Name: _______________________________________________________ DUE: Wednesday, March 21, 2001

Homework Global History II

COLD WAR. In 1946 Sir Winston Churchill gave an address on foreign affairs at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. In it he uttered this ominous sentence: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent [of Europe]." These words marked the beginning of the Cold War. The term was first used again by American financier Bernard Baruch in a congressional debate in 1947, and it may be defined as a condition of competition, tension, and conflict short of actual war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The startling and rapid political changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989 brought the Cold War to an end.

Churchill's words referred to the fact that the Soviet Union, from 1945 to 1948, strengthened its hold on Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. But the Cold War was marked by other effects of the policies of the two superpowers possession of nuclear weapons; the attempt to establish spheres of interest and alliances with other nations; the division of Europe into two military alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact; attempts to start or prevent revolution in smaller nations; and several less-than-total confrontations between the superpowers such as the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The most potent visible symbol of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War was the Berlin Wall, a barricade begun in 1961 to discourage defections from the East to West Germany.

The American response to the perceived Soviet threat of world domination has varied since 1946. In the beginning United States policy was one of "containment,". Under President John F. Kennedy, American policy began to shift to negotiations on arms control and reduction of nuclear stockpiles. Great increases in military spending by the United States during the administration of Ronald Reagan worked to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union. With the Soviet economy in deep trouble, it was no longer possible to keep up with American defense expenditures.

The Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, inaugurated a reversal of Cold War policies, beginning in 1985. With the cooperation of President Reagan, arms reduction agreements were signed, and both sides later pledged troop withdrawals. The Soviets also ended their ten-year war in Afghanistan. The new Soviet democratization spilled over into the rest of Eastern Europe in a dramatic way. By the end of 1989, Communist domination had ended or was seriously eroded in the former Eastern bloc nations. On Nov. 9, 1989, East German authorities allowed the opening of the Berlin Wall . The subsequent destruction of large sections of the wall signaled the end of the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact voted itself out of existence on July 1, 1991.

Nikita KHRUSHCHEV (1894-1971). Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union for 29 years, died March 5, 1953. The next day the government radio announced that to "prevent panic" a collective leadership had been formed to rule the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev was not mentioned in the bulletin. Yet within a few years he triumphed over his rivals to become sole dictator of the Soviet Union.

At Stalin's funeral services Khrushchev shared the platform with the Soviet Union's top leaders. He was, however, merely the chairman who introduced the members of the ruling committee. The most important offices went to Georgi M. Malenkov. The other members of the collective leadership were Lavrenti P. Beria, the head of the secret police, and Vyacheslav M. Molotov, who was Stalin's brilliant foreign minister.

Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev was born April 17, 1894, in a peasant's hut in the poverty-stricken village of Kalinovka, in southern Russia. Like his father, he became a coal miner. He joined the Communist party in 1918, during the civil war, and became an untiring organizer.

Khrushchev entered an industrial school in Moscow in 1929. In the mid-1930s he played a major part in carrying out Stalin's purges. In 1938 Stalin sent him back to the Ukraine to rid the party of anti-Stalinists. After the government had taken almost all the peasants' land, Khrushchev tried to deprive them of the small private plots they still held.

For the last 14 years of Stalin's rule, Khrushchev was party secretary of the Moscow region and a member of the Politburo (later Presidium), the highest organ of the Communist party. By the time Stalin died, many of Khrushchev's supporters had achieved important posts.

Rise to Power (An example of how it is done in a totalitarian government)

About a week after Stalin's death, Khrushchev wrested control of the party machinery from Malenkov. Then he moved against Beria, head of the secret police. With the help of Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov he had Beria arrested in June 1953. In December Beria and many of his aides were executed. Meanwhile Khrushchev had been named first secretary, the acknowledged head of the Communist party.

In 1955 Khrushchev forced Malenkov to resign as premier, on the ground of "inexperience." The title of premier then was given to Marshal Nikolai Bulganin. At that time Marshal Zhukov replaced Bulganin as minister of defense.

As first secretary, Khrushchev was not only the most powerful man in the Soviet Union but leader of the world Communist movement. In February 1956 he delivered his famous two-day "secret" speech (later released) before the 20th Communist Party Congress. In this speech Khrushchev denounced Stalin's rule, accusing the dead dictator of infamous crimes. The revelations shocked Communists throughout the world who had blindly followed Stalin's dictates.

Satellite countries, those in Eastern Europe, were encouraged by the speech to take a more independent line. The Poles rioted, and the Hungarians openly revolted. Stalinists in the Soviet government blamed Khrushchev. Khrushchev put down the revolt in Hungary with Stalinist terroristic methods and eased his stand on Stalinism.

In June 1957 Khrushchev's enemies gained the upper hand in the 11-member Presidium and voted secretly to oust Khrushchev as party secretary. Khrushchev refused to accept the decision and took the fight to the large Central Committee of the party. There, after two days of debate, his leadership was confirmed. Four members of the Presidium including Molotov and Malenkov were dropped and forced to confess their "mistakes." In October even Zhukov, who had helped Khrushchev defeat the conspiracy, was dropped from the Presidium. There remained, however, powerful Stalinist dissenters in both the government and the army. In March 1958 the "collective leadership" was ended when Khrushchev took over Bulganin's title as premier.

Personality and Policies

Correspondents from Western nations described Khrushchev as a man of enormous energy and drive, talkative, sociable, earthy, tough, and shrewd. With great self-confidence he took colossal gambles in both foreign and domestic policy. As a dictator he did not have to fear opposition from a parliament or criticism from the press. He could not, however, completely ignore the discontent of the Soviet people. His announced goals were to overtake the United States in productivity and to help spread Communism throughout the world.

At home Khrushchev continued to build up armaments and heavy industry, at the same time promising the people a huge expansion in consumer goods. In foreign affairs he was bold and unpredictable, making quick turnabouts that put other nations at a disadvantage. While talking peace, he made no concessions except when he was forced to withdraw missiles from Cuba in 1962 and when he agreed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In the early 1960s Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy caused a rift with China that split the Communist world into two opposing camps.

Khrushchev set bold new economic goals for "overtaking the West" and the United States in particular. In 1954, under his supervision, vast new virgin lands were opened to cultivation, and the result was a dramatic increase in food production. Two outstanding harvests (1956, 1958) enabled him to push ahead with rapid industrial development, especially in the production of consumer goods. He also introduced a series of important administrative reforms. In 1957 he set up a new system of regional economic councils and invited debate and discussion on various economic, educational, and legal reforms. He also relaxed censorship somewhat, allowing some dissident intellectuals, like Aleksandr SOLZHENITSYN, to publish previously suppressed works. In 1962 he attempted to reorganize the entire party apparatus on the basis of the "production principle," dividing local committees into separate agricultural and industrial sections. Problems soon developed, however. The good harvest years were followed by bad ones, his administrative changes led to much confusion, and his policy of more open discussion provoked new opposition. Dissidence grew along with popular frustration, as expectations outstripped accomplishments.

In 1964 Khrushchev was removed from office. During his remaining years, he lived quietly. He died in a Moscow hospital on Sept. 11, 1971, following a heart attack.

QUESTION SET #10.

81. What was "the Cold War"?

82. What was "the Iron Curtain"?

83. What was the "Space Race"?

84. How was the "Space Race" affected by the "Cold War"?

85. Explain Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to the head of the Soviet leadership.

86. How is it an example of a totalitarian government?

87. What did Khrushchev want to do?

88. What led to his downfall?

Leonid BREZHNEV, (1906-82).

Leonid Ilich Brezhnev was born on Dec. 19, 1906, in Kamenskoye (now Dneprodzerzhinsk) in the Ukraine. In 1923 he joined Komsomol, the Communist youth organization. His political career began when he joined the Communist party in 1931. A graduate of the Dneprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical Institute in 1935, he worked as an engineer and director of a technical school. He also held a number of local party posts. By 1939 he was the secretary of the regional party committee of Dnepropetrovsk.

He was a member Soviet army during World War II involved in making sure that the soldiers were GOOD communists and loyal to the Communist Party. Brezhnev rose to the rank of major general. After the war he became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Moldavian Communist party. Brezhnev was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1950, and he became a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist party in 1952. Under Nikita Khrushchev, whose protege he became, Brezhnev took over the "virgin lands" project to develop Kazakhstan as an agricultural heartland. By 1960, as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, he became titular head of the Soviet state.

Brezhnev became Khrushchev's assistant as second secretary of the Central Committee in July 1964. Shortly thereafter, however, he joined the coalition forcing Khrushchev out of power on Oct. 15, 1964, and he succeeded Khrushchev as head of the party's Central Committee. After a period of collective leadership with Premier Aleksei Kosygin and with Nikolai Podgorny, chairman of the Presidium, Brezhnev became the Soviet Union's general secretary in 1966.

In May 1976 Brezhnev became a marshal of the Soviet Union; except for Stalin, he was the only Communist party chairman also to hold the highest Soviet military rank. A year later he became chairman of the Supreme Soviet, the first leader to head both the Presidium and the Communist party. In 1979 Brezhnev received the Lenin prize for literature (later recalled). He died in Moscow on Nov. 10, l982.

Less than six years after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, his 18-year reign as Soviet leader was officially denounced as the era of stagnation. In the liberated atmosphere of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), he was blamed for the shocking decline of the Soviet economy and for the rampant cronyism (nepotism) that had bloated the Communist party. At the annual party congress in mid-1988 Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the third of the former chairman's successors as general secretary, criticized the inflated cult of Brezhnev the great fighter for peace, the great Leninist, the great theorist, the hero of Soviet culture.

The disgraced name of Brezhnev was removed from a city, at the request of its citizens, and from streets, squares, and public buildings. Then in 1989 he was stripped of the Order of Victory, a military honor he reportedly did not deserve. Meanwhile, the de-Stalinization movement, which Brezhnev had smothered when he assumed power, was revived.

Under Brezhnev's leadership the Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. The justification was the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted that Communist nations had a right to intervene in one another's affairs if a Warsaw Pact partner was pursuing policies detrimental to the common interests of the others. The concept was extended to Marxist-style governments beyond Eastern Europe. Multibillion-dollar annual bailouts of Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Vietnam were part of the Brezhnev legacy condemned by the new Soviet leadership. It also questioned his authority as the spokesman for the policy of detente, or normalization of relations with Western nations.

de tente or de tente (da tant ; also da tant ) a lessening of tension or hostility, esp. between nations, as through treaties, trade agreements, etc.

QUESTION SET #11.

89. Who succeeded Khrushchev?

90. What was Brezhnev’s major (foreign policy) accomplishments?

91. What is "detente"?

Between 1982 and 1984 the leadership of the Soviet Union changed hands 3 times in less than 2 1/2 years. Leonid Brezhnev died in November 1982 and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov in what proved to be a caretaker "regime".

Yuri ANDROPOV, (1914-84). On Nov. 12, 1982, two days after the death of President Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was elected the new leader of the Soviet Union. Far less was known about Andropov than about the five men who led the country before him. From May 1967 until May 1982 he had headed the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency. This powerful position had proved to be a political dead end for some of his predecessors.

Andropov was born on June 15, 1914, in the village of Nagutskaya in the Stavropol' region. Of his early education little is known, but he began his association with the Communist party at age 16, when he joined Komsomol, the Young Communist League. For a time he worked as a boatman on the Volga River, and in 1936 he graduated from the Inland Waterways Transport College at Rybinsk. Three years later, at 25, he joined the Communist party itself, and in 1940 he was appointed first secretary of Komsomol in the Karelo-Finnish Autonomous Republic. Four years later he was appointed second secretary of the party's Central Committee at Petrozavodsk.

The turning point in Andropov's career was his transfer to Moscow in about 1951 and an assignment to the party's Central Committee there. Appointed ambassador to Hungary in 1953, he helped put down the Hungarian uprising of 1956. He was recalled to Moscow in 1957 to become party secretary in charge of relations with East European countries. In this post he aided Hungarian leaders in their program of reform. By 1973 he had become a full member of the party's Politburo. In contrast with his reputation for relentlessly putting down dissident political opinions within the Soviet Union while head of the KGB, Andropov was often perceived as a leader open to new ideas. General Secretary Andropov was elected to the Soviet presidency on June 16, 1983. He was not seen in public for several months before his death in Moscow on Feb. 9, 1984.

Konstantin CHERNENKO, (1911-85). Konstantin Chernenko, at age 72, succeeded Andropov. Because of his age and ill health, he was also regarded as a caretaker, one last attempt of the Soviet old guard to retain power before handing it to a younger generation. This view was reinforced by the knowledge that Chernenko would not have achieved his position without the aid of his longtime friend Brezhnev, who had promoted him from relatively insignificant posts to positions of authority in Moscow.

Chernenko was born in the Siberian village of Bolshaya Tes on Sept. 24, 1911. The details of his early life are sketchy because he grew up during the years of the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed. He took readily to the new Leninist-Stalinist regime and joined the Komsomol, or Young Communist League, in 1926. Four years later he became a member of the Border Guards and spent several years fighting anti-Communist guerrillas along the Siberia-China border. He became a full member of the Communist party in 1931, and by 1941 he had become secretary of the Krasnoyarsk territorial party committee. Unlike most modern Soviet leaders, he did not serve in the armed forces in World War II.

It was while Chernenko was working for the party in the Moldavian republic from 1948 to 1956 that he met Brezhnev. They became close friends, and through Brezhnev's influence Chernenko was brought to Moscow in about 1956. He was appointed chief of staff of the Presidium in 1960 and head of the Central Committee in 1965. The economic stagnation and corruption of the late 1970s made it unlikely that Chernenko could follow Brezhnev as general secretary of the party. But Andropov's kidney ailment led to an early death, and the old guard led by Chernenko regained power. He died on March 10, 1985, and was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev, a much younger man.

QUESTION SET #12.

92. What two people succeeded Brezhnev after he died?

93. Why were they in power for only a short time?

94. What type of leadership/trend were they part of? Who did they owe their leadership to?

95. Who became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985?