Philadelphia faced disabled subways and trains on
the Monday following Cold Sunday. The death toll
rose, as over 280 deaths were attributed to the cold
conditions between January 9 and 19. Dozens of vic-
tims in unheated homes succumbed to hypothermia
(low body temperature) or heart attack. In all, the
cold wave of the first two weeks of January set some
one hundred low-temperature records.
Impact The cold wave in which Cold Sunday fell
cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Snow-removal
expenses drained city budgets, and families strug-
gled to pay soaring fuel bills. Grocery prices rose in
response to southern crop failures, businesses were
forced to operate on shortened hours, and retail
sales fell. Economists feared that the subzero tem
peratures and continued bad weather would increase
unemployment and inflation, as well as deepen the
recession.
Further Reading
Ludlum, D. M. “Ten Days That Shook the Weather
Record Book.”Weatherwise35 (February, 1982):
50.
“The Numbing of America.”Time, January 25, 1982,
12-16.
Wagner, A. James. “Weather and Circulation of Janu-
ary 1982: A Stormy Month with Two Record Cold
Waves.”Monthly Weather Review110, no. 4 (April,
1982): 310-317.
Margaret A. Koger
See also Agriculture in the United States; Business
and the economy in the United States; Inflation in
the United States; Natural disasters; Unemployment
in the United States.
Cold War
Definition Period of tension and competition
between two superpowers—the United States
and the Soviet Union—lasting from 1945 to
1991
The Cold War defined U.S. foreign policy during the presi-
dency of Ronald Reagan, who famously referred to the So-
viet Union as an “evil empire.” As a result, the threat of
nuclear annihilation haunted the American popular imag-
ination throughout the 1980’s. At the end of the decade,
however, the Cold War came to an end, as the Soviets insti-
tuted liberal reforms and the Berlin Wall was torn down. At
the beginning of the 1990’s, the so-called evil empire col-
lapsed, and Russia and its former republics and satellite
nations embarked on a project of rebuilding and transform-
ing their governments.
The 1980’s began only a week after the Soviet
Union’s invasion of Afghanistan on December 25,- The decade ended only three days after the
end of communism in Czechoslovakia on December
29, 1989, capped an autumn defined by the collapse
of communist regimes across Central Europe. In be-
tween, three American presidents governed during
a decade that witnessed, first, a return of competitive
and confrontational politics reminiscent of the worst
days of the Cold War and, then, an abrupt about-face
toward superpower cooperation, even in highly sen-
sitive areas.
Afghanistan, Carter, and the Cold War By 1980, the
Cold War had passed through several distinct stages.
Born out of a series of Soviet aggressive maneuvers
and U.S. responses to them during the 1945-1947
period, the Cold War had crystallized with the Amer-
ican decision in March of 1947 to make the contain-
ment of communism the anchor of its postwar for-
eign policy. There followed a fifteen-year period
of U.S.-Soviet competition and increasingly global,
confrontational politics that ended only when the
Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962 brought the
two superpowers to the brink of thermonuclear war.
A mutual desire to avert future confrontations led to
a shift in U.S.-Soviet relations in the 1960’s. Pre-1962
confrontation politics gave way to a six-year interim
period, during which both superpowers sought to
minimize the danger of an accidental nuclear war,
even while continuing to pursue their competition
with one another for international influence. This
approach was augmented in 1969 by President Rich-
ard M. Nixon and his national security adviser,
Henry Kissinger. The Nixon administration made a
concerted effort to achieve a détente, or relaxing of
tensions, first with the Soviet Union and later with
China.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan put an official
end to the détente era. President Jimmy Carter had
criticized the détente policy as too one-sided when
campaigning in 1976, on the grounds that Moscow
had often exploited the United States’ desire for
better relations to advance its self-interest. After his
election, though, Carter had continued the policy,
The Eighties in America Cold War 223