Questions tagged [cold-war]
The Cold War was a continuing state of political and military tension from the 1940s to the early 1990s between the Western world, led by the United States and NATO allies, and the Communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellites and allies. The Cold War never saw direct military action, since both sides' nuclear weapons would have guaranteed "mutual assured destruction". Cycles of relative calm were followed by high tension and the threat of war.
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How adamant/sustained was George F. Kennan's opposition to the [creation of the] UN?
Wikipedia's page on George F. Kennan says that he
warned against U.S. participation and reliance on multilateral, legalistic and moralistic organizations such as the United Nations.
(Citing a review ...
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Who are the three people in the Twilight Struggle card "Red Scare / Purge"?
Image of card in question:
Who are the three people in the image?
The card comes with flavor text:
Sparked by fears that the “enemy is among us,” the “red scare” hit its apex with Senator Joseph ...
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Why did Women's Day never really catch on in the US, even though it started there?
The roots of International Women's Day (March 8th) go all the way back to New York City in 1909 and the Socialist Party of America. However, from what I have learned the International Women's Day is ...
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Why did the Soviets not shoot down US spy satellites during the Cold War?
The USSR was not happy with unauthorised overflights, shooting down everything it could, from spy balloons to U-2s. Also, despite repeated US proposals, something like the Open Skies treaty was only ...
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Are there some concrete examples of the pre-1962 Soviet complaints in re CORONA spy satellites?
According to Pat Norris' book Spies in the Sky (p. 111)
until the first successful Zenit flight in summer 1962 the Soviets complained bitterly to America about the CORONA flights.
However he does ...
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When was the official cover of Project Genetrix abandoned? Did the Soviets show (or threaten to show) any of the balloons' equipment?
I've read the Wikipedia page on Project_Genetrix (and one of its sources) but one aspect that's not clear to me is when the official cover the project was abandoned. According to the declassified ...
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Did the microwave listening plot ever yield useful intelligence?
In Spycatcher Peter Wright mentions that microwaves can be used to detect sound-waves in a suitable tuned object without the need for it to have an active power source, and that such a device had been ...
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Why does the Central Treaty Organization include the word "central"?
Recently, I've been wondering, from the 1950s to 1979, there was the Central Treaty Organization, but I don't know why it was named "Central". Do you mean the "center" of the ...
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Were sanctions used against East Germany?
North Korea has survived as an independent state for a lot longer than East Germany did. I am wondering. Did any country, such as the United States, use sanctions against East Germany, and if so, were ...
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Did the Truman Doctrine contribute to the Cuban Missile Crisis?
I have heard that the brinkmanship foreign policy of Eisenhower and Kennedy lead, in part, to the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, I am curious: did the Truman Doctrine also contribute, in part, to the ...
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Were the Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan officially volunteers?
I always thought they were conscripts, who were ordered to go there, but recently saw a mention that they all were volunteers. So, I wonder whether they signed any paper of consent before being sent ...
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What "silly places" (according to Muggeridge) did Nikita Khrushchev go to during his visit in the United Kingdom?
According to this article, more than half of places visited by Nikita Khrushchev in the UK were "silly":
When Nikita Khrushchev visited Britain, Muggeridge made up a list of
the silliest ...
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Is there a database of wars in Europe since 1945?
I'm currently improving a Timeline I build some time ago, this Timeline of Wars in Europe since 1945. I did used several sources, including Wikidata, to get the list of conflicts to include. Yet, ...
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Is the Cold War still going on? [closed]
Do any historians consider the Cold War, or Cold War II, to be going on?
I'm asking because some features of the Cold War still exist, such as an antagonism between Russia and the Western world, and ...
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Were there written (draft) Soviet proposals that would have effectively restricted the US navy from (parts of) Europe?
I'm pretty sure that if one trawls the Soviet propaganda, one can find something asking Americans to bugger off from Europe altogether (ok, on a more serious note--Gorbatchev did propose the ...
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How did the accounting and capital organization system work in communist countries like the USSR? Did ideology justify or undermine the system? [closed]
It's difficult to see how the leaders could have kept track of such a complex system, in such a big country as the Soviet Union (USSR), without recognizing the existence of capital relations, the ...
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Was America behind any 'false flag' bomb attacks in Saigon in the early 1950s?
Graham Greene was a journalist in Vietnam during 1951-1954. His 1955 novel The Quiet American depicts the US as plotting with Trình Minh Thế's Caodaiist faction to bomb a military parade in Saigon, so ...
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Was there a Cold War era Russian safe haven city for politicians and scientists?
I remember learning about a Russian city where, during the Cold War, top politicians and scientists and their families would be evacuated to. It would have existed as a normal city outside of Cold War ...
MCW♦
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Were Russians in the cold war era USA discriminated against for their ethnicity?
As a Chinese living in the western world, I am a little bit concerned about the next decades where there might be a war or a series of conflicts between the rising Chinese power and the current world ...
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Why was Harry Truman chosen to be Vice President in 1944?
In 1944, FDR was running for his fourth and final election. He was starting to age rapidly, he would be dead in just 82 days from being sworn in to his fourth term. Henry Wallace had been FDR's VP ...
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Who is the Pentagon General nicknamed Darth Vader referred to by Arthur C Clarke?
In an introductory blurb to his story "The Golden Seas" in "The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke", p.935, Arthur C. Clarke writes
This was my first response to President ...
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How did Western leaders justify NATO's eastwards expansion after promising the Soviet leadership it won't happen?
Western leaders apparently promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards and threaten Soviet security interests. Leaders named include Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, ...
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Do negotiations/concessions to dictatorial powers always bring them to wanting more? [closed]
Let's focus on European powers that existed from the 18th century until today.
There's a common theory which basically says:
giving concessions or not being firm enough towards dictators always ...
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Has a hostile submarine transitted the Bosphorus submerged?
In WW1, the British submarine E-11 entered the Golden Horn, but apparently not the Bosphorus, and in this old thread on Usenet there are references to WW1 and fiction.
According to a recent article ...
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Did the Soviet Union or China participate in the light bulb cartel? If not, in what ways did they differ and how long did their bulbs last?
The Phoebus cartel was a well known scheme to fix the standard lifespan of incandescent lightbulbs that arose at the beginning of the 20th century.
See Spectrum.ieee.org.
Although not implemented for ...
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When did the Soviets get the ability to drop a nuclear bomb on the United States?
I'm researching the history of the Cold War and I have the impression that the Soviets failed to develop a bomber capable of flying from Russia to the United States until 1956, when the Tu-95 bomber ...
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How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
I have been trying to find detailed explanations (and, if available, references in English or German about it) to the following about the division of Berlin into West and East sides after WW2:
how ...
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How were the West Berlin air corridors negotiated?
This grew out of a question I asked on the Politics SE, which I'm moving here because it's tangential to that question.
As far as I can tell, after World War 2, the Western powers negotiated air ...
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What was the border regime between Poland and Czechoslovakia like during the 1970s and 1980s?
Poland and Czechoslovakia shared a rather long border after WW2. This border included several touristically relevant places, e.g. Snežka in the Krkonoše mountains and several peaks in the High Tatras.
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Did Stalin believe Israel would go communist?
In Anne Applebaum's recent book Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 she claims the USSR supported the new state of Israel and states "Stalin believed Israel would quickly join the ...
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What is this lapel pin logo?
I got this lapel pin in the mid-1980s from a retired communist partisan in Hungary. He had more pins, mostly of communist/socialist organisations, trade fairs, and combines.[1]
cold-war era Eastern ...
MCW♦
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Why didn’t the USSR and CCP reinstate ties after Mao’s death?
With Hua Guofeng and especially Deng Xiapoing’s rise to power, why wasn’t there a thaw and rapprochement in their ties, as the main divide was the rift in ideology between the USSR and Mao’s Stalinist ...
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Why was Eisenhower chosen to be Supreme Allied Commander in Europe?
Dwight D. Eisenhower "Ike", graduated from West Point in 1915 ranked 61st in a class of 164 better known for his abilities on the football field than in the classroom. Upon graduation from ...
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Was PepsiCo really sixth largest military force?
There are several claims on the internet that for a brief time PepsiCo owned the sixth largest military force in the world. You can read about it, e.g., at Wikipedia.
This seems quite fishy to me, so ...
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Was the danger of radiation in the case of nuclear war overestimated during the cold war?
This article tells about signal "Atom" and its intended effect on Moscow metro:
All trains stop, escalators automatically start move downwards.
After 15 min, all hermetic gates on metro ...
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What was the policy on academic research being published beyond the iron curtain?
If a little background to my curiosity were to help: when I was studying logic as a philosophy student, we covered the topic of defining probability, where we looked at Kolmogorov's axioms of ...
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Are there any specific examples of NLF efforts to manipulate American media?
I often see mentions of National Liberation Front (NLF) efforts to manipulate US media during the Vietnam War, but I can't seem to find any specific examples of this happening. Did I misinterpret its ...
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What was the internal Soviet reaction to the moon landing?
The Soviet Union was a famously restrictive place when it came to news and ideological spin, and obviously their attitude toward the United States was less than supportive and warm. The Space Race ...
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Why did Eisenhower iconize Robert E. Lee?
I recently discovered this clip of General Eisenhower: Eisenhower Explains About General Lee (1957)
In it he claims "The 4 top Americans of history: Franklin, Washington, Lincoln and Lee"
I ...
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What was the impact of Fischer vs. Spassky 1972 on the relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union?
In 1948, the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) organized the first Chess World Championship after WW2. Its winner was Mikhail Botvinnik. Further Chess World Champions were Vasily Smyslov, ...
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How was the Cuban military capable of performing African interventions?
Cuba has led many interventions in Africa during the Cold War:
Instructors sent in Angola
Up to 400 000 soldiers, including instructors, tank brigades, air wings in Angola to help the fight against ...
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How did the countries devolved from USSR turn from communism to democracy or other ideology peacefully after the collapse?
After the Soviet Union dissolution, the countries independent from the Union, or the countries in the East Europe that were puppets of the Soviet Union turned to the current government without a civil ...
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How historically accurate was the Queen's trip to Ghana portrayed in Episode 8 of The Crown?
OK let me be more specific. In episode 8 of The Crown (Netflix), it is implied that Queen Elizabeth II went to Ghana (because she heard a sly comment from JFK's wife) to prevent the country from going ...
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Who is the historical figure in McCarthy's speech, "When a great democracy is destroyed..."?
During the Wheeling speech in 1950, McCarthy said :
As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather ...
MCW♦
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Did the U.S. and Soviet Union have a submarine battle in 1968?
There are books and articles about the Soviet submarine K-129 and the USS Scorpion in 1968, with various stories of attempted nuclear attacks and reprisals. Is there a factual narrative about these ...
MCW♦
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Is it true that novel 1984 became famous under US propaganda? [closed]
I've heard from some one that novel 1984 was not a very excellent novel but under US propaganda and CIA's pressure it became famous.
And also the opposite of this happened to novel Brave New World.
...
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How were USSR oblasts and cities governed?
From Wikipedia “During the Soviet period, the high authority in the oblast was shared between three persons: The first secretary of the “Oblast” CPSU Committee (who in reality had the biggest ...
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How successful was the NDEA?
The National Defence Education Act (NDEA) was passed shortly after the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik I with the goal of remedying what the American government believed to be a gap in ...
MCW♦
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What was the Soviet reasoning for developing their Airborne Forces (VDV) into a powerful military branch?
The Soviet Airborne Forces (the VDV, or the Воздушно-десантные войска, or the Aerial Descent Force as a more precise translation) were one of the more prestigious units in the Soviet military (see '...
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Why was the Soviet Naval Infantry disbanded in 1947?
According to Peter Antill:
The naval Infantry performed a number of important landings in both World Wars including raids against the Turks around the Black Sea and the capture of Sakhalin Island and ...
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