Cold War under a Microscope Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

It is widely rumored that, in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, North Vietnamese boats did not actually attack US ships passing by. Instead, it could have been other US ships that mistook the others as being part of the enemy fleet.

Answer: Leonid Brezhnev

Because of the 1968 Prague Spring (i.e. the democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia), the leadership of the Soviet Union formulated the "Brezhnev Doctrine", which stated that Socialist (that is Eastern Bloc) countries enjoyed only limited sovereignty. (It is sometimes said that Brezhnev personally wasn't in favour of this doctrine named after him).

Answer: Charlie

Answer: Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev

Answer: Cuban exiles

The CIA-supported Bay of Pigs invasion occurred in April 1961 and was successfully repelled by Fidel Castro.

Answer: Missouri

Winston Churchill made the Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and he was introduced to the audience by Harry Truman.

Answer: Imre Nagy

The 1956 Hungarian Uprising was crushed by Soviet forces, killing hundreds of Hungarians. Imre Nagy was executed afterwards.

Answer: "38th Parallel"

The original line (from 1945 to 1950) was the 38th parallel. The line was redrawn at the end of the Korean War and became quite ragged but the old name, though not strictly accurate, is still widely used.

Answer: August 29, 1949

August 29, 1949, marked the beginning of the nuclear arms race. Until this date, the United States was the only country to have nuclear weapons.

Answer: Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia, especially under Josef Tito, refused to be dominated by the Soviet Union and continued its own form of 'national communism.' Yugoslavia had the great advantage in the late 1940's of having very largely liberated itself from Nazi occupation.

Answer: 1979

With the establishment of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, the United States government ended all ties with Taiwan, Republic of China.

Answer: appeasement

Appeasement was a pre-World War II foreign policy of UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he allowed Hitler to get the Sudentenland in order to try to avoid a major war.

Answer: Lech Walesa

The Solidarity Movement was a Polish labor union led by Lech Walesa and began in a shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. In the late 1980s Solidarity won control of the Polish government over the Communists, thus ending the decades long hold of the Communist party in Poland.

Answer: Nixon and Brezhnev

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I, also known as SALT I Treaty called for a limit to the production of nuclear weapons in the United States and the Soviet Union.

Answer: China and Albania

China did not attend because it did not like several policies of the Soviet Union, such as the easing of tensions between the West and the Soviet Union. Albania did not attend either because it supported China in its attacks against the policies of the Soviet Union.

Answer: openness and economic restructuring

Glasnost and perestroika were two of Gorbachev's most important policies intended to reform and make communism work in the Soviet Union. However, the plans backfired and eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Answer: Berlin

The Berlin Blockade of June 1948-May 1949 marked a sudden and dramatic intensification of the Cold War. Later, of course, the East Germans 'completed' the Iron Curtain with the construction of the Berlin Wall and 1961; and the 'Fall of the Wall' in November 1989 was one of the most obvious and visible steps in the collapse of Communism in Europe.

Answer: Greece and Turkey

The Truman Doctrine stated that the United States would help any free nation resist Communist aggression. US Congress granted Truman's request to give $400 million to Greece and Turkey, which were fighting against Communist rebellions. Greece and Turkey eventually defeated the Communist forces.

Answer: The Tet Offensive

The Tet Offensive of 1968 increased the popularity and the appeal of the anti-war movement in the United States. The US government reported shortly before the Tet Offensive that the US forces were winning in the Vietnam War, but the surprise attack dashed all those reports, especially when the communist forces were able to attack the US Embassy in Saigon.

Answer: December 25, 1991

Many people regard this date as the end of the Cold War. However, the Cold War had lost most of its intensity about 2-3 years earlier.