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Development of the Cold War Specialist Terms

   

  

     

 Do you recognise the terms below?   Use them in your answers to impress the examiner!!!

 Click on the yellow pointers to reveal explanations for any terms you don't know about.

  

  •  Southeast Asian Youth Conference
    • The Calcutta Conference of 1948 which was used by the Soviet Union to foment revolutions in various south-east Asan countries, notably Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines
  •  Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat Malaya
    • The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) – the communist guerrilla army, led by the Maoist Chin Peng, rebelled against the British occupation in 1948.
  •  Formosa
    • Now called Taiwan; the island off the coast of China where Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang Chinese Nationalists set up a 'Republic of China' (ROC) after being defeated by Mao Zedong in 1949
  •  Peace rebellion
    • The name given to the communist demonstrations in Thailand in 1952
  •  Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance
    • The official name for the treaty between the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s China; the Soviets sent experts, aid and loans
  •  Daegu Uprising
    • Communist rebellion in South Korea (October 1946)
  •  Jeju Uprising
    • Communist rebellion on the South Korean island of Jeju (April 1948); brutally suppressed by Syngman Rhee
  •  Eradication campaign
    • Name given to the brutally suppressed by Syngman Rhee of the Jeju Island uprising
  •  Vietcong and Viet Minh
    • The Viet Minh was [note the singular] the Vietnamese political organization which sought Vietnamese independence; the Vietcong were the guerrilla force fighting in south Vietnam
  •  17th parallel
    • The line of latitude which was used to split North and South Vietnam at the 1954 Peace Talks
  •  38th parallel
    • The line of latitude which separated Communist North Korea from capitalist South Korea.
  •  Domino
    • The theory that, if one country in the far east fell to Communism, others in the region would follow, falling like a row of dominoes.
  •  NSC68
    • In April 1950, the American National Security Council issued a report (NSC 68) recommending that America abandon 'containment' and start 'rolling back' Communism; it led the US government to take a harder line against North Korea in 1950.
  •  NKPA
    • The North Korean People's Army in the Korean War.
  •  ROKs
    • The Republic of Korea's army (the ROKs)
  •  Amphibious
    • A water-borne landing of land forces.   MacArthur's UN forces made an amphibious landing at Inchon, 15 September 1950.  
  •  People’s Volunteers
    • The Chinese army, which entered the war on 25 November 1950.   After initial successes, they were driven back with huge losses.
  •  Human wave
    • The Chinese tactic of attacking using thousands of soldiers in order to overcome defenders with superior weapons - one American soldier described them as like a crowd at a football match.   Like World War I, it led to slaughter - the Chinese admitted to losing 390,000 men dead, but UN sources put the figure at more like a million.
  •  Co-existence
    • Khrushchev believed that the arms race would destroy mankind, and urged 'peaceful co-existence' - he said: 'there were only two ways - either peaceful co-existence or the most destructive war in history.   There is no third way'.   Actually, however, by this he meant something more like 'peaceful competition' - he built up allies by offering economic aid, and waged an arms race, space race and propaganda race against the USA.   He once said that Communism and capitalism would only agree ‘when shrimps learned to whistle’.
  •  Camp David
    • The US President’s country retreat in Maryland, where Eisenhower and Khrushchev had “useful discussions [for] a just and lasting peace” in 1959
  •  Destalinisation
    • In a speech in 1956, Khrushchev attacked Stalin, saying that Stalin was a murderer and a tyrant.   Khrushchev began to ‘de-stalinise’ Russia.   Political prisoners were set free and Beria (Stalin’s Chief of Secret Police) was executed.    This increased the general perception of Khrushchev as a more reasonable/weaker Soviet leader and led to riots and rebellions in the Stalinist states of eastern Europe.
  •  Second Congress of the Union of Writers
    • The Czechoslovak body which criticised government censorship and repression in Czechoslovakia in 1956
  •  MEFESZ
    • The Union of Hungarian University and Academy Students, the democratic student union banned by Hungary’s Stalinist Rákosi government, which marks the start of the Hungarian Revolution when a group of 12 students re-established it in October 1956
  •  Nemzeti Dal
    • Meaning: ‘National song’ – the Hungarian patriotic song sung by crowds in Hungary in 1956: “By the God of the Hungarians we vow that we won't be slaves any longer!”
  •  Szabad Nép
    • The communist newspaper whose offices formed the centre of much of the fighting between the Hungarians and the Soviet soldiers.
  •  Magyar Rádió
    • Radio Budapest – the Hungarian radio station which broadcast pleas for help to the world during the Soviet invasion of 1956. (get the accents right on the ‘a’ and the ‘o’!)
  •  Sputnik
    • At first, Russia was ahead in the space race.   In 1957 Russia launched Sputnik, the first satellite.  
  •  Tsar Bomba
    • The name given to the huge Soviet nuclear bomb developed 1961
  •  Red Nightmare
    • An America film (1949) about a Communist take-over of America.
  •  Witch hunt
    • The name given to the campaign, led by US Senator Joseph McCarthy, to drive suspected Communists out of their jobs and positions in all walks of life
  •  Duck and Cover
    • A children's film about what to do in a nuclear strike - the cartoon figure of a tortoise advised them to 'duck and cover' (hide behind something and cover themselves).
  •  Kitchen Display
    • Khrushchev talked about peaceful co-existence and was prepared to meet western leaders at Summit Meetings, but he was still fiercely communist, and believed that Communism was so evidently better than capitalism that eventually the rest of the world would come round to his way of thinking.   Once, when American Vice-President Nixon visited Russia in 1959, he invited Khrushchev to see an exhibition at the US Trade Fair.   At the kitchen display, he had a very public argument with Nixon about which was the better way of life, communism or capitalism.
  •  Open skies
    • Eisenhower wanted an 'open skies' policy, where both sides would allow the other to send spy-planes over each other's territory.   Khrushchev refused to agree to this.
  •  U2
    • US spy-planes.   On 5 May 1960, Russia shot down an American U2 spy-plane.   At first, the Americans tried to claim that it was a weather-plane that had gone off-course.   However, the Russians put the pilot Gary Powers on trial for spying, and the Americans admitted it was a spy-plane.
  •  saxitoxin
    • The neurotoxin poison given to Gary Powers to kill himself if captured by the Soviets; he did not use it.
  •  Summit
    • Meetings of the USSR and US leaders.   They were designed to reduce tension, but often they actually caused tension.   At Paris (14 May 1960) Khrushchev walked out when Eisenhower would not apologise for the U2 spy-plane incident.   At the Vienna summit of June 1961, there was tension when Khrushchev demanded that the Americans leave West Berlin and Kennedy refused - this led directly to the Berlin Wall.