The Collapse of the Soviet Union and Modern Russia and Yugoslavia Flashcards
What was the Warsaw Pact?
It was a collective defense treaty between the Soviet Union and seven other satellite states as a method to counteract NATO.
What was COMECON?
It was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist states elsewhere in the world.
What occurred in Hungary that showed the Soviet Union’s control over satellite states?
In 1956, the Hungarians tried to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, establish Hungary as a neutral nation, and create a multiparty system. The Soviets crushed the reform movement and killed thousands.
Why was the Berlin Wall constructed?
East German workers took to the streets first to criticize the government’s plan to increase productivity, then later to demand greater political freedom.
Who won the power struggle after Stalin’s death?
Nikita Khrushchev
How did Khrushchev depart from Stalin’s policies?
In a secret meeting, Khrushchev attacked Stalin’s old policies, saying that Stalin’s government had deviated from the political program of Marxist-Leninism. He said that the only reforms that would be acceptable under Marxist-Leninism.
How did tensions rise under Khrushchev?
Although he made a successful visit to the United States, tensions between the two nations heightened in the following year when the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 plane over Russia. The two superpowers nearly went to war when the Soviets placed missiles in Cuba, but President Kennedy’s skillful handling of the crisis, however, allowed both nations to avoid the specter of a nuclear nightmare.
Who succeeded the relative liberalization of Khrushchev?
Leonid Brezhnev
What was Brezhnev’s domestic policy?
He did not reinstate the terror of the Stalin years, but sought to strengthen the role of the party bureaucracy and the KGB and encouraged a clampdown on reform.
What was Brezhnev’s foreign policy? How did he apply this?
Brezhnev created the Brezhnev doctrine, which said that the Soviet Union would support with all the means at its disposal any established Communist state in Eastern Europe that was threatened by internal strife. Using this doctrine, he put down the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, which sought more humanistic socialism.
How did Pope John Paul II influence instability in Poland?
He was appointed as the pope, and he was strongly anti-communist, which raised tensions within Poland, as he was very popular.
What was Solidarity?
It was a Polish union made by Lech Walsea and other workers at the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk. It survived the declaration of martial law and being outlawed by going underground.
How did Solidarity come to power?
After the Polish economy tanked in 1989, the government was forced to negotiate with Walsea and Solidarity and promised multiparty elections, which the Communists lost, and Solidarity took many seats in the parliament.
Who succeeded Brezhnev?
Mikhail Gorbachev
What was so remarkable about 1989?
It witnessed Communist-led regimes peacefully collapsing in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Albania. In East Germany, the collapse of the regime in that year was followed by the reunification of East and West Germany and the fall of the Berlin wall. Romania was an exception to this peaceful transformation, as the violent dictator Nicoale Ceausescu desperately tried to hold on to power, but his government collapsed and he and his wife were executed.
