The Influence of the USSR during the Cold War

The Student Veteran Informed presentation is designed to help faculty & staff better understand the student veterans in our community. Being student veteran informed will help you improve your interactions with student veterans so that they can be more successful in the classroom. Presentations are given, by request, to offices and departments.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union toppled regimes, controlled a handful of Eastern European satellite states with an iron fist, and sent an unfathomable number of people into Siberian exile. Much of this brutality was the work of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Upon inception, the UN was essentially rendered irrelevant and impotent. In the immediate years after the UN adopted its 1948 human rights charter, the Soviet Union massacred its own people with impunity and nearly started a nuclear war with the United States. The UN was virtually silent for all those years.

War. Humans have thrived from war for as long as we can remember. The United States has been fighting wars ever since we found the new country in North America that we now call the United States. We fought against our selves for the freedom of others. We fought in several world wars. We have always fought. But in the late 1940's “war” changed forever. This was well known as the Cold War. Why was this so different? “ The world had never experienced anything like it. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was a half century of military build-up, political maneuvering for international support (Hanes, Sharon M., and Richard C. Hanes).” This means that the world has always seen war as either hand to hand combat or gun to

The Zbigniew Brzezinski defined a Soviet victory as entailing “the submissive neutralization of both Western Europe (through the dismantling of NATO) and Japan, and the withdrawal of U.S. political military presence across the oceans. Moreover, victory was also defined as attaining the worldwide economic supremacy of communism over capitalism” . Part of this view is corroborated in the infamous Long Telegram by American diplomat George F. Kennan, which, among other things, claimed that the USSR wanted to further socialism at the cost of Western capitalism. . From both sources, one can assume the terms of victory for the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and, consequently, these can be compared with the actual events of the Cold War to determine how large a defeat the Soviet Union suffered. It is indeed true that the Western capitalism emerged victorious in the end. Western Europe wasn’t “neutralised”; in fact, it was Eastern Europe that submitted to Western politics as the USSR collapsed. Similarly, by the end of the Cold War it was the USSR’s political presence - rather than the US’ - that had collapsed, leaving the US seemingly unopposed as the leading global superpower. In each of these cases, it appears that the Soviet Union suffered a total defeat far removed from any conditions of victory. However, while this paper will begin by examining these areas of defeat, it will then go on to argue that the defeat was not necessarily total. Finally, it will argue that survival and

The emergence of the Cold War with the Soviet Union had far reaching impacts on American society, including hindering the pace of social reform in the United States. While some aspects of the Cold War may have helped promote certain social reforms, the net impact, deterred inevitable social reforms. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War induced a fear of communism in Americans that had numerous effects on American policies. McCarthyism, a period of controversial accusations on supposedly “communist” Americans, developed from the panic that communism would overcome the United States’ government, leading to loss of individual freedoms. In addition, social reform, especially the Civil Rights Movement, received inadequate attention as American leaders fixated on defeating communism and preventing it from contaminating the United States. Therefore, the United States’ preoccupation with containing communism throughout the Cold War Era hindered social reform domestically. As a result, social reform successes were limited primarily to those exhibiting visible political value by demonstrating the United States’ belief in equality and democracy to the rest of the world.

The Cold War was a state of economic, diplomatic, and ideological discord among nations without armed conflict. The Cold War was between the United States and the USSR because these were the two major powers after WWII. Basically, the Cold War was a series of proxy wars that had taken place back in time involving surrounding countries. One of the main causes for Cold War was that the Soviet Union was spreading communism and the United States didn’t like that so they were trying to contain communism. However, in the end they failed. Many events took place in other countries. In Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and China, communism took over; however, before it did, major wars had taken place. The cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union worsened the condition of countries involved. The Cold War broke countries into two parts that turned against each other, the United States and the Soviet Union used these countries to fight their war and caused a big disturbance to daily life, and the Communist States fought the Non-Communist States; however, the end results of these wars only caused more damage in these countries.

The black identity during the nineteenth century in America was one based on a position of inferiority. The inferiority of slaves to their masters was expressed in several different ways, but all were designed to secure a dependent relationship of the slave to the master. Masters often viewed their slaves as deserving of a moral or religious upbringing, and saw themselves as responsible for completing this task. Paternalism transformed the relationship of slave and master into one of child and parent. In such cases the slave may have been spared the abuse of a cruel master, but suffered no less subordination. A benevolent master created a comfortable environment for slaves, ultimately producing complacent,

One of the main things Reagan was known for his is stance on communist and his commitment to end the Cold War. Reagan was not afraid of the Soviet Union like his Carter or Ford who served as President before him. He told the Secretary of Defense to order whatever is needed and not to worry about the budget. He wanted to be in a position of strength, that way he believed he would be able to negotiate with them; he had a saying of “To build up to build down” http://millercenter.org/president/biography/reagan-domestic-affairs. Reagan did not want there to be an arms race, however if there were to be one he was determined not to loose. The CIA confirmed that the Soviet Union’s economy could not support an arms race against the US. In Reagan’s mind, winning the Cold War meant having the Soviet Union cease to exist.

The Cold War, in fact didn’t take place in the winter season, but was just as dangerously cold and unwelcoming, as it focused on two contrasting powers: the U.S. and the Soviet Union. After World War 2, the Cold War influenced capitalist U.S. and communist Soviet Union to engage in disagreements causing many disputes having to use military, economic and humanitarian aid. With different goals, the contrasting powers prove through the Marshall Plan, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and SALT that communism really can’t coexist with capitalism.

In the year of 1945, one major war ended while another one began. The Cold War began in 1945 just after World War II had ended and last for roughly forty-five years. The war occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. The war was the attempt by the Allied powers to stop the spread of communism by the Soviet Union. The Allied powers did not want the Soviet Union’s form of government to take over the world. The United States was the only country that had the resources to stand up against the Soviet Union.

The December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, combined with Adolf Hitler’s declaring war on the United States, propelled America into World War II from 1939-1945. After War World II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as world powers, and the competition for the restructuring of Europe and the world was on. In the race for economic expansion, Americans loyalty and patriotism was tested influencing an urge to conform. However, the following events such as The Cold War, Containment, Domino Theory, Containments failure, Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Fall of Communism all contributed to the United States emerging as a world leader and a dominant economic power in the second half of the 20th century.

Along the course of American history, this nation has seen many conflicts in its brief timeline. However, as the alliance between America and the USSR dissolved after the second World War, the relationship between both superpowers began to fluctuate as they competed to spread their varying ideologies. This unique time period became known as the Cold War, a conflict unique as it was not fought with normal methods of warfare. In fact, it was not fought with weapons at all. To fully understand this unconventional war, it is important to understand the background to the hostile relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is also important to study its methods of warfare and the conflicts that arose. The Cold War began as a

The Cold War lasted from 1947 to 1991. The Cold War was the wars of multiple threats and possible inflation of earth but ended with invasions and hostility from nations across the world. The Soviet Union and the United States and worked together to defeat their enemies in World War two, which ended with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bombing had left the hundreds of thousands dead as well as a new fear of the United States power. Since the United States and the Soviet Union had worked together both now contained the atom bomb blue prints, creating hostility between the two great nations. Thus, the deadly “ arms race” had begun. No only was there fear of nuclear warfare but also fear of the development of

The Cold War was an economic, ideological, geopolitical war for supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both nations would emerge from World War II as superpowers. A superpower is a nation that can control others through the power that it exerts. The problem with having two superpowers is that when they do not cooperate you create an unstable world of competition through economics and ideology. The debate on when the Cold War began continues to this day; some say the war began as early as 1917 during the Bolshevik Revolution. I do believe this revolution is significant, but I do not believe that the revolution can be the start, but more the framework for the ideological struggle that would take place after World War 2. The Cold War did not simply “start” instead the conflict began with a series of events that would make the war inevitable. These events would be the beginning of half a century of ideological, economic, and geopolitical conflict. By analyzing the beginning of the Cold War, how the Cold War stayed cold, and how the war ended, we can effectively understand how the cold war and the fragmentations left by this war have impacted foreign policy and the world in contemporary society.

Two scenes later, Shakespeare delves deeper into Lady Macbeth's character which adds another perspective to the predicament Macbeth finds himself faced with. Lady Macbeth makes apparent, to the audience, regarding her husband, that she has 'fear' concerning 'thy nature', and that Macbeth is 'too full o' th' milk of human kindness'. This suggests that Lady Macbeth fears that her husband is incapable of producing what she deems necessary for him to gain the kingship. He possesses the desire, but the ruthlessness required in order to secure kingship and usurp the throne, is something that Lady Macbeth opts to take upon herself after minimal deliberation, which reveals much about her and her husband, in terms of Lady Macbeth's dominance that would shock a contemporary audience. The word 'milk' is perhaps alluding to her belief that Macbeth doesn't possess the strength of character that at the time was seemingly synonymous with masculinity. The audience may well feel as though Lady Macbeth believes that Macbeth yearns for the kingship, yet he will not be proactive in going about obtaining it by illegitimate means as she labels him as too kind to take a leading role in an approach of that ilk. Shakespeare arguably here raises a wider debate by using the play as a mouthpiece to voice his concerns regarding the twisted society of the time in that kindness could be seen as something that would be detrimental to an individual. Shakespeare also perhaps intends to voice concerns over