Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of Communism

Their were two very important aspects to Gorbachev and the collpase of communism. The idea of
glastnort which is openness and the idea of peristokia which id economic reconstucting.

Collapse Of Communism

Communism collapsed for many reasons many being of which just because the leaders running the government did not believe in the communist ideology.Then their was the fact that they were so corrupted that the people could not put up with it anymore.They began to fight back and question what they were doing.They found most of their information from the growing media.
The people took the most symbolic thing of communism down, the Berlin wall.This wall separated east and west Germany and they could not trade with one another. So what they did was people took hammers and went to take pieces of it home as a present to show that they took it down and had a part in it.This was basically when the Soviet Union got wiped out.
The soviet union was no longer in charge. The country changed their flag back to the original striped one.The provinces that formed each had their own flag too.This helped to ease the threat of nuclear war.Because their was no threat anymore they did not have to worry. However people did have to worry about getting a new better job because a farmer was not recognized as a good job anymore.

Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

Apartheid was a policy the govnerment put down to seperate the whites from any other race.They put down laws which restricted the people who weren't white.This caused riots to rise and boycotts to happen in order to express their opinion.Then the president F.W. de Klerk got rid of it in 1994. The most impactful person was Nelson Mandela who was a leader in the African national congress.
Nelson Mandela was part of the African national congress and was arrested for treason.He was sentenced to life in prison but got realeased after 27 years.This was when he made his move and changed the way that Africa was being governered.He changed the whole system in 5 years and was elected as the President.
He was considered a hero because of the fact that he set his people free.Because of his voice and him not using straight up violence he changed the government.He freed both the bl;ack people and the white people.

African Independence

Africa faced so many civil wars and battles in such a short period of time. People took control and tried to change but in the end were over thrown by opposition. The leaders tried to improve and industrialize but in the end they did not have enough money and crippled the African economy. The African people just couldn't make up their mind on who to let have control.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban missile crisis was when Russia fell back on the arm race. They had got scared of the fact that the US could lauch missiles at the soviet union but they could only attack eurpoe but not America. Russia then took Cuba and started to build bombs so it can be easier to bomb the US.We then quarantined Cuba and put a barrier around it to stop transports of more bombs to Cuba. Then we had got a letter which proposed that they would remove the missiles if the US would promise to not invade Cuba.
The hottest moment was when a bomb was shot down over Cuba. We then got a letter which stated to remove bombs from Turkey in exchange for the bombs in Cuba.We turned down this proposal and agreed to the first letter.This was considered the hottest moment because when this bomb was shot down it could of been considered as an attack and they could of fired.Then their would have been nuclear war. After they did remove the missiles from Cuba and we agreed not to invade Cuba.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

The NATO or North Atlantic Treaty Organization was an organization of North America and European countries.It was created in order to ensure protection by the US for other countries and to keep Russia form getting to much power.It was also put in place to help the countries who were having economic problems.After this was created Russia created its own organization called the Warsaw Pact.
The Warsaw pact was made up of Russia and its satellite countries.It was made in order to fight back against the NATO.Russia put military personal into its satellite countries in order to increase its hold on them. Russia's Warsaw pact broke down when Russia started to have economic difficulties.Then the countries started to break apart and leave the organization.

FilmLesson:"The Right Stuff"

In the movie The Right Stuff the US and Russia were competing to see who had more of a technological advantage.What they were doing was trying to out match each other. First Russia sent their satellite into space which made us angry and we had to prove that we also had that technology. So what we did was send a monkey into space. Russia then out classed us by sending a man into space. They were winning the space race and were more technologically advanced then us.
Some of the scenes that stood in my head were when they keep having those government meeting that the US keep having in order to analyze a way to come back and beat them. Also the government keep saying that they had spies which were taking the footage of the spacecrafts which sort of confused me to how they got a man that close to Russia's space programs.