The decades-long Cold War was more than a bipolar conflict between two Superpowers-it had implications for the entire world. Cold War goes beyond US-USSR relations to explore the Cold War from an international perspective, including developments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Fink also offers a broader time line of the Cold War than any other text, charting the lead-up to the conflict from the Russian Revolution to World War II and discussing the aftermath of the Cold War up to the present day.

The Cold War is one of the furthest-reaching and longest-lasting conflicts in modern history. It spanned the globe - from Greece to China, Hungary to Cuba - and lasted for almost half a century. It has shaped political relations to this day, drawing new physical and ideological boundaries between East and West. In this meticulously researched account, Bridget Kendall explores the Cold War through the eyes of those who experienced it first-hand. Alongside in-depth analysis that explains the historical and political context, the book draws on exclusive interviews with individuals who lived through the conflict's key events, offering a variety of perspectives that reveal how the Cold War was experienced by ordinary people. From pilots making food drops during the Berlin Blockade and Japanese fishermen affected by H-bomb testing to families fleeing the Korean War and children whose parents were victims of McCarthy's Red Scare, The Cold War covers the full geographical and historical reach of the conflict.

From a Bancroft Prize-winning scholar, a new global history of the Cold War and its ongoing impact around the world. We tend to think of the Cold War as a bounded conflict: a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, born out of the ashes of World War II and coming to a dramatic end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Bancroft Prize-winning scholar Odd Arne Westad argues that the Cold War must be understood as a global ideological confrontation, with early roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. In The Cold War, Westad offers a new perspective on a century when great power rivalry and ideological battle transformed every corner of our globe. From Soweto to Hollywood, Hanoi, and Hamburg, young men and women felt they were fighting for the future of the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of Europe, but it had its deepest reverberations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where nearly every community had to choose sides. And these choices continue to define economies and regimes across the world. Today, many regions are plagued with environmental threats, social divides, and ethnic conflicts that stem from this era. Its ideologies influence China, Russia, and the United States; Iraq and Afghanistan have been destroyed by the faith in purely military solutions that emerged from the Cold War. Stunning in its breadth and revelatory in its perspective, this book expands our understanding of the Cold War both geographically and chronologically, and offers an engaging new history of how today's world was created.

Michael Dockrill's concise study of the early years of the Cold War between the Western Powers and Soviet Union has been widely acclaimed as an authoritative guide to the subject. In this second edition, he and Michael Hopkins bring the story up to the events of 1991, and also expand coverage of key topics.

The Cold War contains a selection of official and unofficial documents which provide a truly multi-faceted account of the entire Cold War era. This volume presents the different kinds of materials necessary to understand what the Cold War was about, how it was fought, and the ways in which itaffected the lives of people around the globe.By depicting the experiences of East Berlin housewives and South African students, as well as those of political leaders from Europe and the Third World, The Cold War emphasizes the variety of ways in which the Cold War conflict was experienced. The significance of these differences is essential tounderstanding the Cold War: it demonstrates how the causes of the clash may have looked very different in Santiago from the way they looked in Seoul, New York, Moscow, or Beijing. The book examines the entirety of the Cold War era, presenting documents from the end of World War II right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A final selection of source material goes on to illustrate the impact of the Cold War to the present day. Again, the emphasis is global: thereare documents on the aftermath of the Cold War in Africa and Europe, as well as on the links between the Cold War and the dramatic events of 11 September 2001.By providing a truly international glimpse of the Cold War and its various actors and subjects, The Cold War helps cut through the often simplistic notions of the recent past and allows the reader to explore the truly global impact of the East-West confrontation that dominated internationalrelations in the second half of the twentieth century.

Exam Board: AQA, Edexcel, OCR & WJEC Level: A-level Subject: History First Teaching: September 2015 First Exam: June 2016 Give your students the best chance of success with this tried and tested series, combining in-depth analysis, engaging narrative and accessibility. Access to History is the most popular, trusted and wide-ranging series for A-level History students. This title: - Supports the content and assessment requirements of the 2015 A-level History specifications - Contains authoritative and engaging content - Includes thought-provoking key debates that examine the opposing views and approaches of historians - Provides exam-style questions and guidance for each relevant specification to help students understand how to apply what they have learnt This title is suitable for a variety of courses including: - AQA: The Cold War, c1945-1991 - OCR: The Cold War in Europe 1941-1995

How, when, and why did the Cold War begin? Why did it last so long? What impact did it have on the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, and the Third World? Finally, what difference did it make to the broader history of the second half of the twentieth century? This clear and stimulating interpretive overview of the Cold War will both invite debate and encourage deeper investigation.

The Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States indelibly shaped the world we live in today--especially international politics, economics, and military affairs. This volume shows how the globalization of the Cold War during the 20th century created the foundations for most of today's key international conflicts, including the "war on terror." Odd Arne Westad examines the origins and course of Third World revolutions and the ideologies that drove the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. towards interventionism. He focuses on how these interventions gave rise to resentments and resistance that, in the end, helped to topple one and to seriously challenge the other superpower. In addition, he demonstrates how these worldwide interventions determined the international and domestic framework within which political, social and cultural changes took place in such countries as China, Indonesia, Iran, Ethiopia, Angola, Cuba, and Nicaragua. According to Westad, these changes, plus the ideologies, movements and states that interventionism stirred up, constitute the real legacy of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2004 he was named head of department and co-director of the new LSE Cold War Studies Centre. Professor Westad is the author, or editor, of ten books on contemporary international history including Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950 (2003) and, with Jussi Hanhimaki, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (2003). In addition, he is a founding editor of the journal Cold War History.

After years of rapprochement, the relationship between Russia and the West is more strained now than it has been in the past 25 years. Putin's motives, his reasons for seeking confrontation with the West, remain for many a mystery. Not for Mikhail Gorbachev. In this new work, Russia's elder statesman draws on his wealth of knowledge and experience to reveal the development of Putin's regime and the intentions behind it. He argues that Putin has significantly diminished the achievements of perestroika and is part of an over-centralized system that presents a precarious future for Russia. Faced with this, Gorbachev advocates a radical reform of politics and a new fostering of pluralism and social democracy. Gorbachev's insightful analysis moves beyond internal politics to address wider problems in the region, including the Ukraine conflict, as well as the global challenges of poverty and climate change. Above all else, he insists that solutions are to be found by returning to the atmosphere of dialogue and cooperation which was so instrumental in ending the Cold War.  This book represents the summation of Gorbachev's thinking on the course that Russia has taken since 1991 and stands as a testament to one of the greatest and most influential statesmen of the twentieth century.

The Cold War: 1945 - 1991 is written with close and clear alignment to the NSW Stage 6 Modern History course. The text incorporates classic and recent historical interpretations and are supported by regular and relevant visual and primary sources extracts, with accompanying activities. Chapter 1 of the student books surveys the origins of the Cold War and early flashpoints, including the Berlin blockade and the Korean War. Subsequent chapters address the focus of study by examining the key developments of The Cold War, detente and its impact and reasons for the conflicts end.

When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR was one of the world's two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system's gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America's arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them.

'When the Nazi power was broken, I asked myself what was the best advice I could give to my fellow citizens here in this island and across the channel in our ravaged continent. There was no difficulty in answering the question. My counsel to Europe can be given in a single word: Unite!' Sir Winston Churchill in 1947 After the Second World War, with much of Europe in ruins, the victorious Winston Churchill swore to build a peace across Europe that would last a generation. Fighting against the new 'Iron Curtain' which had fallen across the world, and battling the personal disappointment of losing the 1945 election in Britain, Churchill dedicated the rest of his life to forging a united Europe. This book, based in part on new evidence, reveals his vision: Britain as a leading member of the European family. Through Churchill's own private papers, Felix Klos unveils Churchill's personal battle to regain his place in world affairs, his confidential conversations with European leaders and the thinking and preparation behind some of his most powerful speeches. A beautifully written history of Europe after the war, and a new glimpse at one of its greatest statesmen.

Drawing on newly opened archives and the reminiscences of the major players, John Lewis Gaddis explains not just what happened but why—from the months in 1945 when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. went from alliance to antagonism to the barely averted holocaust of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the maneuvers of Nixon and Mao, Reagan and Gorbachev.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and Communism in Europe began to collapse.The Cold Warcelebrates that anniversary with a graphic account of the long-running global drama that played from the end of World War II until the era of Gorbachev and glasnost. During that time, such high-tension events as the Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the brink of Armageddon—but both sides always drew back. Follow spread by spread the development of each important stage in the long, chilly conflict that divided the world into two spheres of influence.  More than 30 facsimile items of Cold War memorabilia allow readers to hold and examine diaries, letters, telegrams, decoded intercepts, and newspapers that, up till now, were confined to filing cabinets and museum exhibitions.

Covering politics, music, literature and art, he explores the myths Russians have created from their history.Marking the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of Russia and its unique place in the modern world.

Few historical changes occur literally overnight, but on 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. This new history rejects traditional, top-down approaches to Cold War politics, exploring instead how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth. Party, police, and Stasi reports reveal whyone in six East Germans fled the country during the 1950s, undermining communist rule and forcing the eleventh-hour decision by Khrushchev and Ulbricht to build a wall along the Cold War's frontline. Did East Germans resist or come to terms with immurement? Did the communist regime become more or less dictatorial within the confines of the so-called 'Antifascist Defence Rampart'? Using film and literature, but also the GDR's losing battle against Beatlemania, Patrick Major's cross-disciplinarystudy suggests that popular culture both reinforced and undermined the closed society. Linking external and internal developments, Major argues that the GDR's official quest for international recognition, culminating in Ostpolitik and United Nations membership in the early 1970s, became its undoing,unleashing a human rights movement which fed into, but then broke with, the protests of 1989. After exploring the reasons for the fall of the Wall and reconstructing the heady days of the autumn revolution, the author reflects on the fate of the Wall after 1989, as it moved from demolition into therealm of memory.

The peace achieved at the end of World War II quickly gave way to a tense standoff between the democratic West and the Communist East. This anthology covers an era of international intrigue and domestic turmoil as America faced not only a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, but war in Southeast Asia and race riots at home.

For half a century the Soviet economy was inefficient but stable. In the late 1980s, to the surprise of nearly everyone, it suddenly collapsed. Why did this happen? And what role did Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms play in the country's dissolution? In this groundbreaking study, Chris Miller shows that Gorbachev and his allies tried to learn from the great success story of transitions from socialism to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping's China. Why, then, were efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism so much less successful than in China? Making use of never-before-studied documents from the Soviet politburo and other archives, Miller argues that the difference between the Soviet Union and China--and the ultimate cause of the Soviet collapse--was not economics but politics.

A Short History of the Twentieth Century carries some of the excitement of the times as well as the power of unforeseen events. The theme that dominates much of the book is war and peace—a nervous peace—which gripped the attention of most people who lived through a large part of the century. Mr. Blainey’s talent for identifying the telling detail, the crucial event, the key personality makes for masterful storytelling, and his interest ranges wide over the fields of human activity; he is concerned not only with major transformations but also with the everyday experiences of people around the world. Taking the story from the dawn of a century ripe with promise, especially for Europeans, he shows how and why empires soon fell, igniting wars and revolutions that continued intermittently through the period; economic depressions that brought great powers to their knees; totalitarian governments that doled out misery to their citizens; a Middle East in turmoil; and a resurgent Islam.

Peter Kenez's History of the Soviet Union examines not only political change, but also social and cultural developments. The book identifies the social tensions and political inconsistencies that spurred radical change in the government of Russia, beginning at the turn of the century, culminating in the revolution of 1917. Kenez envisions that revolution as a crisis of authority that posed the question, 'Who shall govern Russia'? This question was resolved with the creation of the Soviet Union. Kenez traces the development of the Soviet Union from the Revolution, through the 1920s, the years of the New Economic Policies - which he sees as crucial to any interpretation of the history of the Soviet Union - and into the Stalinist order. He shows how post-Stalin Soviet leaders struggled to find ways to rule the country without using Stalin's methods but also without openly repudiating the past, and to negotiate a peaceful but antipathetic coexistence with the capitalist West.

The nature of Stalin's Russia has provoked controversy since the early 1930s, and continues to fascinate historians today. This book looks at the Stalinist dictatorship from three different perspectives. Section one focuses on interpretations of Stalin's character in order to explain the everlasting puzzle of the relationship between events and personality. Section two looks at Stalin's role within the Soviet Union, and sees him only as one part (albeit an important one) of a complex culture of politics and administration. The final section examines the ways in which the Soviet people handled socialism, and how Stalinism functioned on the ground.

The Soviet experiment, which ended in 1991, was the most serious attempt ever made to build an ideal society. Power and Privilege is a coherent interpretation of both the Russian and Soviet Empires, explaining what went wrong with the experiment, and how it affected the lives of ordinary men and women.

Key images, professional opinions, and participant experiences enliven this title's discussion of spying, the space race, conflicts in Vietnam and Korea and more. Genocide, intentional nuclear destruction, world war -- what inspired such events and what was left in their wake? How Did It Happen? investigates these questions and others as it probes some of the major turning points in modern history. Encouraging readers to develop interpretive and critical thinking skills, this series from Lucent Books combines primary source materials, full-color images, expert opinions and narrative explanation of the causes and effects of key economic, political and militaristic events in 20th-century history.

Explores the questions surrounding the Cold War era, focusing on the politics between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Examines the events leading up to the Cold War, including the arms race, the first H-bomb test, the war in Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.