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In September 1947, the Soviets created Cominform, the purpose of which was to enforce orthodoxy within the international communist movement and tighten political control over Soviet satellites through coordination of communist parties in the Eastern Bloc.
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Stalin instituted the Berlin Wall one major crises of the Cold War, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began the massive "Berlin airlift",
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In 1949, Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai-shek's United States-backed Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government in China, and the Soviet Union promptly created an alliance with the newly formed People's Republic of China.
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Britain, France, the United States, Canada and eight other western European countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
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One of the more significant impacts of containment was the outbreak of the Korean War. In June 1950, Kim Il-sung's North Korean People's Army invaded South Korea. Joseph Stalin "planned, prepared, and initiated" the invasion,creating "detailed plans" that were communicated to the North Koreans.
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While Stalin's death in 1953 slightly relaxed tensions, the situation in Europe remained an uneasy armed truce.[119] The Soviets, who had already created a network of mutual assistance treaties in the Eastern Bloc by 1949,[established a formal alliance therein, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955
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On the nuclear weapons front, the United States and the USSR pursued nuclear rearmament and developed long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other. In August 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile The launch of Sputnik inaugurated the Space Race. This culminated in the Apollo Moon landings, which astronaut Frank Borman later describ
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The Cuban Missile Crisis (brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before.The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations.
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The Cold War continues to influence world affairs. The post–Cold War world is considered to be unipolar, with the United States the sole remaining superpower.
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After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia drastically cut military spending, and restructuring the economy left millions unemployed. The capitalist reforms culminated in a recession in the early 1990s more severe than the Great Depression as experienced by the United States and Germany
