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The Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United
States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. Historians do
not fully agree on its starting and ending points, but the period is generally considered to span from the
announcement of the Truman Doctrine on 12 March 1947 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26
December 1991.[1] The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the
two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was
based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers,
following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945.[2] Aside
from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance
was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-
reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.
The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of other First World nations that were
generally liberal democratic but tied to a network of authoritarian states, most of which were their former
colonies.[3][A] The Eastern Bloc was led by the Soviet Union and its Communist Party, which had an
influence across the Second World and was also tied to a network of authoritarian states. The US
government supported anti-communist and right-wing governments and uprisings across the world, while
the Soviet government funded left-wing parties and revolutions around the world. As nearly all the colonial
states achieved independence in the period from 1945–1960, they became Third World battlefields in the
Cold War.
The first phase of the Cold War began shortly after the end of World War II in 1945. The United States and its
allies created the NATO military alliance in 1949 in the apprehension of a Soviet attack and termed their
global policy against Soviet influence containment. The Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 in
response to NATO. Major crises of this phase included the 1948–1949 Berlin Blockade, the 1945–
1949 Second Chinese Civil War, the 1950–1953 Korean War, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the 1956 Suez
Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1964-1975 Vietnam War. The US and
the USSR competed for influence in Latin America, the Middle East, and the decolonizing states of
Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split between China and the
Soviet Union complicate relations within the Communist sphere leading to a series of border confrontations,
while France, a Western Bloc state, began to demand greater autonomy of action. The USSR invaded
Czechoslovakia to suppress the 1968 Prague Spring, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil
rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the 1960s–1970s, an international peace
movement took root among citizens around the world. Movements against nuclear weapons testing and
for nuclear disarmament took place, with large anti-war protests. By the 1970s, both sides had started
making allowances for peace and security, ushering in a period of détente that saw the Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic
counterweight to the USSR. A number of self-proclaimed Marxist governments were formed in the second
half of the 1970s in the Third World, including Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Afghanistan,
and Nicaragua.
Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early
1980s was another period of elevated tension. The United States increased diplomatic, military, and
economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when it was alrea Word Help
dy suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail
Detente :- an improvement in
Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of glasnost ("openness", c. 1985)
and perestroika ("reorganization", 1987) and ended Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in 1989. Pressures for the relationship between two or
national sovereignty grew stronger in Eastern Europe, and Gorbachev refused to militarily support their
governments any longer. more countries which have

In 1989, the fall of the Iron Curtain after the Pan-European Picnic and a peaceful wave of revolutions (with thebeen unfriendly towards each
exception of Romania and Afghanistan) overthrew almost all communist governments of the Eastern Bloc.
other in the past

पहले विरोधी रहे दो या अधिक देशों के बीच संबंध-सुधार

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control in the country and was banned
USSR - Soviet Union
following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in
December 1991, the declaration of independence of its constituent republics and the collapse of communist
governments across much of Africa and Asia. The United States was left as the world's sole superpower.
The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy. It is often referred to in popular culture, especially
with themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare. For subsequent history, see international
relations since 1989.

Russian Revolution
Main articles: Russian Revolution and Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
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Allied troops in Vladivostok, August 1918, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

While most historians trace the origins of the Cold War to the period immediately following World War II,
some argue that it began with the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 when the Bolsheviks took power.
In World War I, the British, French and Russian Empires had composed the major Allied Powers from the
start, and the US joined them as a self-styled Associated Power in April 1917. The Bolsheviks seized power
in Russia in November 1917 and fulfilled their promise to withdraw from WWI, and German armies advanced
rapidly across the borderlands. The Allies responded with an economic blockade against all of Russia.[9] In
early March 1918, the Soviets followed through on the wave of popular disgust against the war and accepted
harsh German peace terms with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the eyes of some Allies, Russia now was
helping Germany to win the war by freeing up a million German soldiers for the Western Front and by
relinquishing much of Russia's food supply, industrial base, fuel supplies, and communications with
Western Europe. According to historian Spencer Tucker, the Allies felt, "The treaty was the ultimate betrayal
of the Allied cause and sowed the seeds for the Cold War. With Brest-Litovsk the spectre of German
domination in Eastern Europe threatened to become reality, and the Allies now began to think seriously
about military intervention," and proceeded to step up their "economic warfare" against the
Bolsheviks. Some Bolsheviks saw Russia as only the first step, planning to incite revolutions against
capitalism in every western country, but the need for peace with Germany led Soviet leader Vladimir
Lenin away from this position.
In 1918, Britain provided money and troops to support the anti-Bolshevik "White" counter-revolutionaries.
This policy was spearheaded by Minister of War Winston Churchill, a committed British imperialist and anti-
communist.[13] France, Japan and the United States invaded Russia in an attempt to topple the new Soviet
government. Despite the economic and military warfare launched against it by Western powers, the
Bolshevik government succeeded in defeating all opposition and took full control of Russia, as well as
breakaway provinces such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.[14]
Western powers also diplomatically isolated the Soviet government. Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was
surrounded by a "hostile capitalist encirclement" and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet
enemies divided.[15] He set up an organization to promote sister revolutions worldwide, the Comintern. It
failed everywhere; it failed badly when it tried to start revolutions in Germany, Bavaria, and Hungary.[16] The
failures led to an inward turn by Moscow.
Britain and other Western powers—except the United States—did business and sometimes recognized the
new Soviet Union. By 1933, old fears of Communist threats had faded, and the American business
community, as well as newspaper editors, were calling for diplomatic recognition. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt used presidential authority to normalize relations in November 1933.[17] However, there was no
progress on the Tsarist debts Washington wanted Moscow to repay. Expectations of expanded trade proved
unrealistic. Historians Justus D. Doenecke and Mark A. Stoler note that, "Both nations were soon
disillusioned by the accord."[18] Roosevelt named William Bullitt as ambassador from 1933 to 1936. Bullitt
arrived in Moscow with high hopes for Soviet–American relations, but his view of the Soviet leadership
soured on closer inspection. By the end of his tenure, Bullitt was openly hostile to the Soviet government,
and he remained an outspoken anti-communist for the rest of his life

Franklin D . Roosevelt Mikhail Gorbachev

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Beginning of the Cold War, containment and the Truman Doctrine

(1947–1953)
Iron Curtain, Iran, Turkey, Greece and Poland
Further information: X Article, Iron Curtain, Iran crisis of 1946, and Restatement of Policy on Germany

In late February 1946, George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow to Washington helped to articulate
the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, which would become the basis for US
strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. The telegram galvanized a policy debate
that would eventually shape the Truman administration's Soviet policy.[65] Washington's opposition to the
Soviets accumulated after broken promises by Stalin and Molotov concerning Europe and Iran.[66] Following the
WWII Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, the country was occupied by the Red Army in the far north and the British in the
south.[67] Iran was used by the United States and British to supply the Soviet Union, and the Allies agreed to
withdraw from Iran within six months after the cessation of hostilities.[67] However, when this deadline came, the
Soviets remained in Iran under the guise of the Azerbaijan People's Government and Kurdish Republic of Mahabad.
Shortly thereafter, on 5 March, former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron
[68]
Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri.[69] The speech called for an Anglo-American alliance against the
Soviets, whom he accused of establishing an "iron curtain" dividing Europe from "Stettin in
the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic".[56][70]
A week later, on 13 March, Stalin responded vigorously to the speech, saying that Churchill could be
compared to Hitler insofar as he advocated the racial superiority of English-speaking nations so that they
could satisfy their hunger for world domination, and that such a declaration was "a call for war on the
USSR." The Soviet leader also dismissed the accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over
the countries lying in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet
Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the
Soviet Union should exist in these countries".[71][72]

European military alliances

European economic alliances

Soviet demands to Turkey regarding the Dardanelles in the Turkish Straits crisis and Black Sea border
disputes were also a major factor in increasing tensions.[73][66] In September, the Soviet side produced
the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US but commissioned and "co-authored"
by Vyacheslav Molotov; it portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopoly capitalists who were building
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up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war".[74] On 6
September 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany repudiating the Morgenthau Plan (a
proposal to partition and de-industrialize post-war Germany) and warning the Soviets that the US intended to
maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely.[75] As Byrnes admitted a month later, "The nub of our
program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds ..."[76] In
December, the Soviets agreed to withdraw from Iran after persistent US pressure, an early success of
containment policy.
By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to
American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear
weapons.[77] In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance
the Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents.[78] In the same month, Stalin
conducted the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election which constituted an open breach of the Yalta
Agreement. The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment,
[79] with the goal of stopping the spread of communism. Truman delivered a speech calling for the allocation
of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as a
contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes.[79] American policymakers accused the Soviet Union
of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told
the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government.[80] (The insurgents were helped
by Josip Broz Tito's Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia against Stalin's wishes.)[81][82]
Enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy
consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened
during and after the Vietnam War, but ultimately persisted thereafter.[83] Moderate and conservative parties
in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance,
[84] while European and American Communists, financed by the KGB and involved in its intelligence
operations,[85] adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the
consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and
the anti-nuclear movement.[86]