The course will focus on the following topics:

1. The origins of the Cold War (Soviet strategic planning in the final stages of World War II, U.S. proto-containment, correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt in 1944-45)

2. The key documents related to the beginning of the Cold War (Kennan, Roberts, Novikov, Churchill)

3. Czechoslovakia's road to the Soviet bloc (Beneš's negotiations in Moscow in 1943 and 1945, Czechoslovakia's uranium ore, the Marshall Plan, the Communist coup of February 1948). A comparison with the case of Finland.

4. The Berlin Crisis, 1948-49

5. The Soviet-Yugoslav split

6. The Soviet threat in the early 1950s - perceptions and reality (NSC-68, the Moscow summit in January 1951)

7. The Korean War - prelude to a global conflict?

8. The East German Uprising in 1953

9. The year 1956 - three major crises with different results (Suez X Poland and Hungary)

10.The Soviet strategic planning in the 1950s and 1960s

11. The second Berlin crisis (1958-1961) and the Vienna summit (1961)

12. The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) - diplomacy and intelligence under the threat of nuclear holocaust