How far do you agree with the view that Mikhail Gorbachev played an ‘extraordinary role’ in bringing about the end of the Cold War? It is certainly true that Mikhail Gorbachev played an ‘extraordinary role’ in bringing about the end of the Cold War. This is very much the interpretation given in Source 1, which links the reforming drive of Gorbachev’s personality with the decline in Marxism-Leninism, the ideology which underpinned Soviet communism. Source 2, on the other hand, focuses on economic and technical problems in the Soviet Union rather than personalities or ideas. Source 3 shifts the focus to America, arguing that it was a combination of Ronald Reagan’s personal skills and his vision of a nuclear-free world which brought the Cold War to an end.
After the Second World War, the nations that were still standing strong were the United States of America and The Soviet Union. The domination of these two countries in the second half of the 20th century is known as the time of the Cold War, the diplomatic, geopolitical, and ideological clash of interests, also known as the rivalry between the capitalist democracy ( The United States of America) and the Marxist-Leninist communism ( The Soviet Union), which resulted in several proxy wars, but not with an actual war between these two superpowers ( Palmer 2014: 887).The distrust towards the U.S.S.R government was enormous and as a result to this, the State Department of the United States formulated the containment policy which would prevent the
How far do you agree with the view that the developments of the cold war in the year 1945-8 owed more to soviet expansionism than to USAs economic interests? The developments of the conflict within the cold war (1945-48) are something of intense debate for many years. Historians such as Wolfson and Laver (S7) accredit the influence that Russian expansionism contributed to the conflict between the USA and the Soviet Union. In contrast this prospective is contrasted by Terry Morris and Derek Murphy’s prospective (S8) which places emphasis on how US economic interests were seen as a threat to the USSR and thus contributed to East-West tensions. Source 9 written by Michael Lynch adopts both prospective of USSR expansionism and also US economic interests, however Lynch also emphasises misjudgement and misperceptions which contribute to the conflict conceived at Cold War.
Assess the impact of the US policy of containment and the Russian policy of peaceful co-existence on the cold war in the period to 1968. To what extent did events in Berlin impact on superpower relations to 1968? Asses the role of the arms race in in maintaining cold war tensions after 1949 Evaluate the view that the Korean War was the most significant crisis affecting superpower relations in the period 1948-62 To what extent did events in Cuba in 1962 impact superpower relations? To what extent did the Czech crisis of 1968 impact on superpower relations? Evaluate the impact of crisis in Asia on superpower policies in the period to the 1970’s.
The main reason for the Marshall Plan as a turning factor was in its forthrightness. It can be seen as the United States throwing down an economic gauntlet to the Soviet Union, challenging its authority in Eastern Europe by offering economic aid to countries under the USSR. Despite altruistic claims of helping states grow, the United States was really engaging in dollar diplomacy, attempting to harness the developing economies for their own use. Due to the continual expansion of their own economy, the Americans needed to find emerging markets through which they could both import and export goods, and found them in the Eastern European states. This, however, was seen by the Soviet Union as a form of economic expansion through which the Americans were bringing Eastern European states into their own sphere of influence, and was a direct challenge to their authority.
Stalin's foreign policies contributed an enormous amount to the tensions of the Cold War. His aim, to take advantage of the military situation in post-war Europe to strengthen Russian influence, was perceived to be a threat to the Americans. Stalin was highly effective in his goal to gain territory, with victories in Poland, Romania, and Finland. To the western world, this success looked as if it were the beginning of serious Russian aggressions. The western view of the time saw Stalin as doing one of two things: either continuing the expansionist policies of the tsars, or worse, spreading communism across the world now that his one-state notion had been fulfilled.
• Who was more to blame for the start of the Cold War, the USA or the USSR? The origins of the Cold War; the 1945 summit conferences including the parts played by Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Truman, and the breakdown of the USA-USSR alliance in 1945–6; Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe; the Iron Curtain; the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; the Berlin Blockade and its immediate consequences. June 2012 | Q.2 (a) What was the Iron Curtain? [4] (b) Explain why Berlin was a cause of tension between East and West between 1945 and 1949. [6] (c) How successful was the West in containing Communism in Europe up to 1949?
The Cold War had essentially started as a split between USA and the USSR due to ideological and strategic differences between the two countries. During the course of the Cold War, the official US foreign policy was of containment of communism. This policy fuelled by the fear of communism in USA was designed to prevent further expansion of communism. The policy emerged at a time when Eastern Europe was under the military, and increasing political, control of the Soviet Union, and when Western European countries appeared to be wobbling from their democracies because of socialist agitation and collapsing economies. Containment was a foreign policy introduced at the start of the Cold War by the United States, aimed at stopping the spread of Communism and keeping it 'contained' and isolated within its current borders, otherwise the 'domino effect' would occur, where if one nation became Communist, the surrounding ones would follow.
In 1946, Winston Churchill drew an Iron Curtain in Europe, a metaphor for the ideological and political divide between the Soviet sphere of influence and Western Europe. In the same year, the USA ended its isolationist policy for a policy of containment. The containment policy was adopted by America to prevent the spread of communism beyond the Iron Curtain. In short, the policy was aimed to contain the expansionist tendencies of the Soviet Union. A focus of the American foreign policy during the Cold War, the containment policy was largely a success.
How far do you agree with the view that the Korean War had a significant impact on the early stages of the Cold War? The Korean War (1950-1953) was a conflict between the Communist North and the Capitalist South of Korea who had been separated along the 38th Parallel, temporarily, by the US dominated UNTOK after World War Two. This war was supposedly based on the pledge of the US to reunify a capitalist Korea after Kim Il Sung’s communist invasion of the South. In reality, this war was an allegorical pawn for the development of the Cold War. It significantly highlighted the true conflict involving the US and the USSR, and more importantly the ongoing battle between two opposing ideologies- capitalism and communism.