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The Coils of Cold War

The Coils of Cold War.

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The Coils of Cold War

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  1. The Coils of Cold War

  2. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States took a turn to the economic and political right. Nothing demonstrated this shift more than the Second Red Scare. The trials, denouncements, black lists, and paranoia about Communism in the Second Red Scare showed the domestic face of the Cold War--the international struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States for world dominance.

  3. Karl Marx (1818-1883) German economist, philosopher, and revolutionary. He wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894). These works established Marxism, the fundamental theory of Communism. Basically, Marxism explains political, social, historical, and economic development in terms of the class struggle between capitalists and the workers, or proletariat. Marxism predicted that capitalism would inevitably destroy itself and bourgeois oppression would make way for the rule of the proletariat. This new age would be classless and free of economic exploitation, as all means of production would be owned in common rather than individually.

  4. Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) In Russia, the doctrines of Marx were further developed and applied by Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and first leader of the U.S.S.R. Unlike some Marxists, Lenin stressed revolutionary action rather than waiting for the inevitable fall of capitalism. Another distinction between Marxism and Leninism is where the action takes place. Marx held that Communism could only come about in capitalist nations that had achieved a high level of industrial development. Russia, of course, was largely an agrarian nation at the turn of the century, so Lenin adapted Marxism to apply to under developed countries. Lenin also believed that a strong Communist party was necessary in a Marxist nation to direct the efforts of the workers. Eventually, according to Lenin, the state would "wither away" and rigid governmental structures would disappear.

  5. Josef Stalin (1879-1953) After Lenin's death in 1924, the Soviet Union was led by Josef Stalin. His rule was marked by a purge of the government andmilitary, the forced collectivization of agriculture, a policy ofindustrialization, and the rigid control of the economy by the state.Stalin led the Soviet Union in its costly victory in World War II, (known in the Soviet Union as the "Great Patriotic War").

  6. The Second Red Scare House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Investigate American Fascists and Communists HUAC concentrated on labor unrest, but after the war's end, it gained strength and began to investigate left-wing Americans who might be communist sympathizers. This search led HUAC to Hollywood in 1947, where left-leaning actors, writers, and directors were allegedly spreading subversive communist messages through their movies. One young actor who was ready to name names was future President Ronald Reagan. HUAC did not uncover any of the systematic subversion it had alleged in Hollywood. BLACKLISTING!!!

  7. The Trial of Alger Hiss Hiss was a Harvard-educated New Dealer who had come to Washington during the Roosevelt administration. His accuser was a self-described "dumpy, middle-aged, unhappy scoundrel" named Whittaker Chambers, who would go on to become a senior editor of Time magazine. Chambers accused Hiss of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s when Hiss had been employed at the State Department. Chambers claimed that he and Hiss had belonged to the same espionage ring and that Hiss had given him copies of secret State Department documents. A young California Congressman named Richard M. Nixon took up the case and soon captured national attention. When Chambers claimed that a he had hidden a microfilm of the secret documents in a pumpkin field near his farm, Nixon took members of the press with him to document the uncovering of the microfilm. The statute of limitations for an espionage charge had expired, so the federal government prosecuted Hiss was for perjury. The result of the first trial was a hung jury. After the second trial, a jury found Hiss guilty and sentenced him to five years in prison. When Hiss was finally released from prison, he struggled to prove his innocence for decades. That moment finally came in 1992, when Hiss was 87. A Russian general in charge of Soviet intelligence archives declared that Hiss had never been a spy, but rather a victim of Cold War hysteria. Hiss died on November 15, 1996, just four days after his 92 birthday.

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