Cold War terms

Key Terms Eastern Bloc: Soviet allies in eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary. Harry Truman: U.S. president after Franklin Roosevelt in the early years of the cold war. His foreign policy was to contain Communism through diplomacy and military strength. Iron Curtain: term coined by British P.M. Churchill to describe the political division of Europe between free (western Europe) and repressed (eastern Europe) during the cold war. Marshall Plan: U.S. aid to western Europe after World War II helped it recover and concurrently staved off Communist inroads made in the interim. NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization. U.S.-led alliance including western Europe, Canada, and Turkey against Soviet aggression there; now includes some former communist countries of eastern Europe. Warsaw Pact: a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War in response to NATO. Welfare state: state-run "cradle to grave" care that developed in western Europe and spread in varying forms to the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Technocrat: type of bureaucrat in this era who often had training in engineering or economics, hired to support the welfare state bureaucracy. Green Movement: political movement and party that arose in several western European nations in the 1970s that opposed unfettered free market economies and unchecked industrial pollution. European Union: final name of the Common Market; an economic and, later, political movement in Europe that supported free markets to compete with the U.S. and eventually, the goal of forming a common government in much of Europe. New Feminism: wave of women's rights agitation reappeared in the 1960s promoting job opportunities and other civil rights issues for women. Two early leaders were Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan. Berlin Wall: barrier built by the U.S.S.R. in 1961 in East Germany to keep that nation's subjects from fleeing to liberty in West Berlin. Major cold war symbol until it was torn down in 1989. Solidarity: trade union movement in Poland that developed into a political pressure group that supported reforms from the Communist leadership. Aleksandr Solzhentsyn: Soviet writer of anti-Communist expose The Gulag Archipelago, who was exiled to the West; he later returned to Russia after the fall of the U.S.S.R. Nikita Khrushechev: leader of U.S.S.R. after Stalin's death. Criticized his predecessor's abuses, signaling a bit of a thaw in the cold war. After backing down in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was removed from power and exiled within the U.S.S.R. Zapatistas: guerrilla movement named in honor of Emiliano Zapata; originated in 1994 in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas; government responded with a combination of repression and negotiation. Third World: also known as developing nations; nations outside the capitalist industrial nations of the first world and the industrialized communist nations of the second world; generally less economically powerful, but with varied economies.