The Cold War, Decolonization, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Administrative Information and Exam Preparation

• Sample Prompts: Sample exam prompts will be available on Canvas by the end of tomorrow.
• Final Exam Review Policy:
      * There will be no Zoom review session for the final exam.
      * Office Hours: Held on the Wednesday morning before the final exam from $08:30$ to $09:30$ in Harton Hall 127.
      * Group Discussion: At $09:30$, the professor will relocate to a classroom where up to 35 people can discuss the exam together until $11:00$.
• Outline Review: The professor will discuss exam outlines in person during office hours or scheduled times during finals week. Outlines will not be reviewed over email due to the high volume of requests.
• Communication Policy: The professor will not respond to emails asking about the review session as the information is explicitly provided in writing on the lecture outline.

Comparative Consumerism: The Volkswagen Bug vs. the Trabant

• The West German Volkswagen Bug:
      * The Bug appealed to people on the western side of the Berlin Wall because it responded to consumer demands.
      * It was a product of "state action," developed by the German government in the 1930s.
      * Post-World War II, the plant was overseen by the British administration running that part of Germany.
      * It represents a "mixed economy" model—a state initiative that successfully transitioned into a private company.
• The East German Trabant:
      * Viewed as a "crummy car" with no consumer protections.
      * Due to the command economy, if a Trabant crashed and caught fire while traveling at $15\,mph$, the consumer had no legal recourse because the government produced it.
      * Production was inefficient, and copies were constantly running low, making it difficult for citizens to obtain one even if they were promised equal shares of goods.

The End of Empires: Causes and Post-Colonial Realities

• Structural Reasons for Decolonization (The "Nuts and Bolts"):
      1. Shared War Experiences: Colonial peoples were brought together in large numbers during WWII (e.g., Africans brought onto reserves or serving as soldiers), fostering a sense of unity.
      2. Expectations of Liberty: Soldiers returning from the military (e.g., during the Mau Mau rebellion) felt they should possess the liberties they fought for on behalf of others.
      3. U.S. Influence: Major imperial powers (Holland, Britain, France, Belgium) were reliant on the United States and its nuclear arsenal for protection. The U.S. historically disliked empires and prodded these nations to decolonize.
      4. Economic Insolvency: Imperial powers were bankrupt after WWII. The British, for instance, could not afford the administrative or military costs of fighting rebellions like the Mau Mau if the Americans would not support them.
• The Gatekeeper State:
      * New nations often became socialist as independent entities because they had been structured as socialist colonies since the 1940s.
      * Charateristics of New States: They were multi-ethnic and diverse (illustrated by maps of African cities). Lead leaders were often educated in Western mission schools and trusted to maintain Western interests.
      * These nations were often independent in name only, remaining economically tied to their former colonizers.

Economic Frameworks of the Cold War

• The West (Mixed Economy):
      * Defined by the state and private enterprise working together.
      * The Welfare State: Dominant from 1945 to 1973. It aimed to avoid the social conflicts of the 1930s and bring efficiency to the marketplace.
      * The Beverage Report (1943): The foundational document for the British welfare state.
      * Taxation: To pay for the welfare state, tax brackets were extremely high. The Beatles, for example, were in a $95\%$ tax bracket, leading their accountants to warn them of bankruptcy despite being the world's biggest band.
• The East (Command Economy):
      * The state was responsible for all planning.
      * Inefficiencies arose because plants were given production targets (e.g., fertilizer or soup) without regard for actual consumer demand.

The Rise and Fall of Detente

• Definition of Detente: A "cooling off" or "easing" of tensions occurring by 1968. It was essentially an agreement to disagree between the West and the Soviet Union.
• Internal Soviet Control:
      * The West agreed to let the Soviets run the Eastern Bloc as they saw fit.
      * Soviet-backed authorities crushed rebellions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).
• The Cold War Deal: Satellite states were permitted to buy gas at artificially cheap rates as a "cost" the Russians paid to maintain their empire.
• Dissolution of Detente:
      1. Economic Strain: By the late 1970s, Eastern countries were heavily indebted to Western lenders.
      2. The Coffee Crisis (1976): In East Germany, the government stopped importing coffee because it lacked the international market resources, sparking consumer dissatisfaction.
      3. Western Influence: Detente allowed Western musicians and culture to seep into Eastern Europe.

The Conservative Revolution: Thatcher and Reagan

• Margaret Thatcher (UK):
      * Elected to roll back the British welfare state during a time of high unemployment.
      * Policies included cutting unemployment insurance and government housing, and slashing the National Health Service.
• Ronald Reagan (USA):
      * A fiscal conservative and former movie actor (known for comedies in the 1940s with "Kenneth and Chimp").
      * Elected in 1980 with a focus on ending detente and confronting the Soviet Union.
• The "Evil Empire" Speech:
      * Reagan used a C.S. Lewis quote to describe the Soviet leadership: "Quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-chaser cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
      * He argued that declaring the opponent "evil" raised the political stakes, making appeasement a betrayal of freedom.
      * Reagan mobilized Christian groups and evangelicals who had previously opposed armaments by framing the conflict in moral and biblical terms.

Military Escalation and the End of the Soviet Union

• The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI):
      * Commonly known as "Star Wars."
      * Proposed using satellites to shoot nuclear missiles out of the sky.
      * The goal was to use America's economic and technological power to bankrupt the Soviets by forcing them to compete.
• Soviet Economic Collapse:
      * The Soviet Union was spending $14\%$ of its Gross National Product (GNP) on defense—twice the percentage of the U.S.—yet they were still being "obliterated" in the arms race.
      * The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan further drained Soviet resources.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Reforms: Perestroika and Glasnost

• Gorbachev’s Background: A member of the Politburo who did not remember WWII and had traveled in the West. He realized the East was failing economically compared to the West.
• Early Measures: Faced with low productivity where workers "pretend to work and they pretend to pay us," he sent police to drag people to work and limited alcohol access to combat alcoholism.
• Perestroika (Restructuring):
      * An attempt to make the command economy responsive to consumer demand rather than arbitrary government targets.
• Glasnost (Openness):
      * Designed to allow open conversation about economy and politics.
      * Unintended Consequences: People used the openness to question Soviet history, such as the 1948 seizure of power and the massacre of $10,000$ Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in 1944 (originally blamed on others).
• The Chernobyl Disaster (1986):
      * A nuclear reactor in Kyiv was damaged.
      * The failure of the government to speak openly initially—only acknowledging it after radiation reached Scandinavia—served as the first major test and failure of Glasnost.

Questions & Discussion

• Student: "[Detente is] kind of like a cooling off or, like, easing of, like—I don't know. It's like not being mad anymore… like agreeing to disagree."
      * Professor Briggs: "Yeah. It’s like they cooled them off… So by 1968, two sides have agreed to accept one another."
• Student: "The amount [of Mau Mau] is an example… of Africans being brought onto these reserves."
      * Professor Briggs: "That is an important piece of evidence… we saw this in the Mau Mau region. The soldiers came back feeling like they themselves should have the liberties they were fighting for for other people."
• Student: "What was [Reagan's] nuclear freeze?"
      * Professor Briggs: "I don't know the specifics of it… I will tell you that the nuclear freeze was—the advantage the American arsenal had… was just sheer proliferation or number of missiles that the United States had that were mobile."
• Interaction on the "Evil Empire" Speech:
      * Professor Briggs: "Is this detente?"
      * Student: "No."
      * Professor Briggs: "Why not? How is he describing the other side? One word?"
      * Student: "Evil."