The USA had invaded a USSR backed Vietnam and Cambodia, President Nixon had had to resign as a result of the Watergate Scandal and the entire country had become “a crisis of confidence”. The USSR on the other hand had been steadily gaining wealth, although it was beginning to run out and just a year earlier, in 1979, had begun their invasion of Afghanistan. 2. The result of the game was favourable to the USA, who won 4-3, and reflected the shift in power. The people of America saw the game as a sign of their countries regained dominance, after the USSR had dominated ice hockey as well as most political events, the power was now shifting towards the Americans who had a new found confidence.
The strong feelings of nationalism overwhelmed Canadians, and we took pride in securing our identity as the hockey nation by defeating the Soviets. The ’72 Summit Series was a best-of-eight hockey series between Canada and the Soviets. Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister at the time, hoped the series would ease Canada’s identity and unity issues which had overshadowed our countries politics. Trudeau and the Soviets’ leader, Leonid Brezhnev, also believed the hockey series would be an excellent opportunity to mend relations between the countries, since the match took place during the Cold War, a time where tensions were high between the two nations due to their different political styles. While the series originated in hopes of relieving the strained relationship between the two countries, in the players’ opinions it began a whole new war.
And most importantly, the economy of the Soviet Union was in ruins after the U.S.S.R had chose to spend massive amounts of money on wars and the arms race. The world saw many of the U.S.S.R's failures in Afghanistan and took immediate advantage of it. Although there could be many reasons behind the U.S.S.R invading Afghanistan, it was officially to support the government of Afghanistan against the Islamic Mujahideen Resistance. The Mujahideen were being supported by the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, and the Pakistan government and obviously the U.S.S.R would be conflicted. When the war started off, U.S.S.R didn't expect it to be a decade-long war.
At the death of President Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman proudly and boldly took charge of office. Spending almost nine full years in office, Truman would come face to face with many problems in both foreign and domestic affairs. Although he made many changes at home in reinforcing New Deal policies and guiding the American Economy, the international policies specifically towards the Soviet Union would prove to become staples of American foreign policy for generations. As the Cold War began to emerge, American-Soviet relations began to heed a strong tension. Particularly the impact of both the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Blockade played a major role in the two nation’s relationship.
The Marshall Aid plan also created worry in the USSR since it was revitalizing the German economy and it was the Germans who had twice invaded the USSR and caused great damage to it, especially Hitler’s regime, which had invaded less that five years ago and Russia was still recovering from the damage caused. There are also reasons which support the idea that Truman was not a large cause for the beginning of the Cold War. Stalin also committed actions which drove to the beginning of the Cold War. The first of these is the suggestion of a “sphere of influence” around the USSR, this suggested the expansion of Communism and gave way to west leaders fearing what was called the “Domino Theory” (if one country falls to communism, others will quickly fall in succession). The second was the Berlin Blockade, which strained relationships with the western world and isolated the USSR and other communist countries from the rest of the world in what was called the Iron Curtain.
Under Stalin’s leadership, many oppressive and rigid policies were put in place. After his death, there was a significant incentive to revise them as they had weakened Soviet standing, both abroad and at home. The United States had outpaced the Soviet Union in the nuclear arms race (Mc Dougall 2000). The Soviet Union was surrounded by United States bases located all over Europe. As a result, the Soviet Union had to buy time so as to catch up with its rival.
There were many attributes that aided Hitler in his rise to power. Since the First World War in 1914 Germany’s government had been very unstable, and of course was not helped by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Due to the reparations evoked by the treaty and the cost of war, Germany experienced hyperinflation that was only solved in 1924 with a series of loans from America. Just as Germany’s economy was improving the Wall Street crash occurred in 1929 where America requested repayment of all their loans. These events created the perfect conditions for a new radical party to rise to power: The Nazis.
One of the greatest ideas introduced was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which effectively ended World War One for Russia. Adam Ulam said “this was the legacy of years of isolation and defiance.” Despite these being opposed to their general ideology specifically to appeal to the masses and generate public support before the introduction of NEP. War communism was an important event that leads to the consolidation of Bolshevik power. Once civil war broke out, the Bolsheviks regime was in a dire situation by the
Who was to blame for The Cold War? The Cold War happened over a long period time, unraveling and developing after the horrors of the Second World War. Throughout the course of the years that have followed the Cold War, mixed opinions of who is to blame for the war have arisen. It was believed, before the 1960s, that Stalin and his Communist ideologies brought the war to the attention of the world. Soon after, various evaluations of the war dictated that USA and the “western” supporters (i.e.
Soviet and US relations changed dramatically between 1945 and 1947, there were many reasons to explain why and how this happened. Firstly, one reason was the end of WW2. During the Second World War, America and the USSR were members of the Grand Alliance in order to oppose Hitler, but when this war finished there was nothing to bring the Communists and Capitalists together. Therefore, the two countries went from allies to progressing enemies after Germany was defeated. This developed until a confrontation, from Western and Eastern Europe, in a nuclear arms race.