End of the Cold War in Europe

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 408.

Soviet leader Brezhnev died in 1982 and his successor, realizing change was needed in a crumbling Russia and its strained satellites which they felt were losing a renewed arms race, promoted several reformers. One of them, Gorbachev, rose to power in 1985 with policies of Glasnost and Perestroika and decided to end the cold war and “give away” the satellite empire to save Russia itself. After agreeing with the US to reduce nuclear weapons, in 1988 he addressed the UN, explaining the end of the Cold War by renouncing the Brezhnev Doctrine, allowing political choice and pulling Russia out of the arms race.

The speed of Gorbachev's actions unsettled the West, and there were fears of violence, especially in East Germany. However, Poland negotiated free elections, Hungary opened its borders and East German leader Honecker resigned when it became apparent the Soviets would not support him. The East German leadership withered away and the Berlin Wall fell ten days later. Romania overthrew its dictator and the Soviet satellites emerged from behind the Iron Curtain.

The Soviet Union itself was the next to fall. In 1991 communist hard liners attempted a coup against Gorbachev; they were defeated and Boris Yeltsin became leader. He dissolved the USSR, instead creating the Russian Federation. The Socialist era, begun in 1917, was now over and so was The Cold War.

Conclusion

Some books, although stressing the nuclear confrontation which came perilously close to destroying vast areas of the world, point out that this nuclear threat was most closely triggered in areas of outside Europe, and that the continent in fact enjoyed fifty years of peace and stability which were sorely lacking in the first half of the twentieth century. This view is probably best balanced by the fact that much of Eastern Europe was, in effect, subjugated for the whole period by Soviet Russia.

The Cold War deeply permeated life in East and West, affecting culture and society as well as politics and the military. The Cold War has also often been described as a contest between democracy and communism, while in reality the situation was more complicated, with the “democratic” side, led by the US, supporting some distinctly non-democratic, some brutally authoritarian, regimes in order to deny countries to the Soviet sphere of influence.

Characterize the Cold War period by completing the following table. Add more issues if necessary. Make use of texts 32, 34, 35 from SUPPLEMENTARY READER: