The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and Soviet Union from 1947-1991. They were ideological and geopolitical rivals whose relationship polarized the world into capitalist and communist spheres of influence. While direct military conflict was avoided, there were numerous proxy wars fought around the world. Growing nationalist sentiments in Eastern Europe and reforms under Gorbachev led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in 1991.

1. Professor Chee
Lecture on the Cold War

2. 2
Definition of the cold war (1947-1991)
conflict between two superpowers, the U.S. and the S.U. which polarized the
world into spheres of influence for the two superpowers, along political,
ideological and economic hostile lines. Both countries refrained from direct
armed conflict in Europe, but not in Africa, Asia, Latin America.

3. Calvin & Hobbes on
the Cold War

4. 4
Origins of the Cold War
o US, USSR, Great Britain unnatural
allies during World War II
o Tensions submerged until close of war
o Yalta and Potsdam Conferences
(1945)
o Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt
o Decided on USSR declaration of war
vs. Japan, setting up of International
Military Tribunal
o Free elections for Eastern Europe
o Stalin arranges pro-communist
governments in Eastern European
countries
o 1946: “Iron Curtain” Churchill
speech

5. Tensions since the Russian Civil War 1918-20, when
the Allies Supported the Monarchists or Whites
o Reds (Bolsheviks)
Russian Communist
Party, led by Trotsky
o Whites (Monarchists &
others) supported by
the Allies – Britain,
France, Japan & the
U.S.
10 million+ died, not
including those to disease
& starvation

6. 1917 February & October Revolutions Spuured by
a Devastated Russia, especially during WWI
o Russia was unprepared for WWI
o army ill-led & ill-armed
o ¼ of the soldiers only had arms – ¾
picked up rifles of dead soldiers
o 1914-16 – first 2 years of the war, 2
mil soldiers killed/161 mil
population
o Bread rationing begins in March 1917,
women march
o 1917 February - “Peace, Bread”
o Duma establishes a provisional
government
o Monarch Nicholas II to abdicate

7. 7
The Bolshevik Revolution –
October Revolution of 1917
10 days that shook the world!
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks
o Leads a bloodless coup with promises
of peace
o 1917 October - “Peace, land and
Bread”
“All Power to the Soviets!”
o Treaty with Germany, Treaty of Brest
Litovsk, worse than Versailles, Russia
gives up Poland, the Ukraine, Finland
& the Baltic provinces

8. 8
Demands of the Civil War led to
Lenin’s War Communism
“dictatorship of the proletariat” -
State appropriation or state
controlled ownership of banks,
businesses, churches & monasteries
o Industrial production dropped
90%
o Lenin backtracks and implements
free market reforms, New
Economic Policy (NEP) 1921,
returning small business and
small farmer ownership back.
o 1922 – Lenin & Communists
created a new state – USSR –
Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics
o Lenin dies in 1924

9. 9
Stalin, a Different Kind of Totalitarian Ruler &
the Second Russian Revolution, Industrialization
Stalin, “man of Steel,”
Georgian
o Leads Soviet Union by 1928
the “Great Leap Forward” or the
Great Leap Backwards
o Five Year Plan - Massive
collectivization of agriculture
o 3 million farmers starved
o 1934 – Great Purge – 3 million
Soviets died either directly or
indirectly from the purge,
another 8 million in labor
camps
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
Time Man of the Year, 1939 &
1942

10. Truman Doctrine (1947): to limit the spread
of Communism through Containment
The 33rd U.S. President
Harry Truman (1945-53)
oWorld divided into free and enslaved
states
oUS to support all movements to contain
Communism
o$350 million to Greece, $50 million to
Turkey

11. 11
Truman Doctrine (1947)- limit the spread of
communism through containment
o World divided into free
and enslaved states
o US to support all
movements to contain
Communism
o $350 million to Greece,
$50 million to Turkey

12. Port World War II Occupied Germany, 1945-
1949

13. Construction of the Berlin Wall
1962

14. oNorth Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), 1949
oWarsaw Treaty Organization
(Warsaw Pact), 1955
oNuclear proliferation
oEnd of 60s: Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD)
The Arms Race

15. Great Migrations: African Americans Move North &
West to work for the Military Industry, 1940–60

16. The Military-Industrial
Complex in Los
Angeles

17. The Military Industrial Complex:
Defense Spending as a Percentage of U.S. Output, 1940–2004

18. David Halberstam. The Fifties. Villard Books, 1993.
American in the fifties, “… was a mean time. The nation
was ready for witch-hunts. We had come out of World
War Two stronger and more powerful and more affluent
than ever before, but the rest of the world, alien and
unsettling, seemed to press closer now than many
Americans wanted it to.”
David Halberstam. The Fifties. Villard Books, 1993, p.9

19. Identification Necklaces for
Students,
Just in case of war
Americans Feared War

20. McCarthyism &
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy,
Republican U.S. Senator
Wisconsin (1947 – 1957)

23. Cold War Illusions
September 1950, a defected Russian colonel Kyril
Kalinov’s “How Russia Built the North Korean
Army,” was a Fake CIA Operative story

24. Globalization of the Cold War, The Korean War:
U.S. Calls it, “the Forgotten War”
China, “the War to Resist U.S. Aggression & Aid Korea”
o Japan annexed Korea in
1910, after defeating the
Russians
o U.S. & the S.U. divided
Korea along the 38th
parallel after WW II
o 1948 two Koreas:
o South - Republic of Korea
(capital Seoul) – Syngman
Rhee – propped by the U.S.
o North - People’s
Democratic Republic of
Korea (capital Pyongyang)-
Kim Il Sung – supported by
China & the S.U.

25. o 1950 - North invades the
South, captures Seoul
(with Chinese & Soviet
approval)
o US drives North Korea
back, captures
Pyongyang & the entire
peninsula
o Chinese troops, 300K,
push USA back to 38th
o ceasefire in summer
1953
o No peace treaty,
o 3 million killed
o continued tensions
Globalization of the Cold War,
Korean War, 1950–1953

26. 26
Post-Korean War Legacies
o North Korea – develops a
closed, totalitarian state with a
Kim Il Sung personality cult
government. Since then, his
son, Kim Jong Il, & grandson,
Kim Jong Un
o NK remains isolated from the
West
o South Korean governments led
by military dictatorships
propped by the U.S.
government until 1987, 1 year
before the 88 Olympics (one of
the fastest growing countries
economically)
o Korea only becomes a
democracy in 1987

27. The Cold War
in Cuba
What happens when the US supported candidate does not
win, again?
o Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar (U.S. supported)
o Fidel Castro overthrows Batista in a 1959 revolution
o U.S. retaliates by boycotting Cuban sugar
o Castro builds a relationships with the Soviet Union

28. 28
Bay of Pigs:
Failed U.S. Invasion of Cuba, April 1961
o The American CIA arms &
sends 1,500 Cubans into Bay
of Pigs to spur revolution
o force destroyed in 3 days,
without American air
support
o US embarrassed
o Castro & Cuba looks good

29. Cuban Missile Crisis:
Near Brink of Nuclear War, October 1962
Highly tense, second by second crisis
that the world followed along via
radio & television
o October 1962 Soviets begin
assembling missiles in Cuba
o Kennedy publicly challenges USSR
o Back door diplomacy
o Soviets concede,
o US guarantees never to invade
Cuba again, and withdrew missiles
from Turkey
o US Secretary of State Dean Rusk:
“Eyeball to eyeball, they blinked
first”
o End result: Policy of détente, or
releasing of tensions

30. Cold War Détente?
Khrushchev moves toward peace with US
o Reduction in hostility between
nuclear superpowers
o Strategic Arms Limitations
Talks (1972, 1979)
Fidel Castro & Nikita Khrushchev,
First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
1953 –1964

31. 31
Brezhnev Doctrine - 1968
The right to invade any
socialist country
threatened by elements
“hostile to socialism”
Leonid Brezhnev
General Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, 1977-82

32. 32
U.S. Defeat in Vietnam, 1954-1973
o French reassert control after WW II
o Vietnam resist the French
o Fall of Dien Bien Phu - Ho Chi Minh
defeats France in 1954
o Geneva Peace Conference in 1954 –
Vietnam divided at 17th parallel
o U.S. Supports Ngo Dinh Diem &
anti-Communist South
o Civil war between Ho’s North &
Diem’s US Supported South

33. Vietnamese Protest French Occupation
France – 1887-1940 and again
from 1945-54
U.S. Involvement began in
1954, to contain communism
and assist the French, and
escalated, from Presidents
o Eisenhower,
o Kennedy,
o Johnson,
o Nixon and
o Ford

34. Escalation and De-escalation 1962-1972:
U.S. “Special Advisors“ to Vietnam
the cost of the war in 1968 alone was $88,000 million while the combined
spending on American education, health and housing that year was $24,000
million

35. An Extremely Unpopular War:
American Anti-Vietnam Protests

36. American Cold War
Countercultural Protests
o Dr. Strangelove or: How I
Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb
– Critique of nuclear power
policies
o Massive anti-Vietnam protests
o Rock and Roll as
counterculture
o Watergate Scandal (1972-1974)
– President Nixon orders illegal
wiretaps, discovered and
forced to resign 1974

37. 1973 - US finally withdrew
1975 - the war finally ended!
1976 - Vietnam unified as one
country
Cost in human suffering?
- 58K Americans killed
- Nearly 2 million Vietnamese
killed,
- another 4 million
Vietnamese died due to
chemicals? sprayed over 13%
of the country to defoliate
US Withdrew from Vietnam 1973

38. Genocide in Cambodia
US also bombed Cambodia in 69, 70,
and destabilized the country so that
an extreme regime like the Khmer
Rouge, thrived and grew under the
instability, leading to the genocide in
Cambodia
1.5-3 million estimated killed, or 25%
of Cambodia’s population

39. Soviet setbacks in Afghanistan 1978-1996
9 year struggle between Pro-Soviet
Marxists vs US backed Muslim Warrior
Muhajideens
o Who wins? Neither side but
humiliating for the Soviets.
o pro-Soviet PDPA – People’s Democratic
Party of Afghanistan, attempted too
much Marxist reform too quickly,
Muslim backlash.
o US CIA backed Mujahideens or Islamic
warriors (as well as China, India and
Pakistan – who got involved because of
the millions of refugees living in their
borders)
o UN ceasefire in 1988 – Soviet
withdrawal in 1989.

40. Post Cold War Legacies in Afghanistan
o Fast forward to 1994 – the
Taliban, an extremely
religious & radical student
army – attempt to unify
Afghanistan.
o 1996 – proclaimed a new
Islamic state
o 2004- US starts war with
the Taliban for harboring
al queda

41. 41
The Space Race: A Positive &
Nonviolent aspect of cold war rivalry
o Initial Soviet successes:
1957: Sputnik, first
satellite
1961: Yuri Gagarin orbits
space’
o US sets up NASA, lands
Apollo XI on the moon,
July 1969

42. Revolutions in Eastern, Central Europe 1989
o Polish trade union
Solidarity movement forces
multiparty elections, 1989
o Bulgaria, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Romania
follow
o The “Velvet Revolution”
o Bloodless revolutions

43. East Germany decides to open the Berlin Wall,
Ordinary People Tear It Down, 1989

44. East & West Germany reunite (1990)

45. 45
End of the Cold War
o President Ronald
Reagan (in office
1981-1989) deeply
opposes USSR
o The “evil empire”
o Promotes massive
military spending,
beyond Soviet
economy to keep up
o Strategic Defense
Initiative (“star
wars”)

46. End of the Cold War
Mikhail S. Gorbachev
General Secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (1985-90)
President of the Soviet Union (1990-91)
o Reforms under Gorbachev
o Economic
o Social
o Perestroika: “restructuring”
o Glasnost: “openness”
o Nationalist sentiments, long
suppressed, come to the
surface

47. the Soviet Union Collapses into 15 Separate
States

48. Grace Chee
2015
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