Deck 5: The Cold War

Question 1

What was one reflection of historical continuity in the Cold War?

A) The possibility of conflict.
B) Nuclear weapons.
C) A world divided between two superpowers.
D) A confrontation between communism and capitalism.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Who was the Soviet leader who was responsible for initiating the process that ended the Cold War?

A) Boris Yeltsin.
B) Mikhail Gorbachev.
C) Joseph Stalin.
D) Nikita S. Khrushchev.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Why do some historians date the Cold War from 1918?

A) The Bolshevik Revolution.
B) The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.
C) Western interventions in Russia.
D) The four-power division of Germany.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Who coined the term Iron Curtain?

A) Winston Churchill.
B) Harry S. Truman.
C) Joseph Stalin.
D) Clement Attlee.

Question 5

Which level of analysis is involved when explaining the Cold War by the fact that only the United States could harm the Soviet Union and only the Soviet Union could harm the United States?

A) Individual.
B) Unit.
C) Global System.
D) More than one level.

Question 6

What countries were threatened after World War Two with instability owing to the presence of large communist parties?

A) Great Britain and France.
B) The United States and Italy.
C) West Germany and Italy.
D) France and Italy.

Question 7

Who was the Soviet leader immediately after World War II?

A) Joseph Stalin.
B) Vladimir Lenin.
C) Leonid Brezhnev.
D) Vladimir Putin.

Question 8

What do we call geographic regions dominated by one major actor?

A) Suzerainties.
B) Protectorates.
C) Hegemonic zones.
D) Spheres of interest.

Question 9

Which of the following summit conferences dealt with the postwar disposition of Germany?

A) Tehran.
B) Yalta.
C) Potsdam.
D) Casablanca.

Question 10

What country had to surrender some of its territory in the east to the Soviet Union in return for which it received territory from Germany?

A) Czechoslovakia.
B) Austria.
C) Romania.
D) Poland.

Question 11

What two national leaders were present at the Yalta Conference but not at the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference?

A) Churchill and Roosevelt.
B) Truman and Churchill.
C) Stalin and Roosevelt.
D) Stalin and Churchill.

Question 12

Which of the following reflected the belief that the Soviet Union was like other states and was driven mainly by considerations of power?

A) Riga Axioms.
B) Potsdam Axioms.
C) Yalta Axioms.
D) Moscow Axioms.

Question 13

What country was the most important security concern for American and Soviet leaders after World War II owing to its strategic position, skilled population, and economic potential?

A) Poland.
B) Czechoslovakia.
C) Germany.
D) Yugoslavia.

Question 14

Which of the following countries was annexed by the Soviet Union during World War Two?

A) Poland.
B) Estonia.
C) Ukraine.
D) Bulgaria.

Question 15

What was the last country in Eastern Europe to fall under communist rule?

A) Poland.
B) Czechoslovakia
C) Romania.
D) Bulgaria.

Question 16

What American vice-president argued publicly for conciliation with the Soviet Union?

A) Alben W. Barkley.
B) Richard M. Nixon.
C) Henry Wallace.
D) Spiro Agnew.

Question 17

What was the central theme of George Kennan's "Long Telegram"?

A) The Soviet Union had legitimate interests in Central and Eastern Europe.
B) The United States should rearm quickly.
C) After Stalin died, it would be possible to overcome US-Soviet differences.
D) Soviet and American policy positions were basically incompatible.

Question 18

What policy was elaborated in the "Mr. X" article in the journal Foreign Affairs?

A) Deterrence.
B) Mutual Assured Destruction.
C) Détente.
D) Containment.

Question 19

Who wrote a secret report that was the mirror image of Kennan's Long Telegram?

A) Maxim Litvinov.
B) Vyacheslav Molotov.
C) Nikolai Novikov.
D) Mikhail A. Menshikov.

Question 20

Which of the following is an individual-level explanation for the onset of the Cold War?

A) Stalin's suspicions of Western motives.
B) The Marxist-Leninist system in the Soviet Union.
C) American and Soviet military power after World War Two.
D) The geographic importance of Germany in Central Europe.

Question 21

Which of the following was the source of the US-Soviet security dilemma at the onset of the Cold War?

A) The division of Germany.
B) The bipolar division of power.
C) Dissimilar economic systems.
D) Stalin's paranoia.

Question 22

Which of the following would liberals focus on in interpreting the onset of the Cold War?

A) Soviet superiority in conventional forces.
B) America's nuclear monopoly.
C) The Soviet Union's authoritarian political system.
D) The contrasting identities of the two superpowers.

Question 23

Which of the following was America's first public admission of the Cold War and its commitment to confront the Soviet Union?

A) The Truman Doctrine.
B) The Marshall Plan.
C) NSC-68.
D) The Long Telegram.

Question 24

Where did a crisis trigger America's first Cold War commitment?

A) Iran and Iraq.
B) Italy and France.
C) Greece and Turkey.
D) Korea.

Question 25

What American proposal implicitly recognized that poverty could lead people to accept communism?

A) NSC-68.
B) The Marshall Plan.
C) Open Skies plan.
D) The Alliance for Progress.

Question 26

Which of the following was the alliance constructed by the Soviet Union to confront NATO?

A) The Commonwealth of Independent States.
B) The Comintern.
C) The Warsaw Pact.
D) Comecon.

Question 27

What Soviet-American crisis erupted in 1948 after it became clear that the West was planning on creating a state in Germany by uniting their occupation zones?

A) The Berlin Blockade.
B) The Berlin Wall.
C) The Cuban Missile Crisis.
D) The Bay of Pigs invasion.

Question 28

What symbol of the Cold War stood from 1961 to 1989?

A) The US base at Guantánamo in Cuba.
B) The Kremlin.
C) The hot line.
D) The Berlin Wall.

Question 29

What was the thrust of NSC-68?

A) The need for greater American military preparation.
B) The need for more intensive diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union.
C) The importance of uniting Germany under Western control.
D) The need to unify the Korean peninsula with American military power.

Question 30

Who was Klaus Fuchs?

A) The first chancellor of West Germany.
B) The author of NSC-68.
C) A Soviet spy.
D) The first director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Question 31

Who was America's president when the Korean War began?

A) Harry S. Truman.
B) Franklin D. Roosevelt.
C) John F. Kennedy.
D) Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Question 32

Who was the leader of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in China after World War Two?

A) Mao Zedong.
B) Deng Xiaoping.
C) Chiang Kai-shek.
D) Hu Jintao.

Question 33

To what island did the losers in China's civil war flee that remains a political problem even to the present?

A) Iwo Jima.
B) Hainan.
C) Matsu.
D) Taiwan.

Question 34

What US senator gave his name to a period of rabid anti-communism in the United States?

A) William Knowland.
B) Joseph McCarthy.
C) Karl Mundt.
D) Pat McCarran.

Question 35

Who was the initial commander of UN forces in the Korean War?

A) General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
B) General Douglas MacArthur.
C) General Alexander Haig.
D) General Matthew Ridgeway.

Question 36

Which of the following was the result of the Korean War?

A) Korea remained a divided country.
B) Korea was united under communist control.
C) Korea was united under US control.
D) Korea was declared a neutral state.

Question 37

What was an important domestic consequence of the Korean War for the United States?

A) Dwight Eisenhower's election as president.
B) Richard Nixon's election as president.
C) Ronald Reagan's election as president.
D) Harry Truman's re-election as president.

Question 38

What country governed Vietnam prior to World War Two?

A) China.
B) The United States.
C) Great Britain.
D) France.

Question 39

Who was the communist leader of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War?

A) Ngo Dinh Diem.
B) Vo Nguyen Giap.
C) Ho Chi Minh.
D) Nguyen Van Thieu.

Question 40

What was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

A) A congressional ban on higher expenditures in the Vietnam War.
B) Congressional authorization to increase the US military presence in Vietnam.
C) President Richard Nixon's plan for "Vietnamizing" the Vietnam War.
D) A Statement of President Kennedy's counter-insurgency doctrine.

Question 41

What do we call North Vietnam's military strategy during the Vietnam War?

A) Conventional war.
B) A war of attrition.
C) Guerrilla warfare.
D) Terrorism.

Question 42

What violent event erupted in 1968 that was both a military defeat for North Vietnam and a political defeat for the United States?

A) Battle of Hué.
B) The Tet Offensive.
C) Battle of Dienbienphu.
D) Battle of Khe Sanh.

Question 43

What country was "secretly" bombed by the United States during the Vietnam War?

A) Cambodia.
B) Laos.
C) Thailand.
D) North Vietnam.

Question 44

What American presidential candidate served in Vietnam and publicly opposed the war?

A) Michael Dukakis.
B) Al Gore.
C) Adlai Stevenson.
D) John Kerry.

Question 45

What was the "domino theory"?

A) The loss of one country to communism would lead to the loss of another and then another.
B) A communist victory anywhere would be met by a massive American response.
C) US forces were committed to meeting communist aggression at whatever level was necessary to prevent that aggression from succeeding.
D) Successful communist expansion would endanger US credibility.

Question 46

Which of the following Russian leaders annexed Crimea from Ukraine?

A) Dmitry Medvedev.
B) Yuri Andropov.
C) Vladimir Putin.
D) Boris Yeltsin.

Question 47

What Soviet-American crisis led to great prudence by both in regards to nuclear weapons?

A) The Berlin blockade.
B) The Korean War.
C) The Yom Kippur War.
D) The Cuban missile crisis.

Question 48

Which of the following was not an unspoken rule of Soviet-American conduct during the Cold War?

A) Avoid direct military confrontation.
B) Design weapon systems capable of destroying the enemy's ability to retaliate.
C) Avoid tampering directly in an adversary's sphere of influence.
D) Engage in non-military contests.

Question 49

What did President Ronald Reagan call the Soviet Union?

A) Part of the "axis of evil."
B) The "source of all evil."
C) An "evil spirit in the world."
D) The "evil empire."

Question 50

What was Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost."

A) A policy of reciprocal arms reductions.
B) A policy of economic and social restructuring.
C) A policy of openness.
D) A policy of unilateral concessions.