Global History II - Regents Review Topic 11 & 12 Vocab

Global History and Geography Regents Review Vocabulary

Topic 11 - Unit 10.6 Cold War

Topic 12 - Unit 10.7-8 Modern Asia

Topic 11 Political and economic differences between the United States and the Soviet Union led to a division of Europe during the Cold War. Eastern Europe underwent great change. In the 1980s, worker unrest in Poland led to the toppling of the communist government. Aggression and domestic reforms helped bring about the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. New nations were born, which sometimes led to ethnic conflict. By 1989, a reunified Germany emerged as an economic power. Since 1945 many Latin American nations experienced periods of unrest. In Argentina and Brazil, military regimes and repressive governments finally gave way to democracy. Cuba underwent a revolution that led to a communist dictatorship. Mexico has experienced more stability but has also had periods of unrest.

Topic 12 European imperialism collapsed throughout the world following World War II. In India, independence was accompanied by conflicts among various ethnic and religious groups. In Southeast Asia, war erupted between communist North Vietnam and noncommunist South Vietnam. In Cambodia and Myanmar, hundreds of thousands died or fled their countries due to political, military, and cultural violence. After World War II, Japan adopted a constitution that built a democratic government and became an economic powerhouse. The Communists, under Mao Zedong, rose to power in China. Overcoming early struggles, Communist China became an economic and political power. Korea was divided by war and split in two, leading to two very different political, economic, and cultural outcomes.

Cold War - an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies

Iron Curtain - the political barrier made by the Soviet Union after WW2 to seal off itself from open contact with the West

Satellite Nation - a nation that is aligned or under the influence of another nation

Truman Doctrine - to establish that the United States would support a democratic nation under threat from an internal or external authoritarian force

Marshall Plan - proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe

Containment - the United States’ approach to containing, or preventing, the spread of Communism after World War II

NATO - created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union

Warsaw Pact - a military alliance between Communist countries in East Europe to counter the threat of Capitalism in Europe

Detente - period of the easing of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1979

Mikhail Gorbachev - a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991

Ronald Reagan - an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989

Glasnost - increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union

Perestroika - means restructuring or change; allowed some private enterprise and profit-making USSR after 1985

Berlin Wall - fortified concrete and wire barrier that separated East and West Berlin from 1961 to 1989.

Lech Walesa - a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995

Solidarity Movement - Polish trade union created in 1980 to protest working conditions and political repression

Cuban Missile Crisis - a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War

East and West Germany - East Germany was a communist dictatorship controlled by the Soviet Union. West Germany was a democracy aligned with the US

Fidel Castro - a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba

Afghanistan - both the US and the Soviet Union sought to gain position in Afghanistan, first through infrastructure investments and then military intervention

Vladimir Putin - a Russian politician and former intelligence officer, serving as the current president of Russia

Ethnic Cleansing - an attempt to eliminate members of an unwanted ethnic group within an area

Yugoslavia - created at the end of World War I when Croat, Slovenian, and Bosnian territories that had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire united with the Serbian Kingdom

Slobodan Milosevic - a president of Serbia (a republic, or member state, of Yugoslavia) from 1989 to 1997 and president of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000

War Crimes - an action carried out during the conduct of a war that violates accepted international rules of war.

Argentina - richest nation in Latin America, the Great Depression devastated the country in the 1930’s

Juan Peron - a populist and authoritarian president of Argentina and founder of the Peronist movement

Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo - mothers of young people who had been victims of enforced disappearance

OAS - Organization of American States, the oldest regional international organization in the world

NAFTA - created a free trade zone for Mexico, Canada, and the United States

Mohandas Gandhi - an Indian revolutionary and religious leader who used his religious power for political and social reform

Jawaharlal Nehru - the first prime minister of independent India

India - a country in South Asia whose name comes from the Indus River

Pakistan - the land of the Paks, the spiritually pure and clean

Kashmir - a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, and also between China and India in the northeastern portion of the region

Nonalignment - an organization of States that did not seek to formally align themselves with either the United States or the Soviet Union, but sought to remain independent or neutral

Sikhism - a 15th Century religion founded by a Hindu guru

Mixed Economy - a system that combines aspects of both capitalism and socialism

Ho Chi Minh - president of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1969, supported communism

Ngo Din Diem - president of South Vietnam, with dictatorial powers, of what was then South Vietnam, from 1955 until his assassination, opposed communism

Vietnam - a long, costly, and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States

Domino Theory - the theory that one country falling to communism could cause its surrounding countries to be threatened by communist expansion

Khmer Rouge - a brutal regime that ruled Cambodia, under the leadership of Marxist dictator Pol Pot, from 1975 to 1979

Pol Pot - a political leader whose communist Khmer Rouge government led Cambodia

Cambodia - country on the Indochinese mainland of Southeast Asia

Japan after WW2 - a devastated country at the time of its surrender in August 1945

China after WW2 - in the mid-twentieth century, the Communist Party of China won a brutal civil war

Mao Zedong - leader of the Communist Party in China that overthrew Jiang Jieshi and the Nationalists

Cultural Revolution - goal was to purge Chinese society of any traditional and capitalist elements and preserve communism

Red Guard - a mass, student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong

Deng Xiaoping - a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China

Four Modernizations - were goals first set forth by Deng Xiaoping to strengthen the fields of agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology in China

Tiananmen Square - site in Beijing where Chinese students and workers gathered to demand greater political openness in 1989

Hong Kong - city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta in South China

Xi Jinping - the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, since 2012

North Korea - a highly secretive and authoritarian state with a centralized economy and a one-party system

South Korea - an East Asian nation of some 51 million people located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula

Korean War - conflict between North Korea and South Korea, lasting from 1950-1953, in which the United States along with other UN countries

Kim Jong-un - a North Korean politician who has been Supreme Leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea