USSR NOTES
Cold War – USSR
Key Players
- Main goal of USSR during Cold War: spread Communism
- Ronald Reagan: worked to create a relationship with the USSR
- Relationship was the worst during the 1960’s
- Gorbachev: first and only president of Soviet Union
- Destalinization
- Known for many political and economic reforms
- Famous for Glasnost (Russian for “openness”)
- McCarthy: Senator of Wisconsin
- Black book that had huge list of names that were supposedly related to Communism
- Lost a lot of respect – thought he was doing it because he wanted to be President
- McCarthyism
- Bay of Pigs
- JFK: President
- Going into Cuba with the intent to remove Castro and his party from Cuba
- Result: US failed miserably and was defeated within three days
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- JFK: President
- USSR put missiles in Cuba
- Tried to say that they were used for defensive purposes but used as aggressive stance towards US
- Brinkmanship: going to the brink of war without actually declaring war
- Roughest time period
- Space Race
- Started before JFK but JFK supported it and helped make it happen
- USSR was first to send satellite to space and living thing (dog): Sputnik I
- 1969: US beat USSR to the moon
- Communism: equality in the government – a lot of government intervention-equivalent to democracy
- Socialism: equality in the economy-equivalent to capitalism
- KGB: equivalent to United States’ CSI
- Kennedy Assassination
- Détente: known as a relaxing period – easing of tension
- Peaceful Coexistence: USSR and US could both exist without conflict
WWII
- Allies:
- USA, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and France
- US and Russia 42 and GB and France 39
- Axis:
- Italy, Japan, and Germany, and USSR before 1941
- USSR and Western Europe wanted to stop Hitler from expanding and they didn’t want a two sided war
- Communist leader for Spanish was communistic, anything around communism USSR supported
- Germany invaded USSR in summer 1941
- Thought battle would be quick and decisive, but they were wrong, they forgot to pack winter gear. The biggest tragedy was after a town was defeated they would burn it down or destroy it so that the Germans could not resupply or get food.
- Vladimir Lenin was the person who put communism to practice, Karl Marx thought of the theory of communism
- Joseph Stalin was the dictator and set up labor camps in Siberia did not believe in prisons responsible for 10 million + deaths
Romanovs and the Path to the Revolution
- Peter the Great
- Bloody Nicholas-Romanov last ruler until Bolshevik revolution, cut minimum wage, he and his family were executed after revolution, started as Nicholas II
- Catherine the Great-last ruler of second period of Russian empire which was the best
- Goals
- absolute monarchy get rid of it
- set up a communistic government based on Karl Marx’s theory
- Relations with us – good
- Events
- bloody Sunday: harmless people protesting Czar Nicholas and said to have them killed were murdered by police force of Russia
- Empire and power passed down through family until revo
- Overall good for Russians
Post-Cold War
- Borris Nelson first President
- Vladimir Puton-president from 2000-2008 and in 2012 he ran again and is the current president he worked for Prime Minister
- Foreign Policy-
- Glasnost—made gov’t not secretive—means openness
- START-STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty—signed in 2010 while Pres. Obama was in office
Ancient Russia
- Russia: The Beginnings
- The early history of Russia, like those of many countries, is on of migrating peoples and ancient kingdoms.
- Early Russia was not exactly “Russia,” but a groups of cities that gradually merged into an empire.
- A group of Scandinavian people (Varanginas) crossed the Baltic Sea and landed in Eastern Europe. The leader of the Varangians was the warrior Rurik.
- By 989, Vladimir I was ruler of a kingdom that extended to as far south as the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, and the lower reaches for the Volga River.
- He established a state religion.
- He carefully considered a number of available faiths and decided upon Greek Orthodoxy, thus allying himself with Constantinople and the West.
- He decided against Islam partly because of his belief that his people could not live under a religion that prohibits hard liquor.
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