Video:
Audio:
Recommended Reading:
- Powerpoint presentation
- The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians
- “The Two Faces of Ronald Reagan” by Murray Rothbard
- “The Day the Wall Came Down” by Tibor Machan
- “The Decline and Fall of Gorbachev and the Soviet State” by Yuri Maltsev
- For an understanding of why socialism was doomed to fail, see Socialism by Ludwig von Mises.
Cold War, Part II – Quiz
- Explain the evolution of American nuclear diplomacy toward the Soviet Union from the 1940s through the 1960s.
- Explain the factors that led the USA and the USSR into détente in the late 1960s.
- Explain why 1979 was a critical year in the history of the Cold War.
- Explain the role of Ronald Reagan in bringing the Cold War to an end.
- Identify the events that led to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
- Explain the events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1979-1991.
- Nuclear monopoly before 1949 . . . doctrine of “massive retaliation” in the 1950s . . . “Mutually Assured Destruction” from the 1960s
- USSR’s tense relations with China and USA’s war in Vietnam, along with economic problems, distracted each side.
- The Cold War “heated up” from the cumulative impact of the failure of SALT II, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the fallout from the Iranian Revolution.
- Reagan’s renewal of the arms race exacerbated the economic problems the USSR was already suffering from, and it probably hastened the end of the Cold War.
- Resistance grew in eastern Europe from the early 1980s, e.g. Solidarity in Poland; USSR withdrew from eastern Europe for financial reasons; Communist parties had a tenuous control, but Hungary opened its border with Austria, threatening a mass exodus from the region; governments acquiesced in opening borders and holding elections.
- Military expenditures in Afghanistan and in the arms race with the USA accelerated the USSR toward bankruptcy; there was also a crisis of consumer culture, with massive worker absenteeism and shortages of most goods; Gorbachev’s attempts at glasnost and perestroikawere unable to right the ship; Soviet republics began seceding in 1990; a hardliner coup in August 1991 failed; Russia’s secession in late 1991 was the last straw