Core Practice: Point/Counterpoint – The Cold War
World History Name: ______
E. Napp Date: ______
Pre-Primary Source Activity:
A Thought to Consider:
“Cold War” is an interesting term. It suggests a conflict of ideas and escalating tensions but it also suggests an avoidance of direct confrontation. Of course, from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were so great that the possibility of the Cold War becoming a deadly war frightened most rational people. Yes, during the actual days of the Cold War, it seemed as if the world was on the verge of a catastrophic nuclear Third World War. Yet the actions of humans always contain an element of surprise and today’s threats no longer emanate from a rivalry between two superpowers with opposing ideologies. As the philosophers have suggested, change is inevitable. And so, as the Cold War ended, old hopes and fears have been replaced with new hopes and fears.
General Vocabulary Checklist:
Point: As in point of view, an opinion
Counterpoint: A contrasting or opposing point of view
A Passage from The World’s History by Howard Spodek:
“Three issues dominated the first two generations following World War II. The first was the Cold War. Two powers, previously at the periphery of Europe’s dominance of global economics and arms, now surpassed Europe, challenging and threatening each other, and insisting that the rest of the peoples of earth choose sides between them. Few political, economic, or cultural events of this period escaped the intense competition of the USSR and the United States. Second, in the twenty years following the war, more than fifty European colonies gained their independence…Finally, a variety of strategies and technologies of development resulted from the new competition and the new freedom…
In the closing months of the war, agreements among the Allies signed at Yalta, on the Black Sea, and at Potsdam, Germany, provided some hope that the United States and the USSR would find a way to accommodate their different philosophies and compromise on their aspirations. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Americans interpreted the somewhat vague Yalta agreements as allowing the USSR some dominance among the nations of central and eastern Europe, in its own backyard, but leaving those countries generally independent and free to choose their own governments. Instead, they saw the Soviet Union using armed force to build a central and eastern European empire of its own. Between 1945 and 1947 the USSR imposed communist governments, controlled from Moscow and backed by Soviet troops, on Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and Eastern Germany – adding them to its European empire along with the northern nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which it had annexed in 1940…
The Russians interpreted the global political scene quite differently. They saw America’s assistance to western Europe and Japan, and its additional support to Turkey and Greece, as an attempt to encircle them. Most of all, the Soviet Union knew that America alone had the atomic bomb, and this made it the most dangerous power on earth.
Each side provoked the other, sometimes to the brink of war.”
General Vocabulary Checklist:
Cold War: ______
Escalating: ______
Tensions: ______
Catastrophic: ______
Rivalry: ______
Dominated: ______
Periphery: ______
Interpreted: ______
Communist: ______
Annexed: ______
Pre-Primary Source Questions:
1. What was the Cold War? ______
2. State one cause of the Cold War. ______
3. State one effect of the Cold War. ______
4. What three issues dominated the first two generations following World War II?
______
5. What happened to Europe’s position in the world after World War II?
______
6. What did U.S. officials believe would happen to Eastern and Central Europe after World War II?
______
7. What actually happened to Eastern and Central Europe after World War II?
______
8. How did the Soviets view U.S. actions immediately following World War II?
______
9. How did these opposing interpretations of actions increase tensions between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.?
______
10. What compounded Soviet fears of the U.S.A.?
______
11. Is the United States the only nuclear power today?
______
Think Point of View:
The following questions may help the student determine the individual’s point of view:
· Who wrote the primary source?
· What was the social class background of the author?
· How did the author’s experiences influence his/her perspective of the event?
· When was the source written?
· What historical events were occurring when the source was written?
Remember: No two individuals experience the same event exactly the same.
Point – Excerpts The Truman DoctrineExcerpts from The Truman Doctrine Speech
http://avalon.law.yale.edu
/ Counterpoint – Excerpts from The Brezhnev Doctrine, 1968à* Soviet response to efforts by the Czechoslovakian Communist Party to introduce reforms, reforms the Soviets did not approve of.
http://astro.temple.edu/~rimmerma/brezhnev_doctrine.htm
“…The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by Communists, who defy the government's authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries…
Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek army is small and poorly equipped. It needs supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the government throughout Greek territory. Greece must have assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.
The United States must supply that assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but these are inadequate.
There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.
No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek government…
One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan.
Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations…
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world -- and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.” / “We cannot ignore the assertions, held in some places, that the actions of the five socialist countries run counter to the Marxist-Leninist principle of sovereignty and the rights of nations to self-determination.
The groundlessness of such reasoning consists primarily in that it is based on an abstract, non-class approach to the question of sovereignty and the rights of nations to self-determination.
The peoples of the socialist countries and Communist parties certainly do have and should have freedom for determining the ways of advance of their respective countries.
However, none of their decisions should damage either socialism in their country or the fundamental interests of other socialist countries, and the whole working class movement, which is working for socialism.
This means that each Communist party is responsible not only to its own people, but also to all the socialist countries, to the entire Communist movement. Whoever forget this, in stressing only the independence of the Communist party, becomes one-sided. He deviates from his international duty…
Just as, in Lenin's words, a man living in a society cannot be free from the society, one or another socialist state, staying in a system of other states composing the socialist community, cannot be free from the common interests of that community…
Each Communist party is free to apply the basic principles of Marxism Leninism and of socialism in its country, but it cannot depart from these principles (assuming, naturally, that it remains a Communist party).
Concretely, this means, first of all, that, in its activity, each Communist party cannot but take into account such a decisive fact of our time as the struggle between two opposing social systems-capitalism and socialism.”
Vocabulary Checklist:
Terrorist: ______
Defy: ______
Aid: ______
Totalitarian: ______
Falter: ______
Endanger: ______
Marxist-Leninist: ______
Sovereignty: ______
Self-Determination: ______
Deviates: ______
Capitalism: ______
Socialism: ______
Questions:
1. According to Truman, what threatens the Greek state? ______
2. According to Truman, why is the Greek government unable to cope with the situation? ______
3. According to Truman, why must the United States provide aid to the Greek government?
______
4. According to Truman, what is a primary objective of U.S. foreign policy?
______
5. According to Truman, why must this be the primary objective of U.S. foreign policy?
______
6. According to Truman, what conditions nurture totalitarian regimes?
______
7. According to Truman, what will happen if the U.S. falters in its leadership?
______
8. According to Brezhnev, what assertions can Marxist-Leninists not ignore?
______
9. According to Brezhnev, what decisions can Socialists not make?
______
10. According to Brezhnev, what is the Communist Party responsible for?
______
11. What is the “international duty” according to Brezhnev?
______
12. According to Brezhnev, what is each Communist Party free to do?
______
13. According to Brezhnev, what is each Communist Party not free to do?
______
14. According to Brezhnev, what decisive fact must each Communist Party take into account?
______
15. How do the points of view of Truman and Brezhnev differ? Are there any similarities in their points of view? Explain your answer.
______
Enrichment Activities (To Be Completed on a Separate Piece of Paper):
1. Create a dialogue between a supporter of containment and a supporter of the Brezhnev Doctrine. Use ideas from the documents as well as from your understanding of World History.
2. Write a denunciation of the U.S. containment policy by a high official in the Soviet Communist Party.
3. Write a denunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine by a Czechoslovakian supporter of the Prague Spring.
4. Explain the meaning of the cartoon.