history - cold war

• The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, was a conflict between North Vietnam (supported by the Soviet Union and China) and South Vietnam (supported by the United States and its allies).
• In response to the Soviet Union's successes in space exploration, President Kennedy announced his goal of sending Americans to the moon by the end of the decade.
• The Soviet Union was the first country to launch an artificial satellite into space, which led to increased tensions between the US and USSR.
• The competition for global influence and power between the United States and the Soviet Union contributed to the tensions of the Cold War.
• The Berlin Airlift occurred in 1948-1949 when the Western Allies provided food and supplies to West Berliners who were cut off from their supply lines due to blockades imposed by the Soviet Union.
• The Truman Doctrine stated that the United States would support any nation threatened by communism with military force if necessary.
• The Space Race involved both superpowers competing to achieve technological advancements related to space travel.
• Boris Yeltsin became the Russian president in 1990
• the french surrendered to vietnam in 1954 in fear of the ambushes of the guerilla warfare
• the vietminh general was Vo Nguyen Giap and he developed the guerilla warfare strategy
• the Soviet union was officially dissolved on the 26 December 1991
• by the end of 1989, communism had been dissolved in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria
• East and West Germany were officially reunited in 1990
• the USA was involved in vietnam because instead of fighting the communist USSR, they jostled to win other countries onto their side. they did this by influencing the outcome of wars in other countries by limited war. the capitalist USA wanted to stop vietnam from becoming communist
• the cold war is the fight between russia and the USA by the use of propaganda and arms races to try and be better than one another. this lasted from 1945 to 1991
• the truman doctrine was in 1947
• communist parties directed by the soviet union used a range of tactics to take political control. sometimes they used force and other times they fixed elections and manipulated using violence
• satellite states are smaller, less powerful nations that depended on and were directed by the USSR
• containment is a plan made by the Americans to prevent communism from spreading
• the idea behind containment was that communism would be contained within its existing boundaries and not be allowed to spread. many argue that this was the start of the cold war
• buffer zones were areas of land or territory used as a barrier to separate two opposing forces
• guerrilla warfare was a war tactic in small groups of soldiers against a more powerful enemy to not allow a single battle to take place. this usually took place where a big army would struggle, like a dense forest or mountain
• the first international space station (Apollo Soyuz) was created by both the USA and the USSR in July 1975
• the first country to land on mars was Russia in December 1971. they were only able to receive one image before Mars 3 broke
• America was the first country to land on the moon in July 1969 with Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong
• Russian Luna 10 was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon in July 1969
• the first woman in space was Russian Valentina Tereshkova in June 1963. she spent 71 hours in space which was more than all Americans had collectively at that point
• John Glenn was the third American man in space in February 1962. his launch was helped by a group of African American mathematicians
• in the 1960s, president Kennedy committed the US to a moon landing
• Yuri Gagarin was the first Russian man in space in April 1961
• Alan Shepard was the first American man in space in May 1961
• Russia made the first man made object (Luna 2) to land on the moon in September 1959. nobody was on it but it demonstrated that humans could get to the moon
• President Dwight Eisenhower passed the space act in 1958. this was to show that the USA was serious about taking part in the space race. he tripled the funding for science education and created NASA
• the soviet union made the first man made satellite in orbit (Sputnik) in October 1957. it orbited earth for 3 months sending scientific data back to earth
• the soviet union created the first inter-continental Ballistic Missile in May 1957. this missile could send objects into space
• Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985
• Gorbachev had two major policies called glasnost and perestroika
• glasnost meant that soviet citizens, including journalists, were now free to access government information to report and discuss it freely. if they wished, they could also criticise the government
• perestroika was an economic policy based on introducing elements of capitalism into the communist system
• glasnost failed because the soviet media began attacking the government over everything from the appalling state of soviet housing to the USSR‘s serious lack of environmental portections