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Yalta Conference
It was cited as the start of the Cold War.It was over the issue of the postwar status of Poland, however, that the animosity and mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union that would characterize the Cold War were most readily apparent. -
George Kennan
His policy of containment provided a conceptual framework for a series of successful initiatives undertaken from 1947 to 1950 to blunt Soviet expansion. It was the U.S. policy of keeping communism within its existing boundaries and prevent further Soviet aggression. -
Truman Doctrine
The British government informed the United States that it could no longer furnish the economic and military assistance it had been providing to Greece and Turkey since the end of World War II.Then Truman declared the U.S. would provide military and economic aid to countries threatened by Communism. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan is remembered for the economic support provided by the United States for the rehabilitation of European countries ravaged by the Second World War.The Marshall Plan was to act as a connecting element, and also bind the countries to the West. -
Division of Germany
Allied powers divided Germany into 4 zones -
Berlin Airlift
Russia believed that it would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France and the U.S. out of the city for good. However, U.S. and British airplanes decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. -
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. The western powers instituted an airlift that lasted nearly a year and delivered much-needed supplies and relief to West Berlin. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is established by 12 Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. The military alliance, which provided for a collective self-defense against Soviet aggression, greatly increased American influence in Europe. -
Arms Race
The U.S. discovered that the Soviets were in the process of positioning nuclear missiles in Communist Cuba. The United States sends naval blockade to stop Soviet ships carrying missiles to Cuba. -
Korean War
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.As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
During his presidency, Eisenhower managed Cold War-era tensions with the Soviet Union under the looming threat of nuclear weapons, ended the war in Korea in 1953 and authorized a number of covert anti-communist operations by the CIA around the world. -
Hydrogen Bomb
After the Soviet atomic bomb success, the idea of building a hydrogen bomb received new impetus in the United States. In this type of bomb, deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) are fused into helium, thereby releasing energy. There is no limit on the yield of this weapon. -
Joseph Stalin dies
He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination—and as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of between 8 million and 10 million of his own people. -
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. Though he largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, he instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by placing nuclear weapons 90 miles from Florida. At home, he initiated a process of “de-Stalinization” that made Soviet society less repressive. -
Vietnam War
The war began in 1954, after the rise to power Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against the backdrop of an intense Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. -
Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. -
Space Race
USSR continued its lead in space exploration with the first person in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who orbited earth in Vostok 1, April 12, 1961. Less than a month later Allan Shepard became the first American in space. That same month, President Kennedy created the Apollo program designed to land a person on the moon “before the decade is out.” -
Hungarian Revolution
The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. In response, Communist Party officials appointed Imre Nagy, a former premier who had been dismissed from the party for his criticisms of Stalinist policies, as the new premier. -
Fidel Castro
During that time, Castro’s regime was successful in reducing illiteracy, stamping out racism and improving public health care, but was widely criticized for stifling economic and political freedoms. Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States–most notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. -
U-2 Incident
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.President Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. -
Yuri Gagarin
He was a Russian Cosmonaut sent to space. He was the first man to travel in space he orbited space for an hour and 48 minutes. The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The CIA launched what its leaders believed would be the definitive strike: a full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled their homes when Castro took over. However, the invasion did not go well: The invaders were badly outnumbered by Castro’s troops, and they surrendered after less than 24 hours of fighting. -
Berlin Wall
Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of imigrants by closing its border for good. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints.At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
President John Kennedy notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. -
Strategic Arms Limitation Talkes
This was one of the first steps to slow the arms race, negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union that were aimed at curtailing the manufacture of strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. -
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
The Soviet Union intervened in support of the Afghan communist government in its conflict with anticommunist Muslim guerrillas during the Afghan War. he new government, which had little popular support, forged close ties with the Soviet Union, launched ruthless purges of all domestic opposition, and began extensive land and social reforms that were bitterly resented by the devoutly Muslim and largely anticommunist population. -
Mikhail Gorbachev
Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985. Within five years, his revolutionary program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War, the largely political and economic rivalry between the Soviets and the United States and their allies that emerged following World War II. His actions also set the stage for the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which dissolved into 15 individual republics. -
INF Treaty
A 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. The INF Treaty eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers. -
German Reunification
A strong drive for reunification developed in East and West Germany in 1990.The economy of the East largely collapsed, and the costs of reunification and the privatization of state-owned businesses in the East pushed Germany into recession and led to increased social tensions. -
U.S.S.R Breakup
On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet flag flew over the Kremlin in Moscow for the last time.. A few days earlier, representatives from 11 Soviet republics met in the Kazakh city of Alma-Ata and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union. Instead, they declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States.
