Notes

-"Domino Theory" - US believed IF South Vietnam fell to Communist forces, other nations in SE Asia would become Communist too.
-Brezhnev Doctrine - Soviets have right to intervene if communism is threatened in other communist states.
-Due to these policies, US and the Soviet Union acted in opposition during the COld War (1946 - 1990) resulting in tension and hostility.

How do these two policies influence the actions of US and USSR?
-US provided assistance to nations at risk
-USSR controlled Communist countries
-Nuclear arms build-up

1858 - France colonises Vietnam (France invades Vietnam, making it a colony)
1945 - Japan surrenders to Allies, transfer power to Ho Chi Minh (Viet Minh party pres), Vietnam independence
1946 - War erupts between French and Viet Minh party over control of Vietnam
1954 - Battle of Dien Bien Phu forces France to a ceasefire / splits Vietnam
1965 - US enters war, sends 200k+ troops to support SOuth Vietnam
1973 - Why Americans withdraw? Loses war/No progress/Too many lives lost/In Vain
2.) Effects of the war and withdrawal?
-North takes over
-Both become communist
Technological Ambitions - Space Race (1957)
Military Strength - Arms Race
Ideological Differences - Democratic and Capitalism versus Totalitarian and Communism
Was the USSR Decline due to Force?
-The Cold War cost US > 5 trillion $ yet the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites was not a result of force.
-No NATO tank fired a shot
-No bomb fell on the Kremlin
Upheaval in the USSR (1970's)
-Nikita Khrushchev leader 1953 - 1964
-Leonid Brezhnev leads 1964 - 1982
-By 1970's, communist ruling class in Soviet Union becomes complacent, inefficient, corrupt.
-By 1980's, USSR bad economy, poor working conditions, health issues including alcoholism.
A Home-Grown Insurgency
-A massive, home-grown insurgency (uprising), led by different participants, contributed to the USSR collapse:
-Workers
-Dissident intellectuals (college degrees/professors/writers/etc.)
-Advocates of national self-determination
-Reformers
Polish Trade Union: Solidarity
-The downfall began in 1980 when striking Polish workers organised Solidarity, an independent trade union of nearly 10 million members.
Lech Walesa
-The Polish military drove Solidarity underground in 1981 but in 1983, Solidarity's chairman, Lech Walesa, won the Nobel peace prize
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-Gorbachev felt USSR had to change to survive
-Central planning in a modern economy brought many inefficiencies
-Factory management system provided little incentive to make improvements and every incentive to hide factory capacities to ensure low quotas
-Inefficient socialist farm system - few worker incentives, storage, and transportation problems
How did the above affect Soviet's ability to spend on military for the Cold War?
-Fewer / Unable to afford / Economy was doing poorly
Gorbachev attempts to implement reform, but hardliners resist.
-The policy of Glasnost (openness) made it possible for people to criticize
the government's policies. People realised it was safe to speak out, calls for change became more insistent.
-Gradual market reforms and decentralisation of the economy (perestroika) too slow and failed to keep pace with the crisis and people's demands.
-Soviet Union suffering a deterioration of economic and social conditions and a fall in the GNP (gross national product)
-Gorbachev's attempts to reform the Communist Party failed
-Change too slow and he was held back by giving in to the hard-liners in order to retain power
-As communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, reform of communism in the Soviet Union became unlikely
-Renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine (armed intervention in support of communism) released Eastern European states from Soviet domination
-Communist rulers of these states could not survive without support of the Soviet Union
-After WWII, Germany divided
-Berlin Wall 1961 --> people no longer allowed to travel through the gate
"In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards- General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union, if you seek liberalisation: Come here to this gate! Mr. G, open this gate! / Tear down this wall"
-Sept 1989, wave of huge demonstrations shook Communist regimes across eastern Europe
-East German emigrants surged through Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the West undermining the authority of the Communist hard-liners who clung to power in the GDR
-Nov. 9 1989 Germans poured through the Berlin Wall
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