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| the secret alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in 1882 and lasting until 1914 |
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| an informal understanding among Great Britain, France, and Russia based on a Franco-Russian military alliance (1894), an Anglo-French entente (1904), and an Anglo-Russian entente (1907). It was considered a counterbalance to the Triple Alliance but was terminated when the Bolsheviks came into control in Russia in 1917. |
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| a plan intended to ensure German victory over a Franco-Russian alliance by holding off Russia with minimal strength and swiftly defeating France by a massive flanking movement through the Low Countries, devised by Alfred, Count von Schlieffen (1833-1913) in 1905 |
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| Warfare marked by slow wearing down of the opposing forces and piecemeal gains at heavy cost. The term applies especially to WWI. |
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unrestricted submarine warfare
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| A type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchant ships without warning, as opposed to attacks per prize rules. While providing the submarine with strongly increased lethality and greater chances of survival against its hunters, it is also considered by many as a substantial breach of the rules of war, especially when employed against neutral country vessels in a war zone. The use of unrestricted submarine warfare was announced by Germany on January 9th, 1917. The use of unrestricted submarine warfare was to have a major impact on WWI as it was one of the main reasons why the US joined the war. |
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| The policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by avoiding foreign entanglements and responsibilities. |
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| A coded telegram dispatched by the Foreign Secretary of the German Empire on Jan16,1917 to the German ambassador in the US at the height of WWI. The Secretary of German empire to the German ambassador in Mexico in anticipation of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the German Empire. It instructed Ambassador Eckardt that if the United States appeared likely to enter the war he was to approach the Mexican government with a proposal for military alliance. It was intercepted and decoded by the British. The revelation of its contents in the American press caused public outrage that contributed to the United States' declaration of war against Germany. |
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| The treaty that officially ended WWI, signed at the Palace of Versailles. The leading figures at the treaty negotiations were Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, PM David Lloyd of Britain, and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. The treaty was far more punitive toward Germany than Wilson's Fourteen Points; it required Germany to give up land and much of its army and navy and to pay extensive reparations for damages to civilians in the war. The treaty also created the League of Nations. |
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Article 231/War Guilt Clause
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| An article of the Treaty of Versailles in which Germany was forced to take complete responsibility for starting WWI. |
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| Made in the peace negotiations after WWI. It was announced by President Woodrow to Congress in early 1918. They included public negotiations between nations, freedom of navigation, free trade, self-determination for several nations involved in the war, and the establishment of an association of nations to keep the peace. The “association of nations” Wilson mentioned became the League of Nations. |
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| A world organization established in 1920 to promote international cooperation and peace. It was first proposed in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson, although the United States never joined the League. Essentially powerless, it was officially dissolved in 1946. |
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| The system established after World War I to administer former territories of the German and Ottoman empires. The process of establishing the mandates consisted of two phases: the formal removal of sovereignty of the previously controlling states and the transfer of mandatory powers to individual states among the Allied Powers |
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| The pandemic respiratory infection that caused several waves of pandemic in 1918-1919/1920, resulting in over 20 million deaths worldwide. It was first found in the US, appeared in Sierra Leone and France, and then spread to nearly every part of the world. |
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An anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement in early modern China. Beginning on May 4, 1919, it marked the upsurge of Chinese nationalism, and a re-evaluation of Chinese cultural institutions, such as Confucianism. The movement grew out of dissatisfaction with the Treaty of Versailles settlement, termed the Shandong Problem. Coming out of the New Culture Movement, the end result was a drastic change in society that fueled the birth of the Communist Party of China. |
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| A council, the primary unit of government in the Soviet Union at local, regional, and national levels, also adopted by other Communist regimes. Committees of workers' elected deputies first appeared in 1905 to coordinate revolutionary activities; they sprang up throughout the Russian Empire and were a crucial agent in the Revolution of 1917, forming the basis of Soviet administraiton thereafter. |
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| The armed force first organized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War in 1918 and, in 1922, became the army of the Soviet Union. "Red" refers to the blood of the working class in its struggle against capitalism, and to the belief that all are equal. The appellation "Red" was dropped after World War II, when national symbols replaced those connoting the old revolutionary fervor, and it was officially renamed the Soviet Army. The Red Army eventually grew to form the largest army in history from the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. |
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A series of directives by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin issued upon his return to Saint Petersburg from his exile in Switzerland. The Theses were mostly aimed at fellow Bolsheviks in Russia and returning to Russia from exile. He called for soviets (workers' councils) to take power, denounced liberals and social democrats in the Provisional Government and called for Bolsheviks to not cooperate with the government, and called for new communist policies. The April Theses influenced the July Days and October Revolution in the next months and are identified with Leninism. |
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Definition
| A peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk between the Russian SFSR and the Central Powers, marking Russia's exit from World War I. While the treaty was obsolete before the end of the year, it did provide some relief to Bolsheviks who were tied up in fighting the civil war and affirmed the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland. |
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New Economic Policy (NEP)
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(in the Soviet Union) a program in effect from 1921 to 1928, reviving the wage system and private ownership of some factories and businesses, and abandoning grain requisitions. It was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin to prevent the Russian economy from collapsing. It was officially decided in the course of the 10th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party. |
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Definition
Series of nation-wide centralized exercises in rapid economic development in the Soviet Union. The plans were developed by the Gosplan based on the Theory of Productive Forces that was part of the general guidelines of the Communist Party for economic development. Fulfilling the plan became the watchword of Soviet bureaucracy. The same method of planning was also adopted by most other communist states. The initial five-year plans were created to serve in the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union, which placed a major focus on heavy industry.
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A concept used to describe political systems where a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. The term is usually applied to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or hard-line communist regimes, such as Stalinist Russia, Democratic Kampuchea or North Korea. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, central state-controlled economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics. |
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| A policy that aims to transfer land from private to state or communal ownership. It was adopted by the Soviet government in the 1920s and implemented with increasing brutality; by 1936 almost all the peasants had joined the kolkhozy (large collective farms), although many resisted violently. The integration of agriculture into the state-controlled economy helped to supply the capital required for industrialization. |
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Definition
Political system based on the premise that the government (and not the individual, corporations, or the local community) has the responsibility for the well being of its citizens, by ensuring that a minimum standard of living is within everyone's reach. This commitment is translated into provision of universal and free education, universal medical care, insurance against disability, sickness, and unemployment, family allowances for income supplement, and old age pensions. An economic system that combines features of capitalism and socialism by retaining private ownership while the government enacts broad programs of social welfare |
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The parliament of the Holy Roman Empire, the North German Confederation, and of Germany until 1945. The building in which it meets is still called "Reichstag." While the Holy Roman Empire lasted, it never was a parliament in today's sense; instead, it was the assembly of the various estates of which the Empire was comprised. More precisely, it was the convention of the imperial states, those legal entities that, according to feudal law, had no authority above them besides the king himself.
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League of countries opposed to the Allies during World War II. The three major Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan were part of a military alliance on the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which officially founded the Axis powers. At their zenith, the Axis powers ruled empires that dominated large parts of Europe, Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, but World War II ended with their total defeat. Like the Allies, membership of the Axis was fluid, and some nations entered and later left the Axis during the course of the war. |
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Were the countries officially opposed to the Axis powers during the Second World War. Within the ranks of the Allied powers, the British Empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States of America were known as "The Big Three." U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the Big Three and China as the "Four Policemen". France, before its defeat in 1940 and after Operation Torch was considered as a major ally, though Poland's commitment was, in fact, larger. |
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The program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945 in return for, in the case of Britain, military bases in Newfoundland, Bermudas, and the British West Indies. It began in March 1941, over 18 months after the outbreak of the war in September 1939. |
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| German for "leader," the title taken by Hitler to assert his total control over Germany. |
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The common English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (aka NSDAP or the Nazi Party), an anti-Semitic political party that established a totalitarian dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945. |
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Denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. They used a pseudoscientific basis for racial discrimination against Jewish people. The laws classified people as German if all four of their grandparents were of "German blood”, while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. |
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Munich Conference of 1938
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An agreement regarding the Sudetenland Crisis among the major powers of Europe after a conference held in Munich, Germany in 1938. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of Czechoslovakia in the face of territorial demands made by German dictator Adolf Hitler. The agreement, signed by Nazi Germany, France, Britain, and Italy permitted German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses were situated there. |
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This is used for the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance. Usually it means giving in to demands of an aggressor in order to avoid war. Since World War II, the term has gained a negative connotation in the British government, in politics and in general, of weakness, cowardice and self-deception. |
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An agreement signed in Moscow officially entitled the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1939 that renounced warfare between the two countries and pledged neutrality by either party if the other were attacked by a third party. Each signatory promised not to join any grouping of powers that was “directly or indirectly aimed at the other party”. It remained in effect until Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. |
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| The codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII that commenced in 1941.It was the largest military operation in WWII. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along an 1,800 mile front. The failure of Operation Barbarossa resulted in the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany and is considered a turning point for the Third Reich. Most importantly, Operation Barbarossa opened up the Eastern Front, which ultimately became the biggest theater of war in the 20th century. Operation Barbarossa and the areas which fell under it became the site of some of the largest and most brutal battles, deadliest atrocities, terrible loss of life, and horrific conditions for Soviets and Germans alike - all of which influenced the course of both World War II and 20th Century history. |
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Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
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| A concept created/promulgated during the Showa era by the government/military of Japan that was initiated by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, in an attempt to create a Great East Asia, comprised of Japan, China, and parts of Southeast Asia, that would establish a new international order seeking ‘co prosperity’ for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination. Realistically, it was used in the justification of Japanese aggression in East Asia in the 1930s through the end of WWII and the term is remembered today largely as a front for the Japanese control of occupied countries during WWII, in which puppet governments manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan. |
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A pact formed in 1936, based on agreements between Germany and Japan to oppose communism and the Third International: Italy and Spain subsequently became signatories. |
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A pact signed in Berlin, Germany on September 27, 1940 by Saburo Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, and Galeazzo Ciano (foreign minister of Italy) of Fascist Italy entering as a military alliance and officially founding the Axis Powers of World War II that opposed the Allied Powers. |
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| The name given to the sustained strategic effort by the German Luftwaffe during the summer/autumn of 1940 to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force (RAF), especially Fighter Command. Had it been successful, the planned amphibious and airborne landings in Britain of Operation Sealion would have followed. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces. It was the largest and most sustained bombing campaign attempted up until that date. |
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| A major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of WWII. It took place from June 4, 1942 to June 7, 1942. During the battle, the United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll. The battle was a decisive victory for the Americans, and is widely regarded as the most important naval engagement of the Pacific Campaign of World War II.[2] The battle permanently weakened the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), in particular through the loss of four fleet carriers and over 200 irreplaceable experienced naval aviators. |
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They were the two battles of El Alamein, both of them during 1942. The Battles occurred in Egypt in and around an area named after a railway stop called El Alamein. It contained a pitched battle in World War II (1942) resulting in a decisive Allied victory by British troops under Montgomery over German troops under Rommel. |
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| It contained several large operations by Germany and its allies and Soviet forces conducted with the purpose of possession of the city of Stalingrad, which took place between 1942-1943 during WWII. The results of these operations are often cited as one of the turning points of WWII. It was the bloodiest battle in human history, with 1.5 million casualties. It was marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties by both sides. The German offensive to take Stalingrad, the battle inside the city, and the Soviet counter-offensive which trapped and destroyed the 6th Army and other Axis forces around the city was the 2nd large-scale defeat of the WWII. |
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| (June 6, 1944) the day of the invasion of western Europe by Allied forces (American/British forces) in World War II (on which the Allied forces invaded France) or the code name for the first day of a military attack |
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| The project to develop the first nuclear weapon (atomic bomb) during WWII by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It refers specifically to the period of the project from 1941–1946 under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the administration of General Leslie R. Groves. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The project's roots lay in scientists' fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was also investigating nuclear weapons of its own. Born out of a small research program in 1939, it eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $2 billion USD. The project was largely kept secret. |
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The genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler. |
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"crimes against humanity"
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Definition
In international law, it is an act of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, and is the highest level of criminal offense. |
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mass (or popular) culture
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| What is popular within the social context — that of which is most strongly represented by what is perceived to be popularly accepted among society. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. Pop culture finds its expression in the mass circulation of items from areas such as fashion, music, sport and film. The world of pop culture has had a particular influence on art from the early 1960s on, through Pop Art. When modern pop culture began during the early 1950s, it made it harder for adults to participate. |
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The deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by the use of massacres, and the use of deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider the events to be part of the same policy of extermination. |
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| A United States foreign policy doctrine, adopted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, designed to improve relations with Latin America. A reaction to the exploitative dollar diplomacy of the early 1900s, the Good Neighbor policy encouraged interaction between the United States and Latin America as equals. In the post–World War II era, however, the United States has often reverted to dollar diplomacy and gunboat diplomacy to impose its will on the countries of Latin America. |
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Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP)
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Established in 1929 as the National Revolutionary party by former President Plutarco Calles, it brought together the country's governmental, military, and agricultural leaders in a program of socioeconomic reform. In 1938 it was renamed the Mexican Revolutionary party, but later acquired its current name in 1946. During the rest of the century all Mexican presidents and most officials belonged to the PRI, which was often accused of corruption/electoral fraud, such as the 1988 presidential election. Its victory margins decreased in the 1980s and 90s, and it lost some state elections to its opponents, but the party still remained Mexico's dominant political group |
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A project instituted at the Paris Economic Conference in 1947 to foster economic recovery in European countries after WWII. It took form when U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, urged that European countries decide on their economic needs so that material and financial aid from the United States could be integrated on a broad scale. The ECA was created to promote European production, to bolster European currency, and to facilitate international trade. Another object was the containment of growing Soviet influence. Its activities were transferred to the Mutual Security Agency. Completed in 1952, it was one aspect of the foreign aid program of the United States and greatly contributed to the economic recovery of Europe. |
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Pronouncement by President Truman in 1947, in which he called for immediate economic and military aid to Greece, which was threatened by a communist insurrection, and to Turkey, which was under pressure from Soviet expansion in the Mediterranean. Engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the U.S. sought to protect those countries from falling under Soviet influence after Britain announced that it could no longer give them aid. In response to Truman's message, Congress appropriated $400 million in aid. |
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Conference at Yalta and Potsdam
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The wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 between the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, |
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(1948-1949) one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post-World War 2 Germany, the Soviet Union -- a wartime ally of the three other occupying nations -- blocked the three Western powers' railroad and street access to the western sectors of Berlin that they had been controlling. The crisis abated after the Western powers bypassed the blockade by establishing the Berlin Airlift, demonstrating both their dedication to the cause of supplying their respective zones. |
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Definition
| Airlift in 1948 that supplied food and fuel to citizens of west Berlin when the Russians closed off land access to Berlin |
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| A barrier separating West Berlin from East Berlin and the rest of East Germany. It was part of the Iron Curtain. It separated the 2 regions for 28 years, from 1961 until 1989. At least 133 people were confirmed killed trying to cross the Wall into West Berlin. The East German government gave shooting orders to border guards dealing with defectors. |
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Definition
| The period of conflict, tension and competition between the US and the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940s until the early 1990s. Throughout this period, the rivalry between the two superpowers unfolded in multiple arenas, such as military coalitions; ideology; psychology; espionage; and military, industrial, and technological developments, which included the space race. In sports, rising tensions between the US and the USSR led to boycotts of major events. The Cold War generated for both superpowers costly defence spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race and proxy wars. |
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| An organization of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. It was established on May 14, 1955 in Warshaw, Poland. It was an initiative of the Soviet Union, which actually had all the power among the members. This treaty was in response to the NATO treaty, 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 |
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| North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an international organization composed of the US, Canada, Britain, and a number of European countries: established by the North Atlantic Treaty (1949) for purposes of collective security. In 1994 it launched the partnerships for peace initiative, in order to forge alliances with former Warsaw Pact countries; in 1997 a treaty of cooperation with Russia was signed and in 1999 Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic became full members. |
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| A policy of checking the expansion or influence of a hostile power or ideology, for example by creating strategic alliances or supporting client states in areas of conflict or unrest. |
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| Political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas. Term created by Winston Churchill in a speech about the division of Europe in 1946. The restrictions and the rigidity of the Iron Curtain eased slightly after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, though the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 restored them. It largely ceased to exist in 1989–90 with the communists' abandonment of one-party rule in eastern Europe. |
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Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1968)
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Definition
| International agreement intended to prevent the spread of nuclear technology that was signed by the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, and 59 other countries in 1968. The three major signatories agreed not to assist states lacking nuclear weapons to obtain/produce them; the nonnuclear signatories agreed not to attempt to obtain nuclear weapons in exchange for assistance in developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes. France and China declined to ratify the treaty until 1992, and some nuclear powers, including Israel and Pakistan, have never signed it. In 1995, when the treaty was due to expire, it was extended indefinitely by a consensus vote of 174 countries at the United Nations. |
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decolonization/national liberation
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| Process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization was gradual and peaceful for some British colonies largely settled by expatriates but violent for others, where native rebellions were energized by nationalism. |
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Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
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Definition
The founding and ruling political party of the People’s Republic of China and the world's largest political party. Its paramount position as the supreme political authority in China is guaranteed by China’s constitution and realized through control of all state apparatus. The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, and came to rule all of mainland China after defeating its rival the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. The party's organizational structure was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt afterwards by Xiaoping. |
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Definition
| The People's Republic of China was an economic and social plan used from 1958-1960 which aimed to use China’s vast population to rapidly transform mainland China from a primarily agrarian economy dominated by peasant farmers into a modern, industrialized communist society. It was lead by Mao Zendong but the program is now widely as a major economic failure and great humanitarian disaster with estimates of the number of people who starved to death during this period ranging from 14 to 43 million. |
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Definition
| It was a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China that manifested into wide-scale social, political, and economic violence and chaos, which grew to include large sections of Chinese society and eventually brought the entire country to the brink of civil war. It was launched by Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, in 1966, officially as a campaign to rid China of its "liberal bourgeoisie" elements and to continue revolutionary class struggle. It is widely recognized, however, as a method to regain control of the party after the disastrous Great Leap Forward led to a significant loss of Mao's power to rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, and would eventually descend into power struggles between rival national and local factions. |
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Definition
| An infamous war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanking, then the capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army in 1937. The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted well into the next six weeks, until early February 1938. The Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. Although the executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians, it is claimed that a large number of innocent men were intentionally identified as enemy combatants and executed as the massacre gathered momentum. A large number of women and children were also killed. |
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Definition
| A rider appended to the Army Appropriations Act, a US federal law passed in 1901, which stipulated the conditions for the withdrawal of US troops remaining in Cuba since the Spanish-American War, and defined the terms of Cuban-U.S. relations until 1934. It was formulated by the US Secretary of War Elihu Root and replaced the Teller Amendment. It said that Cuba would not transfer its land to any power other than the US, mandated that Cuba would contract no foreign debt without guarantees that the interest could be served from ordinary revenues, ensured US intervention in Cuban affairs when the US deemed necessary, and prohibited Cuba from negotiating treaties with any country other than the US. |
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Definition
| The revolution that led to the overthrow of General Fulgencio Batista's regime on in 1959 by the 26th of July Movement and other revolutionary elements within the country. The Cuban Revolution also refers to the ongoing implementation of social and economic programs by the new government since the overthrow of the Batista government, including the implementation of Marxist policies. |
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Term
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Definition
| An unsuccessful attempted invasion by armed Cuban exiles in southwest Cuba, planned and funded by the United States, in an attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, shortly after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the U.S. This action accelerated a rapid deterioration in Cuban-American relations, which was further worsened by the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. It is named after the Bay of Pigs where the landing took place, and resulted in a victory for the forces led by Fidel Castro. |
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Definition
| A confrontation between the US, the Soviet Union, and Cuba during the Cold War. The crisis is often regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war. The climax period of the crisis began on October 15, 1962, when United States reconnaissance photographs taken by an American U-2 spy plane revealed missile bases being built in Cuba, and ended two weeks later on October 28, 1962, when President of the United States John F. Kennedy and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with the Soviets to dismantle the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a no invasion agreement and a secret removal of the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey. |
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Definition
| The organization of free trade unions in Poland: recognized in 1980; outlawed in 1982; legalized and led the new noncommunist government in 1989 |
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Definition
| An economic policy adopted in the former Soviet Union; intended to increase automation and labor efficiency but it led eventually to the end of central planning in the Russian economy. It began restructuring the Soviet economy and bureaucracy in the mid 1980s |
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Definition
| An official policy of the former Soviet government emphasizing candor with regard to discussion of social problems and shortcomings. The policy of public frankness and accountability was developed in the former Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachov |
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Definition
The systematic elimination of an ethnic group or groups from a region or society, as by deportation, forced emigration, or genocide. |
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Definition
On April 13, 1919, British Indian Army soldiers under the command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire on an unarmed gathering of men, women and children. The firing lasted about 10 minutes and 1650 rounds were fired. There were over hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries. Back in his headquarters, Reginald Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been "confronted by a revolutionary army," and had been obliged "to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab." |
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passive resistance (satyagraha)
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Definition
The practice of achieving socio-political goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. |
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Definition
A civil disobediance movement launched in India in August 1942 in response to Ghandi's call for immediate independence. Gandhi hoped to bring the British govt to the negotiating table. Almost the entire Congress leadership, and not merely at the national level, was put into confinement less than twenty-four hours after Ghandi's speech, and the greater number of the Congress leaders were to spend the rest of the war in jail
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The partition of the British Indian Empire which led to the creation, on August 14 and 15 1947 of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India. "Partition" here refers not only to the division of the Bengal province of British India into East Pakistan and West Bengal, and the similar partition of the Punjab province into Punjab and Punjab, but also to the respective divisions of other assets, including the British Indian Army, the Indian Civil Service and other administrative services, the railways, and the central treasury. |
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The ruling political party of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. It is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people or 1/5 of the country's total population under its regime, through execution, starvation and forced labor. Following their leader Pol Pot, it imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society—a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. |
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The systematic murder of the Tutsi minority of Rwanda and the moderates of its Hutu majority in 1994. This was both the bloodiest period of the Rwandan Civil War and one of the worst genocides of the 1990s. With the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords, the Tutsi rebels and Hutu regime were able to agree to a cease-fire, and further negotiations were underway. The diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were at first thought to be successful, yet even with the agreeing parties, many rebel factions were present. Over the course of about 100 days, from April 6 to mid-July, at least 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of Hutus were killed during the genocide. |
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| An international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine (1948) and continues primarily as support for the modern state of Israel. Although its origins are earlier, the movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. The movement is described as a "diaspora nationalism” and its proponents regard it as a national liberation movement whose aim is the self-determination of the Jewish people. |
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Two key British government policy statements associated with Conservative statesman and former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. The first (1917) stated the British government will aid the establishment of Palestine as a national home for Jewish people. The second (1926) recognized the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire as fully autonomous states. |
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| A war (1967) fought between Israel and Arab neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The nations of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria also contributed troops and arms to the Arab forces. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day. |
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Agreements signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy Carter. The Accords led directly to the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. |
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A term used to describe the religious idealogies seen as advocating a return to the fundamentals of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah. It is deemed problematic by those who suggest Islamic belief requires all Muslims to be fundamentalists, and by others as a term used by outsiders to describe perceived trends within Islam. One of its most defining features is the reopening of the gates of Ijtihad.
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Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
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| A political movement uniting Palestinian Arabs in an effort to create an independent state of Palestine; when formed in 1964 it was a terrorist organization dominated by Yasser Arafat's al-Fatah; in 1968 Arafat became chairman; received recognition by the United Nations and by Arab states in 1974 as a government in exile; has played a largely political role since the creation of the Palestine National Authority. |
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| An uprising among Palestinian Arabs of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, beginning in late 1987 and continuing sporadically into the early 1990s, in protest against continued Israeli occupation of these territories. |
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| A militant Islamic fundamentalist political movement that opposes peace with Israel and uses terrorism as a weapon; seeks to create an Islamic state in place of Israel; is opposed to the PLO and has become a leading perpetrator of terrorist activity in Israel; pioneered suicide bombing. Its aim is to establish an Islamic state in Palestine |
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| A Palestinian terrorist organization, founded in 1956, with the aim of destroying the state of Israel: it has splintered into rival factions since 1988. It is also a political and military organization founded by Yasser Arafat in 1958 to work toward the creation of a Palestinian state; during the 1960s and 1970s he trained terrorist and insurgent groups. |
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| Lebanese Shiite political party and militia. Founded in 1982 with Iranian help to oppose Israeli forces occupying Lebanon, it launched guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli forces, and mounted terror attacks on other targets inside and outside Lebanon, include the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. It established a Shiite social-services network, including schools, hospitals, and clinics, and emerged as a major Lebanese political force; it has been led since 1992 by Hassan Nasrallah. |
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| Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries: an organization formed in 1961 to administer a common policy for the sale of petroleum. Its members are Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Ecuador and Gabon were members but withdrew in 1992 and 1995 respectively. |
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| A prohibition by a government on certain or all trade with a foreign nation. |
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| One of the world's largest dams on the Nile River in southern Egypt created by Britain. |
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| A fundamentalist Muslim group (Sunni) that controlled much of Afghanistan from 1995 until U.S. military intervention in 2001. In 1996 it defeated the ruling mujaheddin factions and seized control of the country. While in power, it implemented the "strictest interpretation of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world," and became notorious internationally for their mistreatment of women. |
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| An international Sunni Islamic terrorist organization, or alliance of such organizations, founded in 1988 by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam (later replaced by Osama Bin Laden) and other veteran "Afghan Arabs" after the Soviet War in Afghanistan. It has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, the most notable being the September 11 attacks in 2001. These actions were followed by the US government launching a military and intelligence campaign against al-Qaeda called the War on Terror. |
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North American Free Trade Agreement; A trade bloc in North America created by the North American Free Trade Agreement and its two supplements, whose members are Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It came into effect on January 1, 1994 and is the largest trade bloc in the world in terms of combined purchasing power parity GDP of its members. The program, in an endeavor to be more than a set of environmental regulations, established the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a mechanism for addressing trade and environmental issues, the North American Development Bank for assisting and financing investments in pollution reduction, and the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission.
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| An economic and political union established in 1993 after the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by members of the European Community and since expanded to include numerous Central and Eastern European nations. The establishment of the European Union expanded the political scope of the European Economic Community, especially in the area of foreign and security policy, and provided for the creation of a central European bank and the adoption of a common currency, the euro. |
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| World Trade Organization; An international organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade. It came into being on January 1, 1995, and is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was created in 1947, and continued to operate for almost five decades as a de facto international organization. It deals with the rules of trade between nations at a near-global level; it is responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements, and is in charge of policing member countries' adherence to all its agreements, signed by the bulk of the world's trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. |
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| Short for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; it was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization. The Bretton Woods Conference had introduced the idea for an organization to regulate trade as part of a larger plan for economic recovery after World War II. Once the ITO failed in 1950, only the GATT agreement was left. Its main objective was the reduction of barriers to international trade. This was achieved through the reduction of tariff barriers, quantitative restrictions and subsidies on trade through a series of agreements. The GATT was a treaty. The functions of the GATT were taken over by the World Trade Organization which was established during the final round of negotiations in early 1990s. |
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| Group of Eight (G8) which is an international forum for the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The G8 can refer to the member states or to the annual summit meeting of the G8 heads of government. |
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