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Palmer Raids

RED SCARE Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, America was on high alert, fearing Communist revolutionaries on their own shores. The Sedition Act of 1918, which was an expansion of the 1917 Espionage Act, was a direct result of the paranoia. Targeting those who criticized the government, the Sedition Act set into motion an effort […]

Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot Although Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge didn’t come to power until the mid‑1970s, the roots of their takeover can be traced to the 1960s, when a communist insurgency first became active in Cambodia, which was then ruled by a monarch. Throughout the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge operated as the armed wing of […]

Berlin Airlift

The Berlin Airlift: The Partitioning of Berlin As World War II came to an end in 1945, the Allied powers held peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how they would divide up Germany’s territories. The agreements split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: They gave the eastern part of the country […]

Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Origins and Evolution of the Soviet State In the Russian Revolution of 1917, revolutionary Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and four socialist republics were established. In 1922, Russia proper joined its far‑flung republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first leader of this Soviet state was the Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. […]

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Here’s Why the Suez Crisis Almost Led to Nuclear War

Discover the history of the Suez Canal and how Egypt’s President Nasser, with the support of the Soviet Union, seized the canal from the British in 1956, causing an international crisis. See how President Eisenhower intervened to help restore order.

Formation of NATO

Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the formation of key alliances that would endure throughout the Cold War.

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Army‑McCarthy Hearings

Joseph McCarthy and his role in stoking fears of communism and its sympathizers during the 1950s.

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Hollywood Ten

Historian Yohuru Williams discusses key facts about the Hollywood 10, a group of film directors, screenwriters, and producers blacklisted for Communist affiliations in 1947.

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Top Secret, Secret, Confidential: How Are US Government Documents Classified?

The U.S. government has kept secrets from the very beginning. In 1774, members of the Continental Congress passed a resolution “that the doors be kept shut during the time of business” and “to keep the proceedings secret, until the majority shall direct them to be made public.” Secrets are even baked into the Constitution. Article […]

Photos: 7 Decades of the Soviet Union

Formation of the Soviet Union On November 7, 1917, Bolshevik forces led by the Marxist ideologue Vladimir Lenin and his compatriots Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, seized power in the Russian capital, Petrograd. What followed was a protracted and bloody Russian civil war that ended in 1921 with the victory of the Bolshevik Red Army. […]