Post the Introduction of Your Most Recent Paper

[Хahar 🤔]

I haven't written a paper in a while, since all my coursework is math-related now. The last paper I wrote was my history honors thesis, back in the spring of 2015. I apologize for the writing, which is rather turgid because I churned out the whole thing in a week. I enjoy talking about this subject but it's a bit embarrassing to go back and look at what I actually wrote.
In American popular discourse, the Cold War is framed as a bilateral confrontation between monolithic and diametrically opposed blocs, represented by the United States and the Soviet Union. The term “Cold War” itself demonstrates this worldview, as it suggests that relations between capitalist and communist states in the decades following the Second World War were merely a military struggle pursued by other means. To the extent that a place in the narrative exists for other states involved in the Cold War, such as the communist states of Eastern Europe, they are merely satellite states and accessories in the worldwide struggle. This view was actively encouraged by communist propagandists, who sought to present a united socialist front to the world. However, scholarship since the end of Eastern European communism has shown that the notion that Eastern European states were complacent Soviet puppets fails to reflect the truth from an economic standpoint, as communist rule in Eastern Europe led not to Soviet economic exploitation of the region but rather to those states making gains at the expense of Moscow. The eventual breakup of Eastern European communism did not occur in a vacuum, as even during the Cold War each independent communist state acted first and foremost in its own self-interest. Furthermore, the assumption that Westerners during the Cold War simply viewed Eastern Europe as a communist monolith masks the nuances of the relationship of the American media and public opinion with the states of Eastern Europe. Americans could and did distinguish between friendly states and hostile states even among the Soviet bloc, as shown by the contrasting examples of East Germany and Romania.