The Cold War and Global Decolonization Lecture Notes

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering the major ideologies, events, and figures of the Cold War era as detailed in the lesson transcript.

United Nations

An international organization officially established on October 24, 1945, in San Francisco with the purpose of creating a forum to solve global problems peacefully and save future generations from the scourge of war.

Totalitarianism

A form of government where a leader or the state exerts complete and unrivaled control over the lives of its citizens, as seen in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

Iron Curtain

A term popularized by Winston Churchill in his 1946 Fulton, Missouri speech to describe the physical and metaphorical divide between the Soviet-controlled sphere of Eastern Europe and the rest of the continent.

Marshall Plan

A 1947 initiative developed by General George Marshall to give over $13\,billion$ (more than $150\,billion$ in today's dollars) to European countries to rebuild and resist the spread of communism.

Molotov Plan

The Soviet Union's own economic recovery plan created to counter the American Marshall Plan.

Berlin Blockade/Airlift

Occurring from June 1948 to September 1949, it involved the Western Allies flying supplies into West Berlin after Stalin cut off land access to the city.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

Founded in 1949, a military alliance of Western European countries and the United States formed to provide mutual protection against potential Soviet attacks.

Warsaw Pact

Founded in 1955, this was Stalin’s plan to counter NATO by creating a military alliance of countries under Soviet control.

Cold War

The ideological struggle between Capitalism (led by the U.S.) and Communism (led by the U.S.S.R and China) lasting from 1947 to 1991.

Decolonization

The process by which former colonies, such as India, Congo, and Vietnam, broke away from imperial control to claim self-determination.

Suffrage

The right to vote, which women gained across many regions during the 19th and 20th centuries, leading to leaders like Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher.

Thermonuclear (Hydrogen) Bomb

A weapon created in the early 1950s that is up to 700 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

ICBMs

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles created in the 1960s that made the total destruction of the Earth a technical possibility.

MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)

The military theory that if both sides have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other, neither will attack because it would result in the total destruction of both.

Berlin Wall

Constructed in 1961 and fallen in 1989, it was built to separate East and West Berlin to prevent citizens from fleeing the communist sector.

Domino Theory

The western fear that if one country in Asia fell to communism, all surrounding countries would follow like falling dominos.

The Great Leap Forward

Mao Zedong’s 1958-1962 attempt to industrialize China, which resulted in the "Great Famine" and the starvation of an estimated 20 million people.

Cultural Revolution

A period from 1966 to 1976 where Mao Zedong used the "Red Guards" to destroy Chinese history and "old ways" to reassert his control over the country.

Brinkmanship

The practice of pushing dangerous events to the edge of active conflict to achieve an advantageous outcome, a key strategy during the Cold War.

Cuban Missile Crisis

An October 1962 confrontation between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. over Soviet missiles in Cuba, considered the closest the Cold War ever came to a "hot" nuclear war.

Détente

A period from the late 1960s through the early 1980s characterized by the "relaxing" or "easing" of tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The leader of the USSR starting in 1985 who introduced drastic western-style reforms to save the failing Soviet system.

Glasnost

A policy meaning "openness" that allowed Soviet citizens to see materials from the West, criticize the government, and organize protests.

Perestroika

A policy meaning "restructuring" that attempted to move the Soviet state-run economy toward a more flexible, capitalistic model.

Chernobyl Meltdown

An April 26, 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine that exposed the economic and regulatory weaknesses of the Soviet Union.

Brezhnev Doctrine

A Soviet foreign policy principle that suggested the U.S.S.R. had the right to intervene in any socialist country where communism was under threat.

Satyagraha

A policy of passive political resistance, especially that advocated by Mahatma Gandhi against British rule in India.

Long March

A massive military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Communists to evade the Nationalists, later used by Mao as a powerful propaganda tool.