The West in the World, 4th Edition (Sherman)

Chapter 26: Into the Twenty-First Century

Critical Thinking Questions

1. What were the major shortcomings of central economic planning and collectivization?



2. Why were ordinary people dissatisfied with the Soviet system?



3. What other developments aggravated these problems within the Soviet system?



4. What were the main points of Gorbachev's reform program?



5. How did the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union react to Gorbachev's policies?



6. What developments weakened the East European Communist leaders' control over their states?



7. Through what process did a non-Communist government come to power in Poland?



8. How were the Communist governments in Hungary and Czechoslovakia replaced?



9. How was East Germany influenced by the changes in Hungary?



10. What effect did democratization and the undermining of the power of the Communist Party have in the Soviet Union?



11. Which nationalities wanted independence from the Soviet Union? What was Gorbachev's solution to this problem?



12. What difficulties did Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics face in their economic transitions?



13. What problems did nationalism pose in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?



14. How is the former Yugoslavia an extreme example of the dangers and the disruptive force of nationalism?

15. In what ways did the United States demonstrate its position as the last military superpower?



16. How did politics shift to the Right in the West?



17. Why did Western societies begin to question traditional politics?



18. What steps did European states take to establish unity within the European Union?

19. By the 1990s, what global trends blurred national distinctions?



20. In what ways did East Asia and the Pacific Rim challenge Western economic dominance?



21. What types of capitalistic practices did China incorporate into its economy?



22. How did Islamic states reject Western influence and ways?



23. How did increased immigration change individual identities as well as cultural differences?



24. What facilitated the standardization of cultural tastes?



25. In what ways were artistic and intellectual movements in the 1990s "postmodern"?



26. How did economic problems in one part of the world now make themselves felt immediately in another part?



27. At the end of the twentieth century, what were the environmental costs of economic growth and where were they highest?



28. Why did AIDS become a major epidemic?



29. Why did religious revivals appear in different parts of the world at the end of the twentieth century?



30. By the end of the twentieth century, what improvements and advances in individual lives and in Western society as a whole had been made?