The Prince and the Cold War

The Cold War was one of the most significant events of European history because it caused a split in Europe that divided the continent into Western Europe, the capitalists, and Eastern Europe, the communist Soviets. During the Cold War, many different European leaders took different approaches on holding a country down and protecting it from the Soviets, or joining the Soviets. In the novel, The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli, advice is given to a prince for governing a principality, or a nation, and maintaining a strong nation that will not be conquered. Much of his advice can be seen in the actions of a multitude of European leaders during the Cold War, but there are some leaders that did not follow Machiavelli’s advice and was still able to maintain the nation that he ruled. One of these leaders is Mikhail Gorbachev. The main ideas expressed in the novel are that a stable nation is a great nation and a prince’s main concern must be stability, that it is better to be feared by people than it is to be loved, and that a prince must do what he must in order to preserve his power and the power of his nation. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected President of the Soviet Union in 1989, and while he believed in keeping the Soviet Union a strong and powerful nation, he did not follow the advice that Machiavelli gives to the fullest. Gorbachev was concerned with the stability of the Soviet Union, but Machiavelli stresses that a prince must do what he must in order to maintain a nation’s power, and Gorbachev did not do everything in his power to stay strong in the eyes of other nations. He was very focused on burying the Cold War, and in doing so, had to make a lot of negotiations and settlements, and had to make Russia more open with other nations to reestablish the broken trust of other nations. Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost made his nation less feared and made him seem as if we was giving in, and not doing whatever it takes to stay strong, even if that involves being