INDIVIDUALS & SOCIETIES GRADE 8 (2015-16) TERM 2

COLD WAR (1945 – 1991)

 During the WW 2 USA, UK & Soviet Union fought together against Germany & its allies. In the war Germany, Italy
& Japan were defeated. England & France were extremely weakened. Russia & America thus, emerged as the two
powerful nations.
 Post WW 2 – After the WW 2 mutual suspicion, distrust & fear induced the USA & USSR to form their own blocs
of power – The Soviet bloc & American bloc.
 Meaning of the cold war - The term Cold War is characterized by international conflicts & tension between the
democratic world & the communist world, represented by the USA & the USSR respectively. It was Communism
vs. Capitalism, Democracy vs. Socialism
 This Cold War was fought in every field. It extended to the frontiers of defence, economic growth, ideology etc.
The Cold War was not a state of open armed struggle. But it was the continuation of hidden hostilities amongst the
rivals. In other words it can be said that the Cold War was an ideological war or a diplomatic war or a propaganda
war. It was neither a condition of war nor a condition of peace. Indeed, it was a war of words & ideologies. It is
Communism V/S Capitalism or Democracy V/S Socialism.
Why not a Direct Fight? Main events during the Cold War
Both of them were possessing nuclear weapons, a 1) Berlin Blockade & Division of Germany
direct confrontations would have led to launching of 2) Yalta Conference
each other missiles which would lead to the end of the 3) The Space Race
world, history, people. 4) Proxy Wars

BERLIN BLOCKADE & DIVISION OF GERMANY

After the surrender of Germany in 1945, it was divided
into four zones each under four nations- the USA,
Britain, France & Russia. The German capital Berlin was
also divided amongst them.
When the Western powers led by the USA proceeded
with the economic recovery of the three western zones
of Germany, the USSR got alarmed that the zone under
its control would get attracted towards the West
Germany so to prevent that situation the USSR broke
the communication system between West Berlin &
Western Germany.
YALTA CONFERENCE
This incidence is referred as the Berlin Blockade. The
The disagreement between the two superpowers, the USA
Soviets wanted full control of the German Capital of
and the USSR, has its foundation in the Yalta conference
Berlin. Starting on June 24, 1948 the Soviet Union
held in February, 1945. This conference was held towards
blocked all road and railway traffic between West Berlin
the end of the war to discuss many problems connected
& Western Germany.
with the war.
However, Western allies (USA, UK & france) succeeded
They reached an agreement on many points;
in maintaining their link with the people of West Berlin
disagreement on one point led them to mutual suspicion.
by using air-route. The allied response was called the
Russians had started setting up a Communist regime in
Berlin Airlift. The flights ended up bringing more
Poland. Against this background, Roosevelt & Churchill
supplies than before the blockade. The Soviets were
refused to give German territory towards east to Stalin as
humiliated & reopened access to the city on May 12,
per his demand as America was suspicious of Russia’s plan
1949.
of spreading Communism in Eastern Europe.

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 INDIVIDUALS & SOCIETIES GRADE 8 (2015-16) TERM 2
COLD WAR (1945 – 1991)
THE SPACE RACE
In 1955, President Eisenhower announced the USA’s intention to put a satellite into orbit during the International
Geophysical Year (IGY) (July 1957 to June 1958)
The USSR also committed itself to putting a satellite into orbit during the IGY.
Sputnik 1
On 4th Oct, 1957 the USSR astonished the world by announcing that they had launched the world’s first spacecraft,
Sputnik 1. It was carrying instrumentation for measuring atmospheric density & temperature.
It was 58 cm wide aluminum sphere weighing 84 kgs. It was there in sphere for 90 days. When it returned it burned
up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The USA was stunned by the flight of Sputnik 1.
Not only had the USSR became the first nation to put a satellite into orbit but the satellite itself (weighing 83 kgs)
was 6 times heavier than the first prospective US satellite, Explorer 1.
Two months before the launch of Explorer 1, the Sputnik 2 had already carried the first living creature into space (a
dog called Laika)
After the success of Explorer 1 US was aware that the USSR had a considerable lead in space technology.
Now it was the time to put a man into orbit.
USSR reaffirmed their lead in the space race. On 12th April, 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly in space.
Now US made all possible efforts to put a man on the moon which climaxed when Neil Armstrong became the first
astronaut to walk on the moon on 20th July, 1969

WAR IN VIETNAM
War dominated 30 years of Vietnam's history last century. The struggle that began with communists fighting French
colonial power in the 1940s did not end until they seized Saigon and control of the whole country in 1975.
The period that Americans refer to as the "Vietnam War" – and the Vietnamese call the "American War" – was the
US military intervention from 1965 to 1973.
Communist forces based in the north and led by the nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh defeated the French in 1954.
Accords were negotiated that split the country into communist north and pro-American south, divided by a
demilitarised zone (DMZ).
Country-wide elections to decide a permanent solution were promised but never happened, and within five years
the communists had launched a guerrilla war on the south.
Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers were sent to help fight the communists in a costly and ultimately
unsuccessful war which brought domestic civil unrest and international embarrassment.
The US was driven by Cold War concerns about the spread of communism, particularly "domino theory" – the idea
that if one Asian nation fell to the leftist ideology, others would quickly follow.
The Vietnam War was protracted and bloody. The Hanoi government estimates that in 21 years of fighting, four
million civilians were killed across North and South Vietnam, and 1.1 million communist fighters died.
US figures covering the American phase record 200-250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers killed and 58,200 USsoldiers
dead or missing in action.

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 INDIVIDUALS & SOCIETIES GRADE 8 (2015-16) TERM 2
COLD WAR (1945 – 1991)
IRAN CRISIS
In conclusion to an extremely tense situation of the early Cold War, the Soviet Union announces that its troops in
Iran will be withdrawn within six weeks. The Iranian crisis was one of the first tests of power between the United
States and the Soviet Union in the postwar world.
The Iranian crisis began during World War II. In 1942, Iran signed an agreement by which British and Soviet troops
were allowed into the country in order to defend the oil-rich nation from possible German attack. American troops
were also soon in Iran. The 1942 treaty stated that all foreign troops would withdraw within six months after the
end of the war. In 1944, however, both Great Britain and the United States began to press the Iranian government
for oil concessions and the Soviets thereupon demanded concessions of their own. By 1945, the oil situation was
still unsettled, but the war was coming to an end and the American attitude toward the Soviet Union had changed
dramatically.
The new administration of Harry S. Truman, which came to power when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945,
decided that the Soviets were not to be trusted and were bent on expansion. Therefore, a policy of “toughness”
was adopted toward the former wartime ally. Iran came to be a test case for this new policy. The Soviets had
decided to take action in Iran. Fearing that the British and Americans were conspiring to deny Russia its proper
sphere of influence in Iran, the Soviets came to the assistance of an Iranian rebel group in the northern regions of
the country. In early 1946, the United States complained to the United Nations about the situation in Iran and
accused the Soviets of interfering with a sovereign nation. When the March 2, 1946 deadline for the withdrawal of
foreign troops from Iran passed and the Soviets were still in place, a crisis began to develop.
A major diplomatic confrontation was avoided when the Soviets announced on March 25, 1946, that they would be
withdrawing their forces within six weeks. President Truman bragged that his threats of a possible military
confrontation had been the deciding factor, but that seems unlikely. The Soviet Union and Iran had reached an
agreement that gave the Soviets an oil concession in Iran. With this promise in hand, the Soviets kept their part of
the bargain and moved their troops out of Iran in April 1946. Almost immediately, the Iranian government reneged
on the oil deal and, with U.S. aid and advice, crushed the revolt in northern Iran. The Soviets were furious, but
refrained from reintroducing their armed forces into Iran for fear of creating an escalating conflict with the United
States and Great Britain. The Iranian crisis, and the suspicion and anger it created between the United States and
the Soviet Union, helped set the tone for the developing Cold War.
KOREAN WAR
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured
across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the
north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold
War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were
concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some early back-and-forth
across the 38th parallel, the fighting stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile,
American officials worked anxiously to fashion some sort of armistice with the North Koreans. The alternative, they
feared, would be a wider war with Russia and China–or even, as some warned, World War III. Finally, in July 1953,
the Korean War came to an end. In all, some 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war. The
Korean peninsula is still divided today.

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 INDIVIDUALS & SOCIETIES GRADE 8 (2015-16) TERM 2
COLD WAR (1945 – 1991)
AFGHAN INVASION BY USSR
Afghanistan hit the world’s headlines in 1979. Afghanistan seemed to perfectly summarise the Cold War. From the
west’s point of view, Berlin, Korea, Hungary and Cuba had shown the way communism wanted to proceed.
Afghanistan was a continuation of this.
In Christmas 1979, Russian paratroopers landed in Kabal, the capital of Afghanistan. The country was already in the
grip of a civil war. The prime minister, Hazifullah Amin, tried to sweep aside Muslim tradition within the nation and
he wanted a more western slant to Afghanistan. This outraged the majority of those in Afghanistan as a strong
tradition of Muslim belief was common in the country.
Thousands of Muslim leaders had been arrested and many more had fled the capital and gone to the mountains to
escape Amin’s police. Amin also lead a communist based government – a belief that rejects religion and this was
another reason for such obvious discontent with his government.
Thousands of Afghanistan Muslims joined the Mujahdeen – a guerilla force on a holy mission for Allah. They
wanted the overthrow of the Amin government. The Mujahdeen declared a jihad – a holy war – on the supporters
of Amin. This was also extended to the Russians who were now in Afghanistan trying to maintain the power of the
Amin government. The Russians claimed that they had been invited in by the Amin government and that they were
not invading the country. They claimed that their task was to support a legitimate government and that the
Mujahdeen were no more than terrorists.
On December 27th, 1979, Amin was shot by the Russians and he was replaced by Babrak Kamal. His position as
head of the Afghan government depended entirely on the fact that he needed Russian military support to keep him
in power. Many Afghan soldiers had deserted to the Mujahdeen and the Kamal government needed 85,000 Russian
soldiers to keep him in power.
The Mujahdeen proved to be a formidable opponent. They were equipped with old rifles but had a knowledge of
the mountains around Kabal and the weather conditions that would be encountered there. The Russians resorted
to using napalm, poison gas and helicopter gun ships against the Mujahdeen – but they experienced exactly the
same military scenario the Americans had done in Vietnam.
By 1982, the Mujahdeen controlled 75% of Afghanistan despite fighting the might of the world’s second most
powerful military power. Young conscript Russian soldiers were no match against men fuelled by their religious
belief. Though the Russian army had a reputation, the war in Afghanistan showed the world just how poor it was
outside of military displays. Army boots lasted no more than 10 days before falling to bits in the harsh environment
of the Afghanistan mountains. Many Russian soldiers deserted to the Mujahdeen. Russian tanks were of little use in
the mountain passes.
The United Nations had condemned the invasion as early as January 1980 but a Security Council motion calling for
the withdrawal of Russian forces had been vetoed……by Russia.
America put a ban on the export of grain to Russia, ended the SALT talks taking place then and boycotted the
Olympic Games due to be held in Moscow in 1980. Other than that, America did nothing. Why ? They knew that
Russia had got itself into their own Vietnam and it also provided American Intelligence with an opportunity to
acquire any new Russian military hardware that could be used in Afghanistan. Mujhadeen fighters were given
access to American surface-to-air missiles – though not through direct sales by America.
Mikhail Gorbachev took Russia out of the Afghanistan fiasco when he realised what many Russian leaders had been
too scared to admit in public – that Russia could not win the war and the cost of maintaining such a vast force in
Afghanistan was crippling Russia’s already weak economy.
By the end of the 1980’s, the Mujahdeen was at war with itself in Afghanistan with hard line Taliban fighters taking
a stronger grip over the whole nation and imposing very strict Muslim law on the Afghanistan population

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 INDIVIDUALS & SOCIETIES GRADE 8 (2015-16) TERM 2
COLD WAR (1945 – 1991)
FACTS ABOUT THE SOVIET AFGHANISTAN WAR
 Because the Soviet Union failed in securing Afghanistan from the rebels for such a long period of time, the war
is sometimes referred to as the Soviet Union's Vietnam War.
 The United States provided the Mujahideen with Stinger missiles. These enabled them to shoot down Soviet
helicopters and were a major turning point in the war.
 Around 13,000 Soviet troops were killed in the war. It's estimated that over 1 million Afghanis died from the
war. Most of these were civilians, not soldiers.
 Around 5 million people fled the country of Afghanistan during the war. Most went to Pakistan or Iraq.
 The war destroyed much of the country's infrastructure. It became one of the poorest nations in the world
after the war was over.
YALTA CONFERENCE
The Yalta Conference was a meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and
President Franklin D. Roosevelt early in February 1945 as World War II was winding down. The leaders agreed to
require Germany’s unconditional surrender and to set up in the conquered nation four zones of occupation to be
run by their three countries and France. They scheduled another meeting for April in San Francisco to create the
United Nations. Stalin also agreed to permit free elections in Eastern Europe and to enter the Asian war against
Japan. In turn, he was promised the return of lands lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. At the
time, most of these agreements were kept secret.
Yalta became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the cold war. Stalin broke
his promise of free elections in Eastern Europe and installed governments dominated by the Soviet Union. Then
American critics charged that Roosevelt, who died two months after the conference, had “sold out” to the Soviets
at Yalta.
BERLIN BLOCKADE
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the
United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany. Eventually, the
western powers instituted an airlift that lasted nearly a year and delivered much-needed supplies and relief to
West Berlin. Coming just three years after the end of World War II, the blockade was the first major clash of the
Cold War and foreshadowed future conflict over the city of Berlin.
In 1945, the Allies decided to split Germany into four zones of occupation. The capital, Berlin, was also split into
four zones. The USSR took huge reparations from its zone in eastern Germany, but Britain, France and America
tried to improve conditions in their zones.
In June 1948, Britain, France and America united their zones into a new country, West Germany. On 23 June 1948,
they introduced a new currency, which they said would help trade.
The next day, Stalin cut off all rail and road links to west Berlin - the Berlin Blockade. The west saw this as an
attempt to starve Berlin into surrender, so they decided to supply west Berlin by air.
The Berlin Blockade lasted 318 days. During this time, 275,000 planes transported 1.5 million tons of supplies and a
plane landed every three minutes at Berlin's Temple of airport.
On 12 May 1949, Stalin abandoned the blockade

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 INDIVIDUALS & SOCIETIES GRADE 8 (2015-16) TERM 2
COLD WAR (1945 – 1991)
 [Link]
 How is the cold war different from Actual war? (4 M)
Normally, a war is fought with arms and ammunitions, but the Cold war was different from the actual wars, as
it was not fought with weapons. There is no specific spot where the cold war was fought.
Actual war is an official war, while cold war is unofficial. A cold war is a war in which the two opposing sides do
not directly fight each other.
In actual war countries attack each other, there is destruction. While in Cold war, the countries have grudges
between each other, but there is no destruction.
 What are the causes of Cold war? (4 M)
The Berlin Blockade (1948–49) was the first major crisis of the Cold War.
[Link]
The main causes of the Cold War included vastly different political ideologies between the former Allies of the
Second World War, and conflict over the future of a war torn Europe. The two super powers had grudges; each
wanted to prove their powers.
USSR disliked Capitalism, and spread communism. US did not want to share its nuclear secrets.
The countries had conflicts. They wanted to fight against each other -
 How Glasnost & Perestoika led to disintegration of USSR? (7 M) Gorbachev reforms:
[Link]
The Soviet economy was slowly becoming stagnant, whilst military spending went through the roof. The Soviets
threw more money at the military -they were bankrupting themselves.
To counter this stagnation Gorbachev, the President of USSR introduced the policies of Glasnost' and
Perestroika (Openness and Re-Structuring) hoping that people would be open about how to rebuild the
communist system, and make it work better. All it did was allowed people to openly criticize the system - soon
they were calling for it to be replaced.
Glasnost' allowed the youth to speak out against the regime - and enabled them to listen to the music they
wanted.
In the Republics, people were tired of being told what to do by Russians, they wanted to govern themselves, or,
at least, have more autonomy within the Soviet framework - but the centre would not budge. Because of
Glasnost' they could criticize and soon they began to organize. Eventually the people in the Baltic Republics
started protesting - demanding independence, and soon, with the collapse of the union, they got it.
This led to the stepping down of President. With this USSR got disintegrated. It was divided into countries –
Russia, Ukraine.
Gorbachev’s glasnost policy also contributed to the break up of the USSR.
 What do you understand by – “Glasnost & Perestroika”?
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union with the intention of transforming the Soviet economy
and easing Cold War tensions. He realized the USSR could no longer compete with the United States in the Cold
War arms race as its economy was far weaker than that of its rival. To transform the Soviet economy Gorbachev
instituted economic and political reforms known perestroika and glasnost.
Both perestroika and glasnost were policies implemented by Gorbachev to boost the Soviet economy.
 Which event during the cold war brought the super powers on the verge of another war? (7 M)
[Link]
Cuban missile crisis brought USA & USSR on the verge of another war. Both the countries wanted to have
powerful weapons, which they built. But during this race, USSR army kept nuclear weapons ready in Cuba. They
did not intend to attack the US, but only wanted to threaten them as it was only 90 Km away.
 How was the Afghan war the perfect example of proxy war?

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