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The American Town Helped by the Soviet Union during the Cold War

How a bridge created a fight for prestige between the USSR and the United States

Calin Aneculaesei
3 min readSep 29, 2021
The Vulcan Suspension Footbridge. Source: bridge by bridgemeister, image compiled by author.

TThe Cold War is one of the most defining events of the 20th century. For many of us who were not born at a time where we could experience this event. Most of us have only gotten a small taste of this bipolarity through the fight the US and China are currently having over who should become the next global hegemon.

This story provides a weird case of political power play during the Cold War unlike ever see. A case where one of the global hegemons got directly involved in the local politics of the other to show the world their power.

A small mining town

Vulcan is a small mining tucked away in the south-western corner of West Virginia. During the 1970s the mining activity of the town was slowing down as the coal deposits within the mine started to run out. Because of this, the town did not receive much attention from the local governments when the mayor asked for funding for local infrastructure.

Due to the town being solely focused on the extraction of coal many services such as schooling were not available in the town itself. This meant that the children of the workers had to go outside of…

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Calin Aneculaesei
Calin Aneculaesei

Written by Calin Aneculaesei

Student of Philosophy, Politics and Economics. History fanatic. Contact: aneculaeseicg@gmail.com

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