Reading Questions!

1) Explain: “The Cold War… had provided a way of ordering the world.”
2) What was the Brezhnev Doctrine? How and why did Gorbachev steer the USSR away from this policy? What was the result?
3) List the reforms for which Jewish dissenters, intellectuals and professionals were calling. Why did they want each one of these reforms?
4) What do the authors mean by this statement: “Stalin understood the political significance of the weapon”? (Italics are mine, not the authors’.)
5) List the early Cold War scientific advancements that heated up the “Space Race.”
6) What was the message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that shaped the relationship between the Cold War superpowers? How did the US and Soviet Union react to it?
7) List the attempts made to slow down nuclear proliferation and the arms race and explain what each attempt was designed to do. What was détente?
8) Why were the 1980s the “dangerous decade”?
9) How was Gorbachev a new kind of leader from his predecessors?
10) While the Soviet Union was prospering more after Stalin’s death, list the reasons why the Soviet citizens were unhappy with their quality of life.
11) List the reforms that Gorbachev made economically and politically.
12) Who was Boris Yeltsin, what happened in August 1991, and what was the result for Yeltsin’s political career?
13) Read the conclusion. It is an excellent summary of what you have just read.