How did the cold war end

Who Won the Cold War?

There’s an African proverb that says: «When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.» For more than 45 years, the elephantine superpowers of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States fought the Cold War — and some might argue the grass was, in this case, the rest of the world.

While the Cold War was largely a war of threats, there was plenty of real violence, too. The aggression between the U.S. and USSR spilled over into places like Angola and Nicaragua. The two nations fought proxy wars, conflicts between warring parties of a third nation that were supported by the U.S. and USSR. The soil of European nations served as nuclear missile sites for both sides.

In addition to the 15 member states of the USSR, there were seven Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe where populations were repressed and subjugated by communist rule. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet condoned kidnapping and murder of the leftist population under an American-backed regime. And the global psyche was plagued by anxiety over possible nuclear war.

The tense standoff that characterized the Cold War ended when the USSR collapsed completely in 1991, becoming a number of independent countries and the Russian Federation. This collapse was preceded by revolutions in the satellite states of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. When the USSR fell, the Soviet states dissolved.

The end of the Cold War came so abruptly that even years later, disbelief gripped the West. A 1998 episode of the American TV show «The Simpsons» depicts a Russian delegate at the United Nations referring to his country as the Soviet Union. «Soviet Union?» asks the American delegate. «I thought you guys broke up.» «Nyet! That’s what we wanted you to think!» the Soviet delegate replies and laughs ominously [source: IMDB].

This scene underscores a hallmark of the Cold War’s conclusion: uncertainty. What exactly led to the downfall of the Soviet Union? Was the collapse of the USSR inevitable, or did America hasten its disintegration?

Did the U.S. Beat the Soviet Union?

Historians who believe that the U.S. won the Cold War largely agree that American victory was guaranteed through finances. The United States bled Soviets coffers dry through proxy wars and the nuclear arms race. But this financial drain may not have been possible without the unprecedented stockpiling of nuclear weapons.

The world came as close as it ever has to the brink of nuclear war between Oct. 18 and 29, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The showdown over the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles south of the tip of Florida in the U.S., culminated in the USSR’s withdrawal. In a flurry of communications, Russia agreed to remove the missiles in Cuba if the U.S. agreed not to invade the island. The U.S. also agreed to withdraw its missiles from Turkey. The situation was tense enough to inspire the creation of the hotline between Washington and Moscow to head off any future nuclear tensions.

Throughout the 1960s, the U.S. continued to bolster its nuclear arsenal. However, during the ’70s, the Ford and Carter administrations favored sharp criticism of Soviet policies over stockpiling nuclear arms. When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he reinvigorated defense spending, increasing the defense budget by 35 percent.

Many historians credit Reagan with dealing the death blows that ultimately brought down the Soviet Union. Perhaps the one that signaled the end for the USSR was Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). This uncompleted project, popularly called Star Wars, would have cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It called for the weaponization of outer space — a shield comprised of a network of nuclear missiles and lasers that would intercept a Soviet nuclear first strike. The SDI initiative was the pinnacle of both the space race and the arms race between the U.S. and the USSR.

Star Wars was criticized as fantasy by defense observers on both sides of the Iron Curtain (the term coined by Winston Churchill that describes the boundary in Europe between communism and the rest of the world). But Reagan was committed to the project, and the Soviet’s flagging, state-owned economy simply couldn’t match this escalation in defense spending.

When Did the Cold War End?

The Cold War was mostly between the United States and the USSR.

After World War II, there was a growing political, economic, and military tension between the US (and its allies) and USSR (and its allies). This was known as the Cold War. The cold war was an ideological war rather than a military one. The Cold War roughly lasted between 1947 and 1991. The collapse of the USSR saw the official end of the Cold War in 1991. The USSR, a Marxist state, was trying to gain supremacy over their rival, the United States, a capitalist state. The name «Cold War» was used because there was no physical conflict between the two sides. Military might was at the center stage with the use of proxies to advance the ideology. The US possessed weaponry power with the advent of a nuclear bomb that had ended the Second World War. The USSR on the other side had the largest army.

The Cause of the Cold War

Despite having fought together as allies during World War II, the relationship between the United States and the USSR collapsed after the war. The alliance between the two states had been an alliance of convenience. There was distrust between the two nations even during World War II, and therefore, the cold war was a war of pro-Communists against pro-Capitalists.

What Were the Effects of the Cold War?

The first major crisis was the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49. It was soon followed by the Chinese civil war and the Korean War where the communist USSR triumphed. In 1956, the Hungarian revolution was halted by the Soviet Union. At the height of cold war, several crises which include the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In 1968, the Prague Spring liberalization program ended. In 1975, the Vietnam War ended with a victory to the communists. The 1970s saw the start of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and US establishing relations with the Republic of China. However, the talks collapsed in 1979 with the ignition of war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. The period of the 1980s was heralded with high tension that forced US to increase diplomatic, economic, and military pressures on the USSR. There was increased liberalization pressure on USSR after the new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, took power in the mid-1980s. The pressure climaxed in 1989 culminating into a wave of peaceful revolutions. The Communist Party of the USSR lost power and was subsequently banned following a botched coup attempt in August of 1991. In December 1991, USSR collapsed and was formally dissolved, and therefore the US remained as the world’s only superpower.

Repercussions of the Cold War

The Cold War continues to have a significant influence on world affairs today. The US remains the world superpower but Russia, which is a remnant of the Soviet Union, still holds its ground. An underground military intelligence war, space wars, and economic wars continue decades after the cold war.

Cold War

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The Cold War was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed after World War II. This hostility between the two superpowers was first given its name by George Orwell in an article published in 1945. Orwell understood it as a nuclear stalemate between “super-states”: each possessed weapons of mass destruction and was capable of annihilating the other.

The Cold War began after the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, when the uneasy alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other started to fall apart. The Soviet Union began to establish left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe, determined to safeguard against a possible renewed threat from Germany. The Americans and the British worried that Soviet domination in eastern Europe might be permanent. The Cold War was solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid had brought certain Western countries under American influence and the Soviets had established openly communist regimes. Nevertheless, there was very little use of weapons on battlefields during the Cold War. It was waged mainly on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and lasted until 1991.

The Cold War came to a close gradually. The unity in the communist bloc was unraveling throughout the 1960s and ’70s as a split occurred between China and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Japan and certain Western countries were becoming more economically independent. Increasingly complex international relationships developed as a result, and smaller countries became more resistant to superpower cajoling.

The Cold War truly began to break down during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachev, who changed the more totalitarian aspects of the Soviet government and tried to democratize its political system. Communist regimes began to collapse in eastern Europe, and democratic governments rose in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, followed by the reunification of West and East Germany under NATO auspices. Gorbachev’s reforms meanwhile weakened his own communist party and allowed power to shift to the constituent governments of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, giving rise to 15 newly independent nations, including a Russia with an anticommunist leader.

In the late 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. In 1962 the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis, brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

The conflict showed that both superpowers were wary of using their nuclear weapons against each other for fear of mutual atomic annihilation. The signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty followed in 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. Still, after the crisis, the Soviets were determined not to be humiliated by their military inferiority again, and they began a buildup of conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Read a brief summary of this topic

Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1947.

A brief treatment of the Cold War follows. For full treatment, see international relations.

How did the cold war end

You missed your true calling. You should have been a teacher or professor. This is a great article, well researched, unbiased, fair and informative. I’m proud I’d your accomplishments, Theo. Keep up the good work.

You missed your true calling. You should have been a teacher or professor. This is a great article, well researched, unbiased, fair and informative. I’m proud of your accomplishments, Theo. Keep up the good work.

I have no comments for such a wonderful,informative,complete,wellwritten article, CONGRATULATIONS.

A VERY NICE HISTORICAL RECAP. NOBODY CUD HAVE DONE IT THE WAY U DID THEO. TNX.

Furthermore, HUAC was established by a liberal Democrat, not a conservative Republican, which McCarthy was.

And it turns out that the man who started it was, in fact, a Soviet agent himself:

Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954) was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York and a New York State Supreme Court Justice.

He played a key role in establishing the committee that would become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he used to attack fascists, including Nazi sympathizers, and suspected communists.

Authors Allen Weinstein, and Alexander Vassiliev said in 1999 that Soviet files indicate he was a paid agent of the NKVD.

The Boston Globe stated: “Dickstein ran a lucrative trade in illegal visas for Soviet operatives before brashly offering to spy for the NKVD, the KGB’s precursor, in return for cash.”

Sam Roberts in The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case stated
“Not even Julius Rosenberg knew that Samuel Dickstein had been on the NKGB’s payroll.”

Kurt Stone wrote “he was, for many years, a ‘devoted and reliable’ Soviet agent whom his handlers nicknamed ‘Crook.’ “

House hearing “conducted” by a Senator? Bzzzt! Sorry. We have a lovely parting gift for you – a complete of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1962 to further your education.

@BlogDog: You’d be surprised how many errors are in the Encyclopedia Britannica: 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica. For your reference, according to the same study, the oft lamented Wikipedia was at 3.86. 😉

your article has some poor information it dosn’t get much into much detail unlike Britannica encyclopedia

I used this think your lists on Listverse were good….. This just blew them out of the water. Amazing article Theo. Best thing I’ve ever read online. Ever!!

Uh, Senator McCarthy had nought to do with the House Committee of Un-American activities. You have swallowed the commie kool-aid. It was McCarthy who was smeared and lied about. The commie loving media who spread the lies, as they still do to this day.

How’s your votes for the media loved massive Marxist Obama working for you?

Oh, stop deleting comments that prove your ignorance.

@Markon: Theo is Greek I believe, so I’m afraid he didn’t get to vote for “Marxist Obama”. 😉

I am reading this site pretty much everyday, but this is the very first time I feel the need to leave a comment. This is probably the best and most neutral article I have ever read about the Cold War. I simply can’t believe how one could write so beautifully and with so many details all these facts in only one article. Congratulations to the author and the site. This article is an educational and historically accurate gem.

Well researched? Really? The paragraph “The outstanding features of McCarthyism…” is not well researched! Have you people done any actual research? Like you know – all the available info. Sheesh you’d think research would be easier now that we have it at our finger tips.

@Andy: Nobody bats 1000. Theo was researching a huge time period and having to try to pick out the most important bits and then sum them up in a very small number of words. The above mistake has been fixed.

There are numerous inaccuracies re: McCarthy. Senator Joseph McCarthy never sat on the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. Senators don’t sit on House committees, by definition. The Hollywood Blacklist was regulated by the industry itself, not Congress.

The VENONA papers, in conjunction with declassified KGB files, show conclusively that there were Soviet spies at the highest levels of the American government, in the media, and working for defense contractors. This includes Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, White House advisor Lauchlan Currie, and Pentagon signal room clerk Annie Lee Moss.

There are many errors in this article. When Winston Churchill gave his “iron curtain” speech in 1946 he was not the “British leader”. Clement Attlee was. Senator McCarthy did not set up the House Un-American Activities Commission. He never even sat on it. The USSR’s famous 1972 basketball victory over the USA did not happen in Berlin. It happened in Munich along with the rest of the ’72 games. I could go on but will leave it at that.
Regards,
Peter
Wales, UK.

@Peter Crawford: Churchill was still a major British leader at that time. Theo did not say he was Prime Minister, just a “British leader”. He would, of course, go on to be Prime Minister again for a period in the 1950s.
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Thanks for catching the Berlin/Munich thing. Fixed! And please do go on. We are extremely concerned with accuracy here and if you ever spot mistakes in articles, please do point them out (hopefully politely). Nobody bats 1000. I’ve personally found several mistakes over the years I’ve been running this site in the OED, Encyclopedia Britannica, The Straight Dope, Snopes, etc. But we do try really, really hard to make sure articles are perfectly accurate and make sure we’re quick to fix any mistakes later found. So please, go on! 🙂

just curious how long comments that challenge some of your “facts” stay in moderation?

@AmicusC: All comments by new posters are held in moderation until me (the editor here) checks them. If it’s on a weekend, this can be all weekend. On weekdays, it just depends on what’s going on. This is a really busy time of year for this site (lots of things going on that will be announced soon), so right now longer. However, once you get a couple comments approved, your comments will no longer be held in moderation. It’s just a spam prevention thing. We literally get thousands of spam comments per day submitted. Most of them are filtered by our anti-spam bots, but if not for this added “moderation” layer for new commentors, quite a few would get through. Funny enough, sometimes it’s even hard for me to tell whether something is a spam comment or a real one. Spammers get more and more clever every year. 🙂

How can you write an article on the Cold War without mentioning Ronald Reagan? It was his visionary leadership in the 80’s that helped bring about the end of the Soviet empire. From covertly funding the Solidarity movement in Poland to openly demanding the destruction of the Berlin Wall, Reagan’s influence was essential to the West’s victory over Soviet communism.

Amazing, Senator McCarthy was so evil he took over Congress.

It is important to get facts as correct as possible, please read the following from the Wikipedia link you provided: “McCarthy’s hearings are often incorrectly conflated with the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). HUAC is best known for the investigation of Alger Hiss and for its investigation of the Hollywood film industry, which led to the blacklisting of hundreds of actors, writers, and directors. HUAC was a House committee, and as such had no formal connection with McCarthy, who served in the Senate…”

@Steamboat Jon: “It is important to get facts as correct as possible…” I agree completely! Also, thank you for being polite in pointing out a mistake. 🙂

“the notorious “Hearings” of the House Un-American Activities Committee conducted by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin”

Well actually they weren’t. I’ll leave it to you to look it up.

Really great write-up. I agree that you should be a history professor. Your articles are always so informative and interesting. Would it be ok if we make suggestions on articles for you to write — you can be like our own personal historian. 🙂

Misstating the facts about the HUAC was an editing error. Theodoros II regrets the error and salutes the alert and intelligent readers who caught it. TIFO readers are kickass great.

No, it wasn’t an editing error. It was a bald misstatement of facts that have been known since the Venona Project.

Does it always take this site 12 hours to ‘moderate comments’ or only when they are well-cited refutations of liberal propaganda like yours?

@Kathy: Theo does not have the ability to moderate comments. Only I do. As for moderation time, that varies wildly, as stated in a comment elsewhere in this thread.

@Kathy Shaidle: Theo was simply saying in his double checking of the facts during editing, he didn’t catch the mistake. That can happen. I, also, should have caught that when in turn editing Theo’s article but here we are. 🙂
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On your “bald misstatement of facts” and “liberal propaganda” comments, are you under the impression that Theo is trying to push some political agenda here? For your reference, he’s Greek, so I don’t think he’s got any such strong leanings in American politics. As for me, depending on the article, I’ve been accused of being extremely politically bias on both sides of the coin, which hopefully means I’m doing a good job of not favoring one side or the other, but taking the facts as they come in the articles I write.

If crumbling and political struc were what brought down the Soviet Union, why didn’t it collapse in 1921? Or during the famines of the 1930’s? Or during the Five Year Plan and Purge trials? Why has North Korea endured?

You need to accept that Reagan’s leadership in Eastern Europe against the Soviets played a powerful role in the end of the Cold War.

So this is the result of years of Liberal propaganda. SENATOR McCarthy had nothing to do with the HOUSE UnAmerican Activities Committee. Senator McCarthy tried to get the Senate to investigate people who had already been listed as possible Communists who worked for gov’t departments – but Democrats refused to take action & censured him for trivial “scandals.” After McCarthy passed away his “wild” accusations that places like the State Department were riddled with Communist spies & sympathizers proved to be woefully underestimated. Many were high level bureaucrats.

HUAC was started by a liberal Democrat who turned out to be working for the Soviet Union.

@John: Sources? That would be fascinating if true.

Go back up the list to the kathy shaidle response you let through (missed at least one more). She gives the details and sites.

Mr theo, tear down this article!
No mention of Reagan, Thatcher or JPII in winning Cold War?
Wow. No mention of Geneva summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev? Where the we will bury you shoe banger sized up the preppy pup from Hyannis Port and found him wanting as a “why” for Cuban missile crisis?
And so on…

@Glenn: The problem there is Theo had the burden of encapsulating a huge time period with an amazing number of significant things going on in about 1000 words, which is the normal target for articles here. Obviously this one was much longer than that, but in an attempt to keep it from being 5,000 words, he had to cut some things out. 🙂

Like the truth? Does it always take this website 12 hours to ‘moderate comments’?

The article is shot through with commonplace errors about McCarthy, HUAC etc that were soundly debunked 20 years ago with Venona and other revelations from the Soviet archives.

@Kathy: Sometimes longer. 🙂 I am the only one who has the ability to moderate comments on this site. If it’s the weekend and it’s your first comment, a comment might be held in moderation all weekend. On weekdays, it depends. In this case, it’s an extremely busy time right now here with us launching about 4 new things within the month and me setting them all up. Usually I check comments first thing in the morning and then irregularly throughout the day. However, I was awake until about 5am this morning (PST) working on those aforementioned new things and so comments were checked a little late as a bit of sleep was needed. 🙂

Riiiight… there’s room for two paragraphs on McCarthyism, but none for a mention of Reagan, Thatcher, Solidarity, or western rearmament, which precipitated the end of the Cold War.

“shortly after invading Berlin, had gone on to conquer all of Eastern Europe”

is exactly backwards.

@PabloNH: Are you under the impression that Theo is trying to push some sort of political agenda here? If so, see my comment to Kathy.
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As to your second comment, the Soviet occupation of part of Germany, including part of Berlin, began in 1945, at the end of WWII. They wouldn’t go on to conquer much of Eastern Europe until after.

1. No. I am under the impression that you have no idea how the Cold War ended.

2. Or how it began. You have the order of events backwards; Berlin was one of the last places the Soviets occupied.

@PabloNH: Do you have some sources on that one? From everything I’ve read, here’s one source for your reading pleasure, they took Berlin at the very end of the war and continued to occupy East Berlin after the Battle of Berlin, which made it quite the hotspot for the early days of the Cold War.

Took down all the comments pointing out your many mistakes. Domna says ” You should have been a teacher or professor”. This is unfortunately true.

As a general note to everyone, I’m noticing here a lot of comments instead of just saying “Hey, I noticed a mistake…” and politely pointing it out, are more being extremely confrontational and even in some cases insulting. As I said elsewhere, we are extremely concerned with making sure everything is perfectly accurate here. It’s one of the main reasons I started this site, to provide a place where you know what you’re reading has been well researched by highly credentialed authors (Theo being one of the most highly credentialed of the bunch). Further, we don’t abandon old articles, re-checking facts if any mistakes are found. (Nobody, and I mean nobody, bats 1000, no matter how hard we try).
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That said, rudeness (or inappropriate language- this is a family site) is never appreciated and I’ll sometimes delete such comments regardless of what the commentor was talking about. For your reference, Theo does not have the ability to delete comments by other people. So any deletions are not by the author, but by me. I do then re-research and fix the mistakes if any are found, but if you want your comments approved, a little civility is needed.
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In the end, it’s not whether a comment is pointing out a mistake, whether in the article itself or in someone’s comment below it, as you see from all those that have been approved here- it’s the general civility in the comment. Basically, I don’t appreciate commentors attacking other commentors nor my authors. It’s just not the type of community I want here. And, believe me, in another popular site I’ve run, I made the mistake of allowing such things in the name of getting more user interaction. It proved to be a major mistake.

Oh, by the way. Reagan won the cold war.

VENONA VENONA VENONA VENONA
Google is your friend!

@venona: A friend who never calls? 😉 As for the “Venona” part, see Theo’s comments on that below.

In Dat I think Otherwise True enough though.

Why have you not yet posted Kathy Shaidle’s replies, in which she gives this article a thorough spanking?

We’re watching and waiting….

@brewin: The one where she starts with “The author is an idiot.” I don’t approve comments like that, regardless of what else is said. She could have said “The author is an idiot, but this is the greatest site in the world and the editor is both a scholar and a gentlemen,” and I would have deleted it. 😉

Well, there are sites that care about the truth, and sites that care about fragile egos. It’s clear which one this is.

@brewin: Don’t worry, our egos are intact. You can’t run a site where a couple million people a month read your work and not develop a thick skin. But, as I said, I can’t abide rudeness. For some odd reason the anonymity of the internet invariably brings out the worst in many people who would normally be civil in person. I’m told by others who run popular sites that the easy way to solve that (besides just shutting off comments, as many do) is simply to switch to using a Facebook comment system where the person’s comment shows up on their Facebook page as well- amazing how quickly people go back to being civil when people they know in real life might read their thoughts- but I hate using someone else’s system that I have no real control over long term.
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In the end, I’m always up for a good debate. I love it actually and given the amazing amount of smart, well educated people that read this site- with the majority of our readers here being Bachelor’s degree or above according to the various analytics services I use- I’ve been able to have some great discussions over the years on various topics and have learned a lot through this. It’s one of the great things about running this site.
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But starting an argument with insults, rather than facts and reason, is just a poor way to have a constructive conversation. And, frankly, in the majority of those cases, the people aren’t looking to have a good discussion over something anyways. It tends to be more about making themselves feel superior in some way, with them not really usually being interested in any actual real response- they just want people to see how *smart* they are. Or they are just comment trolling, which in either case isn’t a recipe for constructive exchange of ideas.
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Be civil, and regardless of the ideas you present, your comments will get approved here. Be rude, whether to another commenter here, an author, or myself, and you’ll have wasted your time writing it as it will get deleted. There’s enough negativity in the world without subjecting people to reading it here.
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I realize some disagree with that policy and want the freedom to call others all sorts of insulting names here rather than simply let the strength of their argument determine things, but just my personal policy. As I said elsewhere, I made the mistake on a previous site I ran in allowing that sort of thing. Certainly there ended up being a large, very active community there, but in the end it was all negativity as everyone who was interested in having civil, constructive discussions ended up leaving and what was left was a community that embodied the lowest common denominator of the internet. This time, I’m determined to see that group leave and keep around those who are actually interested in good discussions.
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So, please, point out mistakes if you see them in the articles. (I hate mistakes in articles here even more than I hate internet rudeness.) Or, add information you know that wasn’t included in the article or even theories you have on why something happened or the like. Or, if you’re not sure something’s a mistake, but think the history books got it wrong, leave a comment. I love a good debate like that. But, again, leave a comment that starts with “That’s the stupidest comment I’ve ever read, moron!” and you might as well stop writing there.

Is this the famous Theo of Listverse, Toptenz, Gunaxin etc? This guy is a legend. He’s pure awe

The account is pretty good but there’s a number of key events during the Cold War of great importance which were missed entirely. The first is the Korean War, 1950-53, which saw the first armed confrontation between the United Nations and the People’s Republic of China. This had a large Soviet involvement, as they were arming China and the North Koreans.

A second key event missed in this account was Yom Kippur in 1973. This was probably the high water mark of the Cold War, being the second and final direct confrontation between the US and the USSR.

What’s also missing here is the Soviet suppression of internal dissent within the Warsaw Pact nations, notably Hungary in 1956 and Prague Spring in 1968. These along with the Danzig strikes in Poland in the 1980s made it increasingly evident that the USSR could only retain its hegemony over eastern Europe through increasing amounts of force to suppress internal dissent.

More needs to be said about Containment as well. Kennan’s formulation led directly to the creation of NATO, which was to contain Soviet expansion into Europe. However in the 1960s John Foster Dulles expanded Containment to include Asia as well. This resulted in the creation of SEATO and was the principal factor in John F. Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson’s intervention in Vietnam.

@cgh: Thanks for that info! Good Stuff!

@cgh: You are 100% right, but I am afraid that you and some other people who complain overlook (I believe some in purpose too) the simple fact that the premise of this article was how the cold war STARTED and how it ENDED. I could have focused exclusively on the key factors that caused the cold war and the key factors that ended it. Instead I did a really honest and generous attempt to cover as much as possible inside the limit of 1500 words, but I see that some people are going to complain no matter what. Some will even accuse me for being a Cultural Marxist, a liberal idiot and why not a Soviet Spy too, right? 😉 I hope you realize that every single topic in this article could have been the main subject for a separate article. I also left the “Domino Theory” outside and I wonder how no one noticed that, since it is an extremely important part of the cold war too. I just couldn’t cover everything and I informed Daven about it before I even submit the article. I thought and hoped the readers would understand that.
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As for some readers who claim to “spank” or “school” this article. If you pay attention closely their “sources” is what some spies or journalists said and what some conspiracy theories “indicate”……….I am sorry but I can’t take into account “sources” as: “The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case stated” or ” Reagan won the cold war” and so on.
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As for the Venona project, last time I checked it remained a top secret for decades and was not officially declassified until 1995. Still many scholars and historians reject it and consider it a topic of great dispute to this day, yet some people in here will act like it’s the absolute authority and the one and only source of the one and only truth. I believe that when it comes to history, we should not be that arrogant about things we didn’t even witness with our own eyes. What we ALL know is what we have been taught. I don’t see why some people act like they have the key of wisdom and knowledge.
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Like I said to Daven, I always try to write my articles as neutrally as possible and I respect History as a topic and all its secrets that we might never know. I try to go by what we know as the official version of history. Did some of you really expect me to write something like “Reagan smashed the Soviets and won the war like a boss?” Really now? This is a serious site, not Cracked.
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If I wanted to be biased and play the “Conspiracy Theory” game too, trust me guys I could have easily done so and I could also hint that the moon landing was a hoax, or accuse the USSR of disguising men as women to dominate in women’s Olympics events. Even though I find conspiracy theories exciting in most cases, I will try to seek historical accuracy even if it’s against my personal beliefs and theories. I went by the official books here and if you exclude the mistake about HUAC, I don’t think I did that bad.
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In my opinion, some of the people embarrass themselves with this kind of commentary and fanaticism about their “facts” with no basis in reality. So they would like to read a piece whose author slanders one side and makes the other look great? If that’s the case, I suggest they watch Rocky 4 or Battleship Potemkin and pick sides. Now if some of you got the sources and 100% accurate information about the Venona project, how Reagan won the cold war and so on, please share with us and enlighten the world about matters that historians and analysts have failed to give certain answers for decades now.
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And hey Nick, I don’t know about being “famous” but I think I am the Theo you are talking about 🙂

Theo, entire LIBRARIES have been written about every single paragraph, not just essays. The problem any writer has with the start and finish of anything is that it’s difficult to do without a huge introductory section of what came before. Under the circumstances, given the space, this was a pretty good job as I noted at the outset.

Part of the problem in coming to terms with the Cold War is that we’re still too close to it. We have only just barely passed its apparent conclusion. It’s going to take at least another half-century to understand the full scope of its impacts. It’s only now, for example, that we are having a full understanding of the consequences of WWI, let alone its continuation WWII.

Another part of the problem is that far too much of the critical information about the conflict is still sitting locked up in government archives. And until its released, our knowledge is going to remain highly incomplete.

A final point is that the Cold War could only be a cold war, not a hot one. There were at least three occasions in which the US and USSR would have gone to war with each other in any other century. One thing and one thing only prevented that. Mutual fear of nuclear weapons. No one was willing to go to war when fighting meant losing far more than could ever be won. And this, mutual fear if things got out of hand, was the defining characteristic of the Cold War. So, to a degree unheard of in human history, it was fought only by proxies on a highly limited basis.

Ever hear of the Berlin Blockade? Think it might have something to do with how the Cold War began?

@PabloNH: Yes, he has heard of the Berlin Blockade. His knowledge on this particular subject is pretty remarkable actually. I really should maybe post the email back and forth Theo and I had while he was working on this. 🙂 For the record, Theo thought this topic needed to be broken up into many separate articles, and wanted to. He emailed me while working on it lamenting the fact that he was having to leave out an amazing amount of interesting stuff that really should be mentioned, for the sake of keeping the word count reasonable.
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I don’t think people are fully appreciating the difficulty of encapsulating a subject that could easily be expanded into a good series of books on just the cause of the war alone, in such a way that it’s realistically consumable on an entertainment site.
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Yes, there is a lot of very significant things that happened during the Cold War that aren’t mentioned. Check Theo’s references if you want more information on them- he even purposefully included some extras just for people who wanted to learn more on areas that weren’t covered in the article. Or, if you’re particularly knowledgeable on the subject (which I’m sure some of you are), please expound upon it here. Those make phenomenal comments!
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For a time, I used to explicitly mention that below articles- that if you know some related interesting fact not included in the article, leave it in the comments! I did this as many, many of the topics dealt with here, people have written full books on them, so we certainly can’t include all the interesting stuff. While we don’t go all OMGFacts on you, we like more detail and drastically better researched than that, we also can’t go all Frances FitzGerald on you either. It just doesn’t work on an entertainment site. Given that the majority of complaints here on our articles are that we are too detailed most of the time, I like to think we usually strike a happy medium.
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To be fair to Theo, he was apparently right based on the comments here, in that I should have let him break it up into many distinct articles. 😉

First let me say that I agree that much of the inflammatory language and personal insults that have accompanied some of the criticisms of your article are unnecessary and counter-productive. Part of the reason for such hostility from writers who take a dim view of communist ideology is that we (yes, I include myself in that group) have read and listened our entire lives to a never-ending army of statist appologists who ignore, deny or downplay the deprivations of Marxist regimes or who attempt to draw a moral equivalency between Marxist regimes and the United States. 20th century history is pretty clear that such a moral equivalency is wholly unsupported by the facts. Please allow for the lifetime frustration of those of us who have had to listen to people who, with a straight face and occasionally, with faux indignation, have defended the most prolifically murderous regimes which have ever existed. In our view, the Cold War really was, undeniably, a battle between good and evil.

Having said that, it is understandable that there will be substantial disagreement as to how to describe the cold war in a very limited space. Here are my two cents of input:

1. The Cold War was fundamentally ideological. The US was founded on the idea that a centralized govt. should be vigorously and formally restricted in its spheres of activity in order to prevent that govt. from becoming tyrannical. The USSR, on the other hand, was founded on the implicit idea that govt. should have unlimited power including the power to violently suppress any and all opposition. The US attempted to maximize personal political freedom within a practical system of govt. capable of overseeing a large country while the USSR system simply sought to maximize political power and control using a sales pitch which promised a form of unattainable utopia.
2. The Cold War conflict went way beyond mere military confrontation to include the cultural and philosophical undermining of both unaligned and aligned countries as well as the US and USSR themselves. Since the USSR could not generate wealth or technological innovation with anywhere near the alacrity of the US, it could never really hope to defeat the US militarily since the US could always pay much more to project its cultural and military influence. Also, the reality of personal freedom in the US was a powerful counterpoint to the mere promise of utopia provided by Marxist ideology. What all this meant is that the only way for the USSR to realistically defeat the US was by internal subversion.
3. The leftist narrative regarding “one of the darkest and most illiberal ideas in [US] political and social history – McCarthyism” has to be viewed in the context of point 2 above. Humans react very negatively when they feel that they are being manipulated, thus, it is imperative for attempts at internal subversion to remain clandestine. McCarthy openly and publicly pointed fingers at the very real effort by Soviet backed agents to undermine the US govt by influencing govt policy. McCarthy’s and other anti-communists’ efforts were and are intolerable to Marxist agitators and the so the “red-scare” narrative continues to be pushed to this day. Much of the alleged controversy over Venona, I believe, is really just part of the effort to delegitimize any concerted attempt to shine light on the activities of those promoting Marxist ideology. It struck me as I waited in line at a supermarket soon after the fall of the Berlin wall, that, although the market had analog wristwatches with a white face upon which a red hammer and cycle were printed on display for sale (a kitchy trinket, presumably), that same market would never think of selling the same type of watch with a swastika printed on it. Marxist and communist ideas are still taught in a sympathetic way in educational institutions throughout the West despite the frequent declaration that communism is dead.
4. Ignoring Reagan’s role in the collapse of the USSR is irresponsible. Before Reagan, the US had been pursuing the policy of detente – essentially a policy of non-confrontational co-existence with the USSR. There are differing opinions as to whether or not detente was a policy promoted in the US by Soviet agents, but it is a fact that detente was, from the perspective of the USSR, the best possible policy for the US to adopt since it allowed the Soviets to vigorously export Marxist ideology unopposed while continuing its efforts to infiltrate and undermine the US, culturally and philosophically. Reagan explicitly rejected Sec. of State Henry Kissinger’s public declaration that the US had lost the ideological battle with the USSR and that it was his [Kissinger’s] job as SofS to negotiate the US’s best 2nd place finish. Reagan threw out detente entirely, instead adopting a policy of deliberate, unapologetic diplomatic and ideological confrontation from a position of military superiority. Foreign countries have erected statues of Reagan in prominent public spaces. Has any country erected statues of Gorbachev? Mentioning Reagan is not merely partisan or ideological cheerleading. John Paul II, Thatcher, Lech Walesa, Solidarity and Reagan are at least as important to mention in the context of the end of the Cold War as Gorbachev.
5. Identifying the exact beginning and end of the Cold War is probably not possible in a definitive way. Theo’s answer are reasonable, I think, although it should be mentioned that the ideological conflict between the Soviets and the US predated WWII and existed even during the war. The Soviets and the US were briefly allies of convenience and never truly friendly.
6. A couple of factoids derived from an ex-patriot Ukranian that I know:

Yeltsin was standing on a tank taken from a museum in the iconic photos of his defiance. The tank was a great prop, but had no ammunition.

The coup by the hardline communist at the very end failed largely because they had not caught up with technology. The hardliners seized the tv and radio stations thinking that by doing so they would prevent communication amongst their opponents. The opponents, however, were able to communicate and co-ordinate using phones and fax machines.

The Cold War

Three events heralded the end of the Cold War: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Each was brought about or shaped by the demands and actions of ordinary Europeans, who were determined to instigate change.

People power

These changes came at the end of a decade where ordinary people had challenged socialist governments. These pressures undermined and eroded political authority in Soviet bloc nations. With Moscow no longer enforcing adherence to socialist policies, Soviet-bloc governments relented, allowing political reforms or relaxing restrictions such as border controls.

In East Germany, the epicentre of Cold War division, popular unrest brought about a change in leadership and the collapse of the Berlin Wall (November 1989). Within a few months, the two Germanys were rejoined after 45 years of division.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was also in its death throes. After two decades of economic stagnation, the USSR was weakening internally. As the historian John Lewis Gaddis put it, the USSR was a “troubled triceratops”: it remained powerful and intimidating but on the inside its “digestive, circulatory and respiratory systems were slowly clogging up then shutting down”. Mikhail Gorbachev‘s twin reforms, glasnost and perestroika, failed to save the beast.

German reunification

The demise of the Berlin Wall cleared the way for the reunification of Germany. Internal borders between East and West Germany, as well as those in the divided city of Berlin, were quickly removed. West German chancellor Helmut Kohl seized the moment by drafting a ten-point plan for German reunification, without consulting NATO allies or members of his own party.

While most Germans welcomed the move, the prospect of a reunified Germany did not please everyone. It was particularly troubling for older Europeans with lingering memories of Nazism and World War II.

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was privately concerned about it, as were many French, Italians and indeed the Soviets. Israel, now home to thousands of Holocaust survivors, was the most vocal opponent of German reunification.

Free elections

In March 1990, East Germany held its first free elections, producing a resounding defeat for the communists. The two German states stepped up their political and economic co-operation, agreeing to a single currency (the Deutschmark) in July 1990. Work was already underway on the formalities of reunification and the composition of a new German state.

These questions were finalised by the Unification Treaty, which was signed in August 1990 and came into effect on October 3rd. A general election – the first all-German free election since 1932 – was held in December 1990. A coalition of Christian conservative parties won almost half the seats in the Bundestag (parliament), while Helmut Kohl was endorsed as chancellor.

In the years that followed, Germany would dispel concerns about its wartime past by becoming one of the most prosperous and progressive states in Europe.

Soviet Union in crisis

The Soviet Union remained the last bastion of socialism in Europe – but it too was rapidly changing. Gorbachev’s reforms of the mid-1980s failed to arrest fundamental problems in the Soviet economy. Soviet industries faced critical shortages of resources, leading to a decline in productivity.

Meanwhile, Soviet citizens endured severe shortages of state-provided food items and consumer goods, giving rise to a thriving black market. Moscow’s big-ticket spending on the military, space exploration and propping up satellite states further drained the stagnating Soviet economy. More reforms in 1988 allowed private ownership in many sectors, though this came too late to achieve any reversal.

It became clear that the Soviet economy could not recover on its own. In order to revive and prosper, Soviet producers and consumers needed access to Western markets and emerging technologies.

The USSR fades into history

The political dissolution of the Soviet Union unfolded gradually in the late 1980s. A series of reforms in 1987-88 loosened Communist Party control of elections, released political prisoners and expanded freedom of speech under glasnost.

Outside Russia, the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) agitated for independence while separatist-driven violence was reported in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

In early 1990, the Communist Party accepted Gorbachev’s recommendation that Soviet bloc nations be permitted to hold free elections and referendums on independence. By the end of 1990, the citizens in six states – Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova – had voted to leave the Soviet Union. Ukraine, a region of considerable economic value, also declared its independence in July 1990.

The Soviet republics that remained were given greater political and economic autonomy.

The August 1991 coup

In 1991, Gorbachev attempted to restructure and decentralise the Soviet Union by granting its member-states greater autonomy.

Under Gorbachev’s proposed model, the USSR would become the “Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics”, a confederation of independent nations sharing a military force, foreign policy and economic ties. These proposed changes angered some Communist Party leaders, who feared they would erode Soviet power and bringing about the collapse of the USSR.

In August 1991 a group of hardliners including Gorbachev’s vice-president, prime minister, defence minister and KGB chief, decided to act. With Gorbachev at his dacha in Crimea, the group ordered his arrest, shut down the media and attempted to seize control of the government.

The coup leaders misread the mood of the public, however, which came out in support of Gorbachev. The coup collapsed after three days and Gorbachev was returned to office, though with his authority reduced. By Christmas 1991, the Soviet Union had passed into history. It was formally dissolved and replaced by a looser confederation called the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Who ‘won’ the Cold War?

The death of the Soviet Union marked the curtain call of the Cold War. While communist regimes remained in China, North Korea and Cuba, the perceived threat of Soviet imperialism had been lifted from the world.

Debate raged among commentators and historians about who was responsible for ending the Cold War. Some hailed Gorbachev and other Soviet bloc reformers as the architects of change and reform. Others credited strong-minded Western leaders like Ronald Reagan and Thatcher with bringing down the Soviet empire. Some believed communism was defeated by its own false promises. It was an unsustainable economic system that had collapsed from within.

There was undoubtedly some truth in all three perspectives. In the tumultuous 1980s, however, the ordinary people of eastern Europe were the true engine of change.

For decades, citizens in the Soviet bloc had lived under oppressive one-party regimes and had little or no say in government. They were forced to work, denied the right to protest or speak and denied the choices available to their neighbours in the West. The final years of the Cold War were defined by these ordinary people, who risked their lives to rejoin the free world.

Their determination and heroism were noted by novelist John Le Carre:

“It was man who ended the Cold War, in case you didn’t notice. It wasn’t weaponry, or technology, or armies or campaigns. It was just man. Not even Western man either, as it happened, but our sworn enemy in the East, who went into the streets, faced the bullets and the batons and said: ‘We’ve had enough’. It was their emperor, not ours, who had the nerve to mount the rostrum and declare he had no clothes. And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they’ve had their day.”

A historian’s view:
“Many Russians sympathised with the [August 1991] plotters… because they approved of their motivation, that of preventing the Soviet Union from unravelling. After the initial euphoria… had died down, and people began to face the realities of a disbanded Soviet empire, disenchantment set in. Within a couple of years, the Yeltsin administration was itself pushing for a ‘reintegration’ of the former Soviet republics.”
Amy Knight, historian

1. Three significant events heralded the end of the Cold War: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

2. The fall of the Berlin Wall prompted the removal of borders between East and West Germany, while West German chancellor Helmut Kohl began pushing for the reunification of the two states.

3. Despite opposition from some quarters, reunification proceeded during 1990. It was finalised by the Reunification Treaty (October) and free elections for a single Germany (December).

4. Beset by internal economic and political problems, the Soviet Union weakened during the late 1980s. After an unsuccessful coup attempt by hardliners, the USSR was dissolved in 1991.

5. There is much debate about the factors that brought the Cold War to an end. Some attribute it to Gorbachev’s reforms, strong leadership in the West or the unsustainability of socialist economic systems. The role of ordinary people in the late 1980s is also undeniable.