Soviet Union: What Should Textbooks Emphasize? The Soviet Union, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that ran under an Authoritarian Communist regime. It was established by Vladimir Lenin in 1917 after the fall of the Russian Monarchy, and officially became the Soviet Union in 1922; The USSR eventually collapsed at the end of 1991 due to destructuring of its centralized government. The history of the Soviet Union is rich and can be difficult to break down. Trying to grasp the Soviet Union’s description for a textbook can be done by separating it into three categories.
Why Can’t We Be Friends?: The Rise of Tension between the US and USSR post-WWII Dating back to at least the start of communism, the world saw the gradual rise of the Cold War between the United States of America (USA) and the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Although the Cold War was may have been inevitable because of these countries differing visions of economic policy, governmental systems, and the postwar world in general, it was during the years 1941-1949 when it became imminent. In this time, suspicion and tension between the Superpowers increased due to the battle between communism and capitalism, as well as their different governmental systems.
The Soviet Union has been an enigma, but still, a very significant contributor to the history of the world. There have been many rulers in Soviet Union history. The Soviet Union has been through economic successes and downfalls, ages of terror, a world war, was once an ally of the United States, today is an enemy of the US. If we were to add the history from the Soviet Union to our textbooks , what information should be emphasized? There are many important areas about the Soviet Union, three of them are: cultural achievements, military strength and political repression.
In 1971, Richard Nixon attempted to improve relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. This period in history is known as détente, which is the French word meaning release from tension. In the end of the 1980’s, relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union were freezing, which led to few economic transactions, exchanges of hostel words and gowning concerns from citizens (both U.S. and Soviets) about their countries’’ military completion. It was clear the détente was slowly collapsing (Njølstad P. 135). There were main five factors that lead to the collapse of the détente, lack of mutual trust, absence of common values and visions, no real economic interdependence, mutual lack of restraint, and victim to the dynamics of the arms
Back in the 20th century, Russia was a country known as the Soviet Union. On December 25, 1991, however, the Soviet Union came to an end. When the Soviet Union ended, the country was then renamed to Russia. In this essay, we will compare and contrast the Soviet Union with the current U.S and Russian governments. There are many differences between the Soviet Union and The Russian and U.S governments.
Despite his popularity in the US as “The Man Who Beat Communism”, Reagan’s presidency during the 1980s was only a sidekick to Gorbachev in the efforts to end the Cold War. Reagan’s actions against the USSR did not scare the nation into reforms, but Gorbachev’s impact in the Cold War, reforming the Soviet Union and oversight of communism’s peaceful transition into democracy during the late 80s overshadows Reagan’s seemingly token actions, portraying clearly that the only man which can hold the title of the “Man Who Ended the Cold War” with any credibility is Mikhail Gorbachev. The claim that Reagan’s increasing actions against communism and the USSR directly led to the appointment of reformist Mikhail Gorbachev to the post of General Secretary
The word Detente is defined as a relaxation of tensions between nations and countries all around the world. This practice saw great success by groups such as NATO, which sought to bring peace to western and eastern Europe. Also, the governments of the US meet with for the first time in history the government of the now formally recognized the People's Republic of China. To some extend the 1970’s were defined as a period of cooling of tensions, but there were influential and catastrophic examples of
This policy initiative also, “…reduced the level of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.” The policy initiative of détente was a transition from a realist perspective towards China and Russia to a more inclusive liberalization approach based on limited cooperation on important international issues. This initiative led to arms control agreements regarding nuclear weapons that addressed the nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia.
The focus will be on the positives and negatives of the economic, political, and social relationships, along with the lasting impacts between the two most powerful countries. Relations pre détente Both the US and USSR wanted détente, with domestic issues as well as Cold War struggles. The root of the hostility can be accounted to ideological, political, and economic differences, which led to changing
The end of the Twentieth century was challenging. The collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the strongest and most powerful alliances during the world history, created a chaotic situation within its former member states, who were both politically and economically depended on each other. Most of those countries have already had some nationalistic movements and were tending to become independent. 69 years of one-party domination came to the end and all the member states of the Soviet Union started to declare independence. Although the socialist brotherhood and cultural unity which was highly promoted by the Communist Party created a temporary peace in the area of the Soviet Union, it has also created a fake curtain, covering the various issues that the member states had between each other.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union appeared to be growing stronger by the days. Underneath all that success, poor decisions, corrupted systems and outside interference eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. During the 1980s, while the communist party in the Soviet Union gained power, millions of average citizens were faced with starvation. The party pushed industrialization at any cost leading to shortages of food and goods. Industrialization was pushed to the limit, where soon many citizens did not have access to basic needs.
The contradiction of ideology between America and USSR is rising. As time passes, the Cold War broke
There was new political recognition of communist nations, Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Maoist China is a good example of this. The détente resulted in an improvement in diplomatic communications and also promoted economic and trade agreements between the countries of the east and the west during this period. This was a period of mutual acceptance and understanding between the United states and the USSR. Even though the economic systems and the ideologies of these nations many have differed in the past and caused incompatibility between them, the détente had urged the two nations to communicate and work together. The détente was made between the US and the USSR as a result of the gravity and the extent of the threat posed by the ownership of atomic and nuclear technology by each of these nations.
This essay will argue that the United States were the state to benefit most from the end of the Cold War as a result of their supremacy in a newly emerging unipolar security system, despite arguments from political scientists such as Richard Mayer that unipolar supremacy has proved to be a burden. Winning the Cold War has allowed the US to pursue an informal empire and the expansion of democracy using force if necessary. The common values that Europe and the US shared, allowed the former to thrive under US supremacy as an important ally and trading partner. This, along with the European Union’s establishment has allowed for a period of stability in Europe since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of Yugoslavia.
J., Ginsberg, B., Shepsle, K. A., & Ansolabehere, S. (2017). American government: power & purpose. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. doi:http://wwnorton.com/college/polisci/american-government12/core/ch/08/principles.aspx 2. How did the fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of the Cold War threat lead to a conflict in members ' policy and political goals?
