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May 5, 2024 · by World History Edu · May 5, 2024. The Soviet Union’s involvement in World War II is a complex narrative marked by strategic, ideological, and geopolitical motivations. The Soviet entry into the war was not immediate but evolved through various phases, starting from cautious neutrality and shifting to active participation following a direct ...
The Soviet Union in World War 2. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 established a non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with a secret protocol describing how Poland and the Baltic countries would be divided between them.
- Overview
- Negotiating a postwar world order
- The structure and function of the United Nations
- The United Nations in the Cold War
- The evolution of the UN
- What do you think?
The United Nations emerged after World War II as an international peacekeeping organization.
In 1944, delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China—four of the main Allied powers in World War II—met in Washington, DC to negotiate the parameters of the postwar world and to discuss the establishment of the international organization that would become known as the United Nations (UN).
The United Nations replaced the League of Nations, which had been created at the end of the First World War to provide states with an international forum for the peaceful resolution of disputes. Even though US President Woodrow Wilson was one of the key supporters of the League of Nations, the United States never officially joined the organization due to intense opposition from isolationist members of Congress. The League of Nations ultimately proved ineffective in preventing the outbreak of another world war and was formally dissolved in 1946.1
The United States played an instrumental role in the founding of the United Nations. The UN Charter, with its emphasis on peace, security, international law, economic development, and human rights, reflected the influence of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who shared a vision for the postwar world.2 In 1941, the two leaders drafted the Atlantic Charter, which declared that there would be no territorial aggrandizement as a result of the war, that postwar international relations would be cooperative, and that disputes between states would be resolved through peaceful negotiation and not the use or threat of force. The Atlantic Charter eventually became the basis for the UN Charter.
[Read an excerpt from the UN Charter]
The United Nations has several main bodies that serve different purposes. The Secretariat is the main administrative organ of the UN. It commissions research and applies the findings of studies to making the UN a more effective and efficient organization.
The General Assembly is the main deliberative body of the UN. Every country that is a member of the UN is represented in the General Assembly. The UN General Assembly convenes annually to deliberate and vote on important issues affecting world peace and security. The General Assembly can only make recommendations to member-states; it cannot make binding decisions, nor can it enforce those decisions – only the Security Council has the authority to do that.
The Security Council is composed of five permanent members—the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China— which were the five main Allied powers in the Second World War. There are also ten non-permanent seats on the Security Council that rotate between different countries every two years. The purpose of the Security Council is to peacefully resolve international conflicts and prevent the outbreak of war. UN Security Council resolutions are binding and are enforced by UN peacekeepers, which are military forces contributed by member-states.
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was created to promote international economic and social cooperation and development, particularly in the developing world, or what was referred to during the Cold War as the “Third World.”
Because the Soviet Union and the United States both held permanent seats on the UN Security Council, as the Cold War heated up, disunity between the two great powers interfered with the international organization’s basic peacekeeping mission. This was partly due to the dual nature of the UN as a forum for negotiating disputes among states and a pla...
In the 1950s and 1960s, decolonization, or the process by which former colonial territories became independent states, transformed the composition and functioning of the UN. During this time period, dozens of newly independent countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East joined the United Nations and sought to redirect the energies of the organiz...
Why was the United Nations founded? What does the UN Charter tell us about its main goals?
How did the Cold War affect the functioning and purpose of the United Nations?
How did the UN evolve over the course of the twentieth century?
[Notes and attributions]
Why did the Soviet Union have an advantage in directing resources toward a total war economy? How did the outbreak of war affect the American economy? Japan and Britain are both small island nations. Why did the British not have to invade and conquer in order to supply its war effort?
Mar 3, 2021 · Launched on 22 June 1941 and named after the 12th-century Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union represented a decisive breaking of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact. The Axis attacking forces of more than 3 million men split into three groups, aimed at Leningrad, Kiev and Moscow.
Describe the Soviet Union ’s early years and the structure of its government; Analyze the effects of Stalin ’s first Five-Year Plan on the Soviet economy; Describe life in the Soviet Union under Stalin; Russia underwent massive political upheaval during the Bolshevik takeover in 1917.
Feb 2, 2018 · During World War II, Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht intended to conquer the industrial city of Stalingrad — named after then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin — before advancing onward to...
