Livadia Palace on the Crimean coast where the Yalta Conference took place in February 1945.  Many scholars have cited the decisions reached at the conference as marking the start of the Cold War.  Photo courtesy Thomas T. Hammond.

• Read chapter 34 in the textbook (chapter 32 in the Edgar text).
  
• Read my notes for HIS 135 on the Cold War.  I also have remarks on Russia and the Cold War and Gorbachev in my HIS 242 course.
• Study the Questions to Consider and the Key Terms for the unit.
• Post (or respond) your thoughts/ideas about this unit's reading and assignment in the Blackboard online discussion forum. Do not post your assignment there.
  

• Submit the Optional Extra Credit Special Project paper.
• Submit a Pop Culture paper in which you look at some aspects of the growing spread of pop culture throughout the world.  Point value is 100 points possible extra credit for a two-page paper (less for one page).
• Read about Mao Zedong and the Little Red Book.
• We also have a list of some useful websites on the web that deal with world communism.
  

• See the videos dealing with the Cold War in the HIS 242 course.
• For extra credit please suggest to your instructor a relevant video for this unit of the course. Send the title of the video, the url and a brief explanation of why you find the video interesting and applicable to the material that is being studied in this unit.

• Take the short 5-point quiz for chapter 34. Log into Blackboard and look under "Chapter Quizzes." You have five minutes to complete each quiz (multiple-choice questions).
• Read George Kennan's "The Sources of Soviet Conduct".  In a one-page paper, given the benefit of hindsight, assess the accuracy of Kennan's remarks almost fifty years later for a maximum of 50 points extra credit.
• Watch the movie Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, directed by Stanley Kubrick), released at the very hight of the Cold War.  For a maximum of 25 points, in a long paragraph explain why or why not a similar-type of movie poking fun at the current international situation could be released in 2006.
• For 25 points maximum extra credit, compare and contrast the NATO and Warsaw pact treaties in a short paragraph.
• For a maximum of 25 points extra credit, read The Helsinki Final Act (1975) and write a short paragraph explaining the purpose of the Accords.
• For a maximum of 50 points extra credit, read Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech (1946) and then Joseph Stalin's Reply to Churchill (1946) and write a one-page paper comparing the rhetoric on both sides.
  
• For a maximum of 25 points extra credit, read the U.S. and USSR Exchange of Notes on the Berlin Wall (1961) and write a paragraph on the politics involved in the creation of the Berlin Wall.
• For a maximum of 50 points extra credit, read the The Tonkin Bay Resolution (1964), and then write a one-page paper, How did the Gulf of Tonkin Incident provide an excuse for United States military involvement in Vietnam?
• For a maximum of 10 points extra credit, read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and then answer the study sheet questions.
• For extra credit, please suggest a relevant website for this unit of the course.  Send the title of the site, the url and a brief explanation why you find the information interesting and applicable to the material being studied this unit.