Crisis in the Kremlin - Our 1982 USSR
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So far the threat from Islamists is low, as everyone is fighting in Afghanistan, but who know how the situation will develop in the future. For now there is a stalemate in our favour, but the question is for how long we want to stay in Afghanistan.
Thinking about it, I will try to post next chapter today. As for 1985/1986 updates, votes will deal with further reformation of the Soviet system, with following topic: role of women, the question of church in USSR, Russification, emigration of jews, oil glut, nuclear tests, legacy of stalin and rapprochement with Albania.
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Ah true but I'd still like to be a bit prepared since it'll cause us problem in Central Asia & Azerbaijan. Honestly if we continue training the Afghan army to be able counter Mujahedeen and eventually the Islamic extremists/terrorists so we can pull out our (and Warsaw Pact member's) military except leave a garrison so the Afghan military isn't overwhelmed.
The Russification is something I want to be rid of as that cause problems for the Soviets.
Yeah, vote after todays update will be on preventing possible islamist attack, rapprochement with Albania and topic of nuclear tests.
Yes, its one of more pressing issues, but Ive decided to spread these topics, as reform step by step is much better than everything at the same time, as this could destabilize the whole Soviet system
Honestly, the way you spread the reforms has/will help the Soviets unlike Gorbachev's as that just sped up the collapse...
I think that was me and someone else... don't remember who else it was.Also I don't remember who asked about Chernobyl, so I've decided that its happening as OTL. The response would be up to the players though
Chapter Thirteen: A new chapter in Soviet politics (February – April 1985)
In February 1985, two important changes occurred at the top of the Soviet leadership. Firstly, the leader of the liberal faction, Mikhail Gorbachev, replaced Andrei Gromyko, indicating Moscow's willingness to open a new chapter in relations with the West. Gromyko, after his replacement, was appointed to the post of Chairman of Security Council of the USSR. Subsequently, he retired from political life in 1988, and died the following year in Moscow. Secondly, the leader of the technocrat faction, Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov became the new prime minister, beginning a new alliance between conservatives, liberals and technocrats who wanted to transform the Soviet state and the Communist Party. Ryzhkov was born to Russian parents on September 28, 1929, in Dzerzhynsk, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. He graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute in 1959. A technocrat, he started work as a welder, rose through the ranks at the Sverdlovsk Uralmash Plant to become chief engineer, and then, between 1970 and 1975, Factory Director of the Uralmash Production Amalgamation. Ryzhkov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956. He was transferred to Moscow in 1975 and appointed to the post of First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Heavy and Transport Machine Building. Ryzhkov became First Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee in 1979 and was elected to the CPSU Central Committee in 1981. He was one of several members of the Soviet leadership affiliated with the "Andrei Kirilenko faction". Yuri Andropov appointed Ryzhkov head of the Economic Department of the Central Committee, where he was responsible for overseeing major planning and financial organs, excluding industry. As head of the department, he reported directly to Mikhail Gorbachev, and as head of the Central Committee's Economic Department, he met with Andropov once a week. Ryzhkov became convinced that had Andropov lived at least another five years, the Soviet Union would have seen a reform package similar to that implemented in the People's Republic of China. Now Ryzhkov wants to put technocratic ideas into practice for the benefit of the Soviet people.
(Nikolai Ryzhkov - technocrat and new Soviet prime minister)
The Reagan Doctrine was stated by United States President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." It was a strategy implemented by the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in the late Cold War. The doctrine was a centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s. Under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backed pro-communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to diminish Soviet influence in these regions as part of the administration's overall strategy to win the Cold War. The Reagan Doctrine followed in the tradition of U.S. presidents developing foreign policy "doctrines", which were designed to reflect challenges facing international relations, and to propose foreign policy solutions. The practice began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, and continued with the Roosevelt Corollary, sometimes called the Roosevelt Doctrine, introduced by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.
The post–World War II tradition of Presidential doctrines started with the Truman Doctrine in 1947, under which the US provided support to the governments of Greece and Turkey as part of a Cold War strategy to keep both nations out of the Soviet sphere of influence. It was followed by the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Kennedy Doctrine, the Johnson Doctrine, the Nixon Doctrine, and the Carter Doctrine, all of which defined the foreign policy approaches of these respective U.S. presidents on some of the largest global challenges of their presidencies. With the arrival of the Reagan administration, The Heritage Foundation and other conservative foreign policy think tanks saw a political opportunity to significantly expand Carter's Afghanistan policy into a more global "doctrine", including U.S. support to anti-communist resistance movements in Soviet-allied nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. According to political analysts Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould, "it was the Heritage Foundation that translated theory into concrete policy. Heritage targeted nine nations for rollback: Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, and Vietnam".'
Throughout the 1980s, the Heritage Foundation's foreign policy expert on the Third World, Michael Johns, the foundation's principal Reagan Doctrine advocate, visited with resistance movements in Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and other Soviet-supported nations and urged the Reagan administration to initiate or expand military and political support to them. Heritage Foundation foreign policy experts also endorsed the Reagan Doctrine in two of their Mandate for Leadership books, which provided comprehensive policy advice to Reagan administration officials. The result was that, unlike in Afghanistan, the Reagan Doctrine was rather quickly applied in Angola and Nicaragua, with the United States providing military support to the UNITA movement in Angola and the "contras" in Nicaragua, but without a declaration of war against either country. Addressing the Heritage Foundation in October 1989, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi called the Heritage Foundation's efforts "a source of great support. No Angolan will forget your efforts. You have come to Jamba, and you have taken our message to Congress and the Administration". U.S. aid to UNITA began to flow overtly after Congress repealed the Clark Amendment, a long-standing legislative prohibition on military aid to UNITA. Following these victories, Johns and the Heritage Foundation urged further expanding the Reagan Doctrine to Ethiopia, where they argued that the Ethiopian famine was a product of the military and agricultural policies of Ethiopia's Soviet-supported Mengistu Haile Mariam government. Johns and Heritage also argued that Mengistu's decision to permit a Soviet naval and air presence on the Red Sea ports of Eritrea represented a strategic challenge to U.S. security interests in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Heritage Foundation and the Reagan administration also sought to apply the Reagan Doctrine in Cambodia. The largest resistance movement fighting Cambodia's communist government was largely made up of members of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose human rights record was among the worst of the 20th century. Therefore, Reagan authorized the provision of aid to a smaller Cambodian resistance movement, a coalition called the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann; in an effort to force an end to the Vietnamese occupation. While the Reagan Doctrine enjoyed strong support from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute opposed the Reagan Doctrine, arguing in 1986 that "most Third World struggles take place in arenas and involve issues far removed from legitimate American security needs. U.S. involvement in such conflicts expands the republic's already overextended commitments without achieving any significant prospective gains. Instead of draining Soviet military and financial resources, we end up dissipating our own."
(President Reagan in spite of Soviet willingness to open a dialogue with the West remained completely committed to his anti-Soviet stance)
Even Cato, however, conceded that the Reagan Doctrine had "fired the enthusiasm of the conservative movement in the United States as no foreign policy issue has done in decades". While opposing the Reagan Doctrine as an official governmental policy, Cato instead urged Congress to remove the legal barriers prohibiting private organizations and citizens from supporting these resistance movements. Within the Reagan administration, the doctrine was quickly embraced by nearly all of Reagan's top national security and foreign policy officials, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and a series of Reagan National Security advisers including John Poindexter, Frank Carlucci, and Colin Powell. Reagan himself was a vocal proponent of the policy. Seeking to expand Congressional support for the doctrine in the 1985 State of the Union Address in February 1985, Reagan said: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives ... on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua ... to defy Soviet aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense".
As part of his effort to gain Congressional support for the Nicaraguan contras, Reagan labeled the contras "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers", which was controversial because the contras had shown a disregard for human rights. There also were allegations that some members of the contra leadership were involved in cocaine trafficking.Reagan and other conservative advocates of the Reagan Doctrine advocates also argued that the doctrine served U.S. foreign policy and strategic objectives and was a moral imperative against the former Soviet Union, which Reagan, his advisers, and supporters labeled an "evil empire". The Reagan Doctrine was especially significant because it represented a substantial shift in the post–World War II foreign policy of the United States. Prior to the Reagan Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War was rooted in "containment", as originally defined by George F. Kennan, John Foster Dulles, and other post–World War II U.S. foreign policy experts. In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"
Although a similar policy of "rollback" had been considered on a few occasions during the Cold War, the U.S. government, fearing an escalation of the Cold War and possible nuclear conflict, chose not to confront the Soviet Union directly. With the Reagan Doctrine, those fears were set aside and the United States began to openly confront Soviet-supported governments through support of rebel movements in the doctrine's targeted countries. One perceived benefit of the Reagan Doctrine was the relatively low cost of supporting guerrilla forces compared to the Soviet Union's expenses in propping up client states. Another benefit was the lack of direct involvement of American troops, which allowed the United States to confront Soviet allies without sustaining casualties.
(Funeral of victims of the Apartheid regime in South Africa)
On 21 March 1985, on the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, members of the South African Police opened fire on a crowd of people gathered on Maduna Road between Uitenhage and Langa township in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The crowd had been attending a funeral of one of the six who had been slain by the apartheid police on 17 March 1985. They had gathered at Maduna Square and were heading towards the house where the funeral was held when the police blocked the road with two armoured vehicles and ordered the crowd to disperse. When the crowd failed to comply immediately, police opened fire on the crowd, killing 35 people and leaving 27 wounded. The incident became known as the Uitenhage/Langa massacre. In March 1985, tensions between the African population in Uitenhage's townships and the apartheid government reached boiling point. Between 8 and 10 March, police reported 23 incidents of arson and 18 of stone-throwing, causing damage estimated at R220 000. Minister of Law and Order Louis le Grange, had visited Uitenhage with the commissioner of police, General Johan Coetzee, on 19 February. They had been told that ‘soft’ weaponry was no longer effective for riot control purposes. On 14 March, Uitenhage's most senior police officers, the Order Group, decided to take stronger action to regain control. As from 15 March, police patrols were no longer issued with teargas, rubber bullets and birdshot; instead they were given heavy ammunition.
The increased police presence and use of heavy ammunition in the townships of Uitenhage resulted in the killing of six black youth. The funeral of four of the six was to be held on Sunday 17 March 1985 and a stay away was called for Monday 18 March as part of ‘Black Weekend’. The name 'Black Weekend' comes from the fact that the KwaNobuhle township community had chosen that weekend to bury four people killed by the apartheid police earlier in March 1985. Police said that three petrol bombs were thrown at a police vehicle in Langa during this weekend. Police also shot and killed a young man on 17 March 1985. The houses of two police officers in Langa were destroyed by fire. Captain Goosen from the Uitenhage branch applied for a court order which banned all funerals on weekends, Mondays and public holidays from Chief Magistrate MH Steyn. The order was granted on the grounds that limiting funerals would help curb political actions against the apartheid government. The community of Langa then rescheduled the funerals for Thursday, 21 March 1985. Goosen realised that the 21 March marked the 25 anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, where the apartheid police killed 69 black Africans. He then applied for another order to have the funeral postponed yet again, this time approaching Uitenhage Magistrate M. J. Groenwald, who accordingly ruled that funerals could only be held on a Sunday. The first orders which banned funeral on weekends, Mondays and public holidays and the second which banned funerals except on Sundays were both in effect at the same time, leading to a sense of confusion and resentment in the township of Uitenhage. On 21 March 1985, Lieutenant John Fouche and his team patrolled the township of Langa until 8am and found it quiet, they then headed to KwaNobuhle township. Warrant Officer F.W Pentz and his team patrolled KwaNobuhle township and did not find any signs of protest or marching. However, a warrant officer Lekubo noticed a crowd gathering at Maduna Square. He relayed the message to the police headquarters in Uitenhage. Pentz and his team then drove through the crowd and parked the police vehicle on the side of the road. Pentz, who had been in KwaNobuhle township, headed to the police headquarters in Uitenhage, returned with a white police officer who had not been part of original patrol squad that morning. He then drove down the 23rd Street and came across the crowd had seen. Pentz sent a message to Lieutenant Fouche via radio that his patrol needed assistance before accelerating along Maduna Road to small hill between the crowd and the white residential area. A team led by Fouche joined Pentz's team and the two vehicles formed a cordon facing the crowd in a "V" position.
Police teams led by Fouche and Pentz tried to disperse the crowd. However, the crowd continued to march peacefully. Realising that the crowd was not following their (police) orders, the police fired 41 rounds of SSG shotgun ammunition, three round of R1 ammunition and an unrecorded number of rounds of 9mm bullets from their automatic rifles. The shooting left 35 people dead and 27 wounded. On Saturday, 13 April 1985, a mass burial was held to mourn the deaths of 29 people who had died after being shot by police in Langa township, Uitenhage on 21 March was held at KwaNobuhle Stadium. The 29 deceased people were buried in a mass grave in KwaNobuhle Cemetery. The families of the other six people who died from the massacre opted for private burials. The Kannemeyer Commission was appointed the day after the shooting with Judge Donald Kannemeyer as its chairperson and sole member. The Kannemeyer Commission reported that 20 people were shot dead and at least 27 were wounded, and that the majority had been shot in the back. He found that, in the circumstances, the police could not be blamed for issuing orders to open fire. Although, Kannemeyer did not find the police guilty, he added that the police were armed with lethal weapons rather than standard riot control gear because of a deliberate policy adopted by senior officers, and the police should thus have foreseen that an order to open fire would result in fatalities. The report went on to say that police evidence of the weapons carried by the crowd was exaggerated. Charges of public violence laid against 31 people following the Langa massacre of March 1985 were dropped a year later. Of the 31 charged, 21 had been injured by police gunfire.
In 1986, an inquest at the New Brighton courts in Port Elizabeth found that the deaths were not the result of any act or negligence constituting a crime on the part of anyone. The inquest findings were based on the evidence heard by Kannemeyer and it was considered unnecessary to call any of the witnesses to give their evidence to the inquest. As a result of this decision, the families of the deceased withdrew from the inquest proceedings. In 1987, Minister of Law and Order paid out R2,3-million to 51 people injured or widowed in the Uitenhage massacre. The government had admitted that the police had acted wrongfully and negligently and that this was the cause of the incident.
(Destruction caused by bombing in Madrid)
On 12 April 1985, the El Descanso restaurant in Madrid, Spain was bombed in a terrorist attack. The explosion caused the three-story building to collapse, crashing down on about 200 diners and employees, killing 18 people, all Spanish citizens, and injuring 82 others, including eleven Americans working at the nearby Torrejón Air Base who frequented the restaurant. At the time it was the deadliest attack in Spain since the Spanish Civil War. At about 22:30, a bomb exploded in the El Descanso-La Casa de las Costillas restaurant, causing the three-story building housing the restaurant to collapse. The building crashed down on about 200 diners and employees present in the restaurant, killing 18 people and injuring 82. Fifteen American servicemen of the nearby American Torrejón Air Base were among the injured, but while being frequented by air base staff the timing of the bomb occurred at an hour few Americans typically were present. The police investigation concluded that the explosion was caused by a 13-pound chloratite bomb planted near the bathroom of the restaurant, consisting of a chemical compound made up of potassium, sulfur and chlorate, a type of explosive said to be rarely used by domestic Spanish terrorist groups.
Groups claiming responsibility for the attack included Basque separatist group ETA, the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO), Unity of the Abu Zeinab Martyrs, Wa'd (a front of the PFLP-SC) and the Islamic Jihad Organization. The callers from ETA claimed the bomb had gone off earlier than planned and that the bombing was meant to target American soldiers who would have been in the restaurant later, and apologised to the victims of the bombing. After first blaming ETA, Spanish Interior Minister José Barrionuevo concluded the Islamic Jihad Organization and Wa'd had the most credible claim of responsibility following investigations by the National Police. The claim by Wa'd, distributed by the Kuwait News Agency was noted as it included the anagram of the sugar envelopes from the El Descanso restaurant. ETA was also known to have had ties to extremists in Lebanon and Syria where they had access to training camps, and investigators suspected links between Islamic Jihad, ETA and GRAPO. Islamic Jihad had itself been implicated in several attacks in Spain the previous year, including a machine gun attack on a Kuwaiti newspaper publisher and the killing and wounding of two Saudi Arabians, both attacks in Marbella, and the shooting of a Lebanese embassy employee in Madrid. According to the El País newspaper and the Group of Strategic Studies, which cite the attack as "the first attack of Islamist terrorism in Spain," the credibility of Islamic Jihad eventually gained weight, also as a letter circulated two weeks after the bombing stated: "Islam is ready. Spain and Italy are the first targets. The attack in Madrid has been the beginning of the Islamic holy war. Death to the United States. The apostles of death are ready to resume the holy war".
(Nikolai Ryzhkov - technocrat and new Soviet prime minister)
The Reagan Doctrine was stated by United States President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." It was a strategy implemented by the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in the late Cold War. The doctrine was a centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s. Under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to "roll back" Soviet-backed pro-communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to diminish Soviet influence in these regions as part of the administration's overall strategy to win the Cold War. The Reagan Doctrine followed in the tradition of U.S. presidents developing foreign policy "doctrines", which were designed to reflect challenges facing international relations, and to propose foreign policy solutions. The practice began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, and continued with the Roosevelt Corollary, sometimes called the Roosevelt Doctrine, introduced by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.
The post–World War II tradition of Presidential doctrines started with the Truman Doctrine in 1947, under which the US provided support to the governments of Greece and Turkey as part of a Cold War strategy to keep both nations out of the Soviet sphere of influence. It was followed by the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Kennedy Doctrine, the Johnson Doctrine, the Nixon Doctrine, and the Carter Doctrine, all of which defined the foreign policy approaches of these respective U.S. presidents on some of the largest global challenges of their presidencies. With the arrival of the Reagan administration, The Heritage Foundation and other conservative foreign policy think tanks saw a political opportunity to significantly expand Carter's Afghanistan policy into a more global "doctrine", including U.S. support to anti-communist resistance movements in Soviet-allied nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. According to political analysts Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould, "it was the Heritage Foundation that translated theory into concrete policy. Heritage targeted nine nations for rollback: Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, Libya, Nicaragua, and Vietnam".'
Throughout the 1980s, the Heritage Foundation's foreign policy expert on the Third World, Michael Johns, the foundation's principal Reagan Doctrine advocate, visited with resistance movements in Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and other Soviet-supported nations and urged the Reagan administration to initiate or expand military and political support to them. Heritage Foundation foreign policy experts also endorsed the Reagan Doctrine in two of their Mandate for Leadership books, which provided comprehensive policy advice to Reagan administration officials. The result was that, unlike in Afghanistan, the Reagan Doctrine was rather quickly applied in Angola and Nicaragua, with the United States providing military support to the UNITA movement in Angola and the "contras" in Nicaragua, but without a declaration of war against either country. Addressing the Heritage Foundation in October 1989, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi called the Heritage Foundation's efforts "a source of great support. No Angolan will forget your efforts. You have come to Jamba, and you have taken our message to Congress and the Administration". U.S. aid to UNITA began to flow overtly after Congress repealed the Clark Amendment, a long-standing legislative prohibition on military aid to UNITA. Following these victories, Johns and the Heritage Foundation urged further expanding the Reagan Doctrine to Ethiopia, where they argued that the Ethiopian famine was a product of the military and agricultural policies of Ethiopia's Soviet-supported Mengistu Haile Mariam government. Johns and Heritage also argued that Mengistu's decision to permit a Soviet naval and air presence on the Red Sea ports of Eritrea represented a strategic challenge to U.S. security interests in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Heritage Foundation and the Reagan administration also sought to apply the Reagan Doctrine in Cambodia. The largest resistance movement fighting Cambodia's communist government was largely made up of members of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose human rights record was among the worst of the 20th century. Therefore, Reagan authorized the provision of aid to a smaller Cambodian resistance movement, a coalition called the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, known as the KPNLF and then run by Son Sann; in an effort to force an end to the Vietnamese occupation. While the Reagan Doctrine enjoyed strong support from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, the libertarian-oriented Cato Institute opposed the Reagan Doctrine, arguing in 1986 that "most Third World struggles take place in arenas and involve issues far removed from legitimate American security needs. U.S. involvement in such conflicts expands the republic's already overextended commitments without achieving any significant prospective gains. Instead of draining Soviet military and financial resources, we end up dissipating our own."
(President Reagan in spite of Soviet willingness to open a dialogue with the West remained completely committed to his anti-Soviet stance)
Even Cato, however, conceded that the Reagan Doctrine had "fired the enthusiasm of the conservative movement in the United States as no foreign policy issue has done in decades". While opposing the Reagan Doctrine as an official governmental policy, Cato instead urged Congress to remove the legal barriers prohibiting private organizations and citizens from supporting these resistance movements. Within the Reagan administration, the doctrine was quickly embraced by nearly all of Reagan's top national security and foreign policy officials, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and a series of Reagan National Security advisers including John Poindexter, Frank Carlucci, and Colin Powell. Reagan himself was a vocal proponent of the policy. Seeking to expand Congressional support for the doctrine in the 1985 State of the Union Address in February 1985, Reagan said: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives ... on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua ... to defy Soviet aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense".
As part of his effort to gain Congressional support for the Nicaraguan contras, Reagan labeled the contras "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers", which was controversial because the contras had shown a disregard for human rights. There also were allegations that some members of the contra leadership were involved in cocaine trafficking.Reagan and other conservative advocates of the Reagan Doctrine advocates also argued that the doctrine served U.S. foreign policy and strategic objectives and was a moral imperative against the former Soviet Union, which Reagan, his advisers, and supporters labeled an "evil empire". The Reagan Doctrine was especially significant because it represented a substantial shift in the post–World War II foreign policy of the United States. Prior to the Reagan Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War was rooted in "containment", as originally defined by George F. Kennan, John Foster Dulles, and other post–World War II U.S. foreign policy experts. In January 1977, four years prior to becoming president, Reagan bluntly stated, in a conversation with Richard V. Allen, his basic expectation in relation to the Cold War. "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic," he said. "It is this: We win and they lose. What do you think of that?"
Although a similar policy of "rollback" had been considered on a few occasions during the Cold War, the U.S. government, fearing an escalation of the Cold War and possible nuclear conflict, chose not to confront the Soviet Union directly. With the Reagan Doctrine, those fears were set aside and the United States began to openly confront Soviet-supported governments through support of rebel movements in the doctrine's targeted countries. One perceived benefit of the Reagan Doctrine was the relatively low cost of supporting guerrilla forces compared to the Soviet Union's expenses in propping up client states. Another benefit was the lack of direct involvement of American troops, which allowed the United States to confront Soviet allies without sustaining casualties.
(Funeral of victims of the Apartheid regime in South Africa)
On 21 March 1985, on the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, members of the South African Police opened fire on a crowd of people gathered on Maduna Road between Uitenhage and Langa township in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The crowd had been attending a funeral of one of the six who had been slain by the apartheid police on 17 March 1985. They had gathered at Maduna Square and were heading towards the house where the funeral was held when the police blocked the road with two armoured vehicles and ordered the crowd to disperse. When the crowd failed to comply immediately, police opened fire on the crowd, killing 35 people and leaving 27 wounded. The incident became known as the Uitenhage/Langa massacre. In March 1985, tensions between the African population in Uitenhage's townships and the apartheid government reached boiling point. Between 8 and 10 March, police reported 23 incidents of arson and 18 of stone-throwing, causing damage estimated at R220 000. Minister of Law and Order Louis le Grange, had visited Uitenhage with the commissioner of police, General Johan Coetzee, on 19 February. They had been told that ‘soft’ weaponry was no longer effective for riot control purposes. On 14 March, Uitenhage's most senior police officers, the Order Group, decided to take stronger action to regain control. As from 15 March, police patrols were no longer issued with teargas, rubber bullets and birdshot; instead they were given heavy ammunition.
The increased police presence and use of heavy ammunition in the townships of Uitenhage resulted in the killing of six black youth. The funeral of four of the six was to be held on Sunday 17 March 1985 and a stay away was called for Monday 18 March as part of ‘Black Weekend’. The name 'Black Weekend' comes from the fact that the KwaNobuhle township community had chosen that weekend to bury four people killed by the apartheid police earlier in March 1985. Police said that three petrol bombs were thrown at a police vehicle in Langa during this weekend. Police also shot and killed a young man on 17 March 1985. The houses of two police officers in Langa were destroyed by fire. Captain Goosen from the Uitenhage branch applied for a court order which banned all funerals on weekends, Mondays and public holidays from Chief Magistrate MH Steyn. The order was granted on the grounds that limiting funerals would help curb political actions against the apartheid government. The community of Langa then rescheduled the funerals for Thursday, 21 March 1985. Goosen realised that the 21 March marked the 25 anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, where the apartheid police killed 69 black Africans. He then applied for another order to have the funeral postponed yet again, this time approaching Uitenhage Magistrate M. J. Groenwald, who accordingly ruled that funerals could only be held on a Sunday. The first orders which banned funeral on weekends, Mondays and public holidays and the second which banned funerals except on Sundays were both in effect at the same time, leading to a sense of confusion and resentment in the township of Uitenhage. On 21 March 1985, Lieutenant John Fouche and his team patrolled the township of Langa until 8am and found it quiet, they then headed to KwaNobuhle township. Warrant Officer F.W Pentz and his team patrolled KwaNobuhle township and did not find any signs of protest or marching. However, a warrant officer Lekubo noticed a crowd gathering at Maduna Square. He relayed the message to the police headquarters in Uitenhage. Pentz and his team then drove through the crowd and parked the police vehicle on the side of the road. Pentz, who had been in KwaNobuhle township, headed to the police headquarters in Uitenhage, returned with a white police officer who had not been part of original patrol squad that morning. He then drove down the 23rd Street and came across the crowd had seen. Pentz sent a message to Lieutenant Fouche via radio that his patrol needed assistance before accelerating along Maduna Road to small hill between the crowd and the white residential area. A team led by Fouche joined Pentz's team and the two vehicles formed a cordon facing the crowd in a "V" position.
Police teams led by Fouche and Pentz tried to disperse the crowd. However, the crowd continued to march peacefully. Realising that the crowd was not following their (police) orders, the police fired 41 rounds of SSG shotgun ammunition, three round of R1 ammunition and an unrecorded number of rounds of 9mm bullets from their automatic rifles. The shooting left 35 people dead and 27 wounded. On Saturday, 13 April 1985, a mass burial was held to mourn the deaths of 29 people who had died after being shot by police in Langa township, Uitenhage on 21 March was held at KwaNobuhle Stadium. The 29 deceased people were buried in a mass grave in KwaNobuhle Cemetery. The families of the other six people who died from the massacre opted for private burials. The Kannemeyer Commission was appointed the day after the shooting with Judge Donald Kannemeyer as its chairperson and sole member. The Kannemeyer Commission reported that 20 people were shot dead and at least 27 were wounded, and that the majority had been shot in the back. He found that, in the circumstances, the police could not be blamed for issuing orders to open fire. Although, Kannemeyer did not find the police guilty, he added that the police were armed with lethal weapons rather than standard riot control gear because of a deliberate policy adopted by senior officers, and the police should thus have foreseen that an order to open fire would result in fatalities. The report went on to say that police evidence of the weapons carried by the crowd was exaggerated. Charges of public violence laid against 31 people following the Langa massacre of March 1985 were dropped a year later. Of the 31 charged, 21 had been injured by police gunfire.
In 1986, an inquest at the New Brighton courts in Port Elizabeth found that the deaths were not the result of any act or negligence constituting a crime on the part of anyone. The inquest findings were based on the evidence heard by Kannemeyer and it was considered unnecessary to call any of the witnesses to give their evidence to the inquest. As a result of this decision, the families of the deceased withdrew from the inquest proceedings. In 1987, Minister of Law and Order paid out R2,3-million to 51 people injured or widowed in the Uitenhage massacre. The government had admitted that the police had acted wrongfully and negligently and that this was the cause of the incident.
(Destruction caused by bombing in Madrid)
On 12 April 1985, the El Descanso restaurant in Madrid, Spain was bombed in a terrorist attack. The explosion caused the three-story building to collapse, crashing down on about 200 diners and employees, killing 18 people, all Spanish citizens, and injuring 82 others, including eleven Americans working at the nearby Torrejón Air Base who frequented the restaurant. At the time it was the deadliest attack in Spain since the Spanish Civil War. At about 22:30, a bomb exploded in the El Descanso-La Casa de las Costillas restaurant, causing the three-story building housing the restaurant to collapse. The building crashed down on about 200 diners and employees present in the restaurant, killing 18 people and injuring 82. Fifteen American servicemen of the nearby American Torrejón Air Base were among the injured, but while being frequented by air base staff the timing of the bomb occurred at an hour few Americans typically were present. The police investigation concluded that the explosion was caused by a 13-pound chloratite bomb planted near the bathroom of the restaurant, consisting of a chemical compound made up of potassium, sulfur and chlorate, a type of explosive said to be rarely used by domestic Spanish terrorist groups.
Groups claiming responsibility for the attack included Basque separatist group ETA, the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO), Unity of the Abu Zeinab Martyrs, Wa'd (a front of the PFLP-SC) and the Islamic Jihad Organization. The callers from ETA claimed the bomb had gone off earlier than planned and that the bombing was meant to target American soldiers who would have been in the restaurant later, and apologised to the victims of the bombing. After first blaming ETA, Spanish Interior Minister José Barrionuevo concluded the Islamic Jihad Organization and Wa'd had the most credible claim of responsibility following investigations by the National Police. The claim by Wa'd, distributed by the Kuwait News Agency was noted as it included the anagram of the sugar envelopes from the El Descanso restaurant. ETA was also known to have had ties to extremists in Lebanon and Syria where they had access to training camps, and investigators suspected links between Islamic Jihad, ETA and GRAPO. Islamic Jihad had itself been implicated in several attacks in Spain the previous year, including a machine gun attack on a Kuwaiti newspaper publisher and the killing and wounding of two Saudi Arabians, both attacks in Marbella, and the shooting of a Lebanese embassy employee in Madrid. According to the El País newspaper and the Group of Strategic Studies, which cite the attack as "the first attack of Islamist terrorism in Spain," the credibility of Islamic Jihad eventually gained weight, also as a letter circulated two weeks after the bombing stated: "Islam is ready. Spain and Italy are the first targets. The attack in Madrid has been the beginning of the Islamic holy war. Death to the United States. The apostles of death are ready to resume the holy war".
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1. A new leader came to power in Albania. Should the USSR bury the hatchet and seek rapprochement with Tirana?
A) Yes, it's time for a new chapter in relations with Albania:
B) No, it's a waste of time.
2. Recent Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan brought negative response in the West, which brought a debate within the Soviet leadership on further usefulness of such test.
A) Continue with nuclear tests - we need to be always ready for nuclear war against the West;
B) Stop nuclear tests - it's a waste of time and money.
C) Continue with nuclear tests, but at reduced rate.
3. After recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, the Soviet leadership decided to prevent similar situation from happening in the USSR. Please write down how could the Soviet government prevent Islamist terrorist attacks from happening in the USSR?
4. Newly elected Prime Minister Ryzhkov plan to introduce new technocratic policies for the benefit of the Soviet people and state. Please write down which technocratic laws/policies/reforms could be implemented?
A) Yes, it's time for a new chapter in relations with Albania:
B) No, it's a waste of time.
2. Recent Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan brought negative response in the West, which brought a debate within the Soviet leadership on further usefulness of such test.
A) Continue with nuclear tests - we need to be always ready for nuclear war against the West;
B) Stop nuclear tests - it's a waste of time and money.
C) Continue with nuclear tests, but at reduced rate.
3. After recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, the Soviet leadership decided to prevent similar situation from happening in the USSR. Please write down how could the Soviet government prevent Islamist terrorist attacks from happening in the USSR?
4. Newly elected Prime Minister Ryzhkov plan to introduce new technocratic policies for the benefit of the Soviet people and state. Please write down which technocratic laws/policies/reforms could be implemented?
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1. A new leader came to power in Albania. Should the USSR bury the hatchet and seek rapprochement with Tirana?
A) Yes, it's time for a new chapter in relations with Albania:
2. Recent Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan brought negative response in the West, which brought a debate within the Soviet leadership on further usefulness of such test.
For this i think we need a 3rd option in witch we continue the nuclear teast only in much lower intervals!
3. After recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, the Soviet leadership decided to prevent similar situation from happening in the USSR. Please write down how could the Soviet government prevent Islamist terrorist attacks from happening in the USSR?
Arrest more radical Islamist and encourage less radical Islamist
4. Newly elected Prime Minister Ryzhkov plan to introduce new technocratic policies for the benefit of the Soviet people and state. Please write down which technocratic laws/policies/reforms could be implemented?
For this iam not sure beside maybe some form of oglas sytem if that is considered technocratic
A) Yes, it's time for a new chapter in relations with Albania:
2. Recent Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan brought negative response in the West, which brought a debate within the Soviet leadership on further usefulness of such test.
For this i think we need a 3rd option in witch we continue the nuclear teast only in much lower intervals!
3. After recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, the Soviet leadership decided to prevent similar situation from happening in the USSR. Please write down how could the Soviet government prevent Islamist terrorist attacks from happening in the USSR?
Arrest more radical Islamist and encourage less radical Islamist
4. Newly elected Prime Minister Ryzhkov plan to introduce new technocratic policies for the benefit of the Soviet people and state. Please write down which technocratic laws/policies/reforms could be implemented?
For this iam not sure beside maybe some form of oglas sytem if that is considered technocratic
1 - A; By improving our relations with Albania, we can present the image of being conciliatory and willing to have good relations with other communist nations.
2 - B; Atomic weapons are terrible weapons, without a doubt, but with very negative side effects. It is time to move forward, and dedicate those resources to other, not so harmful weapons.
3 - Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks.
4 - A review of labor laws, removing the prohibition on women from carrying out certain jobs, reducing working hours from 8 to 6, trying to improve our relations with Western Europe, allowing companies to establish themselves in certain regions of the Pact, and in turn, that allow access to COMECON products, promote the tourism industry, both among communist nations and with nations from the rest of the world, this last point, although a priori it may seem harmful, can benefit us by allowing them to see both realities, and then they can decide.
2 - B; Atomic weapons are terrible weapons, without a doubt, but with very negative side effects. It is time to move forward, and dedicate those resources to other, not so harmful weapons.
3 - Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks.
4 - A review of labor laws, removing the prohibition on women from carrying out certain jobs, reducing working hours from 8 to 6, trying to improve our relations with Western Europe, allowing companies to establish themselves in certain regions of the Pact, and in turn, that allow access to COMECON products, promote the tourism industry, both among communist nations and with nations from the rest of the world, this last point, although a priori it may seem harmful, can benefit us by allowing them to see both realities, and then they can decide.
1 - A; By improving our relations with Albania, we can present the image of being conciliatory and willing to have good relations with other communist nations.
2 - C
3 - Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks.
4 - A review of labor laws, removing the prohibition on women from carrying out certain jobs, reducing working hours from 8 to 6, trying to improve our relations with Western Europe, allowing companies to establish themselves in certain regions of the Pact, and in turn, that allow access to COMECON products, promote the tourism industry, both among communist nations and with nations from the rest of the world, this last point, although a priori it may seem harmful, can benefit us by allowing them to see both realities, and then they can decide.
2 - C
3 - Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks.
4 - A review of labor laws, removing the prohibition on women from carrying out certain jobs, reducing working hours from 8 to 6, trying to improve our relations with Western Europe, allowing companies to establish themselves in certain regions of the Pact, and in turn, that allow access to COMECON products, promote the tourism industry, both among communist nations and with nations from the rest of the world, this last point, although a priori it may seem harmful, can benefit us by allowing them to see both realities, and then they can decide.
Just caught up with the timeline so I can finally vote.
One thing I find interesting is you having Reagan not supporting the Khmer Rouge considering the US supported them diplomatically in the UN by letting them keep Cambodia's seat and there is some evidence they did it financially and Militarily as well.
1- A
2 - B
3 - Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks
4 - A review of labor laws, removing the prohibition on women from carrying out certain jobs, reducing working hours from 8 to 6, trying to improve our relations with Western Europe, allowing companies to establish themselves in certain regions of the Pact, and in turn, that allow access to COMECON products, promote the tourism industry, both among communist nations and with nations from the rest of the world, this last point, although a priori it may seem harmful, can benefit us by allowing them to see both realities, and then they can decide
One thing I find interesting is you having Reagan not supporting the Khmer Rouge considering the US supported them diplomatically in the UN by letting them keep Cambodia's seat and there is some evidence they did it financially and Militarily as well.
1- A
2 - B
3 - Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks
4 - A review of labor laws, removing the prohibition on women from carrying out certain jobs, reducing working hours from 8 to 6, trying to improve our relations with Western Europe, allowing companies to establish themselves in certain regions of the Pact, and in turn, that allow access to COMECON products, promote the tourism industry, both among communist nations and with nations from the rest of the world, this last point, although a priori it may seem harmful, can benefit us by allowing them to see both realities, and then they can decide
1) A. Now that Hoxha is dead, it's time to let bygones be bygones.
2) B. The time and money wasted on nuclear tests could be better spent on other projects.
3) I am in total agreement with the opinions of the three comrades above me.
4) Same as 3, though I also propose increasing workers' pay by 50% to compensate for the two lost work hours each day.
2) B. The time and money wasted on nuclear tests could be better spent on other projects.
3) I am in total agreement with the opinions of the three comrades above me.
4) Same as 3, though I also propose increasing workers' pay by 50% to compensate for the two lost work hours each day.
1)A
2)B
3)Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks
4)Pursue computerization of the central planning apparatus, allowing for better accuracy and a lessening of bureaucracy and red tape.
2)B
3)Firstly, the KGB and the other secret services of the Warsaw Pact must create an intelligence branch to investigate this emerging threat, secondly, contact the favorable regimes in the Middle East, to initiate a collaboration to find and neutralize both the terrorists and the other infrastructure necessary to carry out their activities (financiers, suppliers, recruiters...), thirdly, approach other nations with an offer to collaborate and help to prevent terrorist attacks
4)Pursue computerization of the central planning apparatus, allowing for better accuracy and a lessening of bureaucracy and red tape.
A) Allowing rifts to form between socialist countries over mere doctrinal disputes was a mistake both tactically and strategically.
B) the less money spent on weapons that could literally kill everyone on the planet, the better.
As for C and D....
B) the less money spent on weapons that could literally kill everyone on the planet, the better.
As for C and D....
With this as an addition to D.
1) A. Now that Hoxha is dead, it's time to let bygones be bygones.
2) B. The time and money wasted on nuclear tests could be better spent on other projects.
3) I am in total agreement with the opinions of the three comrades above me. Traveller76: I would like to add we try to encourage a Islamic Socialism in our member republics to bring in Muslim moderates, women and liberals against religious fanaticism. Use the examples of Revolutionary Iran and other Theocratic regimes to show what could happen if left unchecked.
4) Same as 3, though I also propose increasing workers' pay by 50% to compensate for the two lost work hours each day.
2) B. The time and money wasted on nuclear tests could be better spent on other projects.
3) I am in total agreement with the opinions of the three comrades above me. Traveller76: I would like to add we try to encourage a Islamic Socialism in our member republics to bring in Muslim moderates, women and liberals against religious fanaticism. Use the examples of Revolutionary Iran and other Theocratic regimes to show what could happen if left unchecked.
4) Same as 3, though I also propose increasing workers' pay by 50% to compensate for the two lost work hours each day.