HIST 159 FINAL Exam ID List Definitions

Adenauer, Konrad (1876-1967)

A German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. He switched focus from denazification to recovery and led his country from the ruins of World War II to a productive and prosperous nation that forged close relations with France, the United Kingdom and the United States. During his years in power, West Germany achieved democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity.

Springer Press

A big press combine in Germany which edited tabloids, anti-communist and was a big conservative press organ.

Displaced Persons (DPs)

A person who is forced to leave their home country because of war, persecution, or natural disaster; a refugee. During World War II, these people were put into displaced persons camps established by the Allied Forces and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as a temporary holding place until they could return to their countries of origin. These camps were established primarily for Eastern European refugees and former inmates of the Nazi German concentration camps. In 1948, the United States passed the Displaced Persons Act, which authorized for a limited period of time the admission into the United States of 200,000 certain European displaced persons for permanent residence.

Smokestack Industrialization

A smokestack industry is a traditional heavy manufacturing industry that produces heavy machinery, large items or inputs into other industries. Examples include cars, shipbuilding, steel and other metals, chemicals and heavy machinery. In short, any heavy manufacturing industry that has been around for decades. Such industries tend to cause heavy pollution: the typical images of these industries are factories that have banks of chimney stacks emitting smoke into the atmosphere, hence the term "smokestack". Smokestack industries traditionally have also been labor-intensive producers. Some still are, though others (such as automobile manufacturers) have become significant users of technology in their production lines. The notion of such industries as large employers is sometimes used as a justification for government or state policies to attract, protect or otherwise support these industries in some countries or regions.

Sovereign Debt Crisis

A sovereign debt crisis is when a country is unable to pay its bills. But this doesn't happen overnight as there are plenty of warning signs. It becomes a crisis when the country's leaders ignore these indicators for political reasons. Good examples include modern day Greece, the Eurozone, Iceland, and the United States.

Dubcek, Alexander

Alexander Dubček (27 November 1921 - 7 November 1992) was a Slovak politician who served as the First secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (de facto leader of Czechoslovakia) from January 1968 to April 1969. He attempted to reform the communist government during the Prague Spring but was forced to resign following the Warsaw Pact invasion in August of 1968. During his leadership, under the slogan of "Socialism with a human face", Czechoslovakia lifted censorship on the media and liberalized Czechoslovak society, fuelling the so-called New Wave in Czechoslovak filmography. However, he was put under pressure by Stalinist voices inside the party as well as the Soviet leadership, who disliked the direction the country was taking and feared that Czechoslovakia could loosen ties with the Soviet Union and become more westernized. As a result, the country was invaded by the other Warsaw Pact countries on 20-21 August 1968, effectively ending the process known as the Prague Spring. Dubček resigned in April 1969 and was succeeded by Gustav Husák, who initiated normalization. Dubček was then expelled from the Communist Party in 1970.

Rudi Dutschke

Alfred Willi Rudolf "Rudi" Dutschke (7 March 1940 - 24 December 1979) was a prominent spokesperson of the German student movement of the 1960s. He advocated a "long march through the institutions of power" to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery. This was an idea he took up from his interpretation of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory; accordingly, the quote is often wrongfully attributed to Gramsci. In the 1970s he followed through on this idea by joining the nascent Green movement.

Benno Ohnesorg

Benno Ohnesorg (15 October 1940 - 2 June 1967) was a German university student killed by a policeman during a demonstration in West Berlin. His death spurred the growth of the left-wing German student movement. On 2 June 1967 Ohnesorg participated in a student protest held near the Deutsche Oper, in opposition to the state visit of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was attending a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Deutsche Oper that night. It was the first political demonstration in which Ohnesorg had ever taken part. The protest turned violent after pro-Shah demonstrators, including agents of the Shah's intelligence service, began battling with students, and the police overreacted, employing brutal tactics in their attempts to control the crowd. In the ensuing tumult, demonstrators dispersed into the side streets. In the courtyard of Krumme Strasse 66, Ohnesorg was then shot by police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras. Ohnesorg died before he could be treated at a hospital.

Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007)

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 - 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. During the late 1980s, Yeltsin had been a candidate member of the Politburo, and in late 1987 tendered a letter of resignation in protest. No one had resigned from the Politburo before. This act branded Yeltsin as a rebel and led to his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure. On 29 May 1990, he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 12 June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Upon the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, the RSFSR became the sovereign state of the Russian Federation, and Yeltsin remained in office as president. He was reelected in the 1996 election, in which critics widely claimed pervasive corruption; in the second round he defeated Gennady Zyuganov from the revived Communist Party by a margin of 13.7%. However, Yeltsin never recovered his early popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s. Yeltsin transformed Russia's socialist economy into a capitalist market economy, implementing economic shock therapy, market exchange rate of the ruble, nationwide privatization and lifting of price controls. Yeltsin proposed a new Russian constitution which was popularly approved at the 1993 constitutional referendum. However, due to the sudden total economic shift, a majority of the national property and wealth fell into the hands of a small number of oligarchs. Rather than creating new enterprises, Yeltsin's policies led to international monopolies hijacking the former Soviet markets, arbitraging the huge difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities and the prices prevailing on the world market. In the foreign policy Yeltsin offered cooperative and conciliatory relations, particularly with the Group of Seven, CIS and OSCE, as well as adherence to arms control agreements, such as START II.

Brexit

Brexit, a portmanteau of "British exit", is the impending withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). It follows the referendum of 23 June 2016 when 52 percent of those who voted supported withdrawal. The UK joined the European Communities (EC) in 1973, with membership confirmed by a referendum in 1975. In the 1970s and 1980s, withdrawal from the EC was advocated mainly from the political left, while from the 1990s, the main advocates came from the right, in particular the new UK Independence Party. Prime Minister David Cameron held a referendum to fulfil a 2015 manifesto pledge. Cameron, who had campaigned to remain, resigned after the result and was succeeded by Theresa May. She called a snap general election less than a year later, in which she lost her overall majority. Her minority government is supported in key votes by the Democratic Unionist Party. On 29 March 2017, the UK government invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 at 11 p.m. UK time, when the period for negotiating a withdrawal agreement will end unless an extension is agreed.

Charles de Gaulle

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 1890 - 9 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led the French Resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to reestablish democracy in France. In 1958, he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers by President René Coty. He was asked to rewrite the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position he was reelected to in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969. He was the dominant figure of France during the Cold War era, and his memory continues to influence French politics.

Second Cold War

Cold War II (also called the New Cold War or Second Cold War) is a term used to describe an ongoing state of political and military tension between opposing geopolitical power-blocs, with one bloc typically reported as being led by Russia and/or China, and the other led by the United States, European Union, and NATO. It is akin to the original Cold War that saw a stand-off and proxy wars between the Western Bloc led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union, Russia's predecessor.

Consumerism

Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the industrial revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to an economic crisis: there was overproduction — the supply of goods would grow beyond consumer demand, and so manufacturers turned to planned obsolescence and advertising to manipulate consumer spending. In 1899, a book on consumerism published under the name, Thorstein Veblen, called The Theory of the Leisure Class, examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread "leisure time" in the beginning of the 20th century. In it Veblen "views the activities and spending habits of this leisure class in terms of conspicuous and vicarious consumption and waste. Both are related to the display of status and not to functionality or usefulness."

Euro-missiles

Controversy over the deployment of intermediate ranged missiles in after the USSR introduced them, caused Cold War tension between the USSR and America until both sides removed the weapons. The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962 , the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day (October 16-28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.

De-industrialisation

Deindustrialization or deindustrialisation is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially heavy industry or manufacturing industry. It is the opposite of industrialization. In the 1970s, many U.S. corporations began to shut down their plants in high wage areas and relocated them in the newly industrialized, cheap labor areas of South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Low-skilled workers in U.S. industry have experienced the biggest losses. Workers displaced by foreign competition were forced to seek jobs in lower paying service industries, while industrial production in the United States eroded.

Bosnia

Due to its central geographic position within the Yugoslavian federation, post-war Bosnia was selected as a base for the development of the military defense industry. This contributed to a large concentration of arms and military personnel in Bosnia; a significant factor in the war that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. However, Bosnia's existence within Yugoslavia, for the large part, was a peaceful and very prosperous country, with high employment, a strong industrial and export oriented economy, good education system and social and medical security for every citizen of S. R. Bosnia and Herzegovina.On 18 November 1991, the party branch in Bosnia and Herzegovina of the ruling party in the Republic of Croatia, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), proclaimed the existence of the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia, with the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) as its military branch. It went unrecognized by the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which declared it illegal. A declaration of the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 15 October 1991 was followed by a referendum for independence on 29 February/1 March 1992, which was boycotted by the great majority of Serbs. The turnout in the independence referendum was 63.4 percent and 99.7 percent of voters voted for independence. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence on 3 March 1992 and received international recognition the following month on 6 April 1992. The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was subsequently admitted as a member state of the United Nations on 22 May 1992. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević and Croatian leader Franjo Tuđman are believed to have agreed on a partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1991, with the aim of establishing Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia. Following Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of independence, Bosnian Serb militias mobilized in different parts of the country. Government forces were poorly equipped and unprepared for the war. International recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina increased diplomatic pressure for the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) to withdraw from the republic's territory, which they officially did in June 1992.

Erich Honecker

Erich Honecker was a German politician who, as the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until the weeks preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1976 onward he was also the country's official head of state as chairman of the State Council following Willi Stoph's relinquishment of the post. As Cold War tensions eased in the late 1980s under perestroika and glasnost, the liberal reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes to the East German political system, citing the continual hardliner attitudes of Kim Il-sung and Fidel Castro, whose respective regimes of North Korea and Cuba had been critical of reforms. As anticommunist protests grew, Honecker begged the USSR to intervene and suppress the protests to maintain communist rule in East Germany like the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; Gorbachev refused. Honecker was forced to resign by his party in October 1989 in a bid to improve the government's image before the public. Honecker's eighteen years at the helm of the soon-to-collapse German Democratic Republic came to an end.

Ethnic cleansing (genocide)

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic or racial groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.[1][page needed] The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape. Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied with efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship. Initially used by the perpetrators during the Yugoslav Wars and cited in this context as a euphemism akin to that of Nazi Germany's "Final Solution", by the 1990s, the term gained widespread acceptance due to journalism and the media's heightened use of the term in its generic meaning.

EDC (European Defense Community)

European Defense Community (EDC), an abortive attempt by western European powers, with United States support, to counterbalance the overwhelming conventional military ascendancy of the Soviet Union in Europe by the formation of a supranational European army and, in the process, to subsume West German forces into a European force, avoiding the tendentious problem of West German rearmament. The idea was originally mooted at the Hague Conference of 1948. Influenced by the Korean War, the French politician René Pleven evolved a plan that later was put forward by the French foreign minister Robert Schuman at a meeting of the Council of Europe in 1951. Though the weaker members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were keen, the Scandinavians were cool toward the idea, and opinion in France and Italy was divided. A treaty was actually concluded in Paris in 1952, but tension between eastern and western Europe lessened, and by 1954 the necessity for the EDC seemed also to diminish. In its place there arose the Western European Unity Treaty (May 6, 1955), setting up the Western European Union.

Existentialism

Existentialism is a tradition of philosophical inquiry associated mainly with certain 19th and 20th-century European philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual. While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity. In the view of the existentialist, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.

Sputnik (October 4, 1957)

First man-made satellite put into orbit by the USSR. This caused fear in the US that the Soviets had passed them by in science & technology and the arms race. Democrats scorched the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower for allowing the United States to fall so far behind the communists. Eisenhower responded by speeding up the U.S. space program (NASA), which resulted in the launching of the satellite Explorer I on January 31, 1958. The "space race", a part of the Cold War, had begun. In 1969, the US would land men on the moon, a major victory. The success of Sputnik 1 seemed to have changed minds around the world regarding a shift in power to the Soviets.

Francis Mitterand

François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand[a] (26 October 1916 - 8 January 1996) was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in French history. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he was the first left-winger to be elected President of France under the Fifth Republic. Reflecting family influences, Mitterrand started political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy Regime during its earlier years. Subsequently he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office several times under the Fourth Republic. He opposed de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, Mitterrand outmanoeuvered rivals to become the left's standard bearer at every presidential election from 1965-88; with the exception of 1969. Mitterrand was elected President at the 1981 presidential election. He was re-elected in 1988 and remained in office until 1995. He pushed a socially liberal agenda with reforms such as the abolition of the death penalty, the 39-hour work week, and the end of a government monopoly in radio and television broadcasting.

Gaullists (France)

Gaullism is a French political stance based on the thought and action of World War II French Resistance leader General Charles de Gaulle, who would become the founding President of the Fifth French Republic. A Gaullist was a supporter of this political stance from Charles de Gaulle. The "fundamental principle" of Gaullism is a "certain idea of France" as a strong state. This idea appears in de Gaulle's War Memoirs, in which he describes France as "an indomitable entity, a 'person' with whom a mystical dialogue was maintained throughout history. The goal of Gaullism, therefore, is to give precedence to its interests, to ensure that the voice is heard, to make it respected, and to assure its survival ... to remain worthy of its past, the nation must endow itself with a powerful state."

Glasnost

Glasnost, (Russian: "openness") Soviet policy of open discussion of political and social issues. It was instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s and began the democratization of the Soviet Union. Ultimately, fundamental changes to the political structure of the Soviet Union occurred: the power of the Communist Party was reduced, and multicandidate elections took place. Glasnost also permitted criticism of government officials and allowed the media freer dissemination of news and information.

Goulash Communism

Goulash Communism refers to the variety of communism as practised in the Hungarian People's Republic from the 1960s until the Central European collapse of communism in 1989. With elements of regulated market economics as well as an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Soviet principles applied to Hungary in the previous decade. The name is a semi-humorous metaphor derived from "goulash", a popular Hungarian dish. As goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, it represents how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and how it no longer strictly adhered to Marxist-Leninist interpretations as in the past. Sometimes described as "the happiest barracks in the socialist camp", Hungary in this particular period enjoyed many amenities not available in the rest of the Eastern Bloc.

Helmut Schmidt

Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (23 December 1918 - 10 November 2015) was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1974 to 1982. Before becoming Chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence (1969-1972) and as Minister of Finance (1972-1974). In the latter role he gained credit for his financial policies. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting Foreign Minister. As Chancellor, he focused on international affairs, seeking "political unification of Europe in partnership with the United States". He was an energetic diplomat who sought European co-operation and international economic co-ordination. He was re-elected chancellor in 1976 and 1980, but his coalition fell apart in 1982 with the switch by his coalition allies, the Free Democratic Party.

Helmut Kohl

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (3 April 1930 - 16 June 2017) was a German statesman who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 (of West Germany 1982-1990 and of the reunited Germany 1990-1998) and as the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. From 1969 to 1976, Kohl was minister president of the state Rhineland-Palatinate. Kohl chaired the Group of Seven in 1985 and 1992. In 1998 he became honorary chairman of the CDU, resigning from the position in 2000. As Chancellor Kohl was strongly committed to European integration and French-German cooperation in particular; he was also a steadfast ally of the United States and supported Reagan's more aggressive policies in order to weaken the Soviet Union. Kohl's 16-year tenure was the longest of any German Chancellor since Otto von Bismarck. He oversaw the end of the Cold War and the German reunification, for which he is generally known as Chancellor of Unity. Together with French President François Mitterrand, Kohl was the architect of the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union (EU) and the euro currency.[1] Kohl was also a central figure in the eastern enlargement of the European Union, and his government led the effort to push for international recognition of Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina when the states declared independence. He played an instrumental role in solving the Bosnian War. Domestically, Kohl's policies focused on economic reforms and later also on the process of integrating the former East Germany into the reunited Germany, and he moved the federal capital from the "provisional capital" Bonn back to Berlin, although he himself never resided there because the government offices were only relocated in 1999. Kohl also greatly increased federal spending on arts and culture.

Americanization

In countries outside the United States of America, Americanization or Americanisation is the influence American culture and business have on other countries, such as their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology, or political techniques. The term has been used since at least 1907. While not necessarily a pejorative term, it is most often used by critics in the target country who are against the influences. Americanization has become more prevalent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91, and especially since the advent of widespread high speed Internet use starting in the mid-2000s. In Europe, in recent years there is growing concern about Americanization through Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple Inc., and Uber, among many other Internet-oriented corporations based in the U.S. European governments have increasingly expressed concern regarding privacy issues, as well as antitrust and taxation issues regarding the new American giants.

Gulag

In the Soviet Union, a system of forced labor camps in which millions of criminals and political prisoners were held under Stalin. The government agency in charge of the Soviet forced labor camp system that was created under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The term is also commonly used in the English language to refer to any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union, including camps which existed in post-Stalin times. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.

Jean Monnet

Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (9 November 1888 - 16 March 1979) was a French political economist and diplomat. An influential supporter of European unity, he is considered as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. Jean Monnet has been called "The Father of Europe" by those who see his innovative and pioneering efforts in the 1950s as the key to establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor of today's European Union. Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected pragmatic internationalist. He was named patron of the 1980-1981 academic year at the College of Europe, in honour of his accomplishments.

Kosovo

Kosovo conflict, (1998-99) conflict in which ethnic Albanians opposed ethnic Serbs and the government of Yugoslavia (the rump of the former federal state, comprising the republics of Serbia and Montenegro) in Kosovo. The conflict gained widespread international attention and was resolved with the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1989 Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo, initiated a policy of nonviolent protest against the abrogation of the province's constitutional autonomy by Slobodan Milošević, then president of the Serbian republic. Milošević and members of the Serbian minority of Kosovo had long objected to the fact that Muslim Albanians were in demographic control of an area held sacred to the Serbs. (Kosovo was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as the site of the Turkish defeat of the Serbs in 1389 and the Serbian victory over the Turks in 1912.) Tensions increased between the two ethnic groups, and the international community's refusal to address the issue lent support to Rugova's more radical opponents, who argued that their demands could not be secured through peaceful means. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in 1996, and its sporadic attacks on Serbian police and politicians steadily escalated over the next two years.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher, in full Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, née Margaret Hilda Roberts, (born October 13, 1925, Grantham, Lincolnshire, England—died April 8, 2013, London), British Conservative Party politician and prime minister (1979-90), Europe's first woman prime minister. The only British prime minister in the 20th century to win three consecutive terms and, at the time of her resignation, Britain's longest continuously serving prime minister since 1827, she accelerated the evolution of the British economy from statism to liberalism and became, by personality as much as achievement, the most renowned British political leader since Winston Churchill. Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her decisive re-election in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984.

Martial Law

Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civilian functions of government, especially in response to a temporary emergency such as invasion or major disaster, or in an occupied territory. Martial law can be used by governments to enforce their rule over the public, as seen in multiple countries listed below. Such incidents may occur after a coup d'état (Thailand in 2006 and 2014, and Egypt in 2013); when threatened by popular protest (China, Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, 2009's Iranian Green Movement that led to the takeover by Revolutionary Guards); to suppress political opposition (Poland in 1981); or to stabilize insurrections or perceived insurrections (Canada, The October Crisis of 1970). Martial law may be declared in cases of major natural disasters; however, most countries use a different legal construct, such as a state of emergency. Martial law was introduced in Communist Poland on December 13, 1981 by Generals Czesław Kiszczak and Wojciech Jaruzelski to prevent democratic opposition from gaining popularity and political power in the country. Thousands of people linked to democratic opposition, including Lech Wałęsa, were arbitrarily arrested and detained. About 100 deaths are attributed to the martial law, including 9 miners shot by the police during the pacification of striking Wujek Coal Mine. The martial law was lifted July 22, 1983. Polish society is divided in opinion on the necessity of introduction of the martial law, which is viewed by some as a lesser evil compared to alleged Soviet military intervention.

Gorbachev, Mikhail

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (born 2 March 1931) is a Russian and formerly Soviet politician. He was the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the governing Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991, serving as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990, and President of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically a socialist, he initially adhered to Marxism-Leninism although following the Soviet collapse moved toward social democracy. Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and to its socialist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform was necessary and following the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 pursued this agenda. Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring") and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War. Under this program, the role of the Communist Party in governing the state was removed from the constitution, which inadvertently led to crisis-level political instability with a surge of regional nationalist and anti-communist activism culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev later expressed regret for his failure to save the Soviet state, though he has insisted that his policies were not failures but rather were vitally necessary reforms, which were sabotaged and exploited by opportunists.

Charter 77 (1977)

Motivated in part by the arrest of members of the psychedelic band Plastic People of the Universe, the text of Charter 77 was prepared in 1976. In December 1976, the first signatures were collected. The charter was published on 6 January 1977, along with the names of the first 242 signatories, which represented various occupations, political viewpoints, and religions. Although Václav Havel, Ludvík Vaculík and Pavel Landovský were detained while trying to bring the charter to the Federal Assembly and the Czechoslovak government, and the original document was confiscated, copies circulated as samizdat and on 7 January were published in several western newspapers (including Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Times and The New York Times) and transmitted to Czechoslovakia by Czechoslovak-banned radio broadcasters like Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. Charter 77 criticized the government for failing to implement human rights provisions of a number of documents it had signed, including the 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia, the Final Act of the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Basket III of the Helsinki Accords), and 1966 United Nations covenants on political, civil, economic, and cultural rights. The document also described the signatories as a "loose, informal, and open association of people . . . united by the will to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world." It emphasized that Charter 77 is not an organization, has no statutes or permanent organs, and "does not form the basis for any oppositional political activity." This final stipulation was a careful effort to stay within the bounds of Czechoslovak law, which made organized opposition illegal.

Neo-liberalism

Neoliberalism, ideology and policy model that emphasizes the value of free market competition. Although there is considerable debate as to the defining features of neoliberal thought and practice, it is most commonly associated with laissez-faire economics. In particular, neoliberalism is often characterized in terms of its belief in sustained economic growth as the means to achieve human progress, its confidence in free markets as the most-efficient allocation of resources, its emphasis on minimal state intervention in economic and social affairs, and its commitment to the freedom of trade and capital. Neoliberal ideology and policies became increasingly influential, as illustrated by the British Labour Party's official abandonment of its commitment to the "common ownership of the means of production" in 1995 and by the cautiously pragmatic policies of the Labour Party and the U.S. Democratic Party from the 1990s. As national economies became more interdependent in the new era of economic globalization, neoliberals also promoted free-trade policies and the free movement of international capital. The clearest sign of the new importance of neoliberalism, however, was the emergence of libertarianism as a political force, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of the Libertarian Party in the United States and by the creation of assorted think tanks in various countries, which sought to promote the libertarian ideal of markets and sharply limited governments.

Ostpolitik (1969-1974)

Neue Ostpolitik (German for "new eastern policy"), or Ostpolitik for short, was the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany) and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) beginning in 1969. Influenced by Egon Bahr, who proposed "change through rapprochement" in a 1963 speech at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, the policies were implemented beginning with Willy Brandt, fourth Chancellor of the FRG from 1969 to 1974. Ostpolitik was an effort to break with the policies of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which was the elected government of West Germany from 1949 until 1969. The Christian Democrats under Konrad Adenauer and his successors tried to combat the Communist regime of East Germany, while Brandt's Social Democrats tried to achieve a certain degree of cooperation with East Germany.

New Labour

New Labour refers to a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid-1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto published in 1996, New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland, the leadership of Blair and Brown, as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' "Third Way", which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equality of opportunity and believed in the use of free markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice. The "New Labour" brand was developed to regain trust from the electorate and to portray a departure from their traditional democratic socialist policies, which was criticised for its breaking of election promises and its links between trade unions and the state and to communicate the party's modernisation to the public.

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev[a] (15 April 1894 - 11 September 1971) was a Soviet statesman who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. In a 1956 "secret speech," he discussed Stalin's crimes for the first time, kickstarting the process of de-stalinization.

People's Democracies

People's democracy was a theoretical concept within Marxism-Leninism (and a form of government in communist states) which developed after World War II, which allowed in theory for a multi-class, multi-party democracy on the pathway to socialism. Prior to the rise of Fascism, communist parties had called for Soviet Republics to be implemented throughout the world, such as the Chinese Soviet Republic or William Z. Foster's book Towards Soviet America. However, after the rise of fascism, and the creation of the popular front governments in France and Spain, the Comintern under Bulgarian Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov began to advocate for a broad multi-class united front as opposed to the pure proletarian dictatorship of the Soviets. The possibility of a trans-class democracy was first put forward during the popular front period against Fascism.

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement for reformation within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s and 1990s and is widely associated with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his glasnost (meaning "openness") policy reform. The literal meaning of perestroika is "restructuring," referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system. Perestroika is sometimes argued to be a significant cause of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Cold War. Seeking to bring the Soviet Union up to economic par with capitalist countries such as Germany, Japan, and the United States, Gorbachev decentralized economic controls and encouraged enterprises to become self-financing. The economic bureaucracy, fearing the loss of its power and privileges, obstructed much of his program, however. Gorbachev also proposed reducing the direct involvement of the Communist Party leadership in the country's governance and increasing the local governments' authority. In 1988 a new parliament, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, was created. Similar congresses were established in each Soviet republic as well. For the first time, elections to these bodies presented voters with a choice of candidates, including noncommunists, though the Communist Party continued to dominate the system.

Pied-Noirs

Pied-Noir is a term primarily referring to people of European, mostly ethnic French origin, who were born in Algeria during the period of French rule from 1830 to 1962. More broadly, it can refer to other foreign-origin persons, both Christian and Jewish, from all parts of the Mediterranean whose families had also migrated under French occupation in the 19th and 20th centuries to French Algeria, the French protectorate in Morocco, or the French protectorate of Tunisia, where many carried on living for several generations but fled or were expelled at the end of French rule in North Africa between 1956 and 1962. The term sometimes also includes the pre-existing North African Jews who had been living there prior to French colonization, whether Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews who had arrived after the expulsion from Sepharad (Spain and Portugal) several centuries earlier in 1492 or even earlier Berber-speaking and/or Arabic-speaking Maghrebi Jews who had been residing there for over a thousand years, all of which were nonetheless awarded French citizenship by the 1870 Crémieux Decree whilst the rest of the native Muslim population was maintained in a second class status with the "Code de l'Indigénat" (ref Indigénat). More specifically, the term Pied-Noir is used for those of European ancestry who "returned" to mainland France as soon as Algeria gained independence, or in the months following.

Samizdat

Samizdat was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. Samizdat began appearing following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, largely as a revolt against official restrictions on the freedom of expression of major dissident Soviet authors. After the ouster of Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1964, samizdat publications expanded their focus beyond freedom of expression to a critique of many aspects of official Soviet policies and activities, including ideologies, culture, law, economic policy, historiography, and treatment of religions and ethnic minorities. Because of the government's strict monopoly on presses, photocopiers, and other such devices, samizdat publications typically took the form of carbon copies of typewritten sheets and were passed by hand from reader to reader. The major genres of samizdat included reports of dissident activities and other news suppressed by official media, protests addressed to the regime, transcripts of political trials, analysis of socioeconomic and cultural themes, and even pornography.

Slobodan Milosevic

Slobodan Milošević, (born Aug. 29, 1941, Požarevac, Yugos.—found dead March 11, 2006, The Hague, Neth.), politician and administrator, who, as Serbia's party leader and president (1989-97), pursued Serbian nationalist policies that contributed to the breakup of the socialist Yugoslav federation. He subsequently embroiled Serbia in a series of conflicts with the successor Balkan states. From 1997 to 2000 he served as president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Milošević soon introduced a new populist political style to Serbia, appealing directly to the Serbian people over the heads of LCY officials and calling for an "antibureaucratic revolution." He used his rising popularity to oust his former mentor Stambolić as leader of the LCS in December 1987. As Serbia's party leader, Milošević demanded that the federal government restore full control to Serbia over the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo. And at a time when the federal government was trying to introduce free-market reforms in order to relieve the faltering Yugoslav economy, he emerged as a leading defender of the socialist tradition of state economic intervention, attacking economic reform for its social costs. During 1998 the long-standing dispute between Serbia and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo deteriorated rapidly into open armed conflict between federal security forces and the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, which had begun killing Serbian policemen and politicians. In the early spring of 1999 the Serbs launched a major offensive aimed at defeating the insurgents. NATO forces retaliated by initiating a massive aerial bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, expecting that Milošević would quickly capitulate. Unexpectedly, many Serbs previously critical of his government rallied in support of their country; capitalizing on this, he ordered a program of ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians that drove hundreds of thousands of them into neighbouring countries as refugees. By June, however, Milošević had agreed to a peace accord with NATO that obliged him to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.

De-stalinization

Social process of neutralizing the influence of Joseph Stalin by revising his policies and removing monuments dedicated to him and renaming places named in his honor. Consisted of a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power. The reforms consisted of changing or removing key institutions that helped Stalin hold power: the cult of personality that surrounded him, the Stalinist political system, and the Gulag labour-camp system, all of which had been created and dominated by him.

"Socialism with a human face"

Socialism with a human face was a political programme announced by Alexander Dubček and his colleagues agreed at Presidium of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on April 1968 after he became the chairman of the Party in January 1968. The first author of this slogan was Radovan Richta. It was a process of mild democratization and political liberalization that would still enable the Communist Party to maintain real power. Instead, it initiated the Prague spring which, on the night of 20-21 August 1968, was crushed by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The programme initially called for greater participation of the people in local and country politics under the umbrella of the Communist Party, for greater freedom of the press and of culture and emphasised the need for personal initiative in economics. The most loathed representatives of the previous style of rule were left to go.

Solidarity (Solidarnosc)

Solidarity is a Polish labour union that was founded on 17 September 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa. It was the first trade union in a Warsaw Pact country that was not controlled by a communist party. Its membership peaked at 10 million members at its September 1981 Congress, which constituted one third of the total working-age population of Poland. In the 1980s, Solidarity was a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement, using the methods of civil resistance to advance the causes of workers' rights and social change. The government attempted to destroy the union by imposing martial law in Poland, which lasted from December 1981 to July 1983 and was followed by several years of political repression from 8 October 1982, but in the end it was forced to negotiate with Solidarity. In the union's clandestine years, Pope John Paul II and the United States provided significant financial support, estimated to be as much as 50 million US dollars.

Oil shocks of the 1970s

The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States with the embargo also later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally; US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or "shock", with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and the global economy. It was later called the "first oil shock", followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the "second oil shock." The 1979 (or second) oil crisis or oil shock occurred in the world due to decreased oil output in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Despite the fact that global oil supply decreased by only ~4%, widespread panic resulted, driving the price far higher. The price of crude oil more than doubled to $39.50 per barrel over the next 12 months, and long lines once again appeared at gas stations, as they had in the 1973 oil crisis.

APO

The Außerparlamentarische Opposition (German for extra-parliamentary opposition, commonly known as the APO), was a political protest movement in West Germany during the latter half of the 1960s and early 1970s, forming a central part of the German student movement. Its membership consisted mostly of young people disillusioned with the grand coalition (Große Koalition) of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since the coalition controlled 95 percent of the Bundestag, the APO provided a more effective outlet for student dissent. Its most prominent member and unofficial spokesman was Rudi Dutschke.

Berlin Blockade/Berlin Airlift

The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 - 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. The Western Allies organised the Berlin airlift (26 June 1948-30 September 1949) to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city's population. Aircrews from the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the French Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Air Force:338 flew over 200,000 sorties in one year, providing to the West Berliners up to 12,941 tons of necessities in a day, such as fuel and food, with the original plan being to lift 3,475 tons of supplies. However, by the end of the airlift, that number was often met twofold. The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict, even though they far outnumbered the allies in Germany and especially Berlin.

Berlin Wall (1961)

The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In 1989 a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries—Poland and Hungary in particular—caused a chain reaction in East Germany that ultimately resulted in the demise of the Wall. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of what was left. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom Group was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950.The CCF was founded on 26 June 1950 in West Berlin, which had just endured months of Soviet blockade. Its stated purpose was to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy was less compatible with culture than communism. In practical terms it aimed to challenge the post-war sympathies with the USSR of many Western intellectuals and fellow travellers, particularly among liberals and the non-Communist Left. Formation of the CCF came in response to a series of events orchestrated by the Soviet Union: the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Wroclaw (Poland) in August 1948; a similar event in April the following year in Paris, the World Congress of Peace Partisans; and their culmination in the creation of the World Peace Council, which in March 1950 issued the Stockholm Appeal. As part of this campaign there had also been an event in New York City in March 1949: the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was attended by many prominent U.S. liberals, leftists and pacifists who called for peace with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance)

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist states elsewhere in the world. The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. This usage was sometimes extended as well to bilateral relations among members because in the system of socialist international economic relations, multilateral accords - typically of a general nature - tended to be implemented through a set of more detailed, bilateral agreements. Moscow was concerned about the Marshall Plan. Comecon was meant to prevent countries in the Soviet sphere of influence from moving towards that of the Americans and South-East Asia. Comecon was the Eastern Bloc's reply to the formation in Western Europe of the Marshall Plan.

EU (European Union)

The EU and European citizenship were established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993. The EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome. The original members of what came to be known as the European Communities were the Inner Six: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The Communities and its successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to its remit. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. While no member state has left the EU or its antecedent organisations, the United Kingdom signified the intention to leave after a membership referendum in June 2016 and is negotiating its withdrawal on 29 March 2019. The fundamental purposes of the European Union are to promote greater social, political and economic harmony among the nations of Western Europe. The EU reasons that nations whose economies are interdependent are less likely to engage in conflict.

EEC (European Economic Community)

The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation which aimed to bring about economic integration among its member states. It was created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957. Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated and renamed as the European Community (EC). In 2009 the EC's institutions were absorbed into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist. The Community's initial aim was to bring about economic integration, including a common market and customs union, among its six founding members: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. It gained a common set of institutions along with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) as one of the European Communities under the 1965 Merger Treaty (Treaty of Brussels). In 1993, a complete single market was achieved, known as the internal market, which allowed for the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people within the EEC. In 1994, the internal market was formalised by the EEA agreement. This agreement also extended the internal market to include most of the member states of the European Free Trade Association, forming the European Economic Area covering 15 countries.

Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School is a school of social theory and philosophy associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Founded during the interwar period, the School consisted of Western Marxist dissidents uncomfortable with existing capitalist, fascist or communist systems. Many of these theorists believed that traditional theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the 20th century. Critical of both capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development.

Dayton Accords (1995)

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, Dayton Accords, Paris Protocol or Dayton-Paris Agreement, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, on 1 November 1995, and formally signed in Paris, France, on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the ​3 1⁄2-year-long Bosnian War, one of the Yugoslav Wars. The agreement's main purpose was to promote peace and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to endorse regional balance in and around the former Yugoslavia

Helsinki Accords

The Helsinki Accords, Helsinki Final Act, or Helsinki Declaration was the final act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Finlandia Hall of Helsinki, Finland, during July and August 1, 1975. Thirty-five states, including the US, Canada, and all European states except Albania and Andorra signed the declaration in an attempt to improve relations between the Communists and the West. The Helsinki Accords, however, were not binding as they did not have treaty status. The document was seen both as a significant step toward reducing Cold War tensions and as a major diplomatic boost for the Soviet Union at the time, due to its clauses on the inviolability of national frontiers and respect for territorial integrity, which were seen to consolidate the USSR's territorial gains in Eastern Europe following the Second World War. Considering objections from Canada, Spain, Ireland and other states, the Final Act simply stated that "frontiers" in Europe should be stable but could change by peaceful internal means. US president Gerald Ford also reaffirmed that US non-recognition policy of the Baltic states' (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) forced incorporation into the Soviet Union had not changed. Leaders of other NATO member states made similar statements.

International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer situations to the Court. The ICC began functioning on 1 July 2002, the date that the Rome Statute entered into force. The Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty which serves as the ICC's foundational and governing document. States which become party to the Rome Statute, for example by ratifying it, become member states of the ICC. Currently, there are 123 states which are party to the Rome Statute and therefore members of the ICC. The ICC has four principal organs: the Presidency, the Judicial Divisions, the Office of the Prosecutor, and the Registry. The President is the most senior judge chosen by his or her peers in the Judicial Division, which hears cases before the Court. The Office of the Prosecutor is headed by the Prosecutor who investigates crimes and initiates proceedings before the Judicial Division. The Registry is headed by the Registrar and is charged with managing all the administrative functions of the ICC, including the headquarters, detention unit, and public defense office.

Iron Curtain

The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and its allied states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side were the countries that were allied to the United States or nominally neutral. Separate international economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain.

Kyoto Protocol (1997)

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part one) global warming is occurring and (part two) it is extremely likely that human-made CO2 emissions have predominantly caused it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There are currently 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (Article 2). The Kyoto Protocol applies to the six greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous oxide (N2O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). The Protocol is based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities: it acknowledges that individual countries have different capabilities in combating climate change, owing to economic development, and ergo puts the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Maastricht Agreement of 1991

The Maastricht Treaty (officially the Treaty on European Union) was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands to further European integration. On 9-10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty. The treaty founded the European Union and established its pillar structure which stayed in place until the Lisbon Treaty came into force in 2009. The treaty also greatly expanded the competences of the EEC/EU and led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro.

Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion (nearly $100 billion in 2016 US dollars) in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning on April 3, 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-torn regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spread of Communism. The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers, a dropping of many regulations, and encouraged an increase in productivity, trade union membership, as well as the adoption of modern business procedures.

Stasi

The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) or State Security Service, commonly known as the Stasi was the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever to have existed. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city. The Stasi motto was Schild und Schwert der Partei (Shield and Sword of the Party), referring to the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) and also echoing a theme of the KGB, the Soviet counterpart and close partner, with respect to its own ruling party, the CPSU. Erich Mielke was the Stasi's longest-serving chief, in power for thirty-two of the GDR's forty years of existence. One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents (Zersetzung, literally meaning decomposition). Its Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung) was responsible for both espionage and for conducting covert operations in foreign countries. Under its long-time head Markus Wolf, this directorate gained a reputation as one of the most effective intelligence agencies of the Cold War.

New Left

The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms. Some saw the New Left as an oppositional reaction to earlier Marxist and labor union movements for social justice that focused on dialectical materialism and social class, while others who used the term saw the movement as a continuation and revitalization of traditional leftist goals. Some who self-identified as "New Left" rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle, although others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxism, such as the New Communist movement (which drew from Maoism) in the United States or the K-Gruppen in the German Sprachraum. In the United States, the movement was associated with the anti-war college-campus protest movements, including the Free Speech Movement.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. NATO constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's Headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons, Belgium. The North Atlantic Treaty was largely dormant until the Korean War initiated the establishment of NATO to implement it

Oder-Neisse Line

The Oder-Neisse line is the border between Germany and Poland. It was decided upon by the Soviet Union and presented to the Potsdam Conference as a fait-accompli in the aftermath of the Second World War and is primarily delineated along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers in Central Europe, meeting the Baltic Sea to the north, just west of the Polish seaports of Szczecin and Świnoujście (German: Stettin and Swinemünde). The Oder-Neisse line marked the border between the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and Poland from 1950 to 1990. Communist East Germany confirmed the border with Commmunist Poland in 1950, a meaningless gesture, while West Germany, after a period of refusal, were forced by international pressure to adhere to the border (with reservations) in 1970. In 1990 the newly reunified Germany and the Republic of Poland signed a treaty recognizing it as their border.

Prague Spring (1968)

The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia as a Communist state after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and continued until 21 August 1968 when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country to suppress the reforms. The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. After national discussion of dividing the country into a federation of three republics, Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia and Slovakia, Dubček oversaw the decision to split into two, the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic. This dual federation was the only formal change that survived the invasion.

Red Army Faction

The Red Army Faction (RAF; German: Rote Armee Fraktion), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a West German far-left militant organization founded in 1970. Key early figures included Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler and Ulrike Meinhof, among others. Ulrike Meinhof was involved in Baader's escape from jail in 1970. The West German government as well as most Western media and literature considered the Red Army Faction to be a terrorist organization. The Red Army Faction engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies and shoot-outs with police over the course of three decades. Their activity peaked in late 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the "German Autumn". The RAF has been held responsible for thirty-four deaths, including many secondary targets, such as chauffeurs and bodyguards, as well as many injuries throughout its almost thirty years of activity. Although better-known, the RAF conducted fewer attacks than the Revolutionary Cells, which is held responsible for 296 bomb attacks, arson and other attacks between 1973 and 1995.

Fourth French Republic

The Republican Government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth Republican constitution. Despite the political dysfunction, the Fourth Republic saw an era of great economic growth in France and the rebuilding of the nation's social institutions and industry after World War II. It also saw the beginning of the German-French co-operation, that later led to the development of the EC and the EU. This government proved unable to make effective decisions regarding decolonization of the numerous remaining French colonies. After a series of crises, most importantly the Algerian crisis of 1958, the Fourth Republic collapsed

Srebrenica

The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. The killings were perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of Ratko Mladić. The Scorpions, a paramilitary unit from Serbia, who had been part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, also participated in the massacre. In April 1993 the United Nations (UN) had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica—in the Drina Valley of northeastern Bosnia—a "safe area" under UN protection. However, the UN failed to both demilitarise the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) within Srebrenica and force the withdrawal of the VRS surrounding Srebrenica. UNPROFOR's 370 Dutchbat soldiers in Srebrenica did not prevent the town's capture by the VRS—nor the subsequent massacre. The predominantly Bosniak area of Central Podrinje (the region around Srebrenica) had a primary strategic importance to Serbs, as without it there would be no territorial integrity within their new political entity of Republika Srpska. They thus proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks from Bosniak ethnic territories in Eastern Bosnia and Central Podrinje.

Lisbon Treaty (2007/2009)

The Treaty of Lisbon (initially known as the Reform Treaty) is an international agreement that amends the two treaties which form the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU). The Treaty of Lisbon was signed by the EU member states on 13 December 2007, and entered into force on 1 December 2009. It amends the Maastricht Treaty (1993), known in updated form as the Treaty on European Union (2007) or TEU, and the Treaty of Rome (1957), known in updated form as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007) or TFEU. It also amends the attached treaty protocols as well as the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM). The stated aim of the treaty was to "complete the process started by the Treaty of Amsterdam [1997] and by the Treaty of Nice [2001] with a view to enhancing the efficiency and democratic legitimacy of the Union and to improving the coherence of its action".

Rome Agreements

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU; also referred to as the Treaty of Rome) is one of two treaties forming the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU), the other being the Treaty on European Union (TEU; also referred to as the Treaty of Maastricht). The Treaty of Rome brought about the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the best-known of the European Communities (EC). It was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany and came into force on 1 January 1958. It remains one of the two most important treaties in the modern-day European Union (EU). The TEEC proposed the progressive reduction of customs duties and the establishment of a customs union. It proposed to create a single market for goods, labour, services, and capital across the EEC's member states. It also proposed the creation of a Common Agriculture Policy, a Common Transport Policy and a European Social Fund, and established the European Commission.

Velvet Revolution

The Velvet Revolution (Czech: sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution (Slovak: nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 29 December 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia combined students and older dissidents. The result was the end of 41 years of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia, and the subsequent dismantling of the planned economy and conversion to a parliamentary republic. On 17 November 1989 (International Students' Day), riot police suppressed a student demonstration in Prague. It marked the 50th Anniversary of a violently suppressed demonstration against Nazi occupation. The 17 Nov. 1989 event sparked a series of demonstrations from 17 November to late December. By 20 November, the number of protesters assembled in Prague grew from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated 500,000. The entire top leadership of the Communist Party, including General Secretary Miloš Jakeš, resigned on 24 November. On 27 November, two-hour general strike involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia was held. In response to the collapse of other Warsaw Pact governments and the increasing street protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced on 28 November that it would relinquish power and dismantle the one-party state. Two days later, the legislature formally deleted the sections of the Constitution giving the Communists a monopoly of power. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. On 10 December, President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned. Alexander Dubček was elected speaker of the federal parliament on 28 December and Václav Havel the President of Czechoslovakia on 29 December 1989.

Warsaw Pact

The Warsaw Pact, formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954, but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO.

Reykjavik

The city in which the Reykjavik Summit was held. The former British consulate, called Höfði, was the site of the Reykjavík Summit in 1986. The Reykjavík Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, held in Höfði in Reykjavík, on 11-12 October 1986. The talks collapsed at the last minute, but the progress that had been achieved eventually resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Economic Miracle

The post-World War II economic expansion, also known as the postwar economic boom, the long boom, and the Golden Age of Capitalism, was a period of strong economic growth beginning after World War II and ending with the 1973-75 recession. The United States, Soviet Union, Western European and East Asian countries in particular experienced unusually high and sustained growth, together with full employment. Contrary to early predictions, this high growth also included many countries that had been devastated by the war, such as Japan (Japanese post-war economic miracle), West Germany and Austria (Wirtschaftswunder), France (Trente Glorieuses), Italy (Italian economic miracle), Greece (Greek economic miracle), Taiwan (Taiwan Miracle) and South Korea (Miracle of the Han River).

Youth Revolt (1968)

The protests of 1968 comprised a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, predominantly characterized by popular rebellions against military and bureaucratic elites, who responded with an escalation of political repression. In capitalist countries, these protests marked a turning point for the civil rights movement in the United States, which produced revolutionary movements like the Black Panther Party. In reaction to the Tet Offensive, protests also sparked a broad movement in opposition to the Vietnam War all over the United States and even into London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. Mass socialist movements grew not only in the United States but also in most European countries. The most spectacular manifestation of this were the May 1968 protests in France, in which students linked up with wildcat strikes of up to ten million workers, and for a few days the movement seemed capable of overthrowing the government. In many other capitalist countries, struggles against dictatorships, state repression, and colonization were also marked by protests in 1968, such as the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, and the escalation of guerrilla warfare against the military dictatorship in Brazil. It is important that this was a cultural revolution, rather than a political one.

Yalta Conference (1945)

The second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta. During the conference, the three leaders agreed to demand Germany's unconditional surrender, to set up four occupation zones in the conquered nation to be run by their three countries and France, and began plans for a post-war world. The agreements of this conference became controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the Cold War.

Social Market Economy

The social market economy (SOME; German: soziale Marktwirtschaft), also called Rhine capitalism, is a socioeconomic model combining a free market capitalist economic system alongside social policies that establish both fair competition within the market and a welfare state.[1] It is sometimes classified as a coordinated market economy. The social market economy was originally promoted and implemented in West Germany by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1949. Its origins can be traced to the interwar Freiburg school of economic thought.

Dissidents

The term dissident was used in the Eastern bloc, particularly in the Soviet Union, in the period following Joseph Stalin's death until the fall of communism. It was attached to citizens who criticized the practices or the authority of the Communist Party. The people who used to write and distribute non-censored, non-conformist samizdat literature were criticized in the official newspapers. Soon, many of those who were dissatisfied with the Soviet Bloc began to self-identify as dissidents. This radically changed the meaning of the term: instead of being used in reference to an individual who opposes society, it came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism was perceived to be for the good of a society. An important element of dissident activity in the USSR was informing society (both inside the Soviet Union and in foreign countries) about violation of laws and human rights. Some famous Soviet dissents were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov.

Fellow Travelers

The term fellow traveller (also fellow traveler) identifies a person who is intellectually sympathetic to the ideology of a political organization, and who co-operates in the organization's politics, without being a formal member of that organization. In the early history of the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik revolutionary Trotsky coined the term poputchik ('one who travels the same path') to identify the vacillating intellectual supporters of the Bolshevik régime. Likewise for the political characterisation of the Russian intelligentsiya (writers, academics, and artists) who were philosophically sympathetic to the political, social, and economic goals of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but who chose to not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Moreover, during the Stalinist régime, the usage of the term poputchik disappeared from political discourse in the Soviet Union, but the Western world adopted the English term fellow traveller to identify people who sympathised with the Soviets and with Communism. In U.S. politics, during the 1940s and the 1950s, the term fellow traveler was a pejorative term for a person who was philosophically sympathetic to Communism, yet was not a formal, "card-carrying member" of the American Communist Party.

Détente

The term is most often used in reference to a period of general easing of the geo-political tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States; it was the distinct lessening of the Cold War. It began in 1969, as a core element of the foreign policy of U.S. president Richard Nixon, in an effort to avoid the collision of nuclear risks. The Nixon administration promoted greater dialogue with the Soviet government, including regular summit meetings and negotiations over arms control and other bilateral agreements. The period was characterized by the signing of treaties such as SALT I and the Helsinki Accords. Another treaty, START II, was discussed but never ratified by the United States. There is still ongoing debate amongst historians as to how successful the détente period was in achieving peace. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the two superpowers agreed to install a direct hotline between Washington D.C. and Moscow (the so-called red telephone), enabling leaders of both countries to quickly interact with each other in a time of urgency, and reduce the chances that future crises could escalate into an all-out war. The U.S./U.S.S.R. détente was presented as an applied extension of that thinking. The SALT II pact of the late 1970s continued the work of the SALT I talks, ensuring further reduction in arms by the Soviets and by the U.S. The Helsinki Accords, in which the Soviets promised to grant free elections in Europe, has been called a major concession to ensure peace by the Soviets. Ended in 1920.

Brehznev Doctrine

This doctrine was announced to retroactively justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 that ended the Prague Spring, along with earlier Soviet military interventions, such as the invasion of Hungary in 1956. These interventions were meant to put an end to liberalization efforts and uprisings that had the potential to compromise Soviet hegemony inside the Eastern Bloc, which was considered by the Soviet Union to be an essential defensive and strategic buffer in case hostilities with NATO were to break out. In practice, the policy meant that only limited independence of the satellite states' communist parties was allowed and that no socialist country would be allowed to compromise the cohesiveness of the Eastern Bloc in any way. That is, no country could leave the Warsaw Pact or disturb a ruling communist party's monopoly on power. Implicit in this doctrine was that the leadership of the Soviet Union reserved, for itself, the power to define "socialism" and "capitalism". Following the announcement of the Brezhnev Doctrine, numerous treaties were signed between the Soviet Union and its satellite states to reassert these points and to further ensure inter-state cooperation. The principles of the doctrine were so broad that the Soviets even used it to justify their military intervention in the non-Warsaw Pact nation of Afghanistan in 1979. The Brezhnev Doctrine stayed in effect until it was ended with the Soviet reaction to the Polish crisis of 1980-1981. Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use military force when Poland held free elections in 1989 and Solidarity defeated the Polish United Workers' Party.

Decolonization

Decolonization (American English) or decolonisation (British English) is the undoing of colonialism: where a nation establishes and maintains its domination over one or more other territories. The term refers particularly to the dismantlement, during the second half of the 20th century, of the colonial empires established prior to World War I throughout the world. However, decolonization not only refers to the complete "removal of the domination of non-indigenous forces" within the geographical space and different institutions of the colonized, but it also refers to the intellectual decolonization from the colonizers' ideas that made the colonized feel inferior. Although examples of decolonization can be found as early as the writings of Thucydides, there have been several particularly active periods of decolonization in modern times. These include the breakup of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century; of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires following World War I; of the British, French, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, Belgian and Italian colonial empires following World War II; and of the Soviet Union (successor to the Russian Empire) in 1991.

Potsdam Conference

Held near Berlin, the Potsdam Conference (July 17-August 2, 1945) was the last of the World War II meetings held by the "Big Three" heads of state. Featuring American President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (and his successor, Clement Attlee) and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, the talks established a Council of Foreign Ministers and a central Allied Control Council for administration of Germany. The leaders arrived at various agreements on the German economy, punishment for war criminals, land boundaries and reparations. Although talks primarily centered on postwar Europe, the Big Three also issued a declaration demanding "unconditional surrender" from Japan.

Tito

Josip Broz Tito (7 May 1892 - 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito, was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and political leader, serving in various roles from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II, he was the leader of the Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in occupied Europe. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian and concerns about the repression of political opponents have been raised, some historians consider him a benevolent dictator. He was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Viewed as a unifying symbol, his internal policies maintained the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained further international attention as the chief leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, alongside Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late-20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism and that marked a departure from modernism. The term has also more generally been applied to the historical era following modernity and the tendencies of this era. (In this context, "modern" is not used in the sense of "contemporary", but merely as a name for a specific period in history.) While encompassing a wide variety of approaches, postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward the meta-narratives and ideologies of modernism, often calling into question various assumptions of Enlightenment rationality. Consequently, common targets of postmodern critique include universalist notions of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. Postmodern thinkers frequently call attention to the contingent or socially-conditioned nature of knowledge claims and value systems, situating them as products of particular political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, subjectivism, and irreverence.

ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community)

The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was an organization of six European countries created after World War II to regulate their industrial production under a centralised authority. It was formally established in 1951 by the Treaty of Paris, signed by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The ECSC was the first international organisation to be based on the principles of supranationalism, and started the process of formal integration which ultimately led to the European Union.

Greens

The Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) is the political group in the European Parliament containing green, regionalist and left-wing nationalist political parties. Formed following the 1999 European elections for the 5th European Parliament, the Greens/EFA group consists of three distinct European political parties, namely the larger European Green Party (EGP) and the European Free Alliance (EFA) and the smaller European Pirate Party. The EFA consists of parties representing stateless nations, regionalist and minority political interests. The group has generally limited its membership to progressive parties. These European parties are joined by MEPs from non-aligned national parties, which have included the Dutch Europe Transparent (2004-2009) and the Swedish Pirate Party (2009-2014).

The Euro

The euro is the official currency of 19 of 28 member states of the European Union, as well as some of the territories of the EU. The euro was established by the provisions in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. To participate in the currency, member states are meant to meet strict criteria, such as a budget deficit of less than 3% of their GDP, a debt ratio of less than 60% of GDP (both of which were ultimately widely flouted after introduction), low inflation, and interest rates close to the EU average. In the Maastricht Treaty, the United Kingdom and Denmark were granted exemptions per their request from moving to the stage of monetary union which resulted in the introduction of the euro.

Totaltarianism

Totalitarianism is a form of government that theoretically permits no individual freedom and that seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini coined the term totalitario in the early 1920s to characterize the new fascist state of Italy, which he further described as "all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state." By the beginning of World War II, totalitarian had become synonymous with absolute and oppressive single-party government. Other modern examples of totalitarian states include the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and North Korea under the Kim dynasty. Totalitarianism is often distinguished from dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny by its supplanting of all political institutions with new ones and its sweeping away of all legal, social, and political traditions.

Willy Brandt

Willy Brandt (born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 - 8 October 1992) was a German statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in western Europe through the EEC and to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe. He was the first Social Democrat chancellor since 1930.