Two dates of historical significance
1989 THE BERLIN WALL COMES DOWN
1991 COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
THE BERLIN WALL
DAVID BOWIE 'HEROES' recoreded 1977 Hansa Tonstudio West Berlin
At the time of the building of the Berlin Wall
1. President Kennedy is the US leader of the free democratic capitalist world
Premier Khrushchev is the president of communist USSR.
2. Both NATO AND WARSAW PAC COUNTRIES HAD NUCLEAR ARMS
3. The world was tense from the COLD WAR - a hot war is a conventional arms war like the 2nd world war (with exception of the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan) the ideology of MUTUALLY ASSURED DISTRUCTION M.A.D was agreed to by both sides.
4. The GDR THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (East Germany) was controlled by the USSR and was of course not democratic.
5. On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.
6. Many East German families wished to escape to the West.
In June 1961, some 19,000 people had left the GDR through Berlin.
The following month, 30,000 fled.
In the first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed—the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.
The wall stopped this mass defection but did not stop individuals from attempted to escape.
6OO East German guards patrolled the wall - orders to shoot on sight any escapee
171 were shot.
From 1961 - 1989 - 5OOO East Germans made it across by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.
From the end of the 2nd WW it is estimated that 3.5 million people escaped Soviet controlled countries to the freedom of the west
summery
THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
STING 'Russians' from the album 'Dream of the Blue Turtles' recored 1985
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union 2 things that dramatically increased USA v USSR tension in the Cold War - The Space Race
1. SPUTNIK
2. YURI GAGARIN
After the 2nd WW the USSR took control over the polical ideologies of many Eastern European countries, some of these countries brought about their own revolutions to free themselves of Soviet dominance
Czechoslovakia (now the Czech republic and Slovakia) ended Russian rule in 1989 called THE VELVET REVOLUTION - after Russian tanks had rolled into Prague the capital to re assert Soviet control in 1968.
Hungary also under Soviet control after the war attempted a revolution in 1958 which was put down by tanks from the USSR
After the war the USSR wanted to extend their territory eg they occupied Afganistan from 1979 - 1989.
These kinds of Soviet invasions maintained the cold war tension between East and West.
The American CIA also made sure that no countries in Central / South America could be influenced by the USSR and become socialist after what had happened with the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
The world had many checks and balances to maintain peace and not start WW III
The closest this came was in October 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis when the USA discovered nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. The crisis was averted by President Kennedy with a blockade of Russian ships to Cuba.
When Soviet aid to Cuba was withdrawn in the early 9O's it would signal to the West that the USSR 's economic base was weakening.
Meanwhile changes that the last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev (elected 1985) had introduced allowed the Baltic states to gain economic independence from the USSR.
GLASTNOST - POLITICAL TRANSPARENCY
PERESTROIKA - POLITICAL REFORM
The West encouraged these reforms Time magazine making him Man of the Year
Remember the USSR is a vast empire made up of many individual countries controled by a single communist party state. This now is threatened by loosening the total control that Moscow once had.
Further challenges to Soviet control of satellite countries continued with the uprising of the first non communist controlled workers Union (supported by the CIA) in the ship yards of Gdanisk Poland in 1981- this anti communist Solidarity movement sowed the seeds for the eventual demise of the Berlin Wall later that decade.
Throughout this time NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT meetings were going on between the USA and the USSR.
On November 29, 1988, the Soviet Union ceased to JAM all foreign radio stations, allowing Soviet citizens for the first time since a brief period in the 1960s to have unrestricted access to news sources beyond Communist Party censorship.
Inspired by reforms with the Soviet Union under both perestroika and glasnost, as well as the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, nationalist independence movements began to swell within the U.S.S.R. in the late 1980s.
In August 1991, a coup by hardliners aligned with some members of the KGB attempted to remove Gorbachev, but he maintained in control, albeit temporarily.
In December of 1991, almost 75 years after the Russian Revolution ushered in the Communist Party era, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Gorbechev resigns on December 25, 1991.
The post 2nd WW Cold War was over. There have been 4 Russian leaders after the collapse of the USSR
Boris Yeltsin 1991 - 1999
Vladimir Putin 2OOO - 2OO8
Dmitry Medvedev 2OO8 - 2O12
Vladimir Putin 2O12 - current
Although the threat of nuclear war between the USA and Russia has been seriously reduced since the end of the cold war nuclear armaments still exist.
The United States has 6,800 warheads, according to data from Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris at the Federation of American scientists. 2,800 of them are retired, 4,000 are stockpiled, and 1,800 are deployed. The total number of U.S. warheads is second only to Russia, which currently has 7,000 of them.
COUNTRYNUCLEAR PROGRAMMESIZE OF ARSENAL United StatesThe first country to develop nuclear weapons and the only country to have used them in war. It spends more on its nuclear arsenal than all other countries combined. 6,450 warheads source TIME
United KingdomIt maintains a fleet of four nuclear-armed submarines in Scotland, each carrying 16 Trident missiles. Its parliament voted in 2016 to overhaul its nuclear forces. 215 warheads
FranceMost of its nuclear warheads are deployed on submarines equipped with M45 and M51 missiles. One boat is on patrol at all times. Some warheads are also deliverable by aircraft. 300 warheads
ChinaIt has a much smaller arsenal than the US and Russia. Its warheads are deliverable by air, land and sea. It appears to be increasing the size of its arsenal at a slow pace. 280 warheads
IndiaIt developed nuclear weapons in breach of non-proliferation commitments. It is increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal and enhancing its delivery capabilities. 130–140 warheads
PakistanIt is making substantial improvements to its nuclear arsenal and associated infrastructure. It has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal in recent years. 140-150 warheads
IsraelIt has a policy of ambiguity in relation to its nuclear arsenal, neither confirming nor denying its existence. As a result, there is little public information or debate about it. 80 warheads
North KoreaIt has a fledgling nuclear weapons programme. Its arsenal probably comprises fewer than 10 warheads.
It is not clear whether it has the capability to deliver them.10-20 warheads
Total14,485 warheads
Source: Federation of American Scientists 2017
CLASS ASSIGNMENT ?
Class written research assignment -
What was the prevailing POP CULTURE during the time of the cold war ?
CHOOSE
MUSIC - FASHION - CINEMA or LITERATURE
Explore this either in the USA, USSR or in the UK between 1945 - 1991.
Make reference to the cold war eg BOWIE & STING lyrics in pop music
eg Cold War satire in cinema - Dr STANGELOVE 1964 directed by Stanley Kubrick
The TV movie THE DAY AFTER 1983 addressed the issue of nuclear war more seriously - 62% of the American viewing audience watched this on its night of broadcast
1984 novel by George Orwell
exploring a totalitarian distopian state
In fashion American Jeans as contraband
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