How The Cold War Is Taught Worldwide

Russian Redditor view.u/ffree:

The local view on the Caribbean Crisis focused on how Khrushchev acted as a peacemaker and stopped nuclear war. Schools generally described it like this:

The USA placed missiles in Turkey, a clear act of military aggression against the USSR.

The USSR counteracted by supporting socialist Cuba. This action aimed to protect the island from US military attack and placed defensive missiles there against Turkish deployment.

The USA learned this and began escalating the conflict. USSR history books clearly state the USA was aggressive and unprepared for compromise.

Khrushchev made a bold move, acting as a peacemaker. He removed missiles from Cuba, stopped nuclear war, and negotiated a nonaggression treaty for Cuba and removal of missiles from Turkey.

Russian textbooks from the late 1990s offer more insight into how information was presented. Sentences like "President Kennedy finally took a realistic position and began negotiating with Khrushchev" stress that American aggression started the crisis.

Cuba, some students learned:

The crisis showed the world the US arrogance and its disregard for other nations' sovereignty. It also showed the Cuban and Soviet interest in peaceful conflict solutions, keeping Cuban sovereignty safe and stopping a world nuclear disaster. It proved Fidel Castro was right.

According toone Redditora Redditor who graduated high school in 2002 says Canadians were taught the conflict was:

A global struggle between totalitarian communism and western capitalism. They also looked at the blood on both sides. They taught about US intervention in Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, and Chile. They also taught about Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Hungary, East Germany, and the rest of Eastern Europe.

In 1993, some students got a biased view. When explaining Canadian involvement in the Cold War, one textbookcalled NATO "an American instrument for coordinating the defense policies of its allies, rather than a club of equals that could restrain American initiatives."

Canada did not fully follow US policies. "Despite cooperating with American military policy, Canada tried to look like a peacemaker. When Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt to reverse its Suez Canal control," a Canadian negotiatedthe end of the conflict.

The view on Canada's role in the Vietnam conflict differed. It acknowledged that "Canada, after briefly trying to stop breaches of the accord between North and South, noticed only violations by the North Vietnamese side."

The book suggests the US bears more blame for the Cold War. "Nationalism within former colonies threatened American imperial goals and thus needed to be suppressed."

A Russian Redditor.u/kwonzahe described his experience:

I started school after the Soviet Union fell. By the time I learned about the Cold War, new post-Soviet textbooks offered a basic overview of that time.

The new Russian state wanted to show the mistakes of communist leaders. They also admitted that US pressure shaped Soviet foreign policy.

Americans started seeing each other as potential friends, not mortal enemies. This hope ended the day NATO invaded Yugoslavia. Public opinion shifted toward more military action. Liberal politicians lost ground to hard-line figures with military or intelligence backgrounds. Putin took power less than a year later.

I have no idea what modern textbooks say about the Cold War. They likely edited things since the nineties; I want to see.

This applies to thetextbook trend.After the Soviet Union collapsed, nations focused on their own histories. The era became a clash between two superpowers splitting the world into two systems that affected international relations.

The world's increasing split into two camps led toward a greater danger of atomic conflict.

In India, post-WWII policies featurednonalignment." indicated the country did not side with the United States or the Soviet Union. An Indian Redditor.u/gcs8recalled:

The USSR served as a reliable friend to India during the Cold War. Thus, even though Indians often favor the US due to shared English connections, people who knew geopolitics admired the Soviets.

A friendship pact between India and the USSR gave us easy access to their literature. I read books by Mir Publications, Raduga, and periodicals like the science magazine.Sputnik, the glossy lifestyle magazine.Life in the USSR.Misha [magazine], etc. India and the USSR held cultural festivals broadcast by their national stations. This exposure made me interested in Soviet history and taught me about their people and places. If the USSR had not broken up, I might have moved there for school or work!

In a comment,u/gcs8expanded their thoughts:

I started learning about the USSR as a preteen. I liked almost everything about them. School told me they had a system where no one owned much, and everyone got a basic living standard. That appealed to me.

The Cold War's world split into two sides. The United Kingdom curriculum included this. Redditor's view shows what was left out.u/2deux2, this explains why communism lasted so long:

I learned this in the UK in the mid-'00s. My history classes had two modules on the Cold War. One covered the Russian Revolution and Stalin's rise. The other covered the Cuban and Vietnam crises. By the end, I understood Lenin and Stalin, knew about Khrushchev—the first three leaders—and had a basic idea of communism.

Our course had weak spots. It was too triumphalist. Teachers painted Stalin as a paranoid madman. The Soviets' best wins from the '40s to '60s—like winning WWII, Sputnik, and the first astronaut—were mostly missing from the syllabus. Because of this, you never grasped why communism lasted so long.

It gave a simple view of Vietnam. UK teachers lean left. They taught a simple David versus Goliath story: spirited communist Vietnamese against clumsy Americans. This ignored USSR/China backing for the Viet Cong and the many Vietnamese who fought the communists.

UK textbooks show this method. They offer little detail on how or why communism worked, only explanations about...different stagesThe curriculum covered Cold War stages. It also included organizational growth, like NATO and the United Nations, plus conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.

Many American textbooks leave out key events and results from the Vietnam War. Redditoru/iwazaruunoted:

I want to discuss ourSecret War in Laos, which was completely skipped in all my history classes. I only learned about it last month when I visited Laos.

From 1964 to 1973, the US dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos in 580,000 bombing missions. This equals one plane full every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. They dropped at least 270 million cluster bomblets; about 80 million failed to explode.

A 2009 survey in Laos shows unexploded ordnance (UXO), including cluster bombs, have killed or injured about 50,000 civilians since 1964 (and 20,000 since 1973). Over the last two years, there have been more than 100 new deaths each year. About 60% of accidents cause death, and 40% involve children. Boys face the highest risk.

Laos saw more than half the world's confirmed cluster munition casualties.

People discuss Vietnamese people still suffering from Agent Orange. I visited both countries. I saw more mutilated people in Laos tending fields. At an unexploded object rescue center in Laos, I saw five people died this year from bombs dropped fifty years ago. Many others are injured; losing an arm or going blind seems common.

It is absurd this is not taught in American schools. Considering this and the false flag attack at the Gulf of Tonkin, America acted as the wrongdoer in the 1960s.

Another Redditor,u/WSLOU, offered this:

U.S. - The My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. Our country ignores teaching this.

Some people want to learn about it, but most professors do not study the Vietnam War. Even if they do, there is little information about the Vietnam War overall. I always hear the same excuse: "We were in an unknown country; everyone looked the same." Does that sound familiar?

Victors write history. Losers ignore it.

In the United States, it is widelybelieved thatbecause an American firstwalked on the moon, the space race was a win for the US. Several Redditors shared how the space race was taught in the former Soviet Union.

Redditoru/GoodJobMate:

I recall hearing about the dogs Belka and Strelka, Yuri Gagarin and his phrase "Поехали" [Let's go], the tragedy of his death, and how the space race affected the technology of both the USA and the USSR. "Поехали!" and Belka and Strelka likely stick in a Russian person's mind regarding the space race.

Another contributor,u/Lucky13R, echoed this:

We know we won it; Sergei Korolyov and Gagarin's names are the most known. Other important people's roles are much less known.

One more Redditor,u/Es_ist_kalt_hier, explained:

Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin's words, "Poehali" (Let's go!), when the rocket started. Ordinary school history textbooks lack information on foreign space programs.

China was involved inthe Korean Warand Vietnam, supporting communist alliescommunist alliesThe Chinese interest shaped how the conflicts were taught, as Redditoru/dasolomaso:

We were taught North Korea started the war to unite Korea. America joined and crossed the 38th Parallel, which America saw as an invasion. So China joined the war to protect its ally.

Today, we think North Korea started a civil war. We joined because if America kept going, China would face danger.

The connection between China and Vietnam changed during theSino-Vietnamese War of 1979China views the conflict as a border issue, detailed by.u/dasolomaso:

China encroaches on the border with Vietnam in the north and invades Cambodia, which is China's ally in the south.

We saw Vietnam as a threat and a traitor because we used to help them.

China started a war with Vietnam using the invasion of Cambodia as an excuse to stop Vietnam from becoming a regional power.

From the perspective ofu/SSCookieLover, who learned about the Sino-Vietnam conflict in Vietnam:

My history books do not say we would invade China; that idea was very stupid. Imagine Mexico uniting after a civil war and planning to invade the USA. That shows how dumb the idea was.

The Sino-Vietnamese conflict began with the Cambodian-Vietnamese War. China was friendly with Cambodia and the US. Vietnam was friendly with the USSR. The enemy of my friend is my enemy, so the war started.

Redditoru/panduanduexplained:

I am not Russian, but I am Estonian, next to Russia and part of the Soviet Union. My parents grew up in the Soviet environment. We talked about these things a lot because I was born in a free country and they were not. I always wondered how the Cold War was shown back then.

[M]ost young people in the 1970s and 1980s knew what they learned was nonsense. I do not know if it was new ideas from the West (my parents desperately catching radio signals, for example), or something that just seemed real. Even knowing this, they remained happy.

My grandparents, on the other hand, believed everything. The older generation loves Stalin and his glory. But we younger people stayed away from this, and everyone was happy.

Communism was taught as a factor in events in Indonesia connected to the United States or the Soviet Union. Redditoru/Xiao8818explained:

The September 30, 1965 Riots were arguably the worst and most mysterious riots in our history (watchThe Act of Killingfor a general idea of what was happening.

My mother was about 15 and lived in Surabaya, near Madiun, the riot's center, so she knew some dark secrets. Most of the "communists" killed were not Communist Party members. They were Chinese civilians tricked by the party into donating money and signing a "donator list" paper. This list was what the government used to decide who was who.

At school, we never focused on the violence; we focused more on the "hero" and the "villain." We focused on the seven Revolution Heroes, seven generals killed on September 30, 1965, and the Communist Party members as the villains.

The USknew about events in Indonesia but did not intervene.

RedditorManiac417This offered lessons learned about the Vietnam War.

I studied the Cold War for GCSE History in Northern Ireland. The unit was pretty unbiased, perhaps slightly American because they "won."

It is a GCSE choice, not required. We focus more on the Vietnam and Korean wars. We focus heavily on American war crimes regarding Vietnam.

ForcontextIn the United Kingdom, students complete General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) coursework before GCSE exams. Students take the GCSE exams at age 15 or 16. These exams test students' readiness to finish stage four of secondary education.

Other nations focus more on events before direct American action in Vietnam. France offers deep content on its colonial efforts and the defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954and theGeneva Conferencethat followed.

Canadian students receive different information. They are told that after the French"proved incapable" of controlling Vietnam, their country became "involved in attempts at international control. Canada began by believing it had freedom to act without upsetting Americans or seeming like a United States lackey."