Research paper and realizing we only have 4 more days of class before the FINAL

After today, December 10th, we only have 4 more days of class until our final!

Our paper is due this Friday, Dec 13th at the end of the period. All late work is due the same day, but at the beggining of the period.


Heres some perspective:

   The final is worth 200 points-- which is 2 times the amount of points our research paper is; our research paper is worth the amount of 2 position papers.

    Also, this is only a semester class so after the research paper and the last notebook check (possibly, the board is nearly full) the final is your last chance to raise your grade. Don't get too stressed out, however it is important to study. You can do this by looking over your notebook and checking Edmodo for resources like practice tests.

   Our final is on Friday, Dec 20, from 10:10-11:45 The last final of the 2013 year you'll take. For those with 3rd periods, that final is on Dec 20, from 8:10- 9:45. You have 25 minutes in between finals to cram but that will not be enough studying and studies show that last minute cramming actually confuses you more than it helps you.

China Becomes Communist

After over 20 years of civil wars in China the People's Republic of China was formed in 1949. It was led by the Communist dictator Mao Zedong.  In 1950 Mao sent the People's Volunteer Army into Korea to fight against the United States.  Mao also imposed land reforms which took land from the "wealthy" land-lords and gave it to the peasants.  Mao also campaigned to suppress Counterrevolutionaries, which involved the public execution of former government leaders, businessmen, and anyone who was not totally loyal to Mao.  In 1976 it was estimated that 1 million people had been killed in the land reforms, and 800,000 in the counterrevolutionary campaign.  During Mao's time in power he imposed several reforms such as the Great Leap Forward  The Great Leap Forward began in 1958 and was a plan designed to strengthen the Chinese economy by having every single person produce Steel. However Mao did not predict that the Chinese people would not be able to produce high quality steel and it ended up being a waste of time.  Many civilians died of starvation during the Great Leap Forward because people were not producing food, just steel.

Soviet Union Leaders During the Cold War

During the Cold War power in the Soviet Union changed hands 8 times.  The founder of the Soviet Union was Vladimir Lenin (we barely touched on Lenin this year so I will not focus on him) He was in power for just over one year.  After Lenin came Joseph Stalin.  Under Stalin's brutal leadership the Soviet Union won world 2, developed it's first atomic bomb, but also killed approximately 20 million people.  After Stalin's death in 1953 Georgy Malenkov was his replacement.  He was in power for 11 days before being replaced by Nikita Khrushchev.  Khrushchev gave a speech in 1956 talking about De-Stalinization. De-Stalinization was the reforms to change/remove key ideals that helped Stalin to control total power in the Soviet Union.  Some examples are GULAG and the renaming of cities such as Stalingrad and Leningrad.  After Khrushchev being removed from office in 1964 Leonid Brezhnev replaced him.  Brezhnev played a key role in Soviet-American relations.  He was in charge during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks which provided a maximum number of missiles a country could have at any given time.  Yuri Andropov replaced Brezhnev in 1942 but died after only 1 year in power.  Following the death of Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko took power, but similarly to Yuri his health was rapidly declining and died after only 1 year in power.  After Chernenko, the final leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev took power.  Gorbachev was the most important leader of the Soviet Union in terms of Soviet-American relations.  His reforms changed the Soviet Union into a more free nation.  He encouraged people to think for themselves.  When Gorbachev resigned in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved with him.

The Arms Race Increasing Tensions Creating War Throughout the Cold War

The Arms Race, an event that happened all of the Cold war which you could call a competition between the U.S and the USSR fighting for power. Each nation wanted to be more powerful than other and the Arms Race made countries believe who ever had more weapons was more powerful. When the U.S successfully exploded the atomic bomb it brought a whole new level of competition in the Cold War. August 24, 1949 the USSR developed their first atomic bomb ending the American bomb control while bringing a new aspect of the Arms Race. U.S was still at an advantage but they still continued to make more and more weapons fearing a nuclear war and the USSR going ahead of them in the Arms Race when really they were way ahead, this event was called the Bomber Gap. When USSR starting advancing, President Truman decided to make an even more powerful weapon than the atomic bomb which was the most powerful weapon at the time. In November of 1952, the U.S. successfully tested the Hydrogen Bomb(H-Bomb) which was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. However, only a year later the USSR caught up and built a hydrogen bomb of their own, meaning that both of the world’s superpowers were caught up causing more tensions. The Arms Race was mainly a competition to see who was more powerful as the U.S and the USSR built more and more weapons spending billions of dollars that could have been used on the citizens and the country.

Cuban Missile Crisis

This event happened earlier in the Cold War but it is such a significant event involving U.S and USSR relationships throughout the Cold War, which will help for question number two on the research paper due this Friday the 13th!

Tensions were increasing majorly due the Arms Race throughout the Cold War led to a major event called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The closest period of time the world ever came to a nuclear war, which meant destruction for everyone which everyone feared. Communism and Capitalism were still enemies increasing a lot of the tensions because they both wanted different things. The USSR was still very hind in the Arms Race and when Fidel Castro came to power more tensions increased because he was a Communist and thought placing nuclear weapons in Cuba which was 90 miles from the U.S which U.S felt was too close increased tensions also. Cuba thought a second attack was inevitable due to the Bay of Pigs failure to overthrow Cuba's leader Castro so he thought placing nuclear weapons so close would secure defense. When President of U.S, Kennedy found out this was all happening he responded immediately forcing USSR to remove the nuclear weapons from Cuba and that he would remove the weapons from Turkey. When this was all happening, everyone thought this major crisis would turn the world into a nuclear disaster creating World War III.

Long Telegram

In light of our Cold War Research paper being due this week, I wanted to give an important Cold war event that may be valuable to your paper. The Cold war event that I feel had the most profound effect on US-Soviet relations was the Long Telegram. The Long telegram was an 8,000 word telegram form senior diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Moscow George Kennan talking about Soviet intentions and how the U.S> should deal with them. It gave the basis for the United States policy of containment. Containment was a huge source of tension in the Cold War, and the Cold war was solely a war of tensions. Containment caused the United States to engage in proxy wars with the Soviet Union, or wars where they supported opposite sides of a war in another country and fought each other through these countries. The oppositions caused much strain in the countries' relationships. It also conflicted with the Soviet goal of expansion, and the communist goal to have a one-world communist society. Also, the Telegram said war was inevitable with the Soviet Union, and the United states would eventually have to fight them. Coming from a someone with deep knowledge of current Soviet affairs, it is easy to see why this would cause unrest.

A World Economy

Over the past few days in class we have been watching documentaries on post-Cold War China. One of the most striking features of these documentaries is the effects of globalization on China. Globalization is the interconnection between all countries economies made possible by the internet. Due to the massive population of people in China it is one of the country's most prominent resource. Unfortunately, the huge  population also causes a massive percentage of Chinese people to be poor. Because of this, the labor cost there is cheap, and many Western Businesses are moving their manufacturing centers to China. This has positive and negative effects. It causes westerners to lose jobs in their own country, but also lowers prices for the people in that own country. Chinese are given jobs, but they normally can't afford the products that they make. Does this really benefit the people in the counties, or just the manufacturers. It is hard to say,  but one thing is for sure, it could not happen without globalization.