HIST 1003 Chapter Notes - Chapter 25: Nikita Khrushchev, Velvet Revolution, Glasnost
Document Summary
For forty years after wwii, the cold war was fought ideologically and in wars outside of europe. For those who lived it, it was a tense and uncertain era, but also one in which europeans gave up what had long been their most lethal practice: that of making war on one another. It was almost history in reverse: the huge military budgets states had sustained since absolutist times, and the grand, standing armies of the early twentieth century were abandoned. And since it was now up to the superpowers to supply military might, states, especially in the west, were able to turn their attention and their incomes to paying for a greatly expanded array of social services. Over time, people grew used to living in a demilitarized and divided europe even while critics on both sides grew increasingly unsatisfied with some aspects of their societies: making the soviet bloc.
