Social effects of the Cold War

1. Social effects of the Cold War

3. Arms Race • ICBM • Sputnik • Bay of Pigs • Cuban Missile Crisis

5. McCarthyism

6. McCarthyism • Politicians, FBI, educators, social commentators warn of communist spies • Senator McCarthy - quest to expose communists - liberal, radical, behaving in “odd” way - thousands lose jobs for once being a communist • Conform to a socially sanctioned way of life

7. The Civil Rights Movement • Irony of American “freedom,” exploited by USSR propaganda • weakness of capitalism – poverty, segregation, voting rights, extralegal violence • Influence of Gandhi on Martin Luther King Jr. • Gradual successes: • Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954, against school segregation • Rosa Parks, Montgomery Alabama, 1955

8. Feminism • Families provided best defense to Communism - Women stay home and rear patriotic children, as opposed to working, like in the Soviet Union • Women treated as second class citizens, unhappy with lack of choice/freedom • More married women worked during cold war than WWII - feeling of shame not living up to standards • Women inspired by Communist women, independence movements in Asia and Africa from colonial powers - equal rights • Language of Marxism and anti-colonialism - oppressed class; against male colonization of female bodies; women’s liberation

9. Cold War Countercultural Protests • Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb • Critique of nuclear power policies • Massive anti-Vietnam protests • Rock and Roll as counterculture • Watergate Scandal (1972-1974) • President Nixon orders illegal wiretaps, discovered and forced to resign 1974

10. Fall of the Berlin Wall

11. Reagan and Gorbachev