636Chapter 31
biggest terrorist campaign in postwar European history.
A series of pub bombings in Guildford and Birmingham
shocked British opinion by killing nearly thirty people
in 1974, but London became the favorite IRA target.
Bombs exploded there in law courts and at tourist at-
tractions; later, the IRA would bomb a major depart-
ment store during Christmas shopping, launch a mortar
assault on the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing
Street, attempt to assassinate the prime minister with a
hotel bombing during a party conference, and set off an
enormous explosion in the financial district. The first
five years of public riots, sectarian assaults, vigilante
justice, police and military repression, and terrorist at-
tacks killed more than one thousand people.
Illustration 31.5
Rebellion in the Soviet Bloc.Throughout the cold war, the
Soviet Union faced the problem of discontent in its satellite
states in Eastern Europe. Major uprisings in East Germany in
1953, Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were put
down by force. This photo shows a scene from the Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia: A Soviet tank has
come under attack and crashed into a building in central Prague.