Date of Award

Winter 4-29-2023

Thesis Access

Open Access Honors Thesis

Thesis Location

Departmental Honors Thesis

Degree Name

B.A.

Department

Political Science

Faculty Advisor

Nadejda Marinova

Abstract

This paper will examine how Russia’s foreign policy politically, economically, and culturally affected all of the nations in the Balkan region during the first years of the Cold War. I will further look into the differences and similarities between Russia’s interests and geopolitics in the context of the different disagreements in the region of the Balkans that concerned the Soviet Union, such as the Balkan Pact (1953), the Cyprus Agreement (1960) or the Warsaw Pact (1955), which will be discussed later. The focus will be on how the different leaders of the Soviet Union (Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev) changed the landscape of the relations between the nations in the Balkans and how their different policies changed the trajectory of the nations’ economies and politics. After WWII, the Soviet Union was seen as the second-strongest nation in the world, slightly below the United States, and throughout the first years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was trying its best to compete with what was seen as a superpower of a nation. The Balkans seemed to be the better region for the Soviet Union to influence, and this paper will illustrate precisely these dynamics.

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