The Cold War began after the surrender of Nazi Germany inwhen 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. Top Questions What was the Cold War?
The Cold War truly began to break down during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachevwho changed the more totalitarian aspects of the Soviet government and tried to democratize its political system. Allied troops in VladivostokAugustduring the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War While most historians trace the origins of the Cold War to the period immediately following World War II, others argue that it began with the October Revolution in Russia in when the Bolsheviks took power.
Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and what came to be known as the Space Race was underway. As the president made clear in a speech, the ultimate goal of the United States and its allies was not simply to manage the Cold War — it was to peacefully advance freedom and democracy, sweeping communism aside in the process Document Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East GermanyHungaryCzechoslovakiaand Afghanistan Although the two Great Powers never fought directly, they pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war on several occasions.
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For full treatment, see international relations. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in — Inthe Soviet Union had crushed a democratic uprising in communist Hungary Document 17 ; thirty years later, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would not use force to intervene in the domestic affairs of communist nations.
Nuclear deterrence was the only effective means of preventing a military confrontation. Inthe United States and the Soviet Union, along with other nations, drafted and signed a nuclear test ban treaty in hopes that the quest for more powerful nuclear arms could be slowed Document