An Imaginary Cold War Summit

Lesson plan – a dramatised debate

Introduction

This lesson is a way to demonstrate and conceptualise the ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in an interactive way. It includes crafting a statement in groups and then presenting them to others in a dramatised meeting involving a light-hearted, acted-out debate.

The Premise

It is the height of the Cold War. The international community has been invited to a summit with the intention to finally determine the pecking order in this rivalry. Representatives of both the United States and the Soviet Union have arrived to present their cases in order to convince the Third World (i.e. neutral countries) of their own superiority.

You (the students) are to assume the role of

1. a political advisor to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
2. a political advisor to the President of the United States or a
3. a representative of one of the Third World countries.

You're task is to familiarise yourself with the provided material and — depending on your role — either

• craft a convincing argument for the superiority of your country in the Cold War (groups 1 and 2) or
• prepare to make a decision about the "winner" of the Cold War (group 3).

Material

I have provided some examples of documents to be handed out as material to the groups, to help them formulate their statements. The following material is only meant to get you started — you (as the teacher) are encouraged to add to it to make it more immersive for the students and to make it more illustrative of the subject at hand. Propaganda pictures and posters, news reels and articles or graphs and statistics are all good examples of things to implement.

It is important to keep in mind that the material is supposed to be biased; the representatives of either Cold War counterpart are going to present their case from their own ideological standpoint, and the provided material reflects this outcome.

The third party, on the other hand, should receive a more balanced summary of the situation while the other groups prepare their arguments. This can be achieved by letting them access both sets of material beforehand.

United States

Howdy, partner! It is with great difficulty that the freedom-hating Bolsheviks have sustained the tenuous notion that communism could be a serious alternative to our superior standard of living and unalienable rights and freedoms. It's time to shatter that illusion once and for all — with the following material you will convince the participants of the summit that the American Dream is an undeniable reality!

Soviet Union

Greetings, comrade! With the aid of the provided material decades of hard work by the Komintern shall be brought to completion: you will convince the powers that be and the Proletariat all over the world of the superiority of the Communist system. Never again shall the lies of the imperialist pigs and their bourgeois lackeys undo our struggle towards world revolution and a Communist Utopia!