1. What were the main differences between the Soviet Union and the West? 2. What did the Soviets want at the end of World War II? How did they go about achieving this? 3. How did the US respond to Soviet actions in the years after World War II? 4. What was the fi rst major confrontation of the Cold War? 5. What was the arms race? 6. Why was the Korean War an important event in the Cold War? 7. How was the Cuban Missile Crisis resolved? What impact did it have on the Cold War? 8. Why did the US lose the Vietnam War? 9. How did the Soviet Union maintain its control of Eastern Europe?
10. Why did Mikhail Gorbachev try to reform the Soviet Union? 11. What reforms did he propose? 12. How did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?
13. Find out when the events below and put them in the correct chronological order on a timeline. Write a sentence about what happened in each case. • The Fall of Saigon
• The Berlin Blockade • The Cuban Missile Crisis • The Hungarian Uprising • Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech • The Prague Spring • The Fall of Berlin Wall • The end of the Korean War • The announcement of the Truman Doctrine • The building of the Berlin Wall
Exploring History
1. Write an account of each of the following Cold War events: • The Berlin Blockade
• The Korean War • The Cuban Missile Crisis • The Vietnam War • The end of the Cold War
2. Write an account of the life of Mikhail Gorbachev. 3. Discuss why the Cold War never became a ‘hot war’.
