Resistance in Lithuania during World War II
During World War II, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union again in 1944. Resistance during this period took many forms. Significant parts of the resistance were formed by Polish and Soviet forces, some of which fought with Lithuanian collaborators; this article presents a summary of the organizations and actions involved. In 1940, President Antanas Smetona fled to Germany, not wanting his government to become a puppet of the Soviet occupation. Soviet attempts to capture him were unsuccessful, he was able to settle in the United States. In 1940, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, his wife Yukiko disobeyed orders and saved thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland by granting them visas. In 1941, the Lithuanian Activist Front formed an underground government, following the June uprising, the Provisional Government of Lithuania maintained sovereignty for a brief period. Soviet partisans began sabotage and guerrilla operations against German forces after the Nazi invasion of 1941.
The activities of Soviet partisans in Lithuania were coordinated by the Command of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement headed by Antanas Sniečkus and by the Central Command of the Partisan Movement of the USSR. In 1943, the Nazis attempted to raise a Waffen-SS division from the local population as they had in many other countries, but due to widespread coordination between resistance groups, the mobilization was boycotted; the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force was formed in 1944 under Lithuanian command, but was liquidated by the Nazis only a few months for refusing to subordinate to their command. There was no significant violent resistance directed against the Nazis; some Lithuanians, encouraged by Germany's vague promises of autonomy, cooperated with the Nazis. Pre-war tensions over the Vilnius Region resulted in a low-level civil war between Poles and Lithuanians. Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian units the Lithuanian Secret Police, were active in the region and assisted the Germans in repressing the Polish population.
In the autumn of 1943, the Armia Krajowa began retaliatory operations against the Lithuanian units and killed hundreds of Lithuanian policemen and other collaborators during the first half of 1944. The conflict culminated in the massacres of Polish and Lithuanian civilians in June 1944 in the Glitiškės and Dubingiai villages. See Polish-Lithuanian relations during World War II. In 1943, several underground political groups united under the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania; the committee issued a declaration of independence that went unnoticed. It became active outside Lithuania among emigrants and deportees, was able to establish contacts in Western countries and get support for resistance operations inside Lithuania, it would persist abroad for many years as one of the groups representing Lithuania in exile. Jewish partisans fought against the Nazi occupation. In September 1943, the United Partisan Organization, led by Abba Kovner, attempted to start an uprising in the Vilna Ghetto, engaged in sabotage and guerrilla operations against the Nazi occupation.
In July 1944, as part of its Operation Tempest, the Polish Home Army launched Operation Ostra Brama, an attempt to recapture that city. See Polish–Lithuanian relations during World War II; as of January 2008, 723 Lithuanians were recognized by Israel as Righteous among the Nations for their efforts in saving Lithuania's Jews from the Holocaust. The total number of people who helped the Jews may be much higher. Lithuanian partisans, known as the Forest Brothers, began guerrilla warfare against the Soviet forces as soon as the front passed over them in 1944, continued an armed struggle until 1953; the core of this movement was made up of soldiers from the Territorial Defense Force who had disbanded with their weapons and uniforms and members of the Lithuanian Freedom Army, established in 1941. The underground had press. Thousands of people engaged in passive resistance against the Soviet authorities; the various resistance organizations united under the Movement of the Struggle for the Freedom of Lithuania, issuing a declaration of independence in 1949 that would be signed into law by the independent Republic of Lithuania in 1999.
The most famous of these partisans is Juozas Lukša, author of several books during the resistance and the subject of a recent film. While armed resistance ended in the 1950s, nonviolent resistance continued in various forms, until 1991 when Russia recognized the independence declared by Lithuania on March 11, 1990. February 16, the date that Lithuania first declared its independence in 1918, played an important symbolic role during this period; the call for volunteers for the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force, the VLIK declaration of independence, the LLKS declaration of independence were all made on February 16. This day has become a national holiday in Lithuania
The Falling Torch
The Falling Torch is a 1959 science fiction novel by American writer Algis Budrys. A 1999 Baen Books edition was "very rewritten, includes one new chapter; the novel is about a group of freedom fighters who attempt the nearly hopeless task of liberating planet Earth from the grip of a race of alien invaders. The story has obvious overtones of freeing the author's homeland from its Soviet occupiers; the situation in the early chapters - of the Earth exiles maintaining a government in exile but losing hope of liberating their home planet - was familiar to Burdis. During most of his adult life, Budrys himself held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army, thus he was in a personal situation similar to that of the protagonist Michael Wireman at the outset - though Budrys never tried to infiltrate Soviet-ruled Lithuania and start a rebellion there. However, in the foreword to the Baen edition, the author denies that such was the primary reason for writing the novel. Instead he aimed to produce a story of a man who, like others such as Timur, were in some way disabled and alienated from society, before coming to dominate it.
In 2513, in Geneva, Switzerland - capital of Earth and of the Solar System - a man named Michael Wireman is laid to rest. In life he was revered by people to the point of worship, he laid down the design for a new city of Geneva, drafted a Constitution that would work for a populace accustomed to total regulation by an alien society, ruled the Earth for 50 years. He was remote from common people, but whenever he was driven by in his official car they would cheer him, he was the kind of leader who features so in peoples lives that they feel they cannot go on without him. Before going to the funeral, Wireman's chosen successor - an able politician who knows he would never be able to equal Wireman, has no desire to - wonders again at the source of Wireman's power, he glances at the latest of many biographies of the late dictator. Markham felt the same wonder, found no clear answer. Wireman himself had read Markham's book, scrawled "Poppycock!" on the flyleaf of his own personal copy. The book proceeds to go back forty-four years, tracing Wireman's career to its beginnings, answering the questions which would elude all observers.
The story takes place in the 25th century, four hundred years after humans have begun colonizing other planets, a generation after the home planet, has been conquered by the Invaders. The Invaders in this case are humanoid similar to Earth humans. A tiny human government-in-exile exists in the Alpha Centauri system, home to a large and prosperous human society, but the colonists there are losing their ties to the home planet, they are beginning to look different, for instance having unusually colored eyes. They have a solid military-industrial base, a functioning space fleet, ideas about expanding their sphere of influence, but no particular interest in liberating Earth; the Invaders have superior social engineering technology, allowing them to assess the capabilities of any individual and assign them to a role in life best suited to them. Many humans accept their place in Invader society. Invader society is ordered and clean, in contrast to the polluted industrial cities in the colonies. One man, Michael Wireman, is the last hope of the exiles.
He is the son of the aging President of the government-in-exile. He left Earth as a baby when his parents and the other members of the government-in-exile escaped the Invasion. Despite having no memories of Earth, he has been raised to despise colonial society and worship the idea of liberating Earth; as the novel opens, Michael's father tells the other members of the exiled government that a large arms shipment will be sent to Earth to supply guerrillas led by a man named Hammil. The circumstances suggest that the colonial government is ready to support action against the Invaders, but is avoiding doing it openly. However, by this time many of the exiles have made good lives for themselves in their new home; this did not matter as long as the liberation was hopeless, but they refuse to dismantle those lives to return to Earth. They realize; however he is a misfit with serious psychological problems as a result of his indoctrination by his mother. The colonists send him to Earth. Wireman finds the resistance group on Earth.
Hammil is a narcissistic megalomaniac. He uses the first shipment of weapons to assault an Invader outpost and hang the commander, responsible for Hammil being thrown out of the Earth military. Wireman is involved in a firefight, he is stunned to discover that they are not Invader soldiers, but rival guerrillas trying to steal weapons. To make matters worse, Wireman discovers that the colonial envoy sent with him has a peace treaty that directly commits the colonists to support Hammil, bypassing the government in exile, in exchange f
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Clayton, edited by Harry Bates. Clayton went bankrupt in 1933 and the magazine was sold to Street & Smith; the new editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, who soon made Astounding the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, publishing well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's Legion of Space and John W. Campbell's "Twilight". At the end of 1937, Campbell took over editorial duties under Tremaine's supervision, the following year Tremaine was let go, giving Campbell more independence. Over the next few years Campbell published many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, A. E. van Vogt's Slan, several novels and stories by Robert A. Heinlein; the period beginning with Campbell's editorship is referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
By 1950, new competition had appeared from Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Campbell's interest in some pseudo-science topics, such as dianetics, alienated some of his regular writers, Astounding was no longer regarded as the leader of the field, though it did continue to publish popular and influential stories: Hal Clement's novel Mission of Gravity appeared in 1953, Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" appeared the following year. In 1960, Campbell changed the title of the magazine to Analog Science Fact. At about the same time Street & Smith sold the magazine to Condé Nast. Campbell remained as editor until his death in 1971. Ben Bova took over from 1972 to 1978, the character of the magazine changed noticeably, since Bova was willing to publish fiction that included sexual content and profanity. Bova published stories such as Frederik Pohl's "The Gold at the Starbow's End", nominated for both a Hugo and Nebula Award, Joe Haldeman's "Hero", the first story in the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning "Forever War" sequence.
Bova won five consecutive Hugo Awards for his editing of Analog. Bova was followed by Stanley Schmidt, who continued to publish many of the same authors, contributing for years; the title was sold to Davis Publications in 1980 to Dell Magazines in 1992. Crosstown Publications remains the publisher. Schmidt continued to edit the magazine until 2012. In 1926, Hugo Gernsback launched the first science fiction magazine. Gernsback had been printing scientific fiction stories for some time in his hobbyist magazines, such as Modern Electrics and Electrical Experimenter, but decided that interest in the genre was sufficient to justify a monthly magazine. Amazing was successful reaching a circulation over 100,000. William Clayton, a successful and well-respected publisher of several pulp magazines, considered starting a competitive title in 1928. Clayton was unconvinced, but the following year decided to launch a new magazine because the sheet on which the color covers of his magazines were printed had a space for one more cover.
He suggested to Harry Bates, a newly hired editor, that they start a magazine of historical adventure stories. Bates proposed instead a science fiction pulp, to be titled Astounding Stories of Super Science, Clayton agreed. Astounding was published by Publisher's Fiscal Corporation, a subsidiary of Clayton Magazines; the first issue appeared with Bates as editor. Bates aimed for straightforward action-adventure stories, with scientific elements only present to provide minimal plausibility. Clayton paid much better rates than Amazing and Wonder Stories—two cents a word on acceptance, rather than half a cent a word, on publication —and Astounding attracted some of the better-known pulp writers, such as Murray Leinster, Victor Rousseau, Jack Williamson. In February 1931, the original name Astounding Stories of Super-Science was shortened to Astounding Stories; the magazine was profitable. A publisher would pay a printer three months in arrears, but when a credit squeeze began in May 1931, it led to pressure to reduce this delay.
The financial difficulties led Clayton to start alternating the publication of his magazines, he switched Astounding to a bimonthly schedule with the June 1932 issue. Some printers bought the magazines which were indebted to them: Clayton decided to buy his printer to prevent this from happening; this proved a disastrous move. Clayton did not have the money to complete the transaction, in October 1932, Clayton decided to cease publication of Astounding, with the expectation that the January 1933 issue would be the last one; as it turned out, enough stories were in inventory, enough paper was available, to publish one further issue, so the last Clayton Astounding was dated March 1933. In April, Clayton went bankrupt, sold his magazine titles to T. R. Foley for $100. Science fiction was not a departure for Street & Smith. They
Planet Stories
Planet Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published by Fiction House between 1939 and 1955. It featured interplanetary adventures, both in space and on some other planets, was focused on a young readership. Malcolm Reiss was editor-in-chief for all of its 71 issues. Planet Stories was launched at the same time as Planet Comics, the success of which helped to fund the early issues of Planet Stories. Planet Stories did not pay well enough to attract the leading science fiction writers of the day, but obtained work from well-known authors, including Isaac Asimov and Clifford D. Simak. In 1952 Planet Stories published Philip K. Dick's first sale, printed four more of his stories over the next three years; the two writers most identified with Planet Stories are Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, both of whom set many of their stories on a romanticized version of Mars that owed much to the depiction of Barsoom in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Bradbury's work for Planet included an early story in his Martian Chronicles sequence.
Brackett's best-known work for the magazine was a series of adventures featuring Eric John Stark, which began in the summer of 1949. Brackett and Bradbury collaborated on one story, "Lorelei of the Red Mist", which appeared in 1946; the artwork emphasized attractive women, with a scantily clad damsel in distress or alien princess on every cover. Although science fiction had been published before the 1920s, it did not begin to coalesce into a separately marketed genre until the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. By the end of the 1930s the field was undergoing its first boom. Fiction House, a major pulp publisher, had run into difficulties during the Depression, but after a relaunch in 1934 found success with detective and romance pulp titles. Fiction House's first title with sf interest was Jungle Stories, launched in early 1939. At the end of 1939, Fiction House decided to add an sf magazine to its lineup; the first issue was dated Winter 1939.
Two comics were launched at the same time: Planet Comics. Malcolm Reiss edited Planet Stories from the beginning, retained editorial oversight and control throughout its run, though he was not always the named editor on the masthead; the first of these sub-editors was Wilbur S. Peacock, who took over with the Fall 1942 issue and remained until Fall 1945, after which he was replaced by Chester Whitehorn for three issues, by Paul L. Payne, from Fall 1946 to Spring 1950. With the Summer 1950 issue the editorship passed to Jerome Bixby, editing Jungle Stories. Soon thereafter Planet Stories switched from a quarterly to bimonthly schedule. Bixby lasted a little over a year. A contemporary market survey records that in 1953, payment rates were only one to two cents per word. Planet Stories returned to a quarterly schedule beginning with the Summer 1954 issue, but the pulp market was collapsing, the Summer 1955 issue was the final one. Fiction House made the decision to launch Planet Stories so that there was little time for Reiss to obtain new stories, so he worked with Julius Schwartz and other authors' agents to fill the first issue.
The results were unremarkable, but Reiss was energetic, was able to improve the quality of fiction in succeeding issues, though he apologized to the readers for printing weak material. The magazine was focused on interplanetary adventures taking place in primitive societies that would now be regarded as "sword and sorcery" settings, was aimed at a young readership. Planet Stories relied on a few authors to provide the bulk of its fiction in the early years, with Nelson Bond providing eight lead stories, some of them novels. Fourteen more were written by Ross Rocklynne; the letter column in Planet Stories was titled "The Vizigraph". It printed letters from established writers, from fans who would go on to become well known professionally: Damon Knight's letters are described by sf historian Mike Ashley as "legendary"; the editors put a good deal of effort into keeping the letter column lively. Despite the focus on melodramatic space adventure, the fictio
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895 and written as a frame narrative; the work is credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle; the Time Machine has been adapted into three feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions, a large number of comic book adaptations. It has indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in many media productions. Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in a short story titled "The Chronic Argonauts"; this work, published in his college newspaper, was the foundation for The Time Machine. Wells stated that he had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette until the publisher asked him if he could instead write a serial novel on the same theme.
Wells agreed and was paid £100 on its publication by Heinemann in 1895, which first published the story in serial form in the January to May numbers of The New Review. Henry Holt and Company published the first book edition on 7 May 1895; these two editions are different textually and are referred to as the "Holt text" and "Heinemann text", respectively. Nearly all modern reprints reproduce the Heinemann text; the story reflects Wells's own socialist political views, his view on life and abundance, the contemporary angst about industrial relations. It is influenced by Ray Lankester's theories about social degeneration and shares many elements with Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. Other science fiction works of the period, including Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887 and the film Metropolis, dealt with similar themes. Based on Wells' personal experiences and childhood, the working class spent a lot of their time underground, his own family would spend most of their time in a dark basement kitchen when not being occupied in their father's shop.
His own mother would work as a housekeeper in a house with underground tunnels, where the staff and servants lived in underground quarters. A medical journal published in 1905 would focus on these living quarters for servants in poorly ventilated dark basements. In his early teens, Wells became a draper's apprentice, having to work in a basement for hours on end; this work is an early example of the Dying Earth subgenre. The portion of the novella that sees the Time Traveller in a distant future where the sun is huge and red places The Time Machine within the realm of eschatology, i.e. the study of the end times, the end of the world, the ultimate destiny of humankind. The book's protagonist is a Victorian English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond and identified by a narrator as the Time Traveller; the narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is a fourth dimension and demonstrates a tabletop model machine for travelling through the fourth dimension.
He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person through time, returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator. In the new narrative, the Time Traveller tests his device. At first he thinks nothing soon finds out he went five hours into the future, he sees his house disappear and turn into a lush garden. The Time Traveller stops in A. D. 802,701, where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet deteriorating buildings, having a fruit-based diet, his efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of discipline. They fear the dark and in particular fear moonless nights. Observing them, he finds, he speculates. After exploring the area around the Eloi's residences, the Time Traveller reaches the top of a hill overlooking London, he concludes that the entire planet has become a garden, with little trace of human society or engineering from the hundreds of thousands of years prior.
Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller is shocked to find his time machine missing and concludes that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside, which resembles a Sphinx. Luckily, he had removed the machine's levers before leaving it. In the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Exploring one of many "wells" that lead to the Morlocks' dwellings, he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise of the Eloi possible, he alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, the downtrodden working classes have become the brutal light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that due to a lack of any other means of sustenance, they feed on the Eloi.
His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock a
Dynamic Science Fiction
Dynamic Science Fiction was an American pulp magazine which published six issues from December 1952 to January 1954. It was a companion to Future Science Fiction, like that magazine was edited by Robert W. Lowndes and published by Columbia Publications. Stories that appeared in its pages include "The Duplicated Man" by Lowndes and James Blish, "The Possessed" by Arthur C. Clarke, it was launched at the end of the pulp era, when publisher Louis Silberkleit decided to convert Future to a digest format in 1954, he decided not to do the same with Dynamic cancelling the magazine. Although science fiction had been published in the United States before the 1920s, it did not begin to coalesce into a separately marketed genre until the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. By the end of the 1930s the field was booming. Between early 1939 and mid-1940 publisher Louis Silberkleit launched three sf pulp magazines: Science Fiction, Future Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly.
All three had ceased publication by the end of World War II, killed by a combination of falling sales and wartime paper shortages. In 1950 and 1951 Silberkleit revived Future Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly, the following year he launched Dynamic Science Fiction, with the first issue dated November 1952. All three of the magazines were edited by Robert W. Lowndes, who had edited most of the earlier issues for Silberkleit. In mid-1953 Silberkleit cut rates and slowed down payment to contributors as a result of falling circulation. By this time Silberkleit was experimenting with the digest format for Science Fiction Stories, he soon cancelled Dynamic Science Fiction, leaving only Science Fiction Quarterly in pulp format. Silberkleit paid reasonably good rates, Lowndes was able to obtain some good quality material; some of the stories include Arthur C. Clarke's "The Possessed". Lowndes published nonfiction, including two long critical essays by James E. Gunn, "The Philosophy of Science Fiction", "The Plot Forms of Science Fiction".
These four articles formed Gunn's Master of Arts thesis. Robert W. Lowndes was the editor of all six issues of Dynamic Science Fiction, which remained in pulp format throughout its run, it was priced at 25 cents throughout, was 128 pages for the first four issues, 96 pages for the last two. Three issues were reprinted in the U. K. by Thorpe & Porter, of Leicester. These were dated January and November 1954, were pulp format, they were priced at 1/- and were 96 pages. They correspond to the U. S. issues from June 1953, December 1952, January 1954 respectively. There are no anthologies of stories drawn from Dynamic Science Fiction, but in the 1960s Ivan Howard edited several anthologies for Silberkleit's publishing imprint, Belmont Books, with contents drawn from Silberkleit's magazines; these included: Howard, Ivan, ed.. Way Out. New York: Belmont Books. Six of the seven stories are from Dynamic Science Fiction from the first issue. Howard, Ivan, ed.. Novelets of Science Fiction. New York: Belmont Books.
Four of the eight stories are from Dynamic Science Fiction. Ashley, Mike. "Dynamic Science Fiction". In Tymn, Marshall B.. Science Fiction and Weird Fiction Magazines. Westport CT: Greenwood Press. Pp. 196–98. ISBN 0-313-21221-X. Ashley, Mike. Transformations:The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-779-4. Edwards, Malcolm. "SF magazines". In Clute, John; the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc. pp. 1066–71. ISBN 0-312-09618-6. Rhoades, Shirrel. A Complete History of American Comic Books. New York: Peter Lang. Dynamic Science Fiction series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U. S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U. S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, the Truman Doctrine of 1947, ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars; the conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The capitalist West was led by the United States, a federal republic with a two-party presidential system, as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were liberal democratic with a free press and independent organizations, but were economically and politically entwined with a network of banana republics and other authoritarian regimes, most of which were the Western Bloc's former colonies.
Some major Cold War frontlines such as Indochina and the Congo were still Western colonies in 1947. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a totalitarian leader with different titles over time, a small committee called the Politburo; the Party controlled the state, the press, the military, the economy, many organizations throughout the Second World, including the Warsaw Pact and other satellites, funded communist parties around the world, sometimes in competition with communist China following the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. The two worlds were fighting for dominance in low-developed regions known as the Third World. In time, a neutral bloc arose in these regions with the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought good relations with both sides. Notwithstanding isolated incidents of air-to-air dogfights and shoot-downs, the two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat. However, both were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war.
Each side had a nuclear strategy that discouraged an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker—the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, their deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, technological competitions such as the Space Race; the first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The USSR consolidated its control over the states of the Eastern Bloc, while the United States began a strategy of global containment to challenge Soviet power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Western Europe and creating the NATO alliance; the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the conflict expanded.
The USSR and the US competed for influence in Latin America and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. The Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the two sides came to nuclear war. Meanwhile, an international peace movement took root and grew among citizens around the world, first in Japan from 1954, when people became concerned about nuclear weapons testing, but soon in Europe and the US; the peace movement, in particular the anti-nuclear movement, gained pace and popularity from the late 1950s and early 1960s, continued to grow through the'70s and'80s with large protest marches and various non-parliamentary activism opposing war and calling for global nuclear disarmament. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while US allies France, demonstrated greater independence of action.
The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, which ended with the defeat of the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, prompting further adjustments. By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, ushering in a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979; the early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises, both in 1983. The United States increased diplomatic and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was suffering from economic stag
