The workers of the world had to be “liberated” from bourgeois exploitation. As the principle communist nation of the world, Russia had a duty to spread the revolution begun in 1919 to the rest of Europe. The view of many Marxist scholars was that the proletariat had been brainwashed by the rich, and thus were not capable of instigating a workers’ revolution themselves – therefore Communism had to be introduced by force. Stalin realised that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was a rare opportunity for Russia to act as this vanguard. Perhaps less importantly, though still a significant point in the domination of Eastern Europe, was the desire of Stalin to
In his work, Fleming explained that if the Soviets wanted to attack the united states of America they had done it because they had all the necessary equipment but at that period the nation was more interested in its inner politics than conquering the world. Seeing the Soviet Union as its biggest threat and being afraid of the “Domino” effect, the American government decided to take actions by supporting the rebels in Latin America and countries that were gaining their independence in a hope that these societies will adopt the capitalist ideology. The decisions that the USA made where not always elaborated and in some cases they did more harm than good. Isolating the U.S.S.R from the world politics was
Stalin's foreign policies contributed an enormous amount to the tensions of the Cold War. His aim, to take advantage of the military situation in post-war Europe to strengthen Russian influence, was perceived to be a threat to the Americans. Stalin was highly effective in his goal to gain territory, with victories in Poland, Romania, and Finland. To the western world, this success looked as if it were the beginning of serious Russian aggressions. The western view of the time saw Stalin as doing one of two things: either continuing the expansionist policies of the tsars, or worse, spreading communism across the world now that his one-state notion had been fulfilled.
Russia’s main national interest after setting up other communist republics was to further spread communism. They went about setting up organisations such as Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) and Comecon (Council for Economic Mutual Assistance) to provide economic and military assistance to soviet satellite states. The Warsaw pact was set up in 1955 to provide a combined military force of soviet satellite states. As Eastern Europe unified as communists, Eastern Europe united with the fear of communism. The fear of the spread of communism to Western Europe caused Western European countries to join forces to stop the spread.
The outbreak of the Cold War was triggered by both the USA and the USSR, but I believe that the USA was primarily to blame. This is because of many reasons like the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Aid and other methods put into actions by Truman. The Marshall Aid, also known as the European Recovery Program was the American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1947. The goals of the United States were to rebuild a war-devastated region, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, and make Europe prosperous again.
The United States and the Soviet Union had the most powerful military forces. The Cold War got its name because neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted to openly fight each other and they were afraid of each other’s power. Communism came to the Soviet Union in 1918. The United States didn’t trust the communist. Communism’s goal was to bring down capitalism in any way possible.
Self-determination was a criticism of European imperialism but also an attack on the seizure of power by small armed groups like the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks called the idea of collective security and a world peace keeping organization “a mechanism of world capitalism”. Wilson’s ideas were based on traditional U.S. values of personal and economic freedom (democracy and capitalism). Communism was hostile to capitalist economic development; Marx called it “exploitation”. This posed a threat to the greater freedom of world capitalism as an open market would require the dismantling of trade barriers and spheres of influence.
The Cold War had essentially started as a split between USA and the USSR due to ideological and strategic differences between the two countries. During the course of the Cold War, the official US foreign policy was of containment of communism. This policy fuelled by the fear of communism in USA was designed to prevent further expansion of communism. The policy emerged at a time when Eastern Europe was under the military, and increasing political, control of the Soviet Union, and when Western European countries appeared to be wobbling from their democracies because of socialist agitation and collapsing economies. Containment was a foreign policy introduced at the start of the Cold War by the United States, aimed at stopping the spread of Communism and keeping it 'contained' and isolated within its current borders, otherwise the 'domino effect' would occur, where if one nation became Communist, the surrounding ones would follow.
To his successor Truman and Churchill this seeming promise meant that anyone over a certain age could freely. Stalin clearly had other ideas. He wanted to put what Churchill was to call an “Iron Curtain” around the USSR and that meant each eastern European country that was near to the Soviet border had to have a loyal communist government in power with leaders who would do what Stalin wished. Therefore, elections were never going to be fair. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania all ended up with communist governments and had leaders who looked to Moscow for advice as opposed to the people of the country they governed.
This, however, was seen by the Soviet Union as a form of economic expansion through which the Americans were bringing Eastern European states into their own sphere of influence, and was a direct challenge to their authority. It is possible to argue that the Americans were indeed trying to help struggling states with their growth and that the aims were purely altruistic in nature. However, it must be noted that the Marshall Plan did have strings attached, forcing the countries that it provided aid for to open their markets for American goods and not advancing it to countries who did not do