Castro
The practice of producing or growing a single crop over a wide area and relying heavily on it for exports.
What is a monocultural economy?
An economic hierarchal system in which the tsar granted land titles to nobles and the peasants worked on the land owned by the nobles. The serfs usually lived, farmed, and died on the land on which they were born. This system created disunity between the social classes, sparked resentment towards the tsar and the aristocracy, and destroyed the trust between the people and their leaders.
What is feudalism?
Kennedy sent 1400 Cuban exiles who were trained by the US military and the CIA to invade Cuba. These Cubans, were known as Brigade 2506. After three days of fighting, Castro’s army won and the planned overthrow had failed.
What is "the Bay of Pigs" invasion?
The US, French and British zones of Germany increasingly cooperated with one another and eventually combined to form a unified government in their sectors called trizonia.
What is trizonia?
George Marshall proposed an economic aid plan. He took Truman’s ideology with containment in the Truman Doctrine and built it into a real plan for providing aid. Proposed in June of 1947, this was a massive economic aid package meant to strengthen democratic governments and reduce the appeal of communism. Although the United States also offered this aid to Eastern Europe, Stalin did not allow his puppet states to accept it.
Below is a speech by U.S. Secretary of State Marshall, describing the plan:
“I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious.... The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products — principally from America — are so much greater than its present ability to pay that it must have substantial [large] additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration [decline] of a very grave character.... "
What is the Marshall Plan?
After the Spanish-American War, the US required Cuba to sign an agreement that said Cuba could not enter into a treaty with a third power and the US had the right to intervene militarily in Cuba to protect its "stability"
What is the Platt Amendment?
The tragic events of January 22, 1905 when a peaceful demonstration led by workers resulted in the army opening fire on the marchers, killing at least 130 people
What is Bloody Sunday?
On October 22, 1962 Kennedy places US warships around Cuba to block Soviet ships from going to Cuba and delivering more weapons and building the nuclear stockpile. Kennedy strategically calls this a “quarantine” as he is only blocking ships carrying weapons - he is not blocking ships doing trade or bringing regular goods to Cuba.
What is a blockade?
At this conference: "Post-war Germany is to be divided into four Occupation Zones under the control of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States and France; with the Commanders-in-chief of each country's forces exercising sovereign authority over matters within their own zones, while exercising authority jointly through the Allied Control Council for 'Germany as a whole'.”
What is the Potsdam Conference?
What is the Korean War?
This was, like so many other laws of this time, intended to be a temporary measure to allow Castro to consolidate the gains of the revolution before the inevitable counter-revolutionary attempts by the US and their allies. "real democracy is not possible for hungry people” - Castro
What are suspending elections?
Therefore, to achieve the agricultural outputs that would support the industrialization of the Soviet Union outlined in the Five Year Plan. Basically, the state would now own the land (no more nobility). But at the same time peasants would no longer farm the land for their own individual profit. The plan was to group between 50 and 100 peasants into one large-ish farm. It was believed that large farms would be more efficient and would encourage the effective use of agricultural machinery.
What is collectivization?
Further, in 1963, a direct communications via teletype machine between US and Soviet leaders was established. The intention behind this was that both leaders could directly contact each other instead of relying on contacts through the UN or their own diplomats, and therefore more quickly defuse crises that might lead to nuclear war.
What is the hotline?
Because the city of Berlin remained split between East and West, East Germans could “escape” their country by walking into the western section of the city (as Berlin was located hundreds of miles inside East Germany). To prevent this mass exodus of people, East Germany had this built between the two sections of the city. This, when completed, was a concrete, guarded barrier that extended 96 miles.
What is the Berlin Wall?
Declared in November 1968 after the uprising in Czechoslovakia, affirmed the Soviet right to intervene in any communist regimes around the world to prop them up. It sent a clear message to the West that already countries within the USSR’s influence would be defended personally by the USSR. However, it did not entail spreading communism beyond its existing borders.
What is the Breznhev Doctrine?
The campaign aimed to obtain from the harvest enough money to pay off Cuban debts to the USSR and, by selling surplus sugar, make investments to achieve economic diversification
What is "the Year of the Ten Million"?
In 1936, after high-ranking party member, Kirov, was murdered, party members were publicly tried on a variety of counts, including sabotage, spying for Germany and conspiracy to murder Stalin. Most admitted guilt and were sentenced to death.
What are the Moscow Trials?
In 1960 the US bans all exports to Cuba, in the hope that economic starvation would force Castro to adopt a more business-friendly stance.
What is an embargo?
In February 1948, the three western powers proposed this new, four-power currency.
What is the Deutschmark?
In this Khrushchev 1956 speech, he claimed that the United States and Soviet Union must learn to live together in the world and their different ideologies did not inherently mean they should constantly be threatening each other. Khrushchev coined this idea “peaceful coexistence.” In the same speech he spoke out against Stalin’s ‘cult of personality’ and criticized Stalin’s regime for imposing total control over the USSR and its satellite states.
What is the "Destalinization Speech"?
Between 1965 and 1968, about 25,000 young men were sent to these labour camps. Everyone opposing military service on whatever grounds was sent to these camps, together with a variety of other ‘offenders’: children of political prisoners; youngsters imitating US dress codes and tastes; homosexuals and political dissenters. All were sent to the labour camps to be ‘re-educated through the liberating effects of collective work’.
What are the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP)?
Stalin also purged ethnic minorities in Russia. He wanted to suppress any signs of national independence by removing potential leaders of breakaway movements. This supposed need for national security became an even bigger priority as tensions built toward World War II. A basic method Stalin employed to suppress possible opposition was to deport whole peoples from their homeland to a distant region of the USSR. This is the name of the trains Stalin used to deport them to Siberia.
What are animal wagons?
The overwhelming superiority of the US in nuclear weapons, as shown during the nuclear crisis, came as a shock to the Soviet leadership. The USSR was determined to achieve equality [be on the same level] in nuclear weapons with the US and began an ambitious program for the construction of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
What is nuclear parity?
In April 1949, 12 countries signed a treaty in which they all agreed that an attack on one would be considered an attack on all, and that they would coordinate joint military action in the event of such an attack, with the specific exclusion of attacks in colonial territories.
What is NATO?
After the Chinese Civil War and the nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan, Mao ordered the bombing of neighboring islands Quemoy and Matsu in September 1954.The US did not retaliate against mainland China but US policymakers realized the need to provide concrete support to the Republic of China (Taiwan) and a Mutual Defense Treaty was signed.
What is the Taiwan Strait Crisis?