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Post by olorix on Sept 24, 2004 23:52:13 GMT -6
Alright everyone, I am 'Professor' Olorix (and also the Ambassador to Antica) and this course will detail the origins of the Cold War, and what the Cold War actually was, who it involved, why it occurred, etc. I will present it as a series of 'lectures', and at the end I will give you a relatively simple assignment which will put the ideas I've hopefully taught you into practice. I hope you enjoy this short course, and I will make it entertaining and straightforward enough so that anyone who can speak English (and has a sense of humour ) can enjoy it .
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Post by Nathan on Sept 25, 2004 1:11:51 GMT -6
yay! history rox!!!
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Post by olorix on Jan 4, 2005 18:38:08 GMT -6
Sorry about the total lack of posts here recently . I'll get to writing a lesson right now!
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Post by olorix on Jan 4, 2005 19:12:17 GMT -6
The Cold War. You could ask "eh? How can a war be cold?", well, comrades, if you're fighting a war in a Russian winter and your gun freezes, the bottle of homebrewed vodka you are holding (which itself is frozen) welds itself onto your hand with ice and the saliva in your mouth begins to freeze, that is what a Cold War is!
Alright, to be truthful, the Cold War itself did not involve a lot of this (it did happen during the German invasion of Russia in World War II though). It did, however, involve a hell of a lot of fighting in very hot, humid, poisonous-animal ridden places that you probably wouldn't really want to go on holiday to in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The Cold War, in essence, was the struggle between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union (modern day Russia and many of the countries to it's South and West) to be the most powerful country in the world. This rivalry was built around the mutual fear on both sides that one nation was intent on destroying the other, which funnily enough actually made that a self-fufilling prophecy: both sides misunderstood each others actions and often thought that the reasoning behind what one side did was to undermine the other sides position. This may sound confusing, but hopefully once I explain it a bit more, you will understand! ;D
As many of you will probably know, the USA is a capitalist democracy: the core 'ideology' of the nation is of the importance of democratic freedoms and the freedom to make your own money without much government interference, the 'American Dream'. If someone is below the poverty line, they recieve some but not very much government assistance compared to the rest of the developed world (e.g. Europe and Australasia) This contrasted very sharply with what the Soviet Union was like from 1917 until 1991.
The Soviet Union (or the USSR as I will now call it, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was a Marxist-Leninist one-party state. The core values of it were that Socialism was the ideal form of government and in order to protect the people from Capitalism, the government would follow a 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' [dicatorship of the people] which would also in theory allow true Communism to come to the Soviet Union (which was officially Socialist, because Communism would be a sort of heaven-like state where everyone lived in a very nice conditions with no government at all etc)
I need to include here some more information, because people often don't see any benefits in the Soviet system. Most people in the Soviet Union did not live in luxury, but the government did provide a huge amount of support to the people and the system allowed for all people to have many things provided for them for free by the government e.g. cars, home appliances, food, housing, university education; things that in the United States you would often have to pay huge amounts for and would be out of reach of most people. It was a huge achievement by the Soviets to halt wide-scale famines by the 1950s, considering the absolutely huge area they governed, and indeed previously totally marginalised groups throughout what had been the Soviet Union had been enslaved cultures to the Mediaeval-style guys who ruled Russia before the Soviets. The key thing when examining the Cold War is to avoid prejudice and to be willing to learn new ideas, because if you already have a strong point of view that you are unwilling to change, you wont get anything out of it.
Next lesson soon!
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Post by Nathan on Jan 5, 2005 16:38:54 GMT -6
thank you very much... i look forward to the next lessons!
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