Cold war - Unit 8 Progress check
"Iron smelting and steel making in the Shaoyang region of Hunan province are rapidly developing on a mass scale. In a short period in the fall of 1958, 12,378 local blast furnaces have been built in this area. The main reason for this remarkable progress in such a short time is that this region has fully carried out the Communist Party's directive to let all the people work in iron and steel production, in keeping with the party's general plan of building socialism. Iron and steel production is not simply a technical job; it is also a political task. Therefore, the first condition for the rapid increase in production was for local party leaders to have the entire party membership mobilized. When the current push to increase production began, many 'experts' wanted to have big foreign blast furnaces. They were not interested in building small local furnaces. They thought we should wait until we've had the opportunity to buy elaborate equipment. Actually, that line of thinking would have resulted in producing less, more slowly, and more expensively. Under the timely guidance of the Party, those tendencies were firmly rejected and the policy of throwing all resources into iron and steel production and letting political cadres take charge was carried out. The strength of the masses is tremendous. All the problems of funds, raw materials, equipment, provisions, etc., which in the past seemed so hard to solve, disappeared before the resourcefulness of the people. In one Hunan county, 67,000 people worked non-stop for three days and nights and built 1025 blast furnaces. Many people, hearing the Party's call, walked over 30 miles to join the work, carrying timber and bamboo and their own food and clothes. In the town of Szetu, local people collected more than 1.6 million yuan [Chinese unit of currency] for the iron and steel effort, with one 50-year-old woman contributing more than 200 yuan, her life savings. Shoemakers donated more than 180,000 pairs of sandals for those building the furnaces. In the town of Tienping, the people solved the housing crisis [of furnace workers coming to the town but not having a place to sleep] by vacating more than 500 rooms in their houses and turning them over to the workers. The people also composed the following song: The Communist Party is really wonderful. In three days more than a thousand furnaces were built. The American imperialists will run off, tails between legs. The Chinese people will now surpass Britain. The East wind will always prevail over the West wind." Yin Zeming, Chinese government official, The Strength of the Masses is Limitless, pamphlet published in English by the Beijing Foreign Languages Press, a Chinese government publishing house, 1958 Which of the following best explains why the passage is likely NOT a reliable source of information regarding the level of popular support and enthusiasm for the Chinese government's push for iron and steel in 1958?
As a government official, the author would have felt compelled to overstate the success of communist policies of resource redistribution to demonstrate his loyalty to the party.
"The Russian strategy can be seen at work on many fronts. In Austria the Russians claim 50% of all Austrian industry. In Paris they fight for an arrangement that will allow Yugoslavia to dominate Trieste. In Berlin they carry on a continued press campaign against the Western world but ban our newspapers from the sector if they contain the slightest criticism of Soviet policy. They control the University of Berlin because it is in their sector and impose rigid political tests upon the student body, but they also control the schools of all sectors through the domination of the Berlin Magistrate, established before our entrance. Thus far, it has been impossible to eliminate their Communist textbooks from the western sectors. They always appeal to the Potsdam accord* when it serves their ends and violate it when it suits their purposes. Their officers travel in our zone, marking factory equipment for dismantlement and shipment to Russia. But what they do in their zone is shrouded in mystery and there is some evidence that they are setting this equipment up, not in Russia but in Russian Germany. With millions of troops spread through the whole of Eastern Europe, they are now engaged in a press campaign against Western armies of occupation." *an agreement reached between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union regarding the administration and occupation of Germany following the Second World War Reinhold Niebuhr, United States theologian and political commentator, "The Fight for Germany," article published in Life magazine, 1946 Which of the following best explains Niebuhr's likely purpose in recounting Soviet actions in postwar Europe?
By pointing out the hypocrisy of Soviet policies, he hoped to encourage a more confrontational stance on the part of the United States government.
"Iron smelting and steel making in the Shaoyang region of Hunan province are rapidly developing on a mass scale. In a short period in the fall of 1958, 12,378 local blast furnaces have been built in this area. The main reason for this remarkable progress in such a short time is that this region has fully carried out the Communist Party's directive to let all the people work in iron and steel production, in keeping with the party's general plan of building socialism. Iron and steel production is not simply a technical job; it is also a political task. Therefore, the first condition for the rapid increase in production was for local party leaders to have the entire party membership mobilized. When the current push to increase production began, many 'experts' wanted to have big foreign blast furnaces. They were not interested in building small local furnaces. They thought we should wait until we've had the opportunity to buy elaborate equipment. Actually, that line of thinking would have resulted in producing less, more slowly, and more expensively. Under the timely guidance of the Party, those tendencies were firmly rejected and the policy of throwing all resources into iron and steel production and letting political cadres take charge was carried out. The strength of the masses is tremendous. All the problems of funds, raw materials, equipment, provisions, etc., which in the past seemed so hard to solve, disappeared before the resourcefulness of the people. In one Hunan county, 67,000 people worked non-stop for three days and nights and built 1025 blast furnaces. Many people, hearing the Party's call, walked over 30 miles to join the work, carrying timber and bamboo and their own food and clothes. In the town of Szetu, local people collected more than 1.6 million yuan [Chinese unit of currency] for the iron and steel effort, with one 50-year-old woman contributing more than 200 yuan, her life savings. Shoemakers donated more than 180,000 pairs of sandals for those building the furnaces. In the town of Tienping, the people solved the housing crisis [of furnace workers coming to the town but not having a place to sleep] by vacating more than 500 rooms in their houses and turning them over to the workers. The people also composed the following song: The Communist Party is really wonderful. In three days more than a thousand furnaces were built. The American imperialists will run off, tails between legs. The Chinese people will now surpass Britain. The East wind will always prevail over the West wind." Yin Zeming, Chinese government official, The Strength of the Masses is Limitless, pamphlet published in English by the Beijing Foreign Languages Press, a Chinese government publishing house, 1958 Which of the following aspects of the immediate historical situation in China in 1958 best explains the author's perspective in the passage?
Chinese leaders had made it clear that meeting the goals of the Great Leap Forward was the highest priority facing the country.
"Throughout the period of Nigeria's short and precarious existence as a single political entity, we Eastern Nigerians have always believed in fundamental human rights as they are accepted and enjoyed in civilized countries. Impelled by our belief in these rights and our sense of common citizenship with other Nigerians, we contributed our ideas and skills, our resourcefulness and dynamism, in the development of areas of Nigeria outside the East. We set up businesses and industries throughout the country, overlooked the neglect of our homeland in the division of national institutions, development projects, and financial resources, made our region's abundant natural resources available to the rest of the country, and confidently invested in the general economic and social development of Nigeria. . . . We used to oppose those who told us that what our former colonial masters made into 'Nigeria' was merely an agglomeration of different peoples, distinct in every way except in the color of their skin, and organized in as a unit solely for the commercial interests and administrative convenience of the colonists. . . . But we have come to realize that national unity is no longer possible. The Nigerian constitution that was adopted after independence in 1960 installed the North in perpetual dominance over Nigeria. Thus were sown, by design or by default, the seeds of factionalism and hate, of struggle for power, and the worst type of political deception. National independence was followed by successive crises, each leading to the near disintegration of the country. Last year alone, tens of thousands of Eastern and Southern Nigerians were killed in pogroms by Northerners in all parts of the country, including the capital, Lagos. We are now facing a situation in which there are only two possible outcomes: either perpetual domination of the rest of the country by the North, not by consent but by force and fraud, or a dissolution of the [Nigerian] federation bond." Lieutenant Colonel C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Nigerian army officer, proclamation of the breakaway Republic of Biafra [Eastern Nigeria], 19 Which of the flowing best explains how the immediate historical situation of the proclamation of Biafran independence from Nigeria informed the author's statements in the third paragraph?
Claiming to uphold the rule of law and oppose government corruption had become the norm for those seeking political power, even for military leaders seeking to challenge elected governments.
"It seems that the only way we have of opposing totalitarianism is to reject its lies and start living the truth. Of course, to oppose the government in a society such as ours is very different from opposing a democratic government in an open society. In a repressive society such as ours dissent must start first on the level of individual thinking and conscience, rather than actual political action. The power of our opposition to the Communist regime is, for now, a potential power, which is hidden throughout the whole of society. But once enough members of society have joined our ranks, then this potential power can spring forth (when, where, and under what circumstances it is difficult to predict) into something visible: a real act of political protest, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest. This is why the regime persecutes dissidents for even the most modest attempts to tell the truth. Why was Solzhenitsyn* driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he wielded any real power or because any of the regime's representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. No—Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was a desperate attempt to plug up a wellspring of truth which the regime feared might one day produce unpredictable consequences. They feared Solzhenitsyn because they realized that the crust of lies they have built around us is very fragile. As long as it seals off completely the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, 'The king has no clothes!' then everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole system can suddenly find itself on the verge of disintegrating." *a Soviet writer who wrote books exposing the oppressive policies of Stalinism Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovak writer and dissident, The Power of the Powerless, essay written in 1978 and distributed as an underground publication in Soviet bloc countries As expressed in the passage, Havel's vision of effecting change in the communist bloc was most consistent with which of the following developments?
Grassroots citizens' organizations forming to protest the economic and social injustices in the Communist bloc, such as the Solidarity labor union in Poland
"Throughout the period of Nigeria's short and precarious existence as a single political entity, we Eastern Nigerians have always believed in fundamental human rights as they are accepted and enjoyed in civilized countries. Impelled by our belief in these rights and our sense of common citizenship with other Nigerians, we contributed our ideas and skills, our resourcefulness and dynamism, in the development of areas of Nigeria outside the East. We set up businesses and industries throughout the country, overlooked the neglect of our homeland in the division of national institutions, development projects, and financial resources, made our region's abundant natural resources available to the rest of the country, and confidently invested in the general economic and social development of Nigeria. . . . We used to oppose those who told us that what our former colonial masters made into 'Nigeria' was merely an agglomeration of different peoples, distinct in every way except in the color of their skin, and organized in as a unit solely for the commercial interests and administrative convenience of the colonists. . . . But we have come to realize that national unity is no longer possible. The Nigerian constitution that was adopted after independence in 1960 installed the North in perpetual dominance over Nigeria. Thus were sown, by design or by default, the seeds of factionalism and hate, of struggle for power, and the worst type of political deception. National independence was followed by successive crises, each leading to the near disintegration of the country. Last year alone, tens of thousands of Eastern and Southern Nigerians were killed in pogroms by Northerners in all parts of the country, including the capital, Lagos. We are now facing a situation in which there are only two possible outcomes: either perpetual domination of the rest of the country by the North, not by consent but by force and fraud, or a dissolution of the [Nigerian] federation bond." Lieutenant Colonel C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Nigerian army officer, proclamation of the breakaway Republic of Biafra [Eastern Nigeria], 19 Which of the following best explains Lt. Colonel Ojukwu's purpose in including the information in the first paragraph in his independence proclamation?
He wanted to outline a list of East Nigerian grievances in order to justify the political action he was about to take.
"The Russian strategy can be seen at work on many fronts. In Austria the Russians claim 50% of all Austrian industry. In Paris they fight for an arrangement that will allow Yugoslavia to dominate Trieste. In Berlin they carry on a continued press campaign against the Western world but ban our newspapers from the sector if they contain the slightest criticism of Soviet policy. They control the University of Berlin because it is in their sector and impose rigid political tests upon the student body, but they also control the schools of all sectors through the domination of the Berlin Magistrate, established before our entrance. Thus far, it has been impossible to eliminate their Communist textbooks from the western sectors. They always appeal to the Potsdam accord* when it serves their ends and violate it when it suits their purposes. Their officers travel in our zone, marking factory equipment for dismantlement and shipment to Russia. But what they do in their zone is shrouded in mystery and there is some evidence that they are setting this equipment up, not in Russia but in Russian Germany. With millions of troops spread through the whole of Eastern Europe, they are now engaged in a press campaign against Western armies of occupation." *an agreement reached between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union regarding the administration and occupation of Germany following the Second World War Reinhold Niebuhr, United States theologian and political commentator, "The Fight for Germany," article published in Life magazine, 1946 Which of the following best explains Niebuhr's sense of alarm about Soviet intentions in occupied Eastern Europe?
He was concerned that Americans would be reluctant to see their recent allies in the Second World War as a threat.
B-24 LIBERATOR BOMBERS NEARING COMPLETION AT THE CONSOLIDATED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION PLANT, FORT WORTH, TEXAS, 1942 (plane picture) Which of the following best explains how this photograph from the Second World War can be connected to the Cold War that began shortly afterward?
It shows the technological advances made by one of the victors of the Second World War that solidified its position as a postwar superpower.
"Compatriots throughout the country! We have made concessions for peace during our negotiations with the French to end the war.* But the more concessions we made, the more the French colonialists were determined to maintain their control over Vietnam despite their promises. No! We would rather sacrifice everything than lose our country and return to slavery. Compatriots! Rise up! Men and women, old and young, regardless of religion, political parties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists to save the Fatherland. Those who have rifles must use their rifles. Those who have swords must use their swords. Those who have no swords must use their spades, hoes, and sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save their country. Soldiers, self-defense guards, militiamen! The hour of national liberation has struck! We must sacrifice to our last drop of blood to save our country. We must be ready to endure any hardship. With the determination to sacrifice, victory will be ours! Long live an independent and unified Vietnam! Long live the victorious resistance!" *In 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed an independent republic of Vietnam and war with France broke out in 1946. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese political leader, appeal to the Vietnamese population, 1946 As portrayed by Ho Chi Minh in the passage, the Vietnamese independence movement appears most similar to which of the following types of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century movements?
Nationalist movements
"Iron smelting and steel making in the Shaoyang region of Hunan province are rapidly developing on a mass scale. In a short period in the fall of 1958, 12,378 local blast furnaces have been built in this area. The main reason for this remarkable progress in such a short time is that this region has fully carried out the Communist Party's directive to let all the people work in iron and steel production, in keeping with the party's general plan of building socialism. Iron and steel production is not simply a technical job; it is also a political task. Therefore, the first condition for the rapid increase in production was for local party leaders to have the entire party membership mobilized. When the current push to increase production began, many 'experts' wanted to have big foreign blast furnaces. They were not interested in building small local furnaces. They thought we should wait until we've had the opportunity to buy elaborate equipment. Actually, that line of thinking would have resulted in producing less, more slowly, and more expensively. Under the timely guidance of the Party, those tendencies were firmly rejected and the policy of throwing all resources into iron and steel production and letting political cadres take charge was carried out. The strength of the masses is tremendous. All the problems of funds, raw materials, equipment, provisions, etc., which in the past seemed so hard to solve, disappeared before the resourcefulness of the people. In one Hunan county, 67,000 people worked non-stop for three days and nights and built 1025 blast furnaces. Many people, hearing the Party's call, walked over 30 miles to join the work, carrying timber and bamboo and their own food and clothes. In the town of Szetu, local people collected more than 1.6 million yuan [Chinese unit of currency] for the iron and steel effort, with one 50-year-old woman contributing more than 200 yuan, her life savings. Shoemakers donated more than 180,000 pairs of sandals for those building the furnaces. In the town of Tienping, the people solved the housing crisis [of furnace workers coming to the town but not having a place to sleep] by vacating more than 500 rooms in their houses and turning them over to the workers. The people also composed the following song: The Communist Party is really wonderful. In three days more than a thousand furnaces were built. The American imperialists will run off, tails between legs. The Chinese people will now surpass Britain. The East wind will always prevail over the West wind." Yin Zeming, Chinese government official, The Strength of the Masses is Limitless, pamphlet published in English by the Beijing Foreign Languages Press, a Chinese government publishing house, 1958 Which of the following best explains the significance of the intended audience of Yin Zeming's pamphlet in shaping the author's narrative?
Since it targets an international audience across the Cold War divide, the pamphlet presents an idealized, propaganda-tinged vision of Chinese accomplishments.
Source 1 CUBAN TANK TROOPS IN ANGOLA, FIGHTING ON THE SIDE OF THE PROCOMMUNIST PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT FOR THE LIBERATION OF ANGOLA (MPLA) DURING THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, CIRCA 1980 Source 2 SOUTH AFRICAN ANTIAIRCRAFT UNIT IN ANGOLA, FIGHTING ON THE SIDE OF THE ANTICOMMUNIST NATIONAL UNION FOR THE TOTAL INDEPENDENCE OF ANGOLA (UNITA) DURING THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, CIRCA 1980 The confrontation illustrated in the two photographs can be seen as a specific example of the global rivalries in the period after 1945 that also directly produced which of the following?
The NATO and Warsaw Pact military alliances
B-24 LIBERATOR BOMBERS NEARING COMPLETION AT THE CONSOLIDATED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION PLANT, FORT WORTH, TEXAS, 1942 (plane picture) The image is best understood in which of the following contexts of both the Second World War and the Cold War?
The continued importance of industry in improving military capacity
Source 1 CUBAN TANK TROOPS IN ANGOLA, FIGHTING ON THE SIDE OF THE PROCOMMUNIST PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT FOR THE LIBERATION OF ANGOLA (MPLA) DURING THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, CIRCA 1980 Source 2 SOUTH AFRICAN ANTIAIRCRAFT UNIT IN ANGOLA, FIGHTING ON THE SIDE OF THE ANTICOMMUNIST NATIONAL UNION FOR THE TOTAL INDEPENDENCE OF ANGOLA (UNITA) DURING THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, CIRCA 1980 Which of the following developments or processes in the late twentieth century best explains the participation of foreign troops in the Angolan Civil War, as shown in the two photographs?
The proliferation of Cold War proxy conflicts
B-24 LIBERATOR BOMBERS NEARING COMPLETION AT THE CONSOLIDATED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION PLANT, FORT WORTH, TEXAS, 1942 (plane picture) The image could best be understood as evidence for which of the following developments?
The shift in the global balance of power associated with the Second World War
Source 1 CUBAN TANK TROOPS IN ANGOLA, FIGHTING ON THE SIDE OF THE PROCOMMUNIST PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT FOR THE LIBERATION OF ANGOLA (MPLA) DURING THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, CIRCA 1980 Source 2 SOUTH AFRICAN ANTIAIRCRAFT UNIT IN ANGOLA, FIGHTING ON THE SIDE OF THE ANTICOMMUNIST NATIONAL UNION FOR THE TOTAL INDEPENDENCE OF ANGOLA (UNITA) DURING THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR, CIRCA 1980 Which of the following developments in the period after 1945 most directly prevented localized conflicts such as the one illustrated in the two photographs from escalating into global wars?
The threat of the use of nuclear weapons
"It seems that the only way we have of opposing totalitarianism is to reject its lies and start living the truth. Of course, to oppose the government in a society such as ours is very different from opposing a democratic government in an open society. In a repressive society such as ours dissent must start first on the level of individual thinking and conscience, rather than actual political action. The power of our opposition to the Communist regime is, for now, a potential power, which is hidden throughout the whole of society. But once enough members of society have joined our ranks, then this potential power can spring forth (when, where, and under what circumstances it is difficult to predict) into something visible: a real act of political protest, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest. This is why the regime persecutes dissidents for even the most modest attempts to tell the truth. Why was Solzhenitsyn* driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he wielded any real power or because any of the regime's representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. No—Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was a desperate attempt to plug up a wellspring of truth which the regime feared might one day produce unpredictable consequences. They feared Solzhenitsyn because they realized that the crust of lies they have built around us is very fragile. As long as it seals off completely the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, 'The king has no clothes!' then everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole system can suddenly find itself on the verge of disintegrating." *a Soviet writer who wrote books exposing the oppressive policies of Stalinism Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovak writer and dissident, The Power of the Powerless, essay written in 1978 and distributed as an underground publication in Soviet bloc countries The passage can best be used to illustrate which of the following developments in the 1970s and 1980s?
The way in which government efforts to suppress criticism and restrict freedom of speech proved ineffective in stemming public discontent within communist regimes
"The Russian strategy can be seen at work on many fronts. In Austria the Russians claim 50% of all Austrian industry. In Paris they fight for an arrangement that will allow Yugoslavia to dominate Trieste. In Berlin they carry on a continued press campaign against the Western world but ban our newspapers from the sector if they contain the slightest criticism of Soviet policy. They control the University of Berlin because it is in their sector and impose rigid political tests upon the student body, but they also control the schools of all sectors through the domination of the Berlin Magistrate, established before our entrance. Thus far, it has been impossible to eliminate their Communist textbooks from the western sectors. They always appeal to the Potsdam accord* when it serves their ends and violate it when it suits their purposes. Their officers travel in our zone, marking factory equipment for dismantlement and shipment to Russia. But what they do in their zone is shrouded in mystery and there is some evidence that they are setting this equipment up, not in Russia but in Russian Germany. With millions of troops spread through the whole of Eastern Europe, they are now engaged in a press campaign against Western armies of occupation." *an agreement reached between the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union regarding the administration and occupation of Germany following the Second World War Reinhold Niebuhr, United States theologian and political commentator, "The Fight for Germany," article published in Life magazine, 1946 Which of the following most likely explains why Niebuhr chose to publish his article in a popular publication like Life magazine?
To change government policies in a democratic country like the United States, it was first necessary to change public opinion.
"The main promise which Britain held out to South Asian migrants [in the early 1950s] was the promise of relief from the economic stagnation which affected rural life. In this respect, Indian and Pakistani migrants had a lot in common with the peripheral European countrymen and women who moved to the cities of the industrial north during the 1950s and 1960s—the Portuguese who powered French industrial expansion, the Turks in Germany, the Cypriots and Maltese in Britain. . . . Subsistence farmers as far apart as Ireland, Calabria* and the Punjab** were propelled to post-war Britain by the same economic laws. Their only chance of altering their circumstances, indeed of imagining a future at all that was different from the present, lay abroad. . . . Nonetheless, although the villager from India and the villager from Ireland or Italy may have been subject to the same economic laws, they were poles apart when it came to their migrant experiences. 'Before I came [to England] my mother told me not to cut off my hair,*** but I told her frankly, "Ma, they cut it off in Bombay, even before we board the ship." ' The straightforward acceptance by a Sikh immigrant that the symbols of his religion would have to go if he were to find work in British foundries and factories suggests a profoundly pragmatic attitude that was shared by most other Indian migrants—they were not going to let religion get in the way of livelihood. The Partition of India in 1947 had a profound effect on Indian emigration to Britain. During the Partition, in Punjab alone . . . over 5 million Muslims fled or were forced to go, on trains, ox-cart and by foot, from India to West Punjab in Pakistan. Over 3 million Hindus and Sikhs escaped the other way, to settle in East Punjab. But the population transfer was carried out with terrible violence and slaughter . . . as religious communities took revenge on one another. Refugees flooded into Delhi, others tried to settle on newly divided parcels of land on both sides of the border. But the influx of newcomers also meant that the landholdings of residents already settled in East Punjab had to be sliced up, into smaller and smaller pieces, with the new parcels averaging as little as two and a half acres in some places. Punjabis had been shaken loose from their land and . . . for those of them on both sides of the border who decided to move on from this precarious existence, England was merely the last in a series of migrations." *a region in southern Italy **a region on both sides of the India-Pakistan border ***many Sikh men let their hair grow naturally as a sign of respect for God's creation. Clair Wills, British historian, Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain, book published in 2017 Which of the following best explains why the author brings up the example of the Sikh migrant cutting his hair before coming to England as a way of supporting his argument that the experiences of South Asian and European immigrants to Britain were "poles apart"?
Unlike European immigrants, South Asian immigrants had to suppress parts of their culture and remove important religious symbols to fit into British society
"Compatriots throughout the country! We have made concessions for peace during our negotiations with the French to end the war.* But the more concessions we made, the more the French colonialists were determined to maintain their control over Vietnam despite their promises. No! We would rather sacrifice everything than lose our country and return to slavery. Compatriots! Rise up! Men and women, old and young, regardless of religion, political parties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists to save the Fatherland. Those who have rifles must use their rifles. Those who have swords must use their swords. Those who have no swords must use their spades, hoes, and sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save their country. Soldiers, self-defense guards, militiamen! The hour of national liberation has struck! We must sacrifice to our last drop of blood to save our country. We must be ready to endure any hardship. With the determination to sacrifice, victory will be ours! Long live an independent and unified Vietnam! Long live the victorious resistance!" *In 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed an independent republic of Vietnam and war with France broke out in 1946. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese political leader, appeal to the Vietnamese population, 1946 As indicated by the passage, Vietnam's achievement of independence differed in what way from the achievement of independence by many other former colonies?
Vietnam gained its independence through a violent uprising rather than a negotiated settlement.
"Throughout the period of Nigeria's short and precarious existence as a single political entity, we Eastern Nigerians have always believed in fundamental human rights as they are accepted and enjoyed in civilized countries. Impelled by our belief in these rights and our sense of common citizenship with other Nigerians, we contributed our ideas and skills, our resourcefulness and dynamism, in the development of areas of Nigeria outside the East. We set up businesses and industries throughout the country, overlooked the neglect of our homeland in the division of national institutions, development projects, and financial resources, made our region's abundant natural resources available to the rest of the country, and confidently invested in the general economic and social development of Nigeria. . . . We used to oppose those who told us that what our former colonial masters made into 'Nigeria' was merely an agglomeration of different peoples, distinct in every way except in the color of their skin, and organized in as a unit solely for the commercial interests and administrative convenience of the colonists. . . . But we have come to realize that national unity is no longer possible. The Nigerian constitution that was adopted after independence in 1960 installed the North in perpetual dominance over Nigeria. Thus were sown, by design or by default, the seeds of factionalism and hate, of struggle for power, and the worst type of political deception. National independence was followed by successive crises, each leading to the near disintegration of the country. Last year alone, tens of thousands of Eastern and Southern Nigerians were killed in pogroms by Northerners in all parts of the country, including the capital, Lagos. We are now facing a situation in which there are only two possible outcomes: either perpetual domination of the rest of the country by the North, not by consent but by force and fraud, or a dissolution of the [Nigerian] federation bond." Lieutenant Colonel C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Nigerian army officer, proclamation of the breakaway Republic of Biafra [Eastern Nigeria], 19 Based on the author's point of view, it is most likely that the information presented in the passage
overstates the extent to which Northern Nigerians were responsible for undermining the united Nigerian state
"The main promise which Britain held out to South Asian migrants [in the early 1950s] was the promise of relief from the economic stagnation which affected rural life. In this respect, Indian and Pakistani migrants had a lot in common with the peripheral European countrymen and women who moved to the cities of the industrial north during the 1950s and 1960s—the Portuguese who powered French industrial expansion, the Turks in Germany, the Cypriots and Maltese in Britain. . . . Subsistence farmers as far apart as Ireland, Calabria* and the Punjab** were propelled to post-war Britain by the same economic laws. Their only chance of altering their circumstances, indeed of imagining a future at all that was different from the present, lay abroad. . . . Nonetheless, although the villager from India and the villager from Ireland or Italy may have been subject to the same economic laws, they were poles apart when it came to their migrant experiences. 'Before I came [to England] my mother told me not to cut off my hair,*** but I told her frankly, "Ma, they cut it off in Bombay, even before we board the ship." ' The straightforward acceptance by a Sikh immigrant that the symbols of his religion would have to go if he were to find work in British foundries and factories suggests a profoundly pragmatic attitude that was shared by most other Indian migrants—they were not going to let religion get in the way of livelihood. The Partition of India in 1947 had a profound effect on Indian emigration to Britain. During the Partition, in Punjab alone . . . over 5 million Muslims fled or were forced to go, on trains, ox-cart and by foot, from India to West Punjab in Pakistan. Over 3 million Hindus and Sikhs escaped the other way, to settle in East Punjab. But the population transfer was carried out with terrible violence and slaughter . . . as religious communities took revenge on one another. Refugees flooded into Delhi, others tried to settle on newly divided parcels of land on both sides of the border. But the influx of newcomers also meant that the landholdings of residents already settled in East Punjab had to be sliced up, into smaller and smaller pieces, with the new parcels averaging as little as two and a half acres in some places. Punjabis had been shaken loose from their land and . . . for those of them on both sides of the border who decided to move on from this precarious existence, England was merely the last in a series of migrations." *a region in southern Italy **a region on both sides of the India-Pakistan border ***many Sikh men let their hair grow naturally as a sign of respect for God's creation. Clair Wills, British historian, Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain, book published in 2017 The argument in the third paragraph regarding the connection between the Partition of India in 1947 and Punjabi migrations to Britain in the 1950s is most directly supported by the author's claim that
resettling Partition refugees led to an economic crisis in rural Punjab, leading to further population movements
"Compatriots throughout the country! We have made concessions for peace during our negotiations with the French to end the war.* But the more concessions we made, the more the French colonialists were determined to maintain their control over Vietnam despite their promises. No! We would rather sacrifice everything than lose our country and return to slavery. Compatriots! Rise up! Men and women, old and young, regardless of religion, political parties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists to save the Fatherland. Those who have rifles must use their rifles. Those who have swords must use their swords. Those who have no swords must use their spades, hoes, and sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists and save their country. Soldiers, self-defense guards, militiamen! The hour of national liberation has struck! We must sacrifice to our last drop of blood to save our country. We must be ready to endure any hardship. With the determination to sacrifice, victory will be ours! Long live an independent and unified Vietnam! Long live the victorious resistance!" *In 1945 Ho Chi Minh proclaimed an independent republic of Vietnam and war with France broke out in 1946. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese political leader, appeal to the Vietnamese population, 1946 Compared to the position of anticolonial movements earlier in the twentieth century, the prospects for movements such as Ho Chi Minh's in the mid-twentieth century could most accurately be described as
stronger because the Second World War weakened imperialist powers
"The main promise which Britain held out to South Asian migrants [in the early 1950s] was the promise of relief from the economic stagnation which affected rural life. In this respect, Indian and Pakistani migrants had a lot in common with the peripheral European countrymen and women who moved to the cities of the industrial north during the 1950s and 1960s—the Portuguese who powered French industrial expansion, the Turks in Germany, the Cypriots and Maltese in Britain. . . . Subsistence farmers as far apart as Ireland, Calabria* and the Punjab** were propelled to post-war Britain by the same economic laws. Their only chance of altering their circumstances, indeed of imagining a future at all that was different from the present, lay abroad. . . . Nonetheless, although the villager from India and the villager from Ireland or Italy may have been subject to the same economic laws, they were poles apart when it came to their migrant experiences. 'Before I came [to England] my mother told me not to cut off my hair,*** but I told her frankly, "Ma, they cut it off in Bombay, even before we board the ship." ' The straightforward acceptance by a Sikh immigrant that the symbols of his religion would have to go if he were to find work in British foundries and factories suggests a profoundly pragmatic attitude that was shared by most other Indian migrants—they were not going to let religion get in the way of livelihood. The Partition of India in 1947 had a profound effect on Indian emigration to Britain. During the Partition, in Punjab alone . . . over 5 million Muslims fled or were forced to go, on trains, ox-cart and by foot, from India to West Punjab in Pakistan. Over 3 million Hindus and Sikhs escaped the other way, to settle in East Punjab. But the population transfer was carried out with terrible violence and slaughter . . . as religious communities took revenge on one another. Refugees flooded into Delhi, others tried to settle on newly divided parcels of land on both sides of the border. But the influx of newcomers also meant that the landholdings of residents already settled in East Punjab had to be sliced up, into smaller and smaller pieces, with the new parcels averaging as little as two and a half acres in some places. Punjabis had been shaken loose from their land and . . . for those of them on both sides of the border who decided to move on from this precarious existence, England was merely the last in a series of migrations." *a region in southern Italy **a region on both sides of the India-Pakistan border ***many Sikh men let their hair grow naturally as a sign of respect for God's creation. Clair Wills, British historian, Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain, book published in 2017 Contrary to the author's implicit argument in the second paragraph regarding South Asian migrants' determination to integrate into British society, the migration of former colonial subjects to imperial metropoles typically resulted in
the preservation of cultural and economic ties between former colonies and metropoles, as immigrant communities maintained some connections to their countries of origin
"It seems that the only way we have of opposing totalitarianism is to reject its lies and start living the truth. Of course, to oppose the government in a society such as ours is very different from opposing a democratic government in an open society. In a repressive society such as ours dissent must start first on the level of individual thinking and conscience, rather than actual political action. The power of our opposition to the Communist regime is, for now, a potential power, which is hidden throughout the whole of society. But once enough members of society have joined our ranks, then this potential power can spring forth (when, where, and under what circumstances it is difficult to predict) into something visible: a real act of political protest, a social movement, a sudden explosion of civil unrest. This is why the regime persecutes dissidents for even the most modest attempts to tell the truth. Why was Solzhenitsyn* driven out of his own country? Certainly not because he wielded any real power or because any of the regime's representatives felt he might unseat them and take their place in government. No—Solzhenitsyn's expulsion was a desperate attempt to plug up a wellspring of truth which the regime feared might one day produce unpredictable consequences. They feared Solzhenitsyn because they realized that the crust of lies they have built around us is very fragile. As long as it seals off completely the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, 'The king has no clothes!' then everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole system can suddenly find itself on the verge of disintegrating." *a Soviet writer who wrote books exposing the oppressive policies of Stalinism Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovak writer and dissident, The Power of the Powerless, essay written in 1978 and distributed as an underground publication in Soviet bloc countries In addition to the factors exemplified by the passage, the end of the Cold War was also directly hastened by all of the following EXCEPT
the signing of nuclear arms control treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union