How Did One Optimistic Report From the Stasi Foreshadow the Collapse of Communism?
During the early 80’s, increased tensions marked the new phase of the Cold War. Besides external, the Eastern Bloc countries faced many internal problems as well. The governments of these countries, especially the USSR, tried to spread optimism. But they didn’t see (or didn’t want to see) that everything would collapse soon. Therefore, it’s interesting to see how the secret reports full of optimism actually revealed the real state of affairs.
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How Did Espionage Keep the Cold War Cold?
During the Cold War, information was a very valuable commodity. The search for the valuable information marked the whole Cold War era. The Cold War, as a clash of ideologies, was marked by continuous tensions between the East and the West, but didn’t culminate in a global conflict.
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Did the Soviets Avoid the Early Collapse of the Iron Curtain?
In the 1950s and 1960s the Soviet influence in Romania was very strong. The USSR controlled the country’s economy and political life. That was completely expected since the new government after the end of the Cold war was pro-Soviet. The first serious efforts to bring back sovereignty appeared in the 1960s. The communist government of Romania wanted to become economically independent and release the country from the covert and overt Soviet actions that made this country a satellite state under the strong control of the USSR. Therefore, regarding international relations, these two countries weren’t in equal position. The USSR had the power over Romania. And Romania wanted to make its own decisions. So, Soviet informal controls needed to be stopped.
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Operation RYAN: The Man Without a Face in an Elusive Program
During the early 80s, the world was again on the brink. The diplomatic relations between the East and the West were very unstable. There were a few factors. The Soviets believed the United States was going to start a nuclear attack. A personal element was present, too. Yury Andropov was haunted by the events in Hungary in the 1950s and how the once powerful Communist state began to crumble. Therefore, he justified operation RYAN, or Raketno Yadernoe Napadenie (Nuclear Missile Attack). The whole purpose of the operation was to collect intelligence to prevent a possible attack. In other words, the project was a sort of intelligence operation among the countries of the Iron Curtain, primarily the (former) Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic as their close ally. The program was initiated in May 1981.
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How did Tito’s Yugoslavia Navigate Between Two Conflicting Cold War Blocs?
It is well known that there were two conflicting superpowers during the Cold War, the East and the West. But there was also a tension effort to create a third power. That effort is called the Non- Alignment Movement. During his rule, Stalin was so powerful that every time he waved his hand, people would vanish. His fellow citizens understood very well that “wave”. More than any Russian tsar ever, Stalin had a tendency to expand to the West and incorporate Eastern Europe into the Soviet zone of influence. Therefore, through his employment of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), after the banishment of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito he hoped to see the return of pro-Soviet elements to the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party.
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