Q2 How useful are the sources Practice Questions: Cold War

Study Sources B and C below, then answer the question.

Source B: From a script written for a Radio Moscow broadcast to listeners in Eastern Europe, 24 October 1962, two days after the American President announced a naval blockade of Cuba.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

The Soviet Union has done nothing but help a small island defend itself. Everyone remembers that only last year armed exiles, trained and paid for by Washington, landed at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Cuba's government. Now American warships surround Cuba and stop peaceful shipping on the high seas. This is piracy. For years American rockets have stood in Turkey, within easy reach of our cities, and no one in Washington called that a crime. The Soviet people want peace, but they will not be bullied.

Source C: From a private letter written by an American naval officer serving with the ships enforcing the blockade of Cuba, sent to his wife on 25 October 1962.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

I cannot tell you where we are, only that the air here feels heavier than any storm I have known. Our orders are to stop and search any ship carrying weapons to the island. Nobody on board believes the Russians will simply turn their ships around, and if one refuses to stop, I do not know what happens next. The younger men joke about it; the older ones do not. We listen to the radio for every word from Washington. I have never been so certain that a single mistake could finish everything.

Study Sources B and C below, then answer the question.

Source B: From an article in a Czechoslovak communist newspaper, published in July 1948, a few days after Yugoslavia was expelled from Cominform.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

The leaders of Yugoslavia have chosen the road of nationalism and betrayal. They were warned by their brother parties, and they refused to listen. They boast that Yugoslavia freed itself, forgetting that the Red Army fought on their soil and that Soviet friendship protected them after the war. A party which turns away from the Soviet Union turns, whether it wishes to or not, towards the imperialists in Washington. Cominform was right to expel them. The workers of Yugoslavia will not long follow leaders who have abandoned the camp of peace and socialism.

Source C: From a report written by a British diplomat in Belgrade for the Foreign Office in London, December 1949.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Eighteen months after the break with Moscow, Tito is still in power and the country is still communist. The neighbouring communist states have cut off almost all trade, and the Yugoslav newspapers are full of incidents on the Hungarian and Bulgarian borders. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, leading communists suspected of sympathy with Belgrade have been put on trial and executed. Tito has had little choice but to look west: the Americans have agreed a loan, and more help is being discussed. He will not join our camp, but by surviving he has shown that Moscow cannot always have its way.

Study Sources B and C below, then answer the question.

Source B: From an editorial in a British newspaper, July 1955, published while the leaders of the USA, the USSR, Britain and France were meeting at the Geneva Summit.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

For the first time in ten years the leaders of East and West are sitting at the same table. Since Stalin's death the men in the Kremlin have spoken of peaceful coexistence, they have agreed at last to withdraw their troops from Austria, and now they have come to Geneva. No treaty has been signed and none is expected. Yet the mere fact of these meetings is worth more than a shelf of agreements. The frost of the last decade is melting, and a generation that has grown up expecting another war may dare to hope.

Source C: From a report sent by an American diplomat working at the embassy in Moscow to officials in Washington, written in late May 1960, shortly after the collapse of the Paris Summit.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

The talk in Moscow is of nothing but the aircraft and its pilot. Our refusal to apologise has been seized upon here as proof that the Americans never meant their friendly words at all, and the Soviet leader's walk-out from Paris is presented as the act of an insulted but patient man. Those Soviet officials who had argued for better relations are now silent. We should not pretend that five years of visits and summits have survived this. Whatever remained of the goodwill talked about after Geneva has gone, and the hard men in the Kremlin are again being listened to.

Study Sources B and C below, then answer the question.

Source B: From a statement sent by the Soviet government to communist parties in Eastern Europe in September 1968, explaining why Warsaw Pact troops had entered Czechoslovakia the previous month.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Every socialist country finds its own road, but it may not take a road that damages socialism in its neighbours. When forces hostile to socialism attempted to turn Czechoslovakia away from the socialist road, this ceased to be the affair of the Czechoslovak people alone. It became the affair of every country in the socialist community. The assistance given by the allied armies in August was therefore not interference but a duty. Let no one doubt it: the Warsaw Pact will defend the gains of socialism wherever they are threatened.

Source C: From a report written in 1969 by a Western diplomat working in Eastern Europe, sent privately to his own government.

Written for practice: not a real historical source.

Moscow's declaration that the socialist community may intervene in any member state has been received here with alarm rather than agreement. Romania took no part in the August operation and its leaders speak openly of the right of every nation to settle its own affairs; Albania has left the Warsaw Pact altogether. In the West our governments protested loudly and then did nothing, much as they did nothing over Hungary in 1956. Ministers here assume that talks with the Americans on limiting weapons will go ahead, whatever is said in public about Czechoslovakia.