System competition

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System competition was the name given to the worldwide competition between capitalism and socialism or communism , especially between their main countries, the USA and the Soviet Union , especially in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s . In 1958, the Soviet party leader Nikita Khrushchev announced the goal of overtaking the capitalist West economically within a few years.

Space travel was an important, prestigious field in which the system competition took place . The Soviet Union opened the competition in 1957 with the first Sputnik satellite , and was also ahead of the game in 1961 with the first manned space flight ( Yuri Gagarin ) and the first soft unmanned moon landing. In 1969 the USA won the race for the first manned moon landing , which began in 1961 . The planned Soviet manned lunar program failed. Then the USSR built the first Salyut space station (1971) and the first permanently manned Mir space station , and landed on Mars and Venus for the first time. The attempt to build a copy of the American space shuttle failed. There was only one unmanned launch of the space shuttle called Buran .

Development policy was another field, especially in the 1970s. The Soviet Union and Cuba endeavored to win states in Latin America and especially in Africa (e.g. Egypt, Zambia, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique), and the USA supported their opponents, often together with South Africa and Israel ; this resulted in so-called proxy wars in Africa .

Furthermore, the sporting success, especially between West and East Germany, became an important part of this competition. The second Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 for the GDR were a defining factor in this. In the Eastern Bloc in particular, every means was tried to generate sporting success. According to contemporary witnesses, there was no shrinking from doping in order to outdo the "system enemy" and thereby humiliate them.