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Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was extremely destructive. Two revolutions took place withina few months and put an end to the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During this revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, took power and destroyed the tradition of csarist rule. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. -
Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The bombings of the Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, took place on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945. These bombing were devastating to the cities and killed over 120,000 people, many of which were civilians. The persistent Japanese were forced to surrender after these horrific bombings. -
Iron Curtain
The "Iron Curtain" was the term used to describe the boundary between Europe's two different political areas. It separated freely ruled Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, which was under communist Soviet control at the time. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, gave a speech addressing the situation on March 5, 1946. -
The Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood Ten were a group of men who refused to cooperate in the invasive interrogations concerning communist spies in America. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) conducted these interviews and many of those who resisted were arrested. -
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman established that the US would provide political, militaristic, and economic assistance to democratic countries under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces under the Truman Doctrine. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative passed in 1948 to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet states in May 1955, during the Cold War. -
U2 Incident
The U2 incident was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba. The US surrounded Cuba and was ready to employ military force. -
The Reagan Doctrine
Under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backed pro-communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
