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Communism And The Cold War

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The Cold War, in one sense, was a power struggle between the two nuclear military giants of the age, the United States and the Soviet Union. But on a more basic level, the Cold War was a contest between two opposing ways of life. One was democratic capitalism, whose leading representatives were the United States and the nations of Western Europe. The other was totalitarian Communism, the system of the Soviet Union and its "satellite" nations in Eastern Europe. Between 1945 and 1990, despite constant tensions and an alarming buildup of nuclear arms on both sides, the United States and the Soviet Union officially remained at peace—hence the name the "cold" war. Yet it was hardly a peaceful era. Furthermore through newspapers in USSR (Pravda and …show more content…

The persistence of Communism further sparked a fear of Communism in the US and McCarthyism prevailed. Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin Senator, promoted the Red Scare, which inspires accusations of being a Communist and deportations of those who “looked” like communists. Fear ran high through the streets, as families practiced safety drills in case of any attacks during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 196two. The Cold War was marked with severe competition in both arms race and in space race. The development of nuclear bombs by the US and the USSR in 1949 severely escalated the Cold War and promoted tension within the world. Furthermore, the tension sparked competition in the space race. The USSR launched its first space satellite, Sputnik, in 1957 and incited the US to embrace an ambitious space …show more content…

President Reagan and the White house began a military buildup that stimulated a new arms race. Subsequently, the Reagan administration adopted the Strategic Defense Initiative to build up a space shield for security and drove the Soviet Union into an arms race. As a result of the competition created by the Cold War between the two superpowers, the USSR challenged by the US, heavy industrialization was introduced to accommodate defensive expenditures and as a result a strain was imposed on the Soviet budget. Economically under pressure with the combination of Mikhail Gobrachev’s radical policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (free market economy) the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and gave rise to 15 different nations. The Cold War began as World War II was ending. American leaders saw the power and ambitions of the Soviet Union as a threat to our national security. The Cold War was a war of words and ideologies rather than a shooting war, although at times the Cold War turned “hot” as in Korea and Vietnam. Basically, the Cold War was a rivalry between the United States as leader of the western democracies, and the Soviet Union and the nations that were controlled by the

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