Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of communism

Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the Soviet Union by adding more churches. He wanted the people to start talking more about their society. He had an idea that was made in 1985 called "Glasnost."
The Glasnost is when the people talked about the Soviet Union's issues. These issues consisted of economic and political problems.
Gorbachev wanted to hear how the society's had to say and wanted to hear their opinions. He also wanted the people to come together.Another idea Mikhail Gorbachev had was "Peristrokia." This organization was an idea to reform the economic and the political system. By forming Glasnost and the Peristrokia, Gorbachev was able to open the Soviet Union and end communism.

Collapse of Communism

During the Cold war there was a wall that was built to separate the communists countries and the democratic countries. This wall was called The Berlin Wall.The collapse of Communism started with Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika. He thought these policies would help the USSR in the long run. Communism collapsed because it was weak in economic system and it just wasn't working. This was for the USSR and Eastern Europe. These countries started running out of money.

The reason why people tore down the Berlin wall was because they were shocked that they weren't able to go to the other side of their own country in Germany. The Berlin wall would separate Germany into two parts. East Germany was communist and West Germany wasn't. The Berlin wall stopped people from crossing the border for 28 years. The people who did attempted to cross over were killed,shot or put through gas. After the countries got their own independence people were getting jobs that payed a lot more because the government wasn't in control with the economy. When the USSR was no longer communist everyone felt more relieved and no one had to fear that the Soviet Union would attack their country because they weren't communist.

Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

To me Apartheid is any system or practice that separates people according to race. Apartheid was racism made law, a system dictated in the minutest detail as to how and where the majority of blacks would live, work and die. Nelson Mandela was a strong African man who wanted his people and himself to be treated and respected as normal people and not have to bow down to the unfair government system. Nelson was a strong lifelong warrior in the battle to free South Africans. He was a leader of an underground political congress also known as ANC. ANC was part of a dramatic demonstration against the white ruled government.

In 1964 he was sentenced to life in jail and while in jail he was still having hopes that one day his people will be free from apartheid. In 1990 Mandela was released from prison and less than five years after he was released, he was elected president of South Africa. He ended the Apartheid and freed his people from being treated differently and he also was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now everyone in South Africa has equal opportunities at home and work to make themselves feel comfortable.

African Independence

African changed so much from 1955 to 1975 because it gained more independent countries in 1975. Africans formed a movement to celebrate African culture, heritage, and values, it was called the Negritude movement.In 1947, there was a new leader called Kwame Nkrumah who worked to liberate the Gold Coast African colony. Kwame Nkrumah was elected Prime Minister and tried to build better roads, better schools, and to expand health facilities later on Kwame Nkrumah was elected Prime Minister and tried to build better roads, better schools, and to expand health facilities. Every African country gained there independence at different years.

Some leaders of Africa independent leaders were, Patrice Lumumba who was the first leader of the Congo after Belgium was granted their independence. Jomo Kenyatta was another strong leader who helped his respective nation gain independent from Britain. Marcus Garvey had a goal to lead Europeans out of Africa and have Africa ruled by Africans. Ahmed Ben Bella the Leader of FLN, he was named Prime Minister and first President of Algeria. He estasblished national order, began land reforms, and developed new plans for education.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba during the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world's ever came to a nuclear war. This crisis ranked with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold war and it's often regarded as the moment in which the Cold war became very very close to becoming a nuclear war.The United States challenged the Soviet Union and they want the Soviet Union to remove the missiles. President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev told the Soviet to leave the island and take their missile with them before both the USA and USSR attacked them.

This Cuban missile crisis started right after the failed bay of pigs attack. Fidel Castro the dictator of Cuba felt that there was another attack coming from the United States so he approved of the Khrushchev plan. Khrushchev wanted to avoid the war with the Western nation but yet at the same time wanted to increase economic competition between Communist and Non-Communist countries. Khrushchev's determination to keep peace paid off when he finally got the Americans to remove the missiles from Italy and Turkey and got a public pledge that stated the United States would not invade Cuba. President John F. Kennedy and his organization feared when he found out what the Soviet Union was doing in Cuba. Therefore Kennedy threatened that if any missiles were to be launched from Cuba, he would hold the Soviet Union responsible.The Cuban Missile Crisis was considered “the hottest moment in the Cold War” because it was the only war which consisted of nuclear bombs and was a war that could've destroyed the world.

"The Right Stuff"

In the movie "The Right Stuff" the US and the USSR were competing over space. The USSR was winning this competition because they were the first to send a satellite into space. The United States didn't like the idea that the USSR had already sent something out to space and we haven't. We had decided to send a man out into space but we also had in mind of sending a monkey instead. We trained i think two monkey as we were training our astronauts. We eventually decided on sending seven well trained astronauts out with no monkey and that was a success.The USSR had thought they were winning because they were the first to send a man out into space but little did they now we were planing to be the first to send a man to the moon. And so we did, the man who was the first to experience the moon was Neil Armstrong.
The scene that i remember was when they were testing the rockets out and every time they would think the rocket was gonna be a success,the rocket would turn out to be a disappointment. They tried so many times to send out a rocket and each time they would test a new rocket it would go higher into the sky then the last one did except on the last testing. On the last testing the rocket did absolutely nothing besides throw the top of the rocket off apart from the actual rocket.

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The NATO's were an organization that includes countries in Europe and North America.The NATO organization included countries in Europe and North America. NATO is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. The reason for forming the NATO was so if the countries involved wanted a mutual defense alliance so that if one of them were attacked all of the other countries in NATO would come and help them and this was also a response to spread communism.

The Warsaw was officially named the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship,Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. This treaty was created in 1955 in Warsaw, Poland. The Warsaw pact was an organization of communist states in Central and Eastern Europe.This pact was created to counter NATO and West Germany. Hungary, East Germany, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Soviet Union were the founding members. The Warsaw was also known as the period of conflict, tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.