Key Terms Flashcards
Cold War
The rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States that divided much of Europe into a Soviet-aligned Communist bloc and a U.S. aligned capitalist bloc between 1945 and 1989.
Displaced Persons
Postwar refugees, including 13 million Germans, former Nazi prisoners and forced laborers, and orphaned children.
Truman Doctrine
America’s policy geared to containing communism to those countries already under Soviet control.
Marshall Plan
American plan for providing economic aid to western Europe to help it rebuild.
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)
An economic organization of Communist states meant to help rebuild East Bloc countries under Soviet auspices.
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments.
Warsaw Pact
Soviet-backed military alliance of East Bloc Communist countries in Europe.
Economic Miracle
Term contemporaries used to describe rapid economic growth, often based on the consumer sector, in post World War II western Europe.
Christian Democrats
Center-right political parties that rose to power in western Europe after the Second World War.
Common Market
The European Economic Community, created by six western and central European countries in the West Bloc in 1957 as part of a larger search for European unity.
Socialist Realism
Artistic movement that followed the dictates of Communist ideals, enforced by state control in the Soviet Union and East Bloc countries in the 1950s and 1960s.
de-Stalinization
The liberalization of the post-Stalin Soviet Union led by reformer Nikita Khrushchev.
Decolonization
The postwar reversal of Europe’s overseas expansion caused by the rising demand of colonized peoples themselves, the declining power of European nations and the freedoms promised by U.S. and Soviet ideals.
Nonalignment
Policy of post colonial governments to remain neutral in the Cold War and play both the United States and the Soviet Union for what they could get.
Neocolonialism
A postcolonial system that perpetuates Western economic exploration in former colonial territories.
