Contents
This revision guide is intended to guide you to the key essentials necessary for answering questions on Unit 3. You shouldn’t use at it a replacement for your class notes or your own revision notes, but as a way of supplementing them and ensuring you have a firm awareness of major events, individuals and ideas.
1. The seeds of conflict
2. Emergence of Cold War, 1944-53
3. The ‘Thaw’ & ‘Peaceful Co-existence’
4. The arms impact of the arms race
5. Sin-Soviet relations
6. Détente
7. End of Cold War
Reminder of the structure of Unit 3
Unit 3 = 25% of total marks
Written exam: 2 hours
Answer ONE question from Section A (30 marks), and ONE from Section B (40 marks) - choice of 2 questions in both sections
Section A – discuss an historical issue
Section B – use source material & knowledge to discuss an historical event
Section A – themes to explore in your revision:
1. The post-Stalin thaw and the bid for peaceful coexistence in 1950s:
a) USSR: Khrushchev b) USA: the responses of Dulles, Eisenhower and Kennedy.
the continuation of the Cold War in the 1950s following the retirement of Truman & death of Stalin, despite the bid for improved relations on the part of the USSR in the form of unilateral cuts in the size of the Red Army and withdrawal from Austria and Finland.
the concept of peaceful coexistence & what motivated Khrushchev & the Soviet leadership, & why the USA under Eisenhower & his Secretary of State, Dulles, and later Kennedy and his staff, responded in the way they did.
the role of personality, particularly that of Khrushchev, in shaping relations in these years should be addressed & students should be aware of the Paris Summit, the U2 incident & initial meetings Kennedy & Khrushchev in Vienna.
impact on the west of the crushing of the Hungarian rising & continuing tensions over Berlin
2....