Essay for Exam Chapter 25
World War II had left huge sections of Europe, especially Eastern Europe devastated. Many belonging to these states believed that communism and Joseph Stalin’s USSR was the much sought answer to their woes. Stalin used this to his advantage and built a communist buffer zone by seizing territories. This led to the fall of an iron curtain separating Eastern Europe from their western counterparts and the formation of the Soviet bloc. The cold war that resulted saw enormous changes in the social, economic and cultural life of people in both Western and Eastern Europe. Welfare states emerged to protect vulnerable sections.
Alarmed at the spread of communism in Europe, President Harry Truman of the United States vouched, “To support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures”. This statement became known as the Truman Doctrine and offered an umbrella of protection to western states that resisted communism but lacked stability. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was born to provide military assistance to member nations which were the United States, Britain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, West Germany and Spain. Responding to this, the Soviets founded the Warsaw Pact in 1955 covering Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and the USSR to mutual military assistance. With this, the iron curtain fully descended on Europe.
The Eastern bloc was dominated by Soviet supremacy while the western bloc by the United States. International trade was encouraged following the setting up of the World Bank and a scheme to revive the economies in the West was in vogue. Europe’s pressing need was for economic aid and President Truman came up with the Marshall Plan also known as the Europe Recovery Program. Berlin emerged as the dividing point between the East and the West and in 1961 hostilities intensified with the construction of the Berlin Wall and the creation of two Germanys.
Stalin’s death in 1953 marked the beginning of much needed relief from the communist regime. Though the change was not immediate, it had been initiated. Nikita Khrushchev who became Stalin’s successor in 1956 acknowledged the excesses in the Stalin regime which resulted in a “thaw” in the communist norm. Oil and space research became the Soviet’s forte and the United States was quick to react with its own space programs to keep the communist regime in check.
The Soviet general secretary of the Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev formulated the Brezhnev Doctrine in the wake of the crackdown in Czechoslovakia. Uprisings against communism were put down sternly.
In the Western sections of Europe however, things were changing for the better. Long stretches of peace, better food and medicine increased the value of life and a new baby boom generation sprung up. Increased use of machinery, better job options and higher pays all contributed to higher standard of life in the West than in the East. The safety net cherished by Western states of Europe were not extended to their colonies in Africa and Asia. This resulted in a series of freedom struggles in these colonies. From 1945 European colonialism began to experience a collapse. Colonies that did not fall in the Eastern or Western bloc formed the Third World countries and they joined to form the non-alignment movement in a bid to force decolonization by Europeans. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared a takeover of the Suez Canal in 1956 which alarmed Europe and led to the Suez crisis.
Margret Thatcher became the first woman Prime Minister of Britain and one who stabilized the British economy and foresaw the downfall of communism. Her counterpart in the United States, Ronald Regan shared her views and the duo were responsible for reversing western policies. As these strong conservatives came to power in the West, the iron curtain began to fall with Mikhail Gorbachev taking over the Soviet. Gorbachev formulated perestroika (restructuring the economy) and glasnost (the opening up of the political debate) to build the Soviet. However, his reforms were late in coming and the Soviet he strived to rebuild collapsed in 1991. Communism failed not because of Gorbachev’s faulty efforts but because of the economic crisis in the Soviet that resulted due to excessive spending on military forces to fight in Afghanistan and the growing discontent among people in the East who were enraged by poor living conditions, low pay, lack of entertainment and long working hours among many other grievances. The actual end of the cold war as predicted by Margret Thatcher and Ronal Regan came with the pulling down of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With the wall gone East and West now had no dividing line of separation and marked the total collapse of the iron curtain (Western Civilization II Guides, “Chapter 25: Decolonization and the Cold War”).
“Chapter 25: Decolonization and the Cold War”. Western Civilization II Guides. 2007. Web. Accessed on 30 June 2015.
