Tonight's HW 4-28-09

Defining the Cold War: Read the two primary source documents below. Then, based on the documents, and your knowledge of Social Studies, answer the questions that follow.

In 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a speech at a college in Missouri. He described relations with the Soviet Union in this way:

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies....

We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers from all renewal of German aggression. We welcome her to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Above all, we welcome constant, frequent, and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty, however, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe....

On the other hand, I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable, still more that it is imminent. It is because I am so sure that our fortunes are in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have an occasion to do so. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines....

From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.

From William Appleman Williams, ed., _The Shaping of American Diplomacy_ (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1956), p. 993.

In 1947, U.S. State Department official George F. Kennan wrote an important article for Foreign Affairs magazine which urged the United States to deal with the Soviet Union in a new way:

...it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.... In the light of the above, it will be clearly seen that the Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.... It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power...

From William Appleman Williams, ed., _The Shaping of American Diplomacy_, p. 996.

Answer the following questions based on the above two readings by Churchill and Kennan:

1. What did Churchill and Kennan believe were the goals of the Soviet Union?

2. What did the authors believe should be the response of the United States to Soviet actions?

3. Historians generally agree that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began between 1946 and 1947. How do you think Churchill and Kennan would define "cold war?"

Tonight's HW - 4/27/09

Hello, Everyone:

Tonight's HW

Please have it ready to be collected as soon as you walk in tomorrow

READ pp. 808-821 in the RED textbook.

COMPLETE

1. Terms and Names p. 814 and 821
2. COPY Visual Summary p. 836

Thanks!