The Truman Doctrine is a set of principles of U.S. foreign policy declared by President Harry S.

Truman in a
March 12, 1947 address to Congress to request $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey, as well as authorization to
send American economic and military advisers to the two countries. Truman argued that the U.S. should support
Greece and Turkey economically and militarily to prevent their falling under Soviet control. He supported this
request by proclaiming: "One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of
conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a
fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose
their will, and their way of life, upon other nations." He called upon the U.S. to "support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,"[1] which generalized his hopes for
Greece and Turkey into a doctrine applicable throughout the world. The Soviet Union was clearly at the heart of
Truman's thoughts, but it was never directly mentioned in his speech. As Edler states,[clarification needed] Truman was
attempting to solve Eastern Europe's instability while making sure the spread of communism would not affect
nations like Greece and Turkey.

The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the primary plan
of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the countries of Western Europe, and
repelling communism after World War II. The initiative was named for Secretary of State George Marshall and was
largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan.

George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political
scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold
War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.
Containment was a United States policy uniting military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to limit the spread of
Communism, enhance America’s security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the
Cold War, the policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to expand Communist influence in
Eastern Europe, China, and Korea. It represented a middle-ground position between appeasement and rollback. The
basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan. As a description of U.S.
foreign policy, the word originated in a report Kennan submitted to Defense Secretary James Forrestal in January
1947, a report that was later published as a magazine article. It is a translation of the French cordon sanitaire, used
to describe Western policy toward the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Partitioning of Germany… As a consequence of Germany's defeat in World War II and the onset of the Cold War,
the country was split between the two global blocs in the East and West. Germany would not be reunited until 1990.

The Berlin Blockade, also known as the "German hold-up" (24 June 1948 – 11 May 1949) was one of the first
major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the
Soviet Union blocked the Western force's railway and road access to the western sectors of Berlin that they had been
controlling. Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet controlled regions to start supplying
Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving them nominal control over the entire city.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)),
also called "the (North) Atlantic Alliance", is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic
Treaty on 4 April 1949. The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium,[3] and the organization constitutes a
system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any
external party.

The Warsaw Pact (see Nomenclature) was an organization of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. The
treaty was signed in Warsaw, Poland on May 14, 1955. The treaty was an initiative of the Soviet Union and was in
direct response to West Germany joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (more commonly known by its
English acronym NATO) in 1955. As such, the Warsaw Pact was the Soviet-sponsored military-treaty organization
and the European Communist Bloc's counterpart to NATO; it was similar to NATO in that there was a political
Consultative Committee, followed by a civilian secretary-general, while down the chain of command there was a
military commander in chief and a combined staff, although the similarities between the two international
organizations ended there. [1]
The Sputnik program (Russian: Спутник, Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputnʲɪk]) was a series of robotic spacecraft
missions launched by the Soviet Union. The first of these, Sputnik 1, launched the first human-made object to orbit
the Earth. That launch took place on October 4, 1957 as part of the International Geophysical Year and
demonstrated the viability of using artificial satellites to explore the upper atmosphere.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (Russian: Никита Сергеевич Хрущёв, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchyov) (17
April 1894 – 11 September 1971) was a leader of the Soviet Union, serving as General Secretary of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, following the death of Joseph Stalin, and Chairman of the Council of
Ministers from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for
backing the progress of the world's early space program, as well as for several relatively liberal reforms ranging
from agriculture to foreign policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him
with Leonid Brezhnev.

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a physical barrier separating West Berlin from the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) (East Germany), including East Berlin. The longer inner German border demarcated
the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western
Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in the early
1960s during the Cold War. In Russia, it is termed the "Caribbean Crisis" (Russian: Карибский кризис, Karibskiy
krizis), while in Cuba it is called the "October Crisis". The crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major
confrontations of the Cold War, and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to a
nuclear war.[1]

Détente is a French term, meaning a relaxing or easing; the term has been used in international politics since the
early 1970s. Generally, it may be applied to any international situation where previously hostile nations not involved
in an open war de-escalate tensions through diplomacy and confidence-building measures. However, it is primarily
used in reference to the general reduction in the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and a
thawing of the Cold War, occurring from the late 1960s until the start of the 1980s. In the Soviet Union, détente was
known as Russian: разрядка ("razryadka", loosely meaning relaxation, discharge).

De-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality and Stalinist political system created by
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a six-nation international organisation serving to unify
Western Europe during the Cold War and creating the foundation for European democracy and the modern-day
developments of the European Union. The ECSC was the first organisation to be based on the principles of
supranationalism.[1]

The European Economic Community (EEC) (also referred to as simply the European Community,[1] or the
Common Market in the English-speaking world) was an international organization created in 1957 to bring about
economic integration (including a single market) between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the
Netherlands.

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Russian: Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev; 19 December 1906 [O.S. 6 December 1906] – 10
November 1982) was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (and thus political leader of the
Soviet Union) from 1964 to 1982, serving in that position longer than anyone other than Joseph Stalin. He was twice
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (head of state), from 7 May 1960 to 15 July 1964 and from 16
June 1977 to his death on 10 November 1982.

The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy, first and most clearly outlined by S. Kovalev in a September
26, 1968 Pravda article, entitled “Sovereignty and the International Obligations of Socialist Countries.” Leonid
Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party on November 13, 1968,
which stated:
 "When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards
capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of
all socialist countries."

This doctrine was announced to justify the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to terminate the
Prague Spring, along with earlier Soviet military interventions, such as the invasion of Hungary in 1956. These
interventions were meant to put an end to liberalization efforts and uprisings that had the potential to compromise
Soviet hegemony inside the Eastern bloc, which was considered by the Soviets to be an essential defensive and
strategic buffer in case hostilities with the West were to break out.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв (help·info), Russian pronunciation:
[mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈgʲeɪvʲɪtɕ gərbɐˈtɕof]; born 2 March 1931) is a Russian politician. He was the last General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until 1991, and also the last head of state of the USSR,
serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991. He was the only Soviet leader to have been born after the October
Revolution of 1917.

Perestroika (help·info) (Russian: Перестройка, Russian pronunciation: [pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə]) is the Russian term (now
used in English) for the political and economic reforms introduced in June 1987[1] by the Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev. Its literal meaning is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet economy.

Glasnost (help·info) (Russian: Гла́сность, Russian pronunciation: [ˈglasnəsʲtʲ]) was the policy of maximal publicity,
openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with
freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of 1980s. [1]

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russian: Борис Николаевич Ельцин (help·info); Russian pronunciation: [bɐˈɾʲis
nʲɪkɐˈɫaɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn]) (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving
from 1991 to 1999.

Yeltsin came to power with a wave of high expectations. On 12 June 1991 he was elected president of the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with 57% of the vote, becoming the first popularly elected president. But
Yeltsin never recovered his popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s. The
Yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems.
By the time he left office, Yeltsin had an approval rating of two percent by some estimates.[1]

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states, located primarily in Europe. It
was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993,[5] upon the foundations of the pre-existing
European Economic Community. With around 500 million citizens, the EU combined generated an estimated
(US$16.9 trillion in 2007), over 22% of the nominal gross world product in terms of purchasing power parity.[6]