Cold War (1947–1953)
History of the
Cold War
Origins
1947–1953
1953–1962
1962–1979
1979–1985
1985–1991
Timeline
1953 World Map of alignments
The Cold War (1947-1953) discusses the
period within the Cold War from the Truman
doctrine in 1947 to the Korean War in 1953.
The Cold War began immediately following
World War II and lasted through most of the
rest of the twentieth century.
Creation of the Eastern
Bloc
During the final stages of World War II, the
Soviet Union annexed several countries as
Soviet Socialist Republics within the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics. Most of those ter-
ritories had been ceded to it by the secret
agreement portion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact with Nazi Germany.[1][2] These later an-
nexed territories include Eastern Poland (in-
corporated into two different SSRs)[3], Latvia
(became Latvia SSR)[4][4][5], Estonia (became
Estonian
SSR)[4][5],
Lithuania
(became
Lithuania SSR)[4][5], part of eastern Finland
(became the Karelo-Finnish SSR)[6] and
northern Romania (became the Moldavian
SSR).[7][8]
The USSR is in light red. Soviet Satellite
states are in pink. The Federal People’s Re-
public of Yugoslavia is in purple.
Several of the other countries it occupied
that were not directly annexed into the USSR
became Soviet satellite states. In East Ger-
many after local election losses, a forced
merger of political parties in the Socialist Un-
ity Party ("SED"), followed by elections in
1946 where political opponents were op-
pressed.[9] In the remaining portion of Po-
land not directly annexed into the USSR,
after the failure of a referendum for policies
known as "3 times YES" (3 razy TAK; 3xTAK),
where less than a third of Poland’s popula-
tion voted in favor of the proposed changes
included massive communist land reforms
and nationalizations of industry[10], a second
vote rigged election was held to get the de-
sired result.[11][12][13] Fraudulent Polish elec-
tions held
in January 1947 resulted in
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Cold War (1947–1953)
1
Poland’s
official
transformat