Unit 8 Cold War and Decolonization

Cold War

a state of intense geopolitical, ideological, and economic struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) following World War II

Truman Doctrine

a 1947 U.S. foreign policy pledge, initiated by President Harry S. Truman, to provide military and economic aid to nations resisting communist expansion, specifically Greece and Turkey.

NATO

is a political and military alliance formed in 1949 to ensure collective defense, security, and freedom for its members, primarily countering threats from the Soviet Union (historically) and ensuring stability.

Warsaw Pact

was a Soviet-led collective defense treaty and military alliance formed during the Cold War.

Russian Revolution

was a pair of political upheavals that dismantled the tsarist autocracy, creating the world's first communist state. Led by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, it resulted in the abolition of the monarchy, withdrawal from WWI, and the creation of the USSR.

Chinese Civil War

was a prolonged conflict between the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang/KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for control of China.

Containment Theory

a US Cold War foreign policy designed to prevent the spread of communism and Soviet influence beyond Eastern Europe,

M.A.D.

a Cold War doctrine stating that if two opposing sides (U.S. and USSR) both possess enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other, neither will initiate a first strike because doing so guarantees their own total destruction

Cuban Missile Crisis

a 13-day, high-stakes Cold War standoff between the US and the USSR over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba

Iron Curtain

the ideological, political, and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas—Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe and capitalist Western Europe—from the end of WWII (1945) until the end of the Cold War (1991).

Berlin Wall

a fortified concrete barrier built by East Germany (GDR) to stop citizens from fleeing to capitalist West Berlin

Mao Zedong

was a Chinese communist revolutionary who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and ruled until 1976.

Chiang Kai Shek

was the leader of the Nationalist Party in China. He fought against the Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War and Japan in World War II. He eventually lost the Civil War and retreated his forces to Taiwan, where he was president until his death.

Great Leap Forward

a radical economic and social campaign led by Mao Zedong to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a modern industrial society

Perestroika

“restructuring" in Russian, was a mid-1980s policy initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to reform the stagnant Soviet economy by introducing limited market mechanisms, decentralizing control, and allowing private enterprise.

Glasnost

was a 1980s Soviet policy implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev to increase government transparency, reduce censorship, and permit critical public discussion of social and political issues.

Cultural Revolution

was a violent sociopolitical movement launched by Mao Zedong to reassert his authority and purify Chinese communism by purging capitalist and traditional ("Four Olds") elements. Utlilizing the youth as the red gaurd.D

Deng Xiaoping

the pragmatic leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC) from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. He transformed China's economy by moving it away from Mao Zedong’s strict centrally planned system toward a market-oriented economy, initiating rapid industrial growth, foreign investment, and economic liberalization.

Mikhail Gorbachev

)was the last leader of the Soviet Union, whose reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) intended to modernize the stagnant Soviet economy and political system.

Decolonization

the dismantling of colonial empires and the process by which colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean gained independence and sovereign statehood, largely following World War II.

Indian National Congress

is a major political party founded in 1885 that led India’s independence movement against British colonial rule.

African National Congress

founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, is South Africa's oldest liberation movement and primary political party, which led the struggle against apartheid.

Mohandas Gandhi

was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule, utilizing nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) and civil disobedience.

non-violent civil disobedience

is the active, symbolic, and peaceful refusal to obey specific laws or government demands deemed unjust, aiming to provoke change through moral persuasion rather than force

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

founder and first president (1923–1938) of the modern Republic of Turkey, emerging after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire post-WWI. He enacted rapid, top-down Westernization and secularization reforms—known as Kemalism—that replaced Islamic law, modernized education, adopted the Latin alphabet, and promoted women’s suffrage.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

was the final Shah (monarch) of Iran, known for rapid, autocratic modernization (White Revolution) and close alignment with Western powers, especially the US. His secularization efforts and repressive rule triggered widespread discontent, leading to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the rise of a theocracy

Ayatollah Khomeini

was the Shi'ite cleric who led the 1979 Iranian Revolution, overthrowing the Western-backed Shah to establish a fundamentalist Islamic Republic.

Iranian Revolution

was a popular, largely non-violent uprising that overthrew the US-backed authoritarian regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and replaced it with an anti-Western Islamic Republic.

Apartheid

was a formalized system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa

Pan-Africanism

a global movement and ideology advocating for the political, economic, and cultural unity of people of African descent, fostering solidarity between African nations and the diaspora.

Nelson Mandela

South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, leader of the African National Congress (ANC), and the nation's first Black president (1994–1999). After spending 27 years in prison, he negotiated an end to minority white rule, fostering a peaceful transition to democracy and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Import Substitution Industrialization

a 20th-century economic strategy where developing nations reduce foreign dependency by replacing imported manufactured goods with domestic production.