and on the other side “The Western Alliance” such as NATO and similar organizations in other regions of the world, led by the USA.

Both sides got into a techological arms race, and for a while, had strategy of MADD (Mutual Assured Destruction) meaning if one side launches arsenal of weapons, other side will retaliate, and the result will be Nuclear Winter for the whole planet. So you want to look at the SALT disarmament talks, and what passed for Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

You might seek out information that came out at the conclusion of the Cold War, that had previously been secret, either in the west and could now be declassified, or from the FSU. A lot of this is now available from War College archives. Your goal is not to limit yourself to what was known at the time, and to portray how the conflict was seen from both sides, and the nations that wanted to be uninvolved.

For example, Joe McCarthy got painted as a nut case, and the Rosenbergs unfairly treated, but now we know there was a lot going on that had to be covered up due to national security.

Another example … Iran started out with a benign Monarchy, which the west over-threw & replaced with the Shah of Iran, for a variety of regime change reasons, but mainly fueled by the Cold War and capitalist greed (oil). This guy was really evil to his people, which led to eventual overthrow by the Theocracy that now rules there, and hates USA with a vengence, for all the harm done to their people by the US puppet leader the Shah.

In fact you might find it useful to get info on all the regime change activities conducted during the Cold War, because they explain a lot about some of the messes we now find ourselves engaged in.

Some of the major events, or crises during the Cold War may not be known until long after. For example, each war lays seeds for next one. We in the West know that AIDS came from some foul behavior by idiots in Africa, then communicated via combination of unsafe sex and unsafe blood supply. However, the KGB cooked up a powerful disinformation conspiracy theory that AIDS was a product of US weapons labs … a lot of people in the world still believe this. We might not be in a war on terrorism right now, had seeds not been ladi during the Cold War to make people in nations not yet on either side really annoyed with both sides.

Starting with the Marshall Plan at the conclusion of WW II, consider what might have happened had the USA not rebuilt Europe. Consider how the former vanquished nations were treated. Today Japan is a democratic capitalist power house.

There was idiot stuff done by western powers that drove nations into communism. For example, various colonies of Europe, were told, to get their help in WW II … if you help us win, at the end of the war, we will support your independence. Then after WW II victory, most European nations welched on that deal, such as France in Indo China, which meant that when the independence movement needed help, they got it from the communists. It took a while (see Pentagon Papers) before USA leadership understood this.

The Berlin Airlift was one of several major pivot points in the Cold War … a victory for the west.

The Cuban Missile Crisis … we now know that the Russians in Cuba had operational control of the nuclear warheads, so had the timing been a bit different, had US invaded, had Krushchev not blinked, the result might have been a miniature nuclear war in North America.

More Info

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/

http://www.coldwar.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

Lots more via search engines