974, and 1979, placing quantitative and qualitative limits on nuclear weapons arsenals and delivery systems. In 1954 and again in 1959, the USSR suggested total disarmament and destruction of nuclear stockpiles, but this was mostly for propaganda value. In 1963 the Soviet Union signed a treaty with the United States and Great Britain prohibiting all nuclear tests except underground. The USSR also joined the United States in agreeing to keep outer space free of armaments.
32	Détente Washington condemned the Soviet role in the suppression of dissidence in Poland in 1981 and its shooting down of a South Korean civilian aircraft in Soviet airspace in September 1983. Détente meant, a relaxing of tensions with the West, especially the United States. In May 1972, during a Moscow visit by U.S. President Richard Nixon, he and Brezhnev signed agreements for economic cooperation. Agreement was reached for a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in May 1979, and Brezhnev met with U.S. President Jimmy Carter in Vienna for a formal signing one month later. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December of that year doomed ratification of the accord by the U.S. Senate. U.S.-Soviet relations worsened during the early 1980s.
33	Gorbachev Era and the Fall of the Soviet Union 1985 - 1991
34	The Soviet Block in 1985
35	Gorbachev Comes to Power Brezhnev, after many years of poor health, died in November 1982. His successor as general secretary and head of state was Yuri Andropov, a former chairman of the Soviet political police, the KGB. Andropov attempted a tough approach to Soviet problems, but soon disappeared from public view. He died in February of 1984. After him, Konstantin Chernenko, a member of Brezhnev’s entourage for 35 years, lasted only 13 uneventful months before he, too, died in office. On March 11, 1985, the Central Committee appointed the 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the Politburo, as general secretary.
36	Glasnost’ and Perestroika Gorbachev first seemed content to copy Andropov’s crackdown on corruption, unseating some longtime comrades of Brezhnev and Chernenko and announcing a campaign to curb alcohol consumption. In 1986, dissatisfied with the results of previous decisions and troubled by revelations of incompetence related to the Chernobyl’ nuclear disaster, Gorbachev decided to head off in a much more radical direction. He called for glasnost’ (openness or candor) in the media and culture and for a far-reaching perestroika (restructuring) of the nation’s economy and political system.
37	The Economy Gorbachev never did achieve a deep-cutting reform of the Soviet economy. His main accomplishment was to legalize individual entrepreneurship and small cooperative businesses. Without actually reforming the planned economy, Gorbachev’s government actually provoked a further slowdown in growth. Shortages of consumer goods mushroomed and protest strikes by miners and other workers erupted.
38	Gorbachev’s Reforms Gorbachev’s most concerted efforts were in the political arena, where he announced to the party Central Committee in January 1987 that it was time to inaugurate competitive elections presenting the voter with a multiplicity of candidates, replacing the no-choice ballots that had been universal since the 1920s. Several months later the USSR constitution was amended to safeguard electoral choice among candidates and to replace the Supreme Soviet with a 2250-member Congress of People’s Deputies.
39	Elections of 1989 Elections to the congress were held all over the Soviet Union in March 1989. Many old line party members were defeated, while former political dissidents such as physicist Andrey Sakharov gained entry to the legislature.
40	Gorbachev’s Difficulties Over time he became estranged from conservative leaders. He was also unable to satisfy the more liberal reformers. The acknowledged leader of the “democrats” was Boris Yeltsin, a former candidate member of the Politburo whom Gorbachev excluded from the leadership in October 1987 but who staged a comeback in the 1989 election.
41	The Seeds of Change In 1990 the Central Committee and the Soviet parliament agreed to change the constitution to allow non-Communist parties. In March 1990 the voters of Russia gave the Democrats a narrow victory. Democrat Boris Yeltsin was elected chairman of the assembly by a razor-thin margin in May. On June 12, 1991, he was elected the first President of Russia, in a republic-wide popular election contested by six candidates.
42	Foreign Policy Initiatives Gorbachev deserves most of the credit for the end of the Cold War. One of his first personnel changes was to replace the longtime Soviet foreign minister, Gromyko, with Eduard Shevardnadze, the first secretary of the Georgian Communist Party.
43	US-USSR Arms Reductions He and Shevardnadze agreed in April 1988 to the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It was completed by February 1989. At his meeting with Reagan in Reykjavík, Iceland, in October 1986, the two leaders exchanged new arms reduction proposals. Gorbachev and Reagan signed an agreement in December 1987 to eliminate medium-range and certain shorter-range missiles in Europe. In May 1990 Gorbachev and Bush initialed a treaty to end production and reduce stockpiles of chemical weapons, and in July 1991 they signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) requiring substantial cuts in strategic nuclear weapons.
44	Relations Normalized At a meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome, Gorbachev promised that the Soviet Union would allow full religious freedom. Relations with Israel also improved, as the Soviets relaxed restrictions on Jewish emigration. After August 1990, with tensions rising in the Persian Gulf, the USSR supported the U.S.-led effort to use economic and military pressure to force Iraq to give up its annexation of Kuwait. In December 1988, at the UN General Assembly, Gorbachev announced unilateral reductions in conventional forces, in Eastern Europe and along the China-USSR border. During his visit to Beijing in May 1989, China and the USSR agreed to resume normal relations after a 30-years.
45	Change in Eastern Europe The USSR refused to intervene in Eastern Europe as pressures for reform grew. Reform movements were able to oust Communist governments all across the Soviet bloc. In the most dramatic change, the Berlin Wall was torn down and Communist East Germany merged with West Germany, forming a united Federal Republic of Germany. Increasingly distracted by domestic developments, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its troops from Eastern Europe and to dissolve the Warsaw Pact.
46	Change Builds in the USSR Revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe were soon echoed inside the USSR. The republics profited from long-suppressed nationalism. One by one, the republic parliaments adopted resolutions of sovereignty and the dominance of their laws over Soviet legislation. Lithuania and Georgia went so far as to assert their complete independence from the Soviet Union. Russia, itself passed a sovereignty resolution on June 12, 1990.
47	The Attempted Coup Yeltsin, having rallied pro-democracy forces in front of the Russian parliament, emerged as the hero of the hour. On August 22 the army withdrew its tanks from Moscow and the leaders of the plot surrendered. On August 19, a group of Communist hard-liners in the highest councils of the regime attempted to impose a national state of emergency and to force Gorbachev to go along with the decision. The coup failed.
48	The USSR Comes to an End Between August 20 and August 31, eight republics (Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, Kirgizia Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan joined Lithuania and Georgia in declaring their independence. The Tajik, Armenian, and Turkmen republics followed in September and October, leaving only Russia and Kazakhstan, legally speaking, as members of the Soviet Union. On August 24 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party. In November of 1991 Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Communist Party, making it defunct within the borders of Russia.
49	New Nations
50	A New Begining On December 7, 1991 the leaders of the three largest republics in Europe signed an agreement proclaiming the Soviet Union to be defunct and announcing the formation of a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) without any central state structure. Eight other republics joined the CIS two weeks later. On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation as president in a solemn television address. The Soviet parliament passed its final resolution, acknowledging the dissolution of the Soviet Union, on December 26. On December 31 all functions of the first Communist state ceased: The USSR no longer existed.
51	Soviet Legacy The newly independent states have for the most part gone their own way. The Baltic States have by general agreement made the most rapid advances. Most of Central Asia and Belarus still show patterns of communism. The Russian Federation and Ukraine have made some progress politically. Civil wars and extreme instability have plagued Moldova, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Territorial disputes have lead to war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The most dangerous dispute is between Russia and Ukraine over possession of the Crimean Peninsula in southeastern Ukraine, which is populated largely by ethnic Russians.
52	The End