Breaking Away
To shut the flow of refugees from the communist east to the free west, the communist government built this massive barrier.
What is the Berlin Wall?
Leader of the Communist insurgency in China, he led Red China through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Who is Mao Zedong?
Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
What are the Asian Tigers?
He wrote the masterwork, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a chilling account of the fate of political prisoners in the Soviet Gulag.
Who is Alexander Solzhenitsyn?
The dominant figure in post-war France; he drafted the new constitution for the Fifth Republic strengthening the presidency and then served as the first president in the Fifth Republic.
Who is Charles de Gaulle?
This country's transition from communism was more violent than most; Nicolae Ceausescu used the secret police to crush dissent, murdering thousands of people even in December 1989, until the army withdrew its support and Ceausescu himself was executed.
What is Romania?
Emerging from a group that pushed the previous General Secretary into retirement; he could not cure the long-term problems he faced because of central planning, collective farms, and a corrupt and complacent political class.
Who is Leonid Brezhnev?
A French word describing the relaxed tensions between the Cold War superpowers that came to an end with the invasion of Afghanistan.
What is detente?
Head of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, he became its first post-Communist president.
Who is Lech Walesa?
Conservative British Prime Minister who succeeded in limiting social welfare programs, breaking the power of labor unions, and controlling inflation; as a result of these policies, business investment rose and small businesses grew.
Who is Margaret Thatcher?
This country emerged from the division of territory taken from Japan at the end of World War II; the other half became a communist state and invaded this country; this country survived the war and eventually became a powerful economic player.
What is South Korea?
A reformer, he emphasized openness and restructuring; the Soviet Union collapsed when hard-liners failed in their attempt to arrest and seize control from him.
Who is Mikhail Gorbachev?
Starting as a free trade area with six nations, this group grew to become the world's largest trading bloc.
What is the European Economic Community (EEC), or Common Market?
President of the Russian Republic, he stood up to hard line communists who tried to reverse reforms; his actions caused the Soviet Union to fall, and the republics became free of Soviet rule.
Who is Boris Yeltsin?
American Secretary of State who asserted that communism only succeeded where economies failed; he masterminded $13 billion in aid to rebuild European economies.
Who is George C. Marshall?
Writer Vaclav Havel went from anti-communist activist to President of this country; he led the country through its peaceful division into two separate nations.
What is Czechoslovakia?
This practical reformer led the group that seized power after the Cultural Revolution and moved China away from the excesses of the Red Guard and notions of permanent revolution.
Who is Deng Xiaoping?
Japanese business conglomerates; the allies planned to dismantle them, but they backed off from that level of turmoil because of the Cold War.
What are the zaibatsu?
Advocating socialism with a human face, he led the Prague Spring reform movement which the Soviet Union crushed.
Who is Alexander Dubcek?
Leader of Nationalist China, he and his followers retreated to Taiwan, where they focused on economic growth and built a modern industrial society after being defeated by the communist People's Liberation Army.
Who is Chiang Kai-shek?
Having strong communist resistance movements during World War II, these two Balkan nations became communist but remained independent of the Soviet Union (name both).
What are Albania and Yugoslavia?
Stalin's successor, he condemned repression and purges, but he lost control over the party because of foreign policy failures, slow industrial growth, and an economy hurt by increased military spending.
Who is Nikita Khrushchev?
The two Russian words that describe the last ditch Soviet efforts at restructuring the economy to allow some private ownership and creating greater openness in Soviet politics.
What are perestroika and glasnost?
Declaring Hungary free and calling for free elections, this Hungarian leader angered the Soviets who attacked Budapest and arrested and executed him.
Who is Imre Nagy?
Together with his finance minister, Ludwig Erhard, this West German chancellor led his country through a miraculous economic recovery from World War II.
Who is Konrad Adenauer?