HISTORY DEFINITIONS

Question 1

Detente

Answer 1

The easing of hostility or strained relations, especially between countries

Question 2

Brinkmanship

Answer 2

Practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping, especially in politics

Question 3

Containment

Answer 3

The action or policy of preventing the expansion of a hostile country or influence

Question 4

Glasnost

Answer 4

(in the former Soviet Union) the policy or practice of more open consultative government and wider dissemination of information, initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985

Question 5

Perestroika

Answer 5

(in the former Soviet Union) the policy or practise of restructuring or reforming the economic and political system. Originally referred to increased automation and labour efficiency, but come to entail greater awareness of economic markets and the ending of central planning

Question 6

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)

Answer 6

A doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender

Question 7

Arms Race

Answer 7

a competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons

Question 8

Space Race

Answer 8

the competition between nations regarding achievements in the field of space exploration

Question 9

Missile Gap

Answer 9

Was the Cold War term used in the US for the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR’s missiles in comparison with its own

Question 10

Peaceful Coexistence

Answer 10

A theory developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of primarily Marxist-Leninist foreign policy so that they could peacefully coexist with non-socialist states

Question 11

De-Stalinisation

Answer 11

An effort after the death of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin to soften some of the repressive measures use by his government

Question 12

Thaw

Answer 12

To make less tense or hostile

Question 13

Democratic Captialism

Answer 13

Is a political, economic and social ideology that involves the combination of a democratic political system and a capitalist economic system

Question 14

Iron Curtain

Answer 14

A national barrier separating the former Soviet bloc and the West prior to the decline of communism

Question 15

Superpower

Answer 15

a very powerful and influential nation