In 1947, Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948), an ideologist in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and Stalin’s right-hand man, set up the Cominform, an information bureau and coordinating body for the communist parties in Europe. He developed a doctrine which stated that the world was divided into two irreconcilable camps: an ‘imperialist and anti-democratic’ camp led by the United States and an ‘anti-imperialist and democratic’ camp led by the USSR. The Zhdanov Doctrine was the Soviet response to the Truman Doctrine.

Josip Broz, known as Tito, was a Yugoslav politician and soldier. He served as Prime Minister from 1945 to 1953 then as President of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.

Emblem of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or Comecon), an organisation for economic cooperation with the countries in the Soviet bloc established in January 1949 by the USSR in response to the Marshall Plan and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC).

John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959 under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, introduced the ‘rollback’ policy, which aimed not merely to contain communism (the Truman Doctrine) but to actively drive it back.

On 3 October 1952, the first British nuclear tests are conducted on the Montebello Islands off the west coast of Australia. The United Kingdom is the third country in the world, after the United States and the Soviet Union, to develop nuclear weapons.

In October 1959, on the 10th anniversary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Nikita Khrushchev (on the left), meets Chinese President Mao Zedong (on the right) in Beijing.

On 1 July 1968, in London, several states, including the United States, the USSR and the United Kingdom, sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The Treaty enters into force on 5 March 1970.

On 23 March 1983, Ronald Reagan proposes the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), a major technological programme commonly referred to as ‘Star Wars’. The project aims to protect the United States from the threat of enemy nuclear weapons by means of a space-based shield that can detect and destroy enemy ballistic missiles as soon as they are launched. The US project (which does not come to fruition) draws the USSR into a frenzied arms race which leads the country to the brink of financial and economic collapse.

On 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is the first man to fly in space during the Vostok 1 mission.

During the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, thousands of students gather in Wenceslas Square on 19 December 1989 to call for the election of former dissident playwright Vaclav Havel. This series of peaceful demonstrations leads to the fall of the communist regime, and on 29 December 1989 Vaclav Havel is elected as President of the Republic.