I'm taking a course about Europe during the Cold War next quarter...

A problem created by Western allies and their second appeasement. Basically one country that co-started WWII won against the other, conquered a bunch of other countries (which were fighting back in armed uprisings even long after WWII but not many people know about it).

The Berlin Wall is nothing but a symbol. In reality Cold War was defined by periods of tensions and detentes. And protests.

>Germany 1953
>Hungary 1956
>Poland 1956
>Czechoslovakia 1968
>Poland 1980s
>Romania 1989

And those are just the biggest ones.
Also the commie propaganda and their version of history. I got a couple boos from that era. Nothing I would cite as a reliable source.

Wasn't Lech Walesa communist plant or something? I remember reading about it some time ago.

You'll find that 1916 created the specificity of Protestant British in northern ireland by making the national liberation movement sectarian.

>I got a couple boos from that era. Nothing I would cite as a reliable source.
Try The Revolt Of The Mind: Thiomas Aczel, Tibor Meray
it is an acceptable primary source.

But how does this sectarian battle apply to the Cold War? The IRA weren't doing it for global communism, the Unionists weren't doing it for liberal capitalism.

How did Communists generally explain that far more force were used to put down Communist protests than Capitalist ones?

Significant portions of the IRA were doing it for a nationalist socialism, and the IRA was internally split over socialism. As opposed to the south, the IRA continued in a sectarianless vision of a united irish state.

The Orangeists became more and more trapped in a liberal-conservative capitalist routine, centred in Westminster.

The cold war wasn't between communism and capitalism, but between bolshevist state capitalism and western liberal capitalism.

Bolshevist inspired movements used the concept of "the popular" and "democratic" as a transhistorical category of struggle which meant that their historical "correctness" would be far more opposed by the bourgeoisie.

It's complicated. The Solidarity movement was of course incredibly large (10 million people in its prime). There were many leaders. All of them more educated than Wałęsa. Now of course he's always with a translator so you don't even realize how he sounds like. Like the worst perverted hick. Those translator are making a good job making him sound like an icon. Even as a physical worker he was shitty and lazy. He's known as the leader of the movement because he had the biggest mouth.

I'm from the same city as him and I've heard many stories that you can't find in any book. How he treated his wife or how he and his buddies were stealing camp-beds. He's not popular at all. And yes in the 70s he had contacts with the communist government, was a commie rat and denounced his co-workers for money. He kept it a secret throughout his career including his presidency in the 90s.

Solidarity had better people than him.

Sorry for using you as my personal Encyklopedia on Polish history, but what do you think about this guy? Was he good or not?

Solidarity was, of course, a mixture of liberal anti-socialist elements, liberal pro-socialist elements and ultra-left communists. It embodied the contradictory ideology of the working class under "state-capitalism" or nomenklatura rule.

Which I suppose is just another effect of all non state run unions being banned, so people were pretty much forced to flock to the biggest and strongest one to not be squashed and issolated by the state.

>bolshevist state capitalism and western liberal capitalism.
Oh God, you're one of those 'my kind of communism hasn't been tried' guys, aren't you?

Unions have a tendency towards agglomeration when militant due to the solidaristic nature of the working class in militance. The real problem was that Poland's "communist" moment against the Soviet Union was in 1956 and aptly controlled by Gomulka.

Read Simon Pirani on how early the rot set in in the "Soviet" Union. p.s.: before the foundation.

He was the chaplain of the movement. Brutally murdered by the gov. Not much to talk about but the clergy was the last stand of Polish patriotism and integrity during those times. I know it wasn't the case in Czechoslovakia.

Of course there was also cardinal Wyszyński (distantly related to the infamous Soviet hanging judge) and John Paul II. Lots of books about him but I can't find a single one about his political activity. And this is the topic that interests me. How things looked in the west. Maybe I've read too many Forsyth novels but this seems very interesting.

heh

What did France do to try to stay relevant?

Through killing millions of Vietnamese and Algerians. Also nukes.

Kicking US military bases from French teritorry, leaving NATO and getting nuclear warheads, maintaining an healthy relationship with the USSR and basically playing the role of a neutral power in between of 2 superpowers (both geopolitically and geographically)
"trying to stay relevant" is an American buzzword that is thrown whenever a country doesn't side entirely with America, just so you know.
You mean 6000 Quintuplliard (which is basically 1000 trillon x 1000 gorillard) innocent Algerian child, utterly not bat-shit insane terrorists.