PowerPoint Presentation

Karl Marx, founder of socialism:

Workers of the world, unite!

Timeline of the Cold War1917Russian Revolution is taken over by the Bolsheviks (Lenin)

1921Russian Empire is officially renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (CCCP)

1924Lenin dies

1925Stalin gains control of the Communist Party/USSR

1939FDR okays development of atomic weapons (Manhattan Project)

1942U.S. and U.S.S.R. are uneasy allies in WWII

1945Potsdam Conference between Truman, Stalin, and Churchill the three agree on post-war boundaries

Truman okays bombing of Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), leading to Japans surrender.

1945WWII ends with USSR occupying Eastern Europe and US/Britain/France occupying Western Europe

1946Communist government set up in Albania, beginning gradual communist takeovers in all of Eastern European countries.

1946Kennans long telegram warns of Soviet ambitions to spread communism

1948Marshall Plan implemented to rebuild Western Europe and save it from communism

1948Berlin Airlift begins as response to USSR blocking roads and railroads into West Berlin

1949Chinese Communists (Mao Tse-tung) successfully defeat Nationalists

1949Russians explode their first atomic bomb

1949 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) formed as an alliance of free countries

1950-1954 McCarthy Witch Hunt era or Red Scare

1952Eisenhower takes office

Bomb shelterhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Zgyp4HgNU

1953Stalin dies

1953First hydrogen bomb tested (superbomb)

Korean War observes 60-year ceasefire, but isnt officially ended (ever).

1955Warsaw Pact formed, consisting of the USSR and its eastern European satellites

1955Nikita Kruschev gains control of the Communist Party

1956Kruschev delivers secret speech denouncing Stalins brutality and oppression; within a year he has done a 180-degree reversal

1958-1962Maos Great Leap Forward aimed at transforming Chinese industry

1959-1969Maos Cultural Revolution aimed at purifying China by eliminating old (non-communist) ways of thinking

1957Space Race begins as the Russians beat the U.S. in putting the first satellite into space

1959Fidel Castro sets up communist government in Cuba

1959Kruschev visits U.S.

1960Gary Powers U-2 plane shot down over USSR

1960Kennedy elected president

1961Soviets are first to put a man into space (Yuri Gagarin)

1961Bay of Pigs invasion JFKs failed attempt to help Cuban exiles win Cuba back from Castro1961Berlin Wall constructed overnight to prevent East Germans from escaping into the West

Cuban Missile Crisis: The U.S. and U.S.S.R. teeter on the brink of nuclear war over the Soviets shipping nuclear missiles to Cuba; it ends in a compromisehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYVPx3x3oCg

1963Kennedy assassinated; LBJ (Lyndon B. Johnson) takes office

1964Kruschev forced to resign; Leonid Breshnev takes over

1967U.S. puts first man on the moon

1968Prague Spring crushed by Soviet invasion

1968Nixon elected president

1972Nixon visits China and USSR; Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) with USSR bring about dtente, a calming of the Cold War

1973U.S. troops out of Vietnam

1974Nixon resigns over Watergate Scandal; Ford takes office

1975South Vietnam falls to communism

1975Helsinki Accords affirm European borders, agreements on human rights

1976Carter defeats Ford

1978U.S. and China establish diplomatic relations; U.S. withdraws support of Taiwan as the real China.

1979-1980USSR invades Afghanistan; US boycotts Olympics

Reagan defeats Carterhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM

Polish Solidarity movement challenges the authority of the communist government

1985Mikhail Gorbachev takes over leadership of USSR

1986Gorbachev announces policies of perestroika and glasnost (restructuring and openness)

1988George HW Bush elected president

1988George HW Bush elected president

1989Berlin Wall is demolished, symbolizing the fall of communism

1990East and West Germany reunified

1991The Soviet Union is abolished; Boris Yeltsin becomes president of Russia