Download 12 Ch. 30

Chapter 30: Challenging the
Postwar Order 1960-1991
Text pages 958-991
Détente
• Leonid Brezhnev &
Richard Nixon
• The progressive
relaxation of Cold War
tensions.
Cold War Tensions thaw
Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966,
Chancellor of West Germany 1969–
1974, and leader of the Social
Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
1964–1987.
• Ostpolitik
• German for "new eastern
policy”
• refers to the normalization of
relations between the
Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG, or West Germany) and
Eastern Europe, particularly
the German Democratic
Republic
• the policies were
implemented beginning with
Willy Brandt
• won Brandt the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1971.
Willy Brandt
• A West German Leader
Apologizes for the Holocaust
• In 1970 West German
chancellor Willy Brandt knelt
before the Jewish Heroes’
Monument in Warsaw, Poland,
to ask forgiveness for the
German mass murder of
European Jews and other
groups during the Second
World War. Brandt’s action,
captured in photo and film by
the onlooking press, symbolized
the chancellor’s policy of
Ostpolitik, the normalization of
relations between the East and
West Blocs. (AP Images)
The Helsinki Accords
• Signed by thirty-five
nations who agreed
that Europe’s borders
could not be changed
by force and pledged
to guarantee the
human rights and
political freedoms of
their citizens. They
represented the high
point of détente.
The Growing Counterculture
Movement
• Demographics
• American Inspiration
• The baby boom
• The American Civil
generation grew up in
Rights movement
an era of
and student protests
unprecedented
on college campuses
affluence, received
in the United States
better education, and
inspired students in
acted on concerns
overcrowded Western
about inequality and
European universities
social justice.
to launch protests of
their own.
The New Left
• A movement in western
Europe and the United
States that embraced an
updated, romanticized
version of Marxism. It
attacked the conformity of
consumer society and
urged a lifestyle rebellion
(“the personal is the
political”) that included
drug use, rock music, and
sexual experimentation
• The New Left embraced a
new version of Marxism that
could avoid the worst
excesses of both capitalism
and Soviet-style communism.
Herbert Marcuse:”
Father of the New
Left”; associated with
the Frankfurt School of
critical theory
The Sexual Revolution
• –
More young persons engaged in
sexual experimentation (facilitated by
the pill) and frank talk about sexuality,
even if many of these persons still
wanted to establish families based on
traditional middle-class norms.
• 1. more frank discussion about
sexuality emerged.
• 2. premarital sex became more
common.
• 3. homosexuality became more
widely accepted.
United States and Vietnam
• The Geneva Accords
temporarily divided the
country into southern and
northern zones. Eisenhower
provided military aid,
Kennedy sent 16,000
“military advisers,” and
Johnson provided ½ million
American troops and massive
military aids, while pursuing
a strategy of limited warfare.
• U.S. was pursuing the
policy of containment!
• Criticism
• In spite of initial support, an
antiwar movement emerged
on college campuses and
student protesters joined
forces with old-line
Socialists, New Left
intellectuals, and pacifists.
The Vietcong’s Tet offensive,
though a military failure for
Communist forces, only
increased criticism of the war
in the west.
United States and Vietnam
• . American Withdrawal
– President Nixon
increased aerial
bombardment, but
suspended the draft
and eventually reached
a peace agreement
that allowed America
forces to withdraw. The
south Vietnamese were
forced in 1975 to
accept a united country
under a communist
dictatorship.
The 1960s in the East Bloc
• Prague Spring
• – Alexander Dubcek
(1921–1992), a
reformer but
dedicated
Communist,
introduced “socialism
with a human face” in
January 1968. These
reforms led to an
invasion of 500,000
Soviet and Eastern
European troops
Connection across time: Prague
Spring(1968) vs. Arab Spring(2010)
• Prague Spring
• period of political liberalization in
Czechoslovakia during the era of
its domination by the Soviet Union
after World War II. It began on 5
January 1968, when reformist
Alexander Dubček was elected the
First Secretary of Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia, and
continued until 21 August when
the Soviet Union and members of
the Warsaw Pact invaded the
country to halt the reforms.
• Arab Spring
• is a revolutionary wave of
demonstrations and protests
occurring in the Arab world
that began on Saturday, 18
December 2010.
• To date: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,
and Yemen; civil uprisings
have erupted in Bahrain, and
Syria, ] major protests have
broken out in Algeria, Iraq,
Jordan] Kuwait, Morocco, and
Oman; and minor protests have
occurred in Lebanon,
Mauritania, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan, and Western Sahara
Connection across time: Prague
Spring(1968) vs. Arab Spring(2010)
• Prague Spring
• Arab Spring demonstrations
 Brezhnev Doctrine (1968)
 Soviet policy doctrine, introduced at the Fifth
Congress of the Polish United workers Party on
November 13, 1968
 “When forces that are hostile to socialism try
to turn the development of some socialist
country towards capitalism, it becomes not
only a problem of the country concerned, But
a common problem and concern of all socialist
countries”
Soviet Union had the right to intervene in any
socialist country whenever it saw the need.
 Leadership of The Soviet union reserved to itself the right to define
“socialism” and “capitalism.”
 No country was allowed to leave Warsaw pact or to distribute that nations
communist party’s monopoly on power
 Used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia that terminated the Prague
Spring in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979
Sinatra doctrine replaces the Brezhnev
doctrine in 1988
• "Sinatra Doctrine" was the name that the
Soviet government of Mikhail Gorbachev used
jokingly to describe its policy of allowing
neighboring Warsaw Pact nations to
determine their own internal affairs. The
name alluded to the Frank Sinatra song "My
Way"—the Soviet Union was allowing these
nations to go their own way.
The Supermarket Revolution
LIVING IN THE PAST-pg. 964
OPEC-The Arab-led Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries
• was founded in Baghdad,
Iraq, with the signing of an
agreement in September
1960 by five countries
namely Islamic Republic of
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia and Venezuela.
They were to become the
Founder Members of the
Organization.
• has maintained its
headquarters in Vienna
since 1965
• later joined by Qatar
(1961), Indonesia
(1962), Libya (1962),
the United Arab
Emirates (1967), Algeria
(1969), Nigeria (1971),
Ecuador (1973), Gabon
(1975) and Angola
(2007).
OPEC and the Oil Crisis
• Cheap oil had helped
fuel the postwar
economic boom. In
1973 during the fourth
Arab-Israeli war, the
Arab-led OPEC declared
an embargo on oil
shipments to the United
States. Unemployment
rose, inflation soared,
while productivity and
living standards fell.
The Conservative Backlash
•
•
•
1.
2.
3.
Neoliberalism
A philosophy with distant roots in the
laissez-faire policies of 19th century
liberals that argued that government
should cut social services (housing,
education, health insurance), limit
business subsidies, retreat from
regulation, and privatize state
managed industries (transportation and
communication industries).
Neoliberals embraced all of the
following ideas
reduced government spending on
social services.
a reduction in government
regulations on business.
the privatization of state-managed
industries.
Margaret Thatcher: longest-serving (1979–1990)
British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only
woman ever to have held the post.
• The British prime minister
who pushed through freemarket policies, cut spending
on health care, education and
public housing, reduced
taxes, and privatized
government-run enterprises.
In the short term, this led to
heavy unemployment, a
widening gap between rich
and poor, and occasional
riots.
Margaret Thatcher-pg. 973 Individuals
in Society: “Iron Lady” (video clip)
She is one of the dominant political figures of 20th century Britain,
and Thatcherism continues to have a huge influence. Thatcherism
claims to promote low inflation, the small state and free markets
through tight control of the money supply, privatization and
constraints on the labour movement.
Ronald Reagan: 40th President of the
United States, serving from 1981 to 1989
• American president and leader of the
American neoconservative movement
who cut taxes and increased military
spending, but failed to limit
government spending.
• Reaganomics in the United States, is
often compared to Thatcherism. This
was known as trickle-down economic
1. Reduce the growth of government
spending
2. Reduce income tax and capital gains
tax
3. Reduce government regulation of
economy
4. Control money supply to reduce
inflation
Helmut Kohl
• Chancellor of Germany from 1982
to 1998 (of West Germany between
1982 and 1990 and of the reunited
Germany between 1990 and 1998)
and the chairman of the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973
to 1998. His 16-year tenure was the
longest of any German chancellor
since Otto von Bismarck and
oversaw the end of the Cold War
and the German reunification. Kohl
is widely regarded as one of the
main architects of the German
reunification and, together with
French President François
Mitterrand, the Maastricht Treaty,
which contributed to the creation of
the European Union.
Helmut Kohl, con’t
• German chancellor
(b. 1930) who cut
taxes and
government
spending but helped
lead the German
economy to greater
growth. He agreed
to deploy new U.S.
missiles on West
German territory
and presided over
the reunification
of Germany.
Kohl & Reagan
Kohl and Reagan View the Berlin Wall
Protected by a sheet of bulletproof glass, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl (right) and U.S.
president Ronald Reagan look over the Berlin Wall into East Germany from the balcony of the
West German Parliament building during Reagan’s state visit in June 1987. In a famous speech
made during the trip, Reagan challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this
wall!” and liberalize the East Bloc. (Dick Halstead/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Oct. 3, 1990-Reunification of Germany
• The peaceful
reunification of
Germany accelerated
the pace of agreements
to liquidate the Cold
War.
• *Video clip
Francois Mitterand
•
French president
and Socialist party
leader elected in
1981 who led France
back to the left by,
unsuccessfully and
temporarily,
nationalizing certain
industries and
leading a program of
public investment.
Maastricht Treaty
• Maastricht is officially known as the
Treaty of the European Union and
with it the EU came into existence
for the first time.
• also the blueprint for what was to be
Europe's biggest project for the next
decade - economic and monetary union
• it created the European Union and led
to the creation of the single European
currency, the euro
• it was signed on 7 February 1992 and
went into force on 1 November 1993.
euro
• official currency of the
eurozone: 17 of the 27
member states of the
European Union
• he second largest reserve
currency as well as the
second most traded currency
in the world after the United
States dollar
• Euro coins and banknotes
entered circulation on 1
January 2002
Challenges and Victories for Women
• The Feminist Movement
• – Emerged in response
to changing patterns of
motherhood and paid
work, to a new critique
of gender relations by
intellectuals, and to
lessons learned from the
civil rights and protest
movements of the
1960s.
The Feminist Critique
• Simone de Beauvoir
(1908-1986)
• French philosopher and author
of The Second Sex who argued
that women had been trapped by
inflexible and limiting
conditions and could become
completely free persons only
through self-assertive creativity
and escaping the gender roles
created for them by men.
The Feminist Critique
• Betty Friedan (1921-2006)
• American writer and
author of the Feminine
Mystique (1963), who
called attention to the
stifling aspects of
women’s domestic life
and helped found the
National Organization of
Women (NOW) to press
for women’s rights.
Feminist movement
• Pushed for laws against
discrimination, equal
pay for equal work,
maternity leave, the
right to divorce, and
legalized abortion and
protection from rape
and physical violence.
Some members of the
feminist movement
were also active in the
antinuclear peace
movement of the early
1980s which emerged
in response to Reagan’s
military buildup.
Rise of the Environmental Movement
• Rachel Carson
• American marine
biologist and
conservationist whose
writings are credited with
advancing the global
environmental movement
• Author of Silent Spring
(1962), which had a
seminal impact on the
emerging environmental
movement.
The Ecological Agenda
• It sought to lessen the
effects of industrial
development on the
environment (dying forest,
oil spills, nuclear waste)
and to link local
environmental issues to
poverty, inequality, and
violence on a global scale.
Denmark, March 1969
student protesters at the
University of Copenhagen
took over a scientific
conference on natural history.
They locked the conference
hall doors, sprayed the
professors in attendance with
polluted lake water, and held
up an oil-doused duck,
shouting, “Come and save it
...you talk about pollution,
why don’t you do anything
about it!”
Environmental Groups
• Included Greenpeace,
the Green Party—which
was founded in 1979 in
West Germany and
elected members to
parliament in the 1983
elections—and Green
Parties in Belgium, the
United States, Italy, and
Sweden.
Separatism and Right-Wing
Extremism
• The ETA-short for Basque
Homeland and Freedom
• armed Basque nationalist
and separatist organization.
The group was founded in
1959
• Used bombings and
assassinations to win
territorial independence for
a Basque homeland in
northern Spain
Separatism and Right-Wing
Extremism
• Provisional Irish Republican • 1972, British soldiers
Army (IRA)
shot and killed thirteen
demonstrators, who had
• Catholic paramilitary
been protesting antiorganization in Northern
Catholic discrimination,
Ireland that attacked
in the town of Derry, and
soldiers and civilians in
the violence escalated
Britain for thirty years.
• Next thirty years the IRA
attacked soldiers and
civilians in Northern
Ireland and in Britain
itself.
IRA
Reform Movements in Czechoslovakia
and Poland
• Reformists avoided
direct challenges to
government leaders
and reforming the
Communist party
itself but worked to
build civil society
from below and to
create a new realm of
freedom beyond
formal politics.
Vaclav Havel
• Havel was the ninth and
last president of
Czechoslovakia (1989–
1992) and the first
president of the Czech
Republic (1993–2003)
• one of the signatories of
the Charter 77 manifesto,
which criticized the
government for ignoring
the human rights provisions
of the Helsinki Accords and
for policies of censorship
and environmental
pollution.
Vaclav Havel, Former Czech President,
Dies at 75-New York Times
• Vaclav Havel, the Czech
writer and dissident
whose eloquent
dissections of
Communist rule helped
to destroy it in
revolutions that
brought down the
Berlin Wall and swept
Mr. Havel himself into
power, died on18
December 2011
Karol Wotyla
•
The archbishop of Krakow who
became Pope John Paul II in 1978
and galvanized the Polish nation
when the economy had been in a
nosedive
• reigned as Pope of the from 1978
until his death in 2005. He was
the second-longest serving Pope
in history and the first non-Italian
since 1523
• Pope John Paul II challenged the
Communist regime in Poland by
preaching love of Christ and
country and the inalienable
rights of man.
Poland & Solidarity
• Outlawed Polish trade
union that worked for
workers’ rights and
political reform
throughout the 1980s.
• Led by Lenin Shipyards
electrician and devout
Catholic Lech Walesa
• Poland will lead the
way in the 1989
revolutions!
Solidarity
•
Polish labor union led
by Lech Walesa that
organized strikes in
1980 and 1981 calling
for civil liberties and
cultural and
intellectual freedoms.
When the Communist
leader Wojciech
Jaruzelski declared
martial law, it was
driven underground. It
was reborn toward the
end of the decade.
• Outlawed and driven
underground, Solidarity
survived in part because of
the government’s
unwillingness (and probably
its inability) to impose fullscale terror.
• Solidarity’s challenge
encouraged fresh thinking
in the Soviet Union, ever
the key to lasting change in
the Eastern bloc.
Wojciech Jaruzelski
• Last Communist leader
of Poland from 1981 to
1989, P.M. from 1981 to
1985 and the country's
head of state from 1985
to 1990
From Détente Back to Cold War
• The End of Détente
• – Détente faded when the
USSR ignored the human
rights provisions of the
Helsinki agreement,
pushed for political gains
and revolutions in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America
and invaded Afghanistan
in December, 1979.
Afghanistan (1978- -1989)
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979
USSR’ ’s “Vietnam”
Resistance led by U.S. supported Osama Bin
Laden---trained by the U.S.!!!!!!!
Soviets eventually successful in creating
successful in creating a puppet government
Overthrown by the Taliban in 1996
The American Response
• – After Pres. Jimmy
Carter unsuccessfully
tried to lead NATO
beyond verbal
condemnation, Reagan
strengthened the
American military
buildup, anathematized
the Soviet Union as the
“evil empire,” and
deployed short-range
nuclear missiles in
Western Europe.
• Ronald Reagan is synonymous with
America in the 1980s, Reagan attacked the
Soviet Union head on, referring to them as
the “Evil Empire”. He increased defense
spending, and challenged the Soviets to
elevate the Arms Race knowing they could
not compete with American productivity,
paving the way for Cold War victory.
President from
1980 - 1988
Gorbachev's Reforms in the Soviet
Union
•
served as General Secretary
of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union from 1985
until 1991, and as the last
head of state of the Soviet
Union, having served from
1988 until its dissolution in
1991. He was the only
general secretary in the
history of the Soviet Union
to have been born during
the Communist rule.
Gorbachev
• Soviet leader and
reformer who believed
in Communism but
realized it was failing
to keep up with
Western economic and
technological
developments. He
attacked corruption and
incompetence in the
bureaucracy.
Will be remembered as the man that launched
one the most dramatic revolutions in the 20th
Century!!
 Glasnost (1985)
He encouraged Soviet citizens to discuss ways to
improve society
 Perestroika (1986)
Idea of economic restructuring
Goal wasn’t to overthrow communism but
to make it work more efficiently
 Democratization (1987)
Gorbachev allowed for free elections,
the withdrawal of troops from
Afghanistan, a halt to the arms race
with the United States, the
encouragement of reform movements in
Poland and Hungary, and the end of the
Brezhnev doctrines
· Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev
began a policy called
glasnost, in which he
allowed more
freedom of speech
and the press.
· Gorbachev also signed an arms control treaty, called the INF
Treaty, with Pres. Reagan in 1987.
· Eventually, however, Gorbachev was forced to resign in
1991, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
“Mr. Gorbachev: tear down this wall!”
Video clip
INF (1987)
Dec. 1987- he and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate
range Nuclear Forces treaty
 This banned nuclear missiles range of 300-3,400 miles
 “Star Wars” 1988
 Reagan announced SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) to protect
America against enemy missiles but was never put into effect
 Reunification of Germany (1990
In 1990 Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel peace prize for his
leading role in the peace process which today characterizes
important parts of the international community.
 August Coup (1991)
Fall of Communism (1991)
Dec. 25, 1991—Gorbachev resigns
CIS
Gorbachev
• In 1990 Mikhail
Gorbachev won the
Nobel Peace Prize for
helping to end the Cold
War. Time Magazine
named him Man of the
Year and Man of the
Decade.
Gorbachev, today
• On 27 March 2009, Gorbachev visited Eureka College in Eureka,
Illinois which is the alma mater of former president Ronald Reagan.
He toured the campus and later traveled to Peoria, Illinois as the
keynote speaker at the Reagan Day Dinner.
• To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Gorbachev accompanied former Polish leader Lech Walesa and
German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a celebration in Berlin on 9
November 2009
Gorbachev (right) being introduced to Barack
Obama by Joe Biden, 20 March 2009
1989 Reform movements
The Collapse of Communism in
Eastern Europe-Revolutions of 1989!
• POLAND—leads the way!
• After a renewal of widespread
labor unrest in 1988, Poland
was at the brink of economic
collapse. Solidarity was
legalized in early 1989, the
government held free elections
in June, Solidarity secured a
majority parliamentary seats,
and Tadeusz Mazowiecki (b.
1927) became Poland’s new
non-Communist prime minister.
The new government eliminated
the secret police and
Communist ministers in the
government. It also applied
economic shock therapy to
mark a clean break with state
planning.
Shock Therapy
• Solidarity-led
government’s radical
take on economic
affairs that abruptly
ended state planning
and moved to market
mechanisms and
private property
• the sudden release of
price and currency
controls, withdrawal of
state subsidies, and
immediate trade
liberalization within a
country, usually also
including large scale
privatization of
previously public owned
assets.
The Collapse of Communism in
Eastern Europe-Revolutions of 1989!
• HUNGARY
• The Hungarian Communist
party agreed to hold free
elections in March 1990 and
to gain support opened their
border to East Germany and
tore down the barbed wire
border with Austria. Tens of
thousands of East German
“vacationers” entered the
country en route to Austria
and resettlement in West
Germany.
• In a desperate attempt to
stabilize the situation, the
East German government
opened the Berlin Wall in
November 1989, and
people danced for joy
atop that grim symbol of
the prison state.
jános kádár
permitted liberalization
of the rigid planned
economy
The Collapse of Communism in
Eastern Europe
• EAST GERMANY
• A powerful protest
movement emerged,
consisting of intellectuals,
environmentalists, and
Protestant ministers. To
stabilize the situation, the
government opened the
Berlin Wall in November,
1989. A reform
government took power
and scheduled free
elections.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
The sudden and unanticipated opening of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 dramatized the spectacular fall of
communism throughout east-central Europe. Built
on the orders of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
in 1961, the hated barrier had stopped the flow of
refugees from East Germany to West Germany. Over
the twenty-eight years of its existence, the Wall
came to symbolize the limits on personal freedom
enforced by Communist dictatorships.
Velvet Revolution—collapse of
communism in Czechoslovakia
• non-violent revolution
in Czechoslovakia that
took place from
November 17 to
December 29, 1989
• it saw to the collapse of
the party's control of
the country, and the
subsequent conversion
from Czech Stalinism to
capitalism
The Collapse of Communism in
Eastern Europe--Romania
• The dictator, Nicolae
Ceausescu (1918-1989) was
overthrown by force and
executed by a military court.
• On Christmas Day, 25
December, the two were
tried in a brief show trial and
sentenced to death by a
military court on charges
ranging from illegal
gathering of wealth to
genocide, and were executed
in Târgovişte
• Video clip
German Unification and the End of
the Cold War
• 1. After the wall was opened,
more than half of the
population entered West
Germany and bore hopes of
reuniting with families in the
west.
• 3. International
Agreement –
Gorbachev, Thatcher
and Bush agreed to
German unity in
• 2. Helmut Kohl – The German
exchange for German
chancellor prepared a ten-point
loans to the Soviet
plan to exploit the historical
moment. He promised East
Union and recognition
German citizens a 1-1
of its existing borders.
currency exchange, which led
to the victory of parties with
pro-unification platforms in
March 1990.
The Disintegration of the Soviet Union
1.
Electoral Defeats:
The Communist party suffered
stunning defeats in the
leading cities of the
Russian Soviet republic and
in Lithuania, whose
parliament and president
declared independence.
Gorbachev declared an
embargo but refused to use
force against the separatist
government.
.
Disintegration of the USSR
Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007)
• A radical reform
communist purged by
party conservatives in
1987 who embraced
the democratic
movement and was
elected parliamentary
leader in May 1990.
He announced that
Russia would declare
its independence from
the Soviet Union.
Disintegration of the USSR
• a gang of hard-liners
• 3. The Coup
kidnapped Gorbachev and
• Gorbachev was kidnapped
his family and tried to seize
by a group of hard-liners
control of the government.
(Communists!) in August
It failed and in a short
1991.
amount of time he was
rescued and put back as
head of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of this coup
wanted to preserve
communist power, state
ownership, and the
multinational Soviet
Union, but instead
destroyed all three.
Disintegration of the USSR
• Communist hard-liner’s
attempted to seize the
Soviet government but
failed in the wake of
massive popular
resistance that rallied
around Yeltsin, who
had been elected
president of the
Russian Soviet
Republic.
…the collapse of the USSR
• Yeltsin and his allies
declared Russia
independent,
withdrew from the
USSR and renamed
the Russian Soviet
Republic the Russian
Federation. All of the
other Soviet republics
also left.
 June 12, 1991
Elected President won 57% of the popular
vote in democratic presidential election
 Shock Therapy ( Jan. 1992)
Shift from command economy to a free
market economy
 Chechnya (1991-1994)
Largely Muslim area in S. Western Russia
declared its independence in 1991 but
Yeltsin denied the regions right to secede
1994- sent 40,000troops into the “breakaway
republic” where they ruined the capital city of
Grozny. This didn’t make Yeltsin popular so he
looked to end this & signed a treaty. Yeltsin won
re-election in 1996.
 Dec. 8, 1991-Origin of the CIS
 When elected leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus signed an
agreement forming a new association to replace the crumbling
Soviet Union. They were joined by others and this formally
came into begin on Dec. 21, 1991.
 An alcoholic, Yeltsin personal and health problems received a lot of
attention in the world press
Yeltsin Resigned Dec. 31, 1999 naming Vladimir Putin as Acting
President until new elections
 Aug. 1999- appointed Prime Minister of the
Russian Government by Pres. Boris Yelstin
 Yelstin resigned Dec. 31, 1999 and
appointed Putin to president of Russia
 March 26, 2000 open election
 A typical Russian leader: young & sports
enthusiast
 Unlike his predecessor , he is less
enthusiastic about erasing Russia’s Soviet past
Re- elected on 2004
 In his later years, the philosophy of Putin’s administration has been
described as “sovereign democracy”-> policy of the president must all be
supported by the popular majority in Russia itself & not be governed from
outside of the country. Such popular support constitutes the founding
principle of a democratic society.
President Vladimir Putin …He’s back!
• President Barack Obama
on March 9th, called
Russia’s president-elect
Vladimir Putin to
congratulate him,
inaugurating a relationship
that may decide the fate of
“reset” US relations with
the Kremlin.
• Putin was inaugurated May
7, 2012