Word: west
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...world's first atomic explosions; in the Atomic Year V, men still dreaded the unchained atom, but they had gotten used to the idea that they must live with it. The question was, how? How would the Other Bomb affect the great struggle between Communism and the West? How would it weigh in the balance of war or peace...
...Specific. From Moscow came the most remarkable reaction of all. For more than 24 hours after President Truman's announcement, the Russians maintained silence. Then Tass released a deadpan communiqué deploring the "alarm among broad social circles" which the Washington news had caused. Tass suggested that the West had, just possibly, been fooled. "In the Soviet Union . . . building work on a large scale is in progress-hydroelectric stations, mines, canals, roads-which evokes the necessity of large-scale blasting . . . It is possible that this might draw attention beyond the confines of the Soviet Union." As for atomic energy...
Russia stood to gain from her atom bomb if it scared Europe's people into clamoring for appeasement of Communism, but the West itself stood to gain more: a new clarity of common purpose. The atom bomb in Russian hands was something so ominously specific that it was almost certain to impel a brand of Western unity which otherwise might be years in the forging. Plain common peril might be translated into plain common courage. Moscow's atom-smashing made obsolete no major part of a political strategy that embraced the Atlantic pact, U.S. military aid to Europe...
...Washington's atom-bomb announcement, Vishinsky's speech lacked even the bang of an old-fashioned blockbuster. It was sparked with the standard vituperation. The peace-loving U.S.S.R., cried Vishinsky, was "ready to answer . . . blow for blow" any threats of "the black array of warmongers" in the West. He called on the Assembly to 1) condemn Anglo-American warmongers, 2) impose an "unconditional prohibition of atomic weapons and . . . rigid international control," and 3) call upon the Big Five to sign "a pact for the strengthening of peace...
There was only one thing new on the Russian merry-go-round as it wheeled around to the same old tune: it had one rider less than before. The old East-West split of 53-to-6 had now become 54-10-5. The vagrant vote came from the grinning, youthful-looking Yugoslav delegates who sat in the row behind Vishinsky, seeming to rejoice in their freshly asserted break from Mother Russia...