TASK: STUDY RELATIONS BETWEEN THE WEST AND THE SOVIET UNION in following areas:
a) diplomatic b) economic c) ideological d) military e) personal (between leaders)

• The 1917 October Revolution > The Soviet Russia ruled by the Bolsheviks/ The Communist Party (1918-) > a one party state
• The USA returns to isolationism (based on the Monroe Doctrine) after the Paris Peace Conference 1919
• The Russian civil war 1918-21: The Reds <> The Whites supported by the western countries
• The establishment of the USSR in Dec 1922
• Stalin as a Soviet dictator (1929-) > the 'Stalinism'

> ‘Socialism in one country’ (vs ‘World Revolution’, ‘Trotskyism’); the Collectivization, the Five-Year Plans for industrializing the Soviet economy; the gulags, The 'Great Purge', The 'Great Terror'; Cult of personality

• Hitler becomes power (1933) and begins his policy for abrogation of the Versailles Treaty <> Anglo-French Appeasement policy
• The Nazi-Soviet Pact (Molotov - Ribbentrop) > the 'Secret Protocol': ‘spheres of influence’ (23 August 1939)

> 1) Germany attacks on Poland on 1 Sept 1939 (<> Britain and France declare war on Germany > WW2 begins in Europe) > the occupation of western Poland by Germany
> 2) The occupation of eastern Poland by the USSR, the Finnish Winter War & the occupations of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union (1939-40)

• Operation Barbarossa begins on 22 June 1941

> The USA extend the Lend-lease assistance (besides the Great Britain) to the USSR (> more about ‘the Lend-Lease Act’ on textbook pg 13)
( The ‘Katyn massacre’ in Poland revealed; made by the Soviet NKVD in 1940)

• The Atlantic Charter (Churchill – Roosevelt in August 1941; on page 16)
• Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (7 Dec 1941)

> Italy and Germany declare war on the USA (according to their 1940 Tripartite Agreement with Japan)
> The USSR, the UK and the USA form the Grand Alliance for defeating the Axis powers

• The Battle of Stalingrad > The Soviet counter attack begins in Febr 1943
• The Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 < Stalin’s request for opening a second front
• The Teheran Conference: The ‘Big Three’ (Nov-Dec 1943)

> Britain and the USA agreed to open a second front
>The Normandy landings (D-Day 6 June 1944)

• The Warsaw uprising at the Autumn 1944
• The ‘Percentages Agreement’ (Churchill - Stalin in Moscow, Oct 1944)
• The Yalta Conference (The ‘Big Three’ in Febr 1945) > textbook page 25
• Germany’s unconditional surrender to the allies in May 1945 (after the suicide of Hitler)
• The Potsdam Conference (The ‘Big Three’ in Aug 1945) > textbook pages 26-28
• The USA drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945
• The establishment of the United Nations: ratification of the UN Charter and opening of the United Nations in New York in Oct 1945 > textbook pages 23-24, 28.

Textbook:
Mamaux, A, The Cold War: Superpower tensions and rivalries (Oxford University Press 2015)