In October 1973 a fourth Arab-Israeli war was fought, better known as the Yom Kippur War. It was a coordinated attempt of Egypt and Syria to regain what was lost to Israel in the so-called Six-Day War of 1967, but the Israelis once again proved dominant on the battlefield. However, unlike previous confrontations, during this clash, the Arab states finally employed their probably most far-reaching asset – “the oil weapon”, shocking the entire world more than anyone previously expected.
In recent years, especially with the clumsy US withdrawal, there were many talks about Afghanistan being the so-called “graveyard of empires”. The term, once limited to popular books and mass media, even penetrated scholarly circles. It seems to be a part of international popular culture, probably the most common trope and supposed fact known about the Afghani nation. This poses an important question about Afghanistan - is it really a graveyard of empires?
Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy K. Zhukov is often credited for being one of the best generals in history, in the rank of Napoleon or Alexander the Great. He played a seminal role in the Soviet and, in turn, allied victory over Nazi Germany during World War II. Yet once the war was won and peace arrived, interest in his life dissipates. This poses a question - what happened to Zhukov after WW2?
After the United States faced defeat in the Vietnam War it seemed like both Cold War superpowers learned their lesson - do not interfere in unnecessary conflicts, especially when those are a civil war. However, in late 1979 the USSR repeated the American mistake, leading to the Soviet debacle in Afghanistan that would end in a defeat nearly a decade later. What went wrong and why is it sometimes considered a greater failure than Vietnam?
Looking at the modern history of China, for most westerners, there was an image of a weak and chaotic empire in the Far East, one in which glory days were long gone. In their view, the Chinese were a second-rate nation ripe for plunder, a perfect target for 19th-century imperialism. Nevertheless, China managed to avoid being colonized, despite being beaten in two conflicts, today known as the Opium Wars. That brings the question of how did Beijing manage to preserve its independence and what was the importance of the Opium Wars?
History is filled with bloody and grim movements, world-changing events and practices as well as long-lasting processes. Yet there aren’t many that combine all of those qualities. Among those usually infamous pieces of our past, the Atlantic slave trade holds a rather notorious place. It influenced the demography, economy, development, and society of at least three continents (four if we count the Americas as separate continents) for roughly 400 years. One of the reasons for such a vast impact is in the sheer volume of the Transatlantic slave trade.
Introduction The United Nations is an international organization that was created to uphold peace and encourage good international relations and cooperation. It was supposed to bring harmony among the nations of the world and lead them to a future where there were no more wars. However, like all human creations, its structure and administration have flaws while the utility of the UN always relied upon the imperfect humans that constitute it.
With the recent 35th anniversary of a disaster, popular series about it as well as recent signs of renewed heating up, Chernobyl once again came under the spotlight. Even without such recent trends, as the most serious nuclear disaster in human history, the Chernobyl meltdown is without a doubt a topic that has a long half-life. However, most research and stories revolve either upon what caused the catastrophe or the effects of its radiation on health and ecology.
The Serbian revolution was a long and complex historical process, undertaken by the oppressed Christian serfs (Raja) of the Ottoman Empire, intending to obtain rights of social dignity, national recognition and political autonomy at the beginning of the 19th century. As a rebellion of a disenfranchised group of society with a clear aim for acquiring national statehood, it inspired revolutions of other Christian peoples of the Turkish Empire, Greeks and Romanians before all.
Introduction It is hard to pinpoint the exact date when the Cold War began, as it was a gradual transition from wartime allies to peacetime opponents. Yet, the tensions and troubles on the horizon were clear from the get-go, maybe most picturesquely described by Sir Winston Churchill. In March 1946 he described a division of Europe by saying “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”.
