The Soviet Union (and now Russia) have always been somewhat of a mystery to Americans. In

In the period after World War II, from the late 1940’s up until the 1990’s, the United States and their allies were engaged in a “cold” war with the Soviet Union and its allies. Except for minor proxy wars between countries supported by the respective sides, no major wars were fought between the U.S. and the USSR. Nonetheless, tensions were extremely high for many years and the two superpowers constantly went back and forth trying to best the other. Likely the most well-known of these competitions was the Space Race. Battling for cosmic supremacy from the late 1950’s to 1969, the two countries traded many victories over the years and pushed each other to their technological apexes.

Despite the unsuccessful past during the Cold War years between the United States and the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan and his counterpart the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev during the 1980s should have focused on bright future by reducing the nuclear arms, because having a partnership, friendship and the common goal will move two nations toward success. On 1985, in an effort to improve the international situation, the United States and the Soviet Union have decided to hold a meeting in Switzerland, Geneva. It was a first official meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, to discuss reductions in nuclear weapons and talk about future partnerships. Geneva Summit led on to four further meetings in 1986 Reykjavik, in 1987 in Washington, Moscow in 1988, and the last one in New York Harbour in 1988.

During the era of the Cold War, starting in 1947 and definitively ending in 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union faced off in conflicts with each other through smaller states.

America and the Soviet Union were on the brink of world destruction. The Cold War was one of the most frightening times in American history but strangely the difference between the cold war and the other major wars was the two superpowers in the United States of America and the Soviet Union never actually fought in any battle or had attacked the other through the long 50 years. It affected many people from the fear of destruction, the wave of patriotism in people for their country, and to the wave of people wanting more from the government and wanting a drastic change. It also forced America to change its ideals on their foreign policies and had America get more involved in foreign affairs and move away from their idea of isolation. The cold war also gave way to the rise of unions and the wave of worker rights. The effect of the Cold War has affected American culture and policies into the system and style of life we live in today.

The 1980’s were a dynamic time in the life cycle of the Cold War. The early portion of this decade, which saw massive shifts in the administrations of the United States and Soviet Union, maintained an atmosphere of suspicion, wariness, and skepticism. This theme of uncertainty and caution was the logical product of decades of both American and Soviet duplicity, confrontation, and militarization. Yet, despite this mistrust between the polar Cold War belligerents, and contrary to the early rhetoric of the Reagan administration, the United States and Soviet Union modified their perceptions of each other’s intentions following 1985’s Reykjavik Summit, which, despite producing no tangible results, established common desire for arms reduction and a conclusion of the Cold War. This warming of relations, however, increased at a gradual rate and encountered significant hurdles as the two nations attempted to limit the potential for thermonuclear war. Ultimately, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s “dialogue of the eyes” transitioned from one administration to the next, while also weathering significant domestic pressures as the United Soviet Socialist Republic disintegrated.

Before the 38th Parallel , there was no North Korea and South Korea – only Korea. The 38th Parallel was initially created to guarantee that Japan would surrender to the Soviet Union in the north and the south would surrender to the United States, but it later became a barrier between the two states. (Gupta 1972). The line was proposed by the United States and agreed to by the Soviet Union. Author William Stueck names the 38th parallel as the first step in the Korean War, writing, “the war originated in 1945 with the division of the peninsula into occupation zones by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the perpetuation of that division as a result of the two nation’s subsequent failure to agree on terms for unification.” (Stueck 1995)

In exchange theory, a human being’s behavior has been perceived as a logical decision where one tries to optimize benefits while minimizing cost or pain. According to different sociologists, when someone engages in a social interaction they tend to weigh the reaction of other people about what they are doing or saying and their behaviour will be dictated by the behaviour of others. This, somehow, is similar to what we are seeing in Canadian marriage where a man’s or woman’s involvement in marriage is determined by economic factors (Hou & Myles,

Toronto, Canada---- Since the end of World War Two, the United States and the Soviet Union have experienced a number of political clashes. From the Marshall Plan to the Korean war, to testing nuclear weapons, and to the use of missiles, the United States and the Soviet Union have definitely established a divide between the two empires. The growing dependence of the United States in Europe and Great Britain has increased imperialist speculation from the USSR. However, the United States justifies their presence though the policy of Containment, in its attempt to defend democracy. Also since post World War Two, there has been a massive increase of arms in both the Soviet Union and the United States. From the booming economy of the war and the devastating atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States became a global superpower. The need for efficient nuclear weapons suddenly became an obsession. In 1952, the USSR managed to develop their own Atomic bomb, which threatened the position of the United States. And from there an arms race began. The use of nuclear weapons is an extreme that neither empire wishes to reach, however, the public is not certain.

After the end of World War II, there had been an emergence of two world superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union who would be drawn into a Cold War that was a silent battle that raged on from 1945 to 1991. Which had started when the Soviet Union’s leader, Joseph Stalin, had started the spread of communism throughout Europe and Asia. At the time the majority of the world was either democratic or independent while only a handful of countries were communist; however all were powerful countries such as the Soviet Union and China. Which meant communism can spread adamantly, and rampantly. It had first started in Eastern Europe such as in Greece, Turkey, and Poland. So to counteract these overtakes, the United Nations, especially the United States had responded vehemently against the rule, with the use of containment in the form of policies, treaties, and responsive actions. Throughout the Cold War, they had managed to contain communist hotspots, and strongholds, in Berlin, Korea, and Cuba.

What would the History of the world have be if the United States never landed on the moon, but instead the Soviet Union was successful at sending cosmonauts to the moon and were the first humans to ever step foot on a celestial body? This is what I wanted to explore in my research, this is all subjective we cannot go back in time to see what the outcome would have been if it never happened the way it did. The idea has been talked about even with the sceptics who think the whole moon landing in 1969 was a hoax to give the United States the title and make the Soviets stop pursuing the moon landing. In this paper I want to give a little history of actual events and then examine ideas of alternative events.

The five scholarly books examined are as follows: In Longing and Belonging, Allison Pugh discusses the role of parenting and the effects of consumerism and consumption on children. Foodies, by Baumann and Johnston, discusses how foodie culture falls under the umbrella of both democracy and distinction. Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience by Sharon Boden develops the argument that the changes to the Marriage Act in 1994 shifted the perception of a wedding to a consumer-based experience. In Orderly Fashion, Patrik Aspers discusses the social order in the fashion industry. In Sharon Zukin’s Point of Purchase, she examines consumerism through the twentieth century, which brings the arguments of the above-mentioned authors into synthesis.

After the World War II, despite the losses in material and in human lives, both United States and Soviet Union were the only two countries which emerged from that war, and whose powers were really strengthened. That was because both possessed some characteristics that other nations could not boast, such as a multi-ethnic society, a government able to exploit the immense human and industrial resources, implementing also new political programs worldwide. Moreover, these two great countries were markedly different from each other, for both ideologies and purposes, for this reason they proposed two distinct models of development: the "American model" which proposed a liberal system (political- economic), deeply individualistic and characterized

The concept of free-market played an essential role in making American people in the 1960s believe that it is important for them to fight communism through any means possible. Consumerism had reached a point where it had become indispensable and the benefits that it brought along made it difficult and virtually impossible for the community to express interest in economic systems other than capitalism. One of the principal reasons why the Cold War occurred relates to the West's obsession with materialism and with the fact that this precious concept could be destroyed as a result of communist ideas pervading the Western society.

These differences in levels of development may give the illusion of an historical emergence of money separate from, and subsequent to, the emergence of commodities. But in such cases what is at issue is the particular form of money, or the way in which value manifests itself in the particular society. Even transactions which are apparently barter transactions, in that the equivalents exchanged are both concrete commodities, may best be analyzed as degenerate monetary transactions, in which the parties estimate the abstract value of their respective products, and finding them equal, or nearly equal, are able to avoid transferring money itself.

The sailors rallying cry “Soviets without Bolsheviks” reflected a growing anger at the Bolsheviks who since they had taken power had gone about taking over almost every aspect of the economy. Although Leon Trotsky was able to take down the revolutionaries with a force of his own the Bolsheviks knew that it was necessary to make changes. The Soviet Union, therefore, moved back toward Capitalism in an attempt to motivate the common people. The first step was only to replace the collectivization of food with a food tax allowing peasants to keep their surplus. But according to Lenin “the private market proved to strong for us.”(Davies, 1998). Over the course of the next few months, the Soviet Union continued its slide away from Socialism in order to reinvigorate the economy. The Bolsheviks made several concessions including selling or leasing many of the smaller factories, heavy industry stayed mainly under state control, back to private individuals and allowing them to once again make a profit. In conjunction with this, compulsory employment was also eliminated allowing employers to fire workers that were either not needed or performed poorly on the job. The last major change was bringing back the ruble. The Bolsheviks had eliminated the ruble shortly after they took power mainly because it almost had no value, but with the start of NEP the ruble was brought back to help facilitate the buying and selling of goods in an open market and the paying of