VCE Modern History Cold War essay structures quiz

The American Revolution and the founding of the United States in the late eighteenth century

The causes of World War One, focusing on the rival alliances and the arms race before 1914

The Changing World Order 1945-2010, including the Cold War

Ancient civilisations such as Rome and Greece and their lasting influence on the modern world

The United States for provoking Soviet defensive responses

Britain and France

Decolonisation

The Soviet Union for expansionist behaviour after 1945

A commitment to support free peoples resisting subjugation, formally inaugurating containment

A pledge to continue the wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union into peacetime

A formal declaration of American neutrality in the emerging disputes between the wartime allies in Europe

A bilateral disarmament treaty in which both superpowers agreed to reduce their conventional armed forces

Direct military conflict between American and Soviet forces fought across several theatres

SALT I, the Helsinki Accords, Nixon's visits to Moscow and Beijing

The withdrawal of both superpowers from the United Nations and its Security Council

A rapid nuclear escalation in which both sides massively expanded their warhead stockpiles

A return to Stalinist purges, with mass arrests of party officials and political rivals across the USSR

A military reconquest of Eastern Europe to tighten Soviet control over the satellite states of the bloc

Glasnost (openness), perestroika (restructuring), and 'New Thinking' in foreign policy

Outlawing the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and replacing it with a multi-party democratic system

Simply define what the Cold War was and roughly when it began and ended, without taking any clear position

List every single major event of the entire period in strict chronological order before the actual argument of the essay even begins

Open with a striking quotation, such as a song lyric or a famous line, to grab the reader's attention first

State a clear thesis, signpost the body argument, and reference at least one historiographical position the essay will engage with

Identify the source, situate it (date, author, type), use it to support a claim, then evaluate its perspective/limitations

Quote from the source without any attribution, since naming the author and date is not necessary in a history essay

Save all of the source material for the very end of the essay, gathering every one of the quotations together into a single final summary paragraph

Avoid using primary sources altogether and rely only on the student's own general knowledge of the period instead

A renewed period of cooperation and arms-control agreements between Washington and Moscow

Reagan's 'Evil Empire' framing, SDI, Soviet expansion in Afghanistan, Able Archer 83

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist governments of Eastern Europe

A continuation of detente, with summit diplomacy and relaxed tensions between the superpowers

A full-scale United States invasion of Cuba that removed the Castro government from power and cleared out the Soviet missiles by force

A direct nuclear exchange between the two superpowers that caused devastating destruction on both sides

Soviet withdrawal of missiles in exchange for a US pledge not to invade and (secretly) US withdrawal of missiles from Turkey

Cuba abandoning its alliance with the Soviet Union and joining NATO as a new Western-aligned member state

There were many different causes that all contributed to the Cold War in a whole variety of ways, and in this essay I am going to go through each one of them in turn and explain in detail how they each helped to bring about the long conflict between the two rival superpowers.

In this essay I will discuss the many causes of the Cold War, looking carefully at the political, economic and ideological factors involved before finally reaching a clear and balanced conclusion about which of them mattered the most overall.

The Cold War lasted from 1945 right through until 1991, and over those many decades there were a great many important events that took place between the United States and the Soviet Union all around the world, as this essay will show.

Ideology was the primary cause of the Cold War only when fused with security interests; the orthodox emphasis on Soviet expansionism captures part of the story, but post-revisionist accounts demonstrate that the bipolar power vacuum after 1945 was equally decisive.