Chapter 28: The Contemporary Western World

Decline of the Soviet Union

From Cold War to Post-Cold War

• By the 1970s, American-Soviet relations had entered a new phase, known as détente, which was marked by a relaxation of tensions and improved relations between the two superpowers.
  • Détente received a major setback in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
• The Cold War further intensified when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980.
• The accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 eventually brought a dramatic end to the Cold War.
• In another policy change, Gorbachev stopped giving Soviet military support to Communist govern- ments in Eastern Europe.

Upheaval in Soviet Union

• Between 1964 and 1982, drastic change in the Soviet Union had seemed highly unlikely.
• When Nikita Khrushchev was removed from office in 1964, two men, Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev, replaced him. Brezhnev emerged as the dominant leader in the 1970s.
  • At the same time, Brezhnev benefited from the more relaxed atmosphere associated with détente.
• However, dissidents— those who spoke out against the regime—were still punished.
• In his economic policies, Brezhnev continued to emphasize heavy industry.
• By the 1970s, the Communist ruling class in the Soviet Union had become complacent and corrupt.
  • By 1980, the Soviet Union was seriously ailing, with a declining economy, a rise in infant mortality rates, a dramatic surge in alcoholism, and poor working conditions.
• From the start, Gorbachev preached the need for radical reforms.
• The basis of these reforms was perestroika  or restructuring.
• At the Communist Party conference in 1988, Gorbachev established a new Soviet parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, whose members were to be elected.
• At the same time, Gorbachev strengthened his power by creating a new state presidency.
  • One of Gorbachev’s most serious problems was the multiethnic nature of the Soviet Union.
  • As Gorbachev released this iron grip, these ten- sions again came to the forefront.
• During 1990 and 1991, Gorbachev struggled to deal with the problems unleashed by his reforms.
  • On August 19, 1991, a group of these conservative leaders arrested Gorbachev and tried to seize power.
• The Soviet republics now moved for complete independence.
• Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991, and turned over his responsibilities as commander in chief to Boris Yeltsin, the new president of Russia.
• Boris Yeltsin was committed to introducing a free market economy as quickly as possible, but the transition was not easy.
• At the end of 1999, Yeltsin resigned and was replaced by Vladimir Putin, who was elected president in 2000.
• In July 2001, Putin launched reforms aimed at boosting growth and budget revenues and keeping Russia on a strong economic track.

Eastern Europe

Revolutions in Eastern Europe

• Workers’ protests led to demands for change in Poland.
• In 1980, a worker named Lech Walesa organized a national trade union known as Solidarity.
• Finally, after a new wave of demonstrations in 1988, the Polish regime agreed to free parliamentary elections—the first free elections in Eastern Europe in 40 years.
• In December 1990, Walesa was chosen as president.
  • At the end of 1995, Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former Communist, defeated Walesa and became the new president.
• After Soviet troops crushed the reform movement in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Communists used massive repression to maintain their power.
  • Then, in 1988 and 1989, mass demonstrations took place throughout Czechoslovakia.
• At the end of December, Václav Havel, a writer who had played an important role in bringing down the Communist government, became the new president.
• In 1965, the Communist leader Nicolae Ceaus ̧escu and his wife, Elena, set up a rigid and dictatorial regime in Romania.
  • Ceaus ̧escu’s economic policies led to a sharp drop in living standards, including food shortages and the rationing of bread, flour, and sugar.
• One incident ignited the flames of revolution.
  • In December 1989, the secret police murdered thousands of men, women, and children who were peacefully demonstrating.
• In 1971, Erich Honecker became head of the Communist Party in East Germany.
• On November 9, the Communist government surrendered to popular pressure by opening its entire border with the West.
• During East Germany’s first free elections in March 1990, the Christian Democrats won almost 50 percent of the vote.

The Disintegration of Yugoslavia

• The Yugoslav political scene was complex.
• In 1990, the Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia began to lobby for independence.
• Slobodan Milos ̆evic ́, who became leader of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia in 1987, rejected these efforts.
• After negotiations failed, Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence in June 1991.
  • Early in 1992, the Serbs turned their guns on Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  • Many Bosnians were Muslims.
  • Toward them, the Serbs followed a policy they called ethnic cleansing— killing them or forcibly removing them from their lands.
• In 1995, new offensives by Bosnian government army forces and by the Croatian army regained considerable territory that had been lost to Serbian forces.
  • These attacks forced the Serbs to sign a formal peace treaty on December 14.
• Peace in Bosnia did not bring peace to the region.
• A new war erupted in 1998 over Kosovo.
• In 1974, Tito had made Kosovo an autonomous (self-governing) province within Yugoslavia. Kosovo’s inhabitants were mainly ethnic
• In 1989, Slobodan Milos ̆evic ́ stripped Kosovo of its autonomous status.
• After months of negotiations, the Kosovo Albanians agreed in 1999 to a peace plan that would give the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo broad autonomy for a three-year interim period.

Europe and North America

Winds of Change in Western Europe

• Between the early 1950s and late 1970s, Western Europe experienced virtually full employment.
• An economic downturn, however, occurred in the mid-1970s and early 1980s.
  • The Western European nations moved toward a greater union of their economies after 1970.
• The EEC or European Community (EC) was chiefly an economic union.
• France’s deteriorating economic situation in the 1970s caused a shift to the left politically.
• Mitterrand initiated a number of measures to aid workers: an increased minimum wage, a 39-hour work week, and higher taxes for the rich.
• Socialist policies, however, largely failed to work, and France’s economic decline continued.
• In 1969, the Social Democrats, a moderate Socialist party, replaced the Christian Democrats as the leading party in West Germany.
• In 1982, the Christian Democratic Union of Hel- mut Kohl formed a new, more conservative government.
  • The joy over reunification soon faded as new problems arose.
• Kohl’s government was soon forced to face the politically undesirable task of raising taxes.
• The collapse of the economy also led to increasing attacks on foreigners.
• Between 1964 and 1979, Great Britain’s Conservative Party and Labour Party alternated being in power.
  • In 1979, the Conservatives came to power under Margaret Thatcher.
  • Thatcherism, as her economic policy was termed, improved the British economic situation, but at a price.
• Thatcher dominated British politics in the 1980s.
• The Conservative Party, now led by John Major, continued to hold a narrow majority.

The U.S. Domestic Scene

• With the election of Richard Nixon as president in 1968, politics in the United States shifted to the right.
• Economic issues became the focus of domestic politics by the mid-1970s.
• In his campaign for the presidency, Nixon believed that “law and order” issues and a slowdown in racial desegregation would appeal to southern whites.
  • As president, Nixon began to use illegal methods to gain political information about his opponents.
  • Nixon repeatedly lied to the American public about his involvement in the affair.
• Vice President Gerald Ford became president when Nixon resigned, only to lose in the 1976 election to the former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter.
• At the same time, a crisis abroad erupted when 52 Americans were held hostage by the Iranian government of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
• The Reagan Revolution, as it has been called, sent U.S. policy in new directions.
  • Reversing decades of policy, Reagan cut back on the welfare state by decreasing spending on food stamps, school lunch programs, and job programs.
• Total federal spending rose from $631 billion in 1981 to over a trillion dollars by 1987
• A budget deficit exists when the government spends more than it collects in revenues.
• George Bush, Reagan’s vice president, succeeded him as president.
• The new president was a southern Democrat who claimed to be a new Democrat—one who favored a number of the Republican policies of the 1980s.
• President Clinton’s political fortunes were aided considerably by a lengthy economic revival.

Canada

• During a major economic recession in Canada in the early 1960s, the Liberals came into power.
• The most prominent Liberal government of the time was that of Pierre Trudeau, who became prime minister in 1968.
• An economic recession in the early 1980s brought Brian Mulroney to power in 1984.
  • Mulroney’s government sought to return some of Canada’s state- run corporations to private owners.
• Neither Trudeau’s nor Mulroney’s government was able to settle an ongoing crisis over the French-speaking province of Quebec.

Western Society and Culture

Changes in Women’s Lives

• Since 1970, the number of women in the work force has continued to rise.
  • In the 1960s and 1970s, some women in the women’s liberation movement came to believe that women themselves must transform the fundamental conditions of their lives.
• As more women became activists in the 1980s and 1990s, they became involved in other issues.
• In the 1990s, there was a backlash to the women’s movement as some women advocated a return to traditional values and gender roles.

The Growth of Terrorism

• Acts of terror have become a regular aspect of modern Western society.
  • Some terrorists are militant nationalists who wish to create separatist states.
• One such group is the Irish Republican Army (IRA), whose goal is to unite Northern Ireland, governed by Great Britain, with the Irish Republic.
• State-sponsored terrorism has often been an important part of international terrorism.
• One of the most destructive acts of terrorism occurred on September 11, 2001, in the United States.
  • The U.S. government accumulated evidence indicating that these acts had been carried out by al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden.
• Following the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, United States president George W. Bush vowed to wage war on terrorism.
  • United States and NATO air strikes targeted Taliban-controlled command centers, airfields, and al-Qaeda hiding places.
• At home, President Bush established the White House Office of Homeland Security for the purpose of protecting the United States from terrorism and responding to any future terrorist attacks.

Science and Technology

• Scientific and technological achievements since World War II have revolutionized people’s lives.
  • By sponsoring projects, governments and the military created a new model for scientific research during World War II.
• A stunning example of how the new scientific estab- lishment operated is the space race.
• The postwar alliance of science and technology led to a fast rate of change that became a fact of life in Western society.
• Critics in the 1960s and 1970s noted that some technological advances had far-reaching side effects that were damaging to the environment.

Religious Revival

• Many people perceived a collapse in values during the twentieth century.
• One expression of the religious revival was the attempt by Christian thinkers, such as the Protestant Karl Barth, to breathe new life into traditional Christian teachings
• In the Catholic Church, attempts at religious renewal came from two popes—John XXIII and John Paul II.
• John Paul II, who had been the archbishop of Cracow in Poland before he became pope in 1978, was the first non-Italian pope since the sixteenth century.

Trends in Art

• For the most part, the United States has dominated the art world since the end of World War II.
• Abstractionism, especially abstract expressionism, was the most popular form of modern art after World War II.
• The early 1960s saw the emergence of pop art, which took images of popular culture and transformed them into works of fine art.
• In the 1980s, styles emerged that some have referred to as postmodern.
  • Postmodernism is marked by a revival of traditional elements and techniques, including not only traditional painting styles but also traditional crafts.
• During the 1980s and 1990s, many artists experimented with emerging technologies such as digital cameras and computer programs to create new art forms.

Popular Culture

• The United States has been the most powerful force in shaping popular culture in the West and, to a lesser degree, in the world
• Television did not become readily available until the late 1940s.
• The United States has also dominated popular music since the end of World War II.
  • When American popular music spread to the rest of the world, it inspired local artists, who then transformed the music in their own way.
• The establishment of the video music channel MTV in the early 1980s changed the music scene by making image as important as sound to the selling of records.
• Between music videos and computer technology, consumer access to a variety of artists and musical genres has grown tremendously.

Sports, Television, Politics

• In the postwar years, sports became a major product of both popular culture and the leisure industry.
• Televised sports were an inexpensive form of entertainment from consumers’ point of view.
  • Many sports organizations came to receive most of their yearly revenues from television contracts.
  • Sports have become big politics as well as big business
• The most telling example of the mix of politics and sport is the Olympic Games.
• The political nature of the games found expression in other ways as well.