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50 Cold War figures

Leaders, soldiers, spies, defectors, thinkers and a sprinkling of walk-on players who later took starring roles in world affairs… (Not in chronological order)
Quiz by Amilcar
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Last updated: March 9, 2023
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First submittedJanuary 11, 2022
Times taken487
Average score46.0%
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Answer
Said an 'Iron curtain' was slamming down
Winston Churchill
Imposed Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe
Joseph Stalin
His ‘Little Red Book’ permeated a communist superpower
Mao Zedong
Warned against a US "military-industrial complex"
Dwight Eisenhower
Balkan communist leader who defied Soviet influence
Josip Tito
U.S. president who set up the CIA
Harry Truman
Soviet secret policeman who killed and imprisoned millions
Lavrenty Beria
His dystopian novels warned against totalitarianism
George Orwell
Led his country's communist north to armed standoff on 38th parallel
Kim Il-sung
American general whose aid plan propped up European democracies
George Marshall
Smuggled the West's nuclear secrets to Moscow
Klaus Fuchs
His 'politics of grandeur' complicated West's Cold War ties
Charles de Gaulle
Cosmonaut whose flight accelerated the space race
Yuri Gagarin
Declared himself a Berliner on Cold War's chilliest front line
John Kennedy
Led his southeast Asian country in Cold War's biggest proxy conflict
Ho Chi Minh
Brandished his shoe at the U.N. general assembly
Nikita Khrushchev
The CIA may have planned to sabotage his cigars
Fidel Castro
His 'red scare' Senate hearings tried to weed out communists
Joe McCarthy
East German leader who had the Berlin Wall built
Walter Ulbricht
CIA chief who staged coups in Iran and Guatemala
Allen Dulles
The KGB's 'third man' in MI6 before he defected to Moscow
Kim Philby
American general who urged US to nuke China during Korean war
Douglas MacArthur
Chinese premier masterminded Beijing’s Cold War diplomacy
Zhou Enlai
CIA accused of killing this leader to stop Congo turning communist
Patrice Lumumba
Maniacal scientist who learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
Dr. Strangelove
Hint
Answer
American surveillance pilot downed over USSR
Gary Powers
Crystalised Cold War Mideast splits by nationalising Suez Canal
Gamal Abdul Nasser
He went to China, upending US policy
Richard Nixon
French thinker who quit Communist Party after Hungary rising
Jean-Paul Sartre
Revolutionary pin-up shot dead in Bolivia
Che Guevara
Star Soviet dancer who defected in Paris
Rudolf Nureyev
Soviet leader who sent Red Army into Afghanistan
Leonid Brezhnev
Marxist fugitive who kidnapped OPEC ministers
Carlos the Jackal
Middle East president who gave USSR a Mediterranean naval base
Hafez al-Assad
American practitioner of realpolitik who sought Soviet detente
Henry Kissinger
He installed a pro-West dictatorship that ruled Indonesia for decades
Suharto
Soviet writer whose novels exposed Gulag prison system
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Elected South American leader ousted by CIA-backed general Pinochet
Salvador Allende
He refused early release from 'Hanoi Hilton'
John McCain
Staged a communist coup in Ethiopia and declared "red terror"
Mengistu Haile Mariam
'Solidarity' union leader who led his country after Cold War
Lech Walesa
His “Star Wars” programme threatened new arms race near Cold War end
Ronald Reagan
His Cold War spy novels showed moral ambiguities of conflict
John Le Carre
Brought free market reforms to communist power but no political relaxation
Deng Xiaoping
Saudi who helped West-backed rebels battle the Soviets in Afghanistan
Osama bin Laden
His reforms as economy declined could not avert Soviet collapse
Mikhail Gorbachev
World leader who served as a KGB spy in Cold War Dresden
Vladimir Putin
She said of the last Soviet leader: “We can do business together”
Margaret Thatcher
Warsaw Pact leader summarily executed as his regime fell in 1989
Nicolae Ceausescu
Reunified his country as the Cold War ended and iron curtain fell
Helmut Kohl
+2
Level 47
Mar 2, 2023
Che Guevara was executed in cold blood...
+1
Level 66
Mar 9, 2023
Good spot - I've changed the clue
+1
Level 84
Mar 2, 2023
I would consider accepting Baryshnikov in addition to Nureyev.
+1
Level 66
Mar 9, 2023
Thanks. I've tweaked the clue to specify he defected in Paris to make it more clearly about Nureyev.