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110 Cold War Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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The Cold War, a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, lasted from the end of World War II until the early 1990s. This era shaped the modern world and influenced countless aspects of politics, economics, and society. If you're tasked with writing an essay about the Cold War, choosing a compelling topic is crucial. To help you brainstorm ideas and find inspiration, here are 110 Cold War essay topic ideas and examples.

• The origins of the Cold War: Analyzing the causes of the conflict.
• The Yalta Conference: Assessing its impact on the Cold War.
• The Truman Doctrine: Examining its role in shaping the Cold War.
• The Marshall Plan: Evaluating its impact on European recovery and the Cold War.
• The Berlin Airlift: Analyzing its significance in the context of the Cold War.
• The Korean War: Assessing its role as a proxy conflict during the Cold War.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis: Evaluating its impact on U.S.-Soviet relations and the Cold War.
• The Space Race: Analyzing its influence on the Cold War and technological advancements.
• The arms race: Assessing the importance of nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
• The Iron Curtain: Examining its role in dividing Europe during the Cold War.
• The domino theory: Evaluating its influence on U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.
• The Suez Crisis: Analyzing its impact on the Cold War and decolonization.
• The Vietnam War: Assessing its role as a Cold War battleground.
• The Prague Spring: Evaluating its significance in the context of the Cold War.
• The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: Analyzing its impact on the Cold War.
• Détente: Assessing the policies and consequences of the period of eased tensions.
• The Helsinki Accords: Evaluating their role in the Cold War and human rights.
• The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI): Analyzing its influence on U.S.-Soviet relations.
• The fall of the Berlin Wall: Assessing its importance in ending the Cold War.
• Perestroika and Glasnost: Evaluating their impact on the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
• The collapse of the Soviet Union: Analyzing its effects on the post-Cold War world.
• Proxy wars during the Cold War: Analyzing conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• The impact of the Cold War on the Third World: Assessing economic and political consequences.
• The role of propaganda during the Cold War: Analyzing its use by both sides.
• The cultural impact of the Cold War: Evaluating the influence on film, literature, and music.
• The role of espionage during the Cold War: Analyzing famous spies and intelligence agencies.
• The arms control talks: Assessing their effectiveness in reducing Cold War tensions.
• The role of non-aligned countries during the Cold War: Analyzing their significance.
• The impact of the Cold War on sports: Evaluating the use of athletic competitions for propaganda.
• The Cold War and the nuclear family: Analyzing the influence on societal norms.
• The Cold War and the Red Scare: Assessing the impact on civil liberties in the United States.
• The role of women during the Cold War: Analyzing their contributions and limitations.
• The impact of the Cold War on popular culture: Evaluating its portrayal in movies and TV shows.
• The Cold War and the arms trade: Assessing the influence on global weapons proliferation.
• The impact of the Cold War on the Middle East: Analyzing regional conflicts and alliances.
• The Cold War and the space exploration: Evaluating the role of technology and scientific advancements.
• The role of NATO during the Cold War: Assessing its importance in collective defense.
• The impact of the Cold War on East Asia: Analyzing the division of Korea and China's role.
• The Cold War and the European Union: Evaluating the influence on European integration.
• The impact of the Cold War on Latin America: Analyzing U.S. interventions and communist movements.
• The role of technology in the Cold War: Analyzing advancements in communication and surveillance.
• The Cold War and the United Nations: Assessing its role in maintaining global stability.
• The impact of the Cold War on the arms industry: Evaluating its economic consequences.
• The space race and its impact on scientific research: Analyzing technological advancements.
• The Cold War and nuclear accidents: Assessing the risks and consequences.
• The influence of Cold War propaganda on public opinion: Analyzing its effects.
• The Cold War and the media: Evaluating the role of journalism in shaping public perception.
• The impact of the Cold War on education: Analyzing curriculum changes and ideological influences.
• The Cold War and the military-industrial complex: Assessing its influence on the economy.
• The role of ideology in the Cold War: Analyzing the clash of capitalism and communism.
• The Cold War and the nuclear arms control treaties: Evaluating their effectiveness.
• The impact of the Cold War on human rights: Analyzing violations and international responses.
• The Cold War and the rise of terrorism: Assessing its connection to geopolitical rivalries.
• The role of intelligence agencies during the Cold War: Analyzing covert operations.
• The impact of the Cold War on the environment: Evaluating nuclear testing and pollution.

These are just a few examples of the many possible topics you can explore in a Cold War essay. Consider your interests, the requirements of your assignment, and the available resources to choose a topic that engages you and allows for in-depth research. Remember, a well-chosen topic is the first step towards crafting an exceptional essay on the Cold War.

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6 KEY questions about the Cold War

1. What was the Cold War?

From left: British prime minister Churchill, the American President Harry S. Truman, the Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin.

The Cold War is defined as a rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The rivalry crystallized a few years after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Soon, it transformed into a full-fledged enmity that spilled over into ideological, economic, scientific, military and other spheres where the two superpowers tried to outperform one another.

It lasted for over 45 years and officially ended with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. 

2. Who started it?

Although debates are ongoing as to who bears primary responsibility for starting the Cold War, it is only fair to argue that both the U.S. and the USSR contributed to the escalating tensions.

Bearing the fruit of the hard-earned victory and seeking to eliminate the mere possibility of another devastating attack on the Soviet Union, the Kremlin sought to strengthen its position in Europe after WWII. Thus, Moscow installed left-wing governments in some of the East European countries that the Red Army had liberated from Nazi occupation. For ideological reasons underpinning the communist ideology, the Soviet Union also proclaimed the desire and intention to spread communism throughout the entire world.

On the other hand, the U.S. seized a unique opportunity to spread its influence over weakened Europe and thus emerge as a dominant force in world politics after a prolonged period of political isolation. Countering the Soviet aspirations to install communist governments in Europe was only natural for the U.S., which aspired to become a global superpower.

The Cold War intensified when Washington announced it was implementing a massive restoration plan for Europe - known as the Marshall Plan - as well as introducing the so-called Truman Doctrine, a policy that pledged support for democracies against authoritarian threats: this basically meant that the U.S. would contain Soviet expansion anywhere in the world. On top of that, NATO was soon formed.

3. Was it inevitable?

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

In a way, it was. We certainly don’t know how history would have played out, had the U.S. or the USSR acted any differently from what they did. However, in retrospect, there were so many factors that contributed to igniting the Cold War that it is safe to assume there was simply no way around this for either Moscow or Washington.

For one, Germany lost all of its influence in Europe, and left a power void that was quickly filled by the Soviet Union and the U.S., making the two countries natural rivals. Conflicting ideologies did not help to make the relations amicable either. Both countries acquired nuclear weapons at the beginning of the Cold War hostilities making them the leading powers in the world. All these factors combined almost certainly make the Cold War look inevitable in retrospect. Besides, we will never know for sure if it was ever possible to avert this grand geopolitical rivalry.

4. Why was it “cold”?

A P2V Neptune U.S. patrol plane flies over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban missile crisis in this 1962 photograph.

The global standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was known as “cold” because it never turned into an open war between the two superpowers. The term “Cold War” was coined in 1945 by George Orwell who foresaw a period of history characterized by the rivalry of states that were “at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbors.”

His prediction came true with incredible accuracy: the U.S. and the USSR were unconquerable for they had massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons and were entrapped into a permanent conflict with one another at the same time.

5. How close did it come to turning into a real war?

Pretty close. In fact, the Cold War manifested itself in multiple proxy wars in which the U.S. and the USSR fought each other indirectly by supporting opposite sides in bloody conflicts sparked in different corners of the globe. 

The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Congo, Angola, Afghanistan, and other countries were by and large products of the Cold War. Many people died throughout these conflicts, including Soviet and American servicemen. However, they were never regarded as open military confrontations between the U.S. and the USSR. Instead, Moscow and Washington saw them as part of the efforts to spread their respective ideologies and undermine the position of their Cold War rival in various parts of the world, all at the cost of local populations, who endured enormous suffering, but also extracted some benefits from aligning with one of the two rival sides.

In some instances during the Cold War, the U.S. and the USSR came close to spiraling into a direct war with one another. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the world came quite close to WWIII. A technical mistake could have caused a nuclear war between the two countries in 1983, but the apocalypse was averted thanks to Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov, who decided not to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. following a false alarm.

6. Who won?

Moscow in August 20, 1991. A coup d'état attempt in the USSR.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, the U.S. was the ”last man standing" in the Cold War standoff. 

However, historians disagree on whether the U.S. can be justly credited with “winning” the Cold War, because it is not clear what the primary reason for the USSR's collapse was.

One can make the argument that the U.S. depleted the Soviet resources through expensive proxy wars and an outrageously expensive nuclear arms race. However, some argue that the U.S. was merely a witness to the USSR’s collapse, as the communist superpower disintegrated due to a number of internal problems , such as the inefficiency of the planned economy, huge military spending, corruption, totalitarian rule of the communist party, and absence various freedoms including the freedom of speech.

Even if Washington considered the collapse of its rival an unequivocal victory, the post-Cold War era presented many new challenges for the U.S. leading some people to argue that the U.S. became a declining power in international politics after it lost its archenemy in the face of the USSR.

By the same token, one can make an argument that the collapse of the USSR marked the “end-point of mankind's ideological evolution.” Indeed, many people believed this in the early 1990s even though the unfolding post-Cold War era made many people doubt the validity of this argument.

Click here to find out how the USSR was formed.

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• Introduction & Top Questions

Origins of the Cold War

The struggle between superpowers.

• Toward a new world order

What was the Cold War?

How did the cold war end, why was the cuban missile crisis such an important event in the cold war.

• What was Harry S. Truman's reaction to communist North Korea's attempt to seize noncommunist South Korea in 1950?
• Should the United States maintain the embargo enforced by John F. Kennedy against Cuba?

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• Table Of Contents

The Cold War was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed after World War II . This hostility between the two superpowers was first given its name by George Orwell in an article published in 1945. Orwell understood it as a nuclear stalemate between “super-states”: each possessed weapons of mass destruction and was capable of annihilating the other.

The Cold War began after the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, when the uneasy alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other started to fall apart. The Soviet Union began to establish left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe, determined to safeguard against a possible renewed threat from Germany. The Americans and the British worried that Soviet domination in eastern Europe might be permanent. The Cold War was solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid had brought certain Western countries under American influence and the Soviets had established openly communist regimes. Nevertheless, there was very little use of weapons on battlefields during the Cold War. It was waged mainly on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and lasted until 1991.

The Cold War came to a close gradually. The unity in the communist bloc was unraveling throughout the 1960s and ’70s as a split occurred between China and the Soviet Union . Meanwhile, Japan and certain Western countries were becoming more economically independent. Increasingly complex international relationships developed as a result, and smaller countries became more resistant to superpower cajoling.

The Cold War truly began to break down during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachev , who changed the more totalitarian aspects of the Soviet government and tried to democratize its political system. Communist regimes began to collapse in eastern Europe, and democratic governments rose in East Germany , Poland , Hungary , and Czechoslovakia , followed by the reunification of West and East Germany under NATO auspices. Gorbachev’s reforms meanwhile weakened his own communist party and allowed power to shift to the constituent governments of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, giving rise to 15 newly independent nations, including a Russia with an anticommunist leader.

In the late 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were developing intercontinental ballistic missiles . In 1962 the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis , brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

The conflict showed that both superpowers were wary of using their nuclear weapons against each other for fear of mutual atomic annihilation. The signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty followed in 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. Still, after the crisis, the Soviets were determined not to be humiliated by their military inferiority again, and they began a buildup of conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Recent News

Cold War , the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” It was first used in the United States by the American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in a speech at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina , in 1947.

A brief treatment of the Cold War follows. For full treatment, see international relations .

Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II , the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army . The Americans and the British feared the permanent Soviet domination of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons. The Cold War had solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.

The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49); the United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953.

From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the death of the longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953; nevertheless, the standoff remained. A unified military organization among the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact , was formed in 1955; and West Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold War was in 1958–62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles , and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other’s retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 , which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing. But the crisis also hardened the Soviets’ determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States was forced to match for the next 25 years.

Throughout the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct military confrontation in Europe and engaged in actual combat operations only to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956) , Czechoslovakia (1968) , and Afghanistan (1979) . For its part, the United States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954) , supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983) , and undertook a long (1954–75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its rule ( see Vietnam War ).

Cold War Studies Project

The Cold War Studies Project promotes archival research in former East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrich what is known about Cold War events and themes. More important, it encourages scholars and students to use their research on Cold War topics to illuminate current theoretical debates about international and domestic politics.

Until the 1990s, Western scholars had no access to postwar archival materials in the former Eastern bloc. During the Communist era, the only people who were allowed to consult secret postwar documents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were trusted employees of the Communist Party or central government. The main responsibility of archival officials in these countries was to ensure that no items, no matter how inconsequential, fell into the hands of unauthorized researchers.

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union drastically changed this situation. Immense opportunities for primary research on all aspects of the Cold War became available from the early 1990s on. Scholars have been able to pore over sensitive archival materials from as recently as 1991 and examine memoirs and other first-hand accounts by former officials who took part in high-level deliberations. Despite lingering obstacles in some of the former East-bloc archives (notably in Moscow), the vast amount of newly released documentation and first-hand accounts has enabled scholars to gain a much better understanding of events that once seemed inscrutable.  The Cold War Studies program at Harvard University was set up in the late 1990s to take advantage of these opportunities, building on the achievements of the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.  Since the early 1990s, the CWIHP and the National Security Archive have done valuable work in obtaining declassified materials and encouraging scholars to pursue archival research.  Laudable as these accomplishments have been, the flood of new documentation from the former Communist bloc has overwhelmed even the best of efforts to cope with it. The Cold War Studies program at Harvard was established to contribute—and add a crucial new dimension—to the CWIHP's and the National Security Archive's activities by making use of the resources one finds at a large Ivy League university.      The Harvard program focuses primarily on scholarly endeavors, especially through its publication program, but it also seeks to draw policy-relevant lessons from the Cold War.  Despite severe crises during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union managed to avoid a direct military confrontation.  If scholars gain a better understanding of how this feat was accomplished, they should be able to provide recommendations about how to prevent and manage conflicts and cope with nuclear proliferation in the post-Cold War era. Harvard's Cold War Studies program promotes archival research in former East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrich what is known about Cold War events and themes.  More important, it encourages scholars and Ph.D. students to use their research on Cold War topics to illuminate current theoretical debates about international and domestic politics.  One of the chief means of accomplishing these goals is the sponsorship of scholarly publications, including the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series and the peer-reviewed  Journal of Cold War Studies , both edited by Mark Kramer. An Editorial Board of distinguished scholars provides advice and assistance for the Journal and Book Series. In addition to the publications program, the Cold War Studies program has compiled a large data base of declassified documents now available in microfilm or photocopies, and a document repository and research area housing many thousands of photocopied documents from the former Soviet Union, East-Central Europe, and other parts of the world. All materials in these collections are available to researchers who come to the Cold War Studies offices at Harvard.

Publications and Activities

Journal of Cold War Studies

The Journal of Cold War Studies features peer-reviewed articles based on archival research in the former Communist world and in Western countries.

Cold War Studies Book Series

The Cold War Studies Book Series emphasizes the use of archival evidence to test and reexamine theoretical concepts that were derived from events during the Cold War.

Cold War Studies Seminar

Intended to shed new light on events from the Cold War era and encourage the use of archival evidence to test theories of domestic and international politics. 

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FRS 130 - The Cold War

• Starting Points
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The source-driven junior paper

Primary sources in the library, manuscript collections in princeton university library, other resources to locate primary sources.

• Footnotes made easy This link opens in a new window
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Often, the best work arises from close engagement with a primary source. As you read, you'll think of questions or begin to shape an argument. The hard part is to find a primary source that addresses the broad general area of interest. Here are some strategies for finding primary sources:

• Check the footnotes, endnotes and bibliography of a good academic book on your topic.
• Search the library catalog for the topic you're researching.  Add the word "sources", "diaries," "correspondence," or "personal narratives" to find primary sources that are published as books

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• News, Policy and Politics Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window Consists of the backfile of 15 major magazines (including the Newsweek archive), spanning areas including current events, international relations, and public policy. Covers history, political science, law and economics. 1918-2015

• Documentary History of the Harry S. Truman Presidency
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Access to a wealth of significant primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. Divided into various core collections; each contains a diverse range of policy documents including presidential directives, memos, diplomatic dispatches, meeting notes, independent reports, briefing papers, White House communications, email, confidential letters, and other secret material.

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Translation service of the U.S. Government, usually attributed to the Central Intelligence Agency. It covered political, military, economic, environmental and sociological news and commentary, as well as scientific and technical information.

For later years see World News Connection.

• Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961 This link opens in a new window Reproduces records relating to Canada, the Caribbean and the US from the British Foreign and Colonial Offices in the UK National Archives.
• Communist Historical Newspaper Collection (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window Collection of Communist American and British papers: The Daily Worker (1936-1958); The Ohio Socialist (1917-1919); People's Daily World (1986-1990); People's Weekly World (1990-2013); Sunday Worker (1936-1958); The Toiler (1919-1922); The Worker (1922-1924); New York; and The Worker (1958-1968); London.
• Left of Liberalism: Marxist-Socialist Newspapers, 1900-2015
• Mary Ferrell Foundation This link opens in a new window Searchable archive of documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal, and post-Watergate investigations into abuses of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
• U.S. and U.N. Government Documents For assistance with government and United Nations documents, contact David Hollander ([email protected])
• Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window Includes collections on "Cold War Voices" and files from presidential administrations from Johnson through Carter
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As of mid-2020, forty-two volumes have been published in Harvard's Cold War Studies Book Series. For full information about the individual books, please go to the book series page .

The Cold War

Cold war topics.

The seeds of conflict What was the Cold War? What is communism? Communist Russia Capitalist America Post-war divisions

Europe divided The Iron Curtain The Truman Doctrine The Domino theory The Marshall Plan Post-war Germany The Berlin blockade

The communist world The Soviet Union under Khrushchev East Germany Communist China North Korea North Vietnam Cuba under Castro Romania under Ceausescu Cambodia under Pol Pot The Sino-Soviet split

The struggle for the upper hand Cold War alliances Nuclear weapons The Korean War The Vietnam War Coups and proxy wars The ‘Space Race’ Societies transformed ‘Reds under the bed’ Cold War espionage McCarthyism Cold War propaganda Sport in the Cold War The ‘Kitchen Debate’

Tension and confrontation The Hungarian uprising Gary Powers and U-2 The Berlin Crisis The Berlin Wall The Cuban Missile Crisis The Prague Spring

Détente and the Reagan era What was Détente ? Soviets in Afghanistan The Second Cold War The Korean Air disaster Stagnation in the Soviet Union

The Cold War in decline Glasnost and perestroika The winds of change The fall of the Berlin Wall The end of the Cold War US-Russia relations since the Cold War The post-Cold War world

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The Cold War

The National Archives and Records Administration holds and makes available for research a significant quantity of federal records and presidential materials that document Cold War era activities and concerns of the United States Government. This web page provides links and citations to NARA-prepared or NARA-sponsored sources of information about this Cold War documentation.

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Reference Information Paper 107, "An Introduction to National Archives Records Relating to the Cold War" This paper provides a brief overview of the holdings of the National Archives relating to the Cold War.

Cold War Related Records

National Archives Catalog The National Archives Catalog can be used to search a significant subset of NARA's holdings by media type and by subject.

Bibliographies, Conferences, and Papers

Conference: " From Vienna to Checkpoint Charlie: The Berlin Crisis of 1961 ", held October 27, 2011

The Cold War: An Eyewitness Perspective . Keynote address by Harlan Cleveland, at the Cold War Symposium held on October 21, 2006, at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Proceedings of the Conference on "The Power of Free Inquiry and Cold War International History" These proceedings resulted from a conference jointly sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration and the University of Maryland on September 25th and 26th, 1998.

A Select Bibliography: The Cold War This list, compiled by staff members at the Eisenhower Presidential Library, features resources that are based on presidential materials in the custody of the library facility in Abilene, KS.

Holocaust-Era Assets Bibliography: Cold War This list, compiled by members of the staff of NARA's Archives Library Information Center, features books about Cold War era efforts to recover Holocaust assets.

Bibliography of the John E. Taylor Collection This list features books about espionage and intelligence activities.

The Constitution Community The Constitution Community is a partnership between classroom teachers and education specialists from the National Archives and Records Administration. Some of the lesson plans resulting from this partnership relate to Cold War events.

Online Exhibit of "American Originals" The postwar segment of this exhibit features significant Cold-War-era documents, such as the speech cards that prompted President John F. Kennedy when he made his remarks in Berlin on June 26, 1963.

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The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives form a unique center for scholarly research on labor history and the history of socialist, anarchist, communist and other radical political movements.

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All researchers wishing to use archival collections and researchers unaffiliated with NYU wishing to use the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives must register to use the collections, which entails registering a  Special Collections Research Account (SCRA)  and showing a valid photo ID when they arrive at Tamiment. 

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CPUSA New York Demonstrations 1949 Smith Act Prosecutions

Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) - Smith Act Prosecution - New York - Demonstrations against, 1949; The Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection; PHOTOS.223; Box 401; Folder 20149; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives Collections on the United States and the Cold War

Tamiment's Cold War collections focus on the ways in which the ideological and geopolitical conflict with the Soviet Union affected American politics, culture, and society from 1945 to 1991. 

Highlighted Cold War Collections

• Alger Hiss Collections The Tamiment Library’s Alger Hiss (1904-1996) collections include Hiss family papers, his legal defense files, as well as collections from long-time Hiss associates. The Debevoise & Plimpton Records on Alger Hiss (dated 1938-1980) contain files from the legal firm's representation of Alger Hiss in his 1949 perjury trials and his 1979 coram nobis petition to overturn his conviction. A select group of materials from the Debevoise & Plimpton Records are being digitized and will be available online in 2018. In addition to the original archival materials that are housed at NYU, both the Alger Hiss Defense Collection for the Harvard Law School Library and the Hiss Papers are available through Microfilm. Future projects will microfilm the Alger Hiss correspondence in the records of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Alger Hiss files in the United Nations Archives.
• Phillip Agee Papers (TAM.517) Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (1935–2008) joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador, Uruguay, and Mexico. After resigning from the Agency in 1968, he became a leading opponent of CIA practices. He was best known as the author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary (1975), which identified about 250 CIA officers, front companies and foreign agents then or previously working for the United States.
• Jay and Si-Lan Chen Leyda Papers (TAM.083) Jay Leyda (1910-1988) studied directing with Sergei Eisenstein at the Moscow State Film School, became a correspondent for Theatre Arts Monthly and New Theatre , and was an art critic for the Moscow News . In 1936, Leyda was the assistant to Iris Barry, curator of the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art, but resigned amidst allegations that he was a subversive agent. Leyda went to Hollywood in 1942 where he was a technical advisor on films on Russian subjects. His wife, Si Lan Chen Leyda (b. 1909), was a modern dancer who attended the Bolshoi Ballet School and Vera Maya's school in Moscow where she met and married Leyda.
• Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack , the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag (TAM.148) The Church League of America (1937-1984), a right wing anti-communist research and advocacy group, collected these research files from other creators with a similar political outlook and professional activities: American Business Consultants Inc., the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag. All of these creators had connections to the intelligence agencies of the United States government, kept detailed research files on individuals and organizations, and were part of a right-wing research and information network that monitored Communists.
• Communist Party of the United States (TAM.132) The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist political organization that was founded in Chicago in 1919 and played a pivotal role in many political and social movements of the 20th century. The Party’s work left an indelible mark in the arena of progressive politics, particularly from the 1920s to the 1940s. Though the CPUSA’s strength and size declined sharply following the advent of the Cold War and McCarthyism, it remained committed to economic and social justice. Though materials from as early as 1892 can be found in the collection, the bulk of the records were created between 1950 and 1990. A more comprehensive record of the CPUSA’s early 20th century activity can be found in the Files of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives, 1919-1943 (Microfilm R-7548).
• The Daily Worker and Daily World Photographs Collection (PHOTOS.223) The official organ of the Communist Party, USA, the Daily Worker's attempted to speak to the broad left-wing community in the United States, covering a wide range of events in the United States and around the world. Images of many important people, groups and events associated with the CPUSA and the American Left are present in the collection, as well as images of a wide variety of people, subjects and events not explicitly linked with the CPUSA or Left politics.
• National Council on American-Soviet Friendship Records (TAM.134) The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship succeeded the National Council on Soviet Relations, founded in 1941. The NCSR grew out of the more overtly radical American-Soviet friendship movement of the 1930's, whose organizational center was the Friends of the Soviet Union founded in 1929. The Council, composed largely of professionals who were sympathetic to Socialism, believed that the USSR and the United States should join together in their common fight against fascism. In 1946, the House Un-American Activities Committee began a formal investigation of NCASF, and in 1947, it was indicted for failure to register with the Subversive Activities Control Board.
• National Guardian Photographs (PHOTOS.213) The National Guardian (later known as The Guardian ) was a radical leftist weekly newspaper published in New York City between 1948 and 1992. The National Guardian reported on labor, activism, reform, and social movements without particular party affiliations, advocating for a unified leftist party in the United States. Known for its independent and investigative journalism, the paper produced significant pieces on civil rights and the Cold War, and was one of the few publications to print news sympathetic to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg during their trial and execution.
• National Lawyers Guild (TAM.191) The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) was founded in 1937 as an association of progressive lawyers and jurists who believed that lawyers had a major role to play in reconstructing legal values by emphasizing human rights over property rights. This collection includes early administrative records of the Guild, primarily those of its National Office and New York City Chapter, as well as materials describing legal and political activities of many of the Guild's chapters and committees. The bulk of the collection, however, is focused on the court case which revealed that the Guild had been the target of a forty-year covert Federal Bureau of Investigation campaign of surveillance, infiltration and intimidation (National Lawyers Guild v. Attorney General, 1977-1989).
• Victor Navasky Papers (TAM.594) Victor Navasky (b. 1932) was editor of The Nation from 1978-1995, publisher and editorial director from 1995-2005, and later publisher emeritus. The collection provides a broad view of Victor Navasky’s life, his interests, and his work. His books, articles, essays, plays, and speeches are represented, particularly his extensive research on the Hollywood Blacklist and the early Cold War. There is a small audio-visual series containing, for example, audio recordings of a number of interviews Navasky conducted for his book, Naming Names .

(Note: Tamiment Researchers must use: Microfilm - Film R-7860)

The Rapp-Coudert Committee (New York State Joint Legislative Committee on the State Education System) was charged with investigating individuals and organizations with suspected radical ties in New York City public schools and colleges from 1940-1942. This collection consists of the Committee's investigation files including correspondence, interview notes, lists and hearing transcripts; minutes; and copies of Communist, anti-war and civil liberties publications collected by the Committee in the course of investigations. (Note that Tamiment Library holds only a microfilm version of this collection Film R-7860. The original documents are held by the New York State Archives.)

• Howard Zinn Papers (TAM.542) Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was a historian, activist, playwright, teacher, public speaker and author of articles, essays, and books including his best-selling A People’s History of the United States . Reaching the wider public through his work, Zinn celebrated the lives of ordinary individuals engaged in the struggle for peace and justice, highlighting their often overlooked victories, and encouraging his audiences to engage as well. This collection provides a broad view of Howard Zinn’s many activities and interests, including his articles, interviews, and lectures on US foreign policy during the Cold War.
• Tamiment Serials Collections (Multiple Collections) Uncataloged Tamiment serials were archivally processed and opened for research by February 2019, with all finding aids and catalog records published and discoverable as collections were completed. In addition, 253 publications, measuring over 250 linear feet, were identified as matches for bibliographically cataloged titles throughout NYU’s sub-libraries, and moved to these sub-libraries to fill gaps in existing holdings. The project resulted in 9,397 previously uncataloged and under-described unique serial titles being arranged into 24 assembled subject-based collections.
• Civil Rights Serials (TAM.771)
• Africa Serials (TAM.782)
• Asia Serials (TAM.779)
• Communist and Socialist Serials (TAM.747)
• Foreign Politics Serials (TAM.765)
• Latin America Serials (TAM.770)
• Religion Serials (TAM.777)
• United States Politics and Government Serials (TAM.759)
• War and Peace Movement Serials (TAM.757)
• Next: Cold War Collections >>
• Last Updated: Sep 12, 2024 1:44 AM
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• 08 November 2019

Cold-war lessons for European science

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Celebrations of Germany’s reunification, which would lead to the entry of central and eastern European nations into the European Union. Credit: Patrick Piel/Gamma-Rapho via Getty

On the night of 9 November 1989, young and old began to dismantle the Berlin Wall. Brick by brick, they broke down the 3.6-metre-high structure, which formed part of the border between communist East and capitalist West Germany. Those unforgettable scenes changed the world’s political map. They led to Germany’s reunification and played a significant part in the liberation of central and eastern European countries from the Soviet yoke and their subsequent entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

Those were heady months. The political philosopher Francis Fukuyama excitedly called the expansion of western-style liberal democracy “the end of history”. But, as we now know, such a statement was not only premature, it also masked a much more complex reality of international relations that is still playing out today.

For scientists in central and eastern Europe, the end to more than four decades of isolation was a big win. More research transferred to universities, and away from the old, state-supported academies of science. With that came new sources of funding from the European Union — amounting to €25 billion (US$28 billion) in the present round.

But the abrupt transition to a market economy, and the ending of many state subsidies for the less-well-off in former communist countries, also took their toll. Economic hardship in the early 1990s helped drive many researchers to pursue careers in the West. This exodus of academics contributed to an intellectual void, from which Russia and Ukraine, especially, haven’t fully recovered.

But it was different for science institutions in western Europe, and more globally. Fresh ideas and new talent were welcomed. One result is the experimental fusion reactor ITER, developed by Soviet-era researchers in the late 1960s and now being constructed in France. The International Space Station is another.

But there’s some distance to go before the scientific gains of an expanded EU can be more fully shared. Spending on research and development in central and eastern Europe averages at 1% of gross domestic product(GDP) — considerably below the EU average of 2.07%.

Some countries, such as the Czech Republic and Slovenia, have caught up in recent years. But others, including Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia, spend even less than 1% of their GDP on research and development. EU member states from central and eastern Europe that are home to one-fifth of the bloc’s 500 million inhabitants gain less than 5% of the €80-billion Horizon 2020 research programme. This must change — and it will if national governments start to ramp up their own domestic investments and work harder to improve the quality of their research.

One of the biggest paradoxes of the past 30 years is Russia. The epicentre of Soviet power, Russia under Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s began to look West, helping to precipitate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, the international atmosphere is closer to that of a new cold war. Russia and the EU, with the United States, are on opposite sides of crucial foreign-policy controversies, and both Russia and the United States are pulling away from key arms-control agreements, notably the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

And although Russia remains part of many international scientific projects, in some cases it is choosing to seek scientific partnerships to its east and south, including with the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — and with others in Africa, Latin America and Asia. A new divide seems to be opening up between researchers in the East and West.

If a new cold war is coming, the lessons from science’s cold-war history need to be dusted down. US president Lyndon Johnson and Russia’s premier Alexei Kosygin agreed that — other differences notwithstanding — their nations would collaborate in science. One result was the founding in 1972 of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, which is still going strong.

Among the larger EU states, Germany clearly understands the need to keep an open door for researchers, and remains actively involved with Russian research. A call for proposals for joint German–Russian projects in all fields of science, launched last month by the German Research Foundation and the Russian Science Foundation, promises to strengthen scientific links between the two countries. Russia’s logistical support of MOSAiC, a German-led one-year Arctic expedition launched in September, highlights the feasibility of East–West scientific partnerships even in troubled political times.

Thirty years of research cooperation since the cold war ended has done much more than just help to keep the peace. But a strong dose of that original spirit — which kept cold-war collaborations alive — is still needed. The journey to successful East–West collaboration is far from over.

Nature 575 , 257 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03451-1

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• HISTORY & CULTURE

What was the Cold War—and are we headed to another one?

The 45-year standoff between the West and the U.S.S.R. ended when the Soviet Union dissolved. Some say another could be starting as tensions with Russia rise.

As World War II dragged to an end in 1945, the leaders of the “Big Three” allied powers—the United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain—met in Potsdam, Germany, to hash out   terms to conclude the bloodiest conflict the world had ever seen. The great powers split Germany into occupation zones, recognized a Soviet-backed government in Poland, and partitioned Vietnam, monumental decisions that shaped the postwar global order. The talks were meant to forge a lasting peace, but within 18 months, a Cold War began that lasted more than four decades.

One of the most important moments at Potsdam was not captured in a memo or proclaimed at a press conference. Late in the conference, U.S. President Harry Truman took aside Soviet premier Joseph Stalin to share some explosive news: The U.S. had just successfully tested a weapon of “unusual destructive force.” It was a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire cities, the most dangerous and powerful armament the world had ever seen.

( Subscriber exclusive: For Hiroshima's survivors, memories of the bomb are impossible to forget .)

Within weeks, the U.S. used the atomic bomb to force Japan’s surrender. With a devastating and proven weapon in its armory, the U.S. suddenly had the upper hand among the powers who were allies in the war. What followed was a dangerous struggle for supremacy between two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Though the two nations were technically at peace, the period was characterized by an aggressive and costly arms race; bloody proxy wars fought across Latin America, Africa, and Asia; and competing bids for world dominance between U.S.-led capitalist governments and the Soviet-led communist bloc.

The Cold War lasted nearly half a century. Here’s a look at why it began, how it escalated, its legacy today—and why some analysts think another Cold War is already underway.

Why’s it called the Cold War?

The term “cold war” had existed since the 1930s, when guerre froide was used in France to describe increasingly fraught relationships between European countries. In 1945, shortly after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, British writer George Orwell used the term in an essay that explored what the atom bomb meant for international relations.

The atom bombs killed more than 100,000 Japanese citizens, unveiling a destructive power so terrifying that Orwell predicted it would discourage open warfare among great powers, creating instead “a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbours.”

Orwell’s prediction of a “peace that is no peace” came true as seeds of distrust between the former allies grew.

Okay, so how did the Cold War begin?

The U.S.S.R. had borne the highest number of military and civilian casualties in the war— an estimated 24 million —while liberating huge swaths of Eastern Europe from Nazi control. Soviet leader Josef Stalin was dissatisfied with the postwar division of Europe, which he felt didn’t fairly reflect his nation’s contribution.

In the U.S., diplomat George Kennan outlined the Soviet Union’s growing distrust in the 1946 “Long Telegram,” as it is now known. Kennan warned that the U.S.S.R. was illogical and insecure and would not cooperate with the West in the long-term. In response, Washington began to pursue a policy of “containment” to prevent the spread of Soviet ideology and influence.

The U.S. soon got an opportunity to flex its new policy. In 1947, Britain announced it would withdraw aid from Greece and Turkey, which were both battling communist uprisings. President Harry Truman seized the occasion to ask Congress for funds to assist both countries, establishing what became known as the Truman Doctrine —the principle that the U.S. should support countries or people threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. Stalin saw the move as the opening shot of a shadow war.

The term “Cold War” became a shorthand to describe the ideological struggle between capitalism in the West and communism in the East.   American journalist Walter Lippmann popularized the term in a series of articles in 1947 as nations chose sides in the standoff.

Why was NATO created?

The U.S. wasn’t alone in worrying about Stalin’s push to extend Soviet influence westward and bring other states under communist rule. In 1948, the U.S.S.R. backed a communist coup in Czechoslovakia and launched a blockade of west Berlin, which had been divided into occupation zones controlled by communists in the east and capitalists in the west.

To demonstrate a united front, the U.S. and its allies formed a transatlantic mutual defense alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. On April 4, 1949, the U.S., Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the U.K. signed a treaty agreeing that “an armed attack against one or more…shall be considered an attack against them all.”  

The U.S.S.R. responded by creating a defensive alliance of its own. Signed in 1955, the Warsaw Pact included the Soviet Union and seven satellite states, including Poland and East Germany, reinforcing the ideological and military barrier between Eastern and Western Europe that Winston Churchill had dubbed the “ Iron Curtain ” in a 1946 speech.

How close did the world come to nuclear war?

As the two sides faced off across that Iron Curtain, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. engaged in an arms race, pouring trillions of dollars into accumulating nuclear arsenals .

The U.S. had an advantage at the start of the arms race. But once the U.S.S.R. built its own nuclear arsenal, the two sides were at a standoff over “mutually assured destruction” —the idea that if either side attacked, the other would retaliate, unleashing apocalyptic consequences for both parties.

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Both countries had missile defenses pointed at one another, and in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the countries closer to the brink than any other event in the Cold War. The U.S. detected Soviet missile bases and arms in communist Cuba, just 90 miles south of Florida. Demanding they be removed, President John F. Kennedy declared that a strike on U.S. territory would trigger an immediate nuclear strike on the U.S.S.R.

The threat of imminent nuclear war hung over nearly two weeks of tense negotiations. Finally, the U.S.S.R. agreed to dismantle its weapons facilities if the U.S. pledged not to invade Cuba. Behind the scenes, the U.S. agreed to remove nuclear weapons from Turkey; that agreement did not become public until 1987.  

Nevertheless, both sides’ nuclear arsenals continued to grow exponentially. By the late 1980s, the United States had an estimated 23,000 nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union’s 39,000.

How else was the Cold War fought?

Over more than four decades of Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union waged multiple proxy wars across the globe. In the Korean War , the Vietnam War , and other armed conflicts, the superpowers funded opposing sides or fought directly against communist or capitalist militias. Both sides funded revolutions, insurgencies, and political assassinations in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

The U.S. and Soviet Union also jockeyed to prove technological dominance in a 20-year Space Race . The Soviet Union scored first with the 1957 launch of Sputnik-1, the first artificial satellite, while the U.S. was first to send a man to the moon in 1969. Only in the mid 1970s did the two nations begin to cooperate on joint missions.

( 50 years after Apollo 11, a new moon race is on .)

How did the Cold War end?

By the mid 1980s, life behind the Iron Curtain had changed. Democratic uprisings were percolating in Soviet bloc nations, and the U.S.S.R. itself struggled with economic and political chaos. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. forged a more open relationship, even brokering a nuclear treaty in 1987 that eliminated a class of particularly dangerous ground-launched missiles from the nations’ arsenals.

By 1991, the Soviet Union had lost most of its bloc to democratic revolutions, and the Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the U.S.S.R., opened his country to the West and instituted economic reforms that undercut institutions that relied on nationalized goods. In December 1991, the U.S.S.R. was dissolved into separate nations.

What does all this mean now?

The U.S.S.R. is gone, and nuclear arsenals have dramatically decreased thanks to nonproliferation treaties between Washington and Moscow in the 1980s and 1990s. In recent decades, the U.S. and Russia have cooperated on a number of global issues, including Afghanistan and the war on terror.

But the Cold War still affects modern geopolitics. Both nations still have divergent geopolitical interests, large defense budgets, and international military bases. NATO still wields political power and has grown to include 30 member states. The alliance now stretches to Russia’s borders and includes former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact members, such as Poland and the Baltic States. Since the 1990s, Russia has seen the eastward expansion of NATO as a threat to its security .

Tensions between Russia and the West reached a new high point following the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which had applied to take the first steps toward NATO membership in 2008, before a new president shelved the plan two years later. Some commentators have likened the current crisis to the beginnings of a new Cold War.

( Follow Ukraine's 30-year struggle for independence with this visual timeline .)

Is a 21st-century Cold War already being waged? It remains to be seen. Though historians say the decisions at Potsdam set the stage for a long post-World War II rivalry, we may not recognize the beginnings of a new Cold War until it’s visible in history’s rear-view mirror.

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