THE COLD WAR

The Cold War was born out of the 1945 Yalta Conference to define areas of responsibility in a post-world war world. Stalin gained most, communist governments existing in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania by 1947, with Czechoslovakia and East Germany to follow.
Yugoslavia became communist under Tito but retained independence. Berlin itself was split into 4 zones – the USSR, US, Britain and France – but was in East Germany, only accessible by a ‘corridor’ to the west.

PACTS AND THINGS

In 1948 the 3 western powers created the state of West Germany, the Soviet response being to blockade Berlin. The west responded with the Berlin Air Lift, supplying the city and daring the Soviets to shoot down the planes.
The blockade was lifted in May 1949. To stop further expansion of communism, in 1949 the west devised NATO, the Soviets responding with the Warsaw Pact, mass armies beginning to appear on both sides.
Continued migration to the west became a hindrance to the east, so in 1961, the Berlin Wall was built, extending to become what Churchill called the Iron Curtain, splitting Europe into two camps.
Hungary rebelled against Soviet domination in 1956, and Poland in 1968, both uprisings put down by the Soviet Red Army. But things nearly got out of hand in 1962.

THE NUCLEAR THREAT

In 1959 Fidel Castro won a revolution in Cuba, turning the country to communism and friendship with the USSR. The Soviets had become the 3rd nuclear power in 1949, and in 1962 a US spyplane photographed a missile site under construction in Cuba.
Kennedy put the island under naval quarantine and threatened nuclear war if the site was not dismantled. Powerless in naval terms, the USSR backed down, but began building up their navy from this point.
But a more rational form of diplomacy arose. Throughout the period MAD, or Mutally Assured Destruction, was the policy of deterrence, both sides having thousands of nuclear warheads, the idea being that neither side could win a war.

END GAME

In 1963 a nuclear test ban treaty was signed, followed by Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT. And whilst espionage was ripe throughout the period, relations settled down to detente.
By the late 1980s, the Soviets faced trouble. In Poland the trade union Solidarity under Lech Walesa rose to sweep away communism. In the Kremlin the communists of the Soviet Union had realised the west was spending their way to victory, the Soviet economy unable to afford the arms race.
Out of this realisation, Gorbechov, a more moderate leader, rose. The INF Treaty was signed in 1988, limiting intermediate nuclear weapons, followed by reduction talks. Spurred on by Polish freedom, peaceful uprisings erupted throughout the Warsaw Pact and in 1989, German youth ripped down the Berlin Wall, uniting the two Germanies.
The Soviet infra-structure began to break down, crystallised in Boris Yeltsin, who, after a communist hardline attempt to depose Gorbechov, spurred on the people to rise.
Communism was swept away, Yeltsin becoming the President of a new Russia.

TODAY

Today, that new Russia is democratic, but under Putin, old-style central control is raising its head once more. In the west, NATO struggles to find a role, peacekeeping the new ethos following the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ambitions of a Greater Serbia.
Following wars in Croatia, Bosnia and intrigues in Kosovo, NATO finds itself in a new form of protectorate, keeping opposing hatreds apart. However, communism affected more than just Europe, as we shall see in the next post.

© Anthony North, February 2008

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