Key People & Terms

A list of key people and terms you need to know in order to understand The Cold War.  

Presidents of the USA
- Harry S Truman
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- John F. Kennedy
- Lyndon B. Johnson
- Richard M. Nixon
 - Gerald Ford
- Jimmy Carter
- Ronald Reagan
- George Bush Sr.  

Leaders of the Soviet Union
- Joseph Stalin
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Leonid Brezhnev
- Yuri Andropov
- Konstantin Chernenko
 - Mikhail Gorbachev  

Other important international leaders
- Winston Churchill
- Robert Atlee
- Mao Zedong
- Ho Chi Minh
- Fidel Castro
- Alexander Dubcek
- Willy Brandt
- Ayatollah Khomeini
- Gamal Abdel Nasser
- Jawaharlal Nehru
- Josip Broz “Tito”
 - Ahmed Sukarno
- Lech Walesa  

Other important people
- Joseph McCarthy
- Yuri Gagarin
- Valentina Tereshkova
- Alan Shepard
- John Glenn
- Neil Armstrong
- Buzz Aldrin
- Michael Collins

Terms and Events
- Cold War
- Truman Doctrine
- Yalta and Potsdam Conferences
- Salami Tactics
- Iron Curtain
- Red Army
 - Red Scare
- Berlin Blockade
 - Berlin Airlift
 - Marshall Plan and COMECON
- NATO and Warsaw Pact
- Chinese Communist Revolution
- Korean War
- Destalinization
- Hungarian Uprising
- Dètente
- Suez Crisis
- Cuban Revolution
- Berlin Wall
- Bay of Pigs
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- Vietnam War
- Vietminh
- Vietcong
- Watergate
- 1973 Oil Crisis
- CIA
- KGB
- Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
- Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars)
- Glasnost and Perestroika
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Dissolution of the Soviet Union 

Cold War Timelines

You have some examples of cold war timelines below to prepare the exam about Cold War. Apart from these ones, I strongly recommend the timelines which you can find here and here