Cold War

Cold War

Ministry of education, science and culture

High College of English

Graduation Paper

on theme:

U.S. - Soviet relations.

Student: Pavlunina I.V.

Supervisor: Kolpakov A. V.

Bishkek 2000

Contents.

Introduction. 3

Chapter 1: The Historical Background of Cold War. 5

1.1 The Historical Context. 5

1.2 Causes and Interpretations. 10

Chapter 2: The Cold War Chronology. 17

2.1 The War Years. 17

2.2 The Truman Doctrine. 25

2.3 The Marshall Plan. 34

Chapter 3: The Role of Cold War in American History and Diplomacy. 37

3.1 Declaration of the Cold War. 37

3.2 Сold War Issues. 40

Conclusion. 49

Glossary. 50

The reference list.

51

Introduction.

This graduation paper is about U.S. - Soviet relations in Cold War

period. Our purpose is to find out the causes of this war, positions of the

countries which took part in it. We also will discuss the main Cold War's

events.

The Cold War was characterized by mutual distrust, suspicion and

misunderstanding by both the United States and Soviet Union, and their

allies. At times, these conditions increased the likelihood of the third

world war. The United States accused the USSR of seeking to expand

Communism throughout the world. The Soviets, meanwhile, charged the United

States with practicing imperialism and with attempting to stop

revolutionary activity in other countries. Each block's vision of the world

contributed to East-West tension. The United States wanted a world of

independent nations based on democratic principles. The Soviet Union,

however, tried control areas it considered vital to its national interest,

including much of Eastern Europe.

Through the Cold War did not begin until the end of World War II, in

1945, U.S.-Soviet relations had been strained since 1917. In that year, a

revolution in Russia established a Communist dictatorship there. During the

1920's and 1930's, the Soviets called for world revolution and the

destruction of capitalism, the economic system of United States. The United

States did not grant diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union until 1933.

In 1941, during World War II, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The

Soviet Union then joined the Western Allies in fighting Germany. For a time

early in 1945, it seemed possible that a lasting friendship might develop

between the United States and Soviet Union based on their wartime

cooperation. However, major differences continued to exist between the two,

particularly with regard to Eastern Europe. As a result of these

differences, the United States adopted a "get tough" policy toward the

Soviet Union after the war ended. The Soviets responded by accusing the

United States and the other capitalist allies of the West of seeking to

encircle the Soviet Union so they could eventually overthrow its Communist

form of government.

The subject of Cold War interests American historicans and journalists

as well as Russian ones. In particular, famous journalist Henryh Borovik

fraces this topic in his book. He analyzes the events of Cold War from the

point of view of modern Russian man. With appearing of democracy and

freedom of speech we could free ourselves from past stereotype in

perception of Cold War's events as well as America as a whole, we also

learnt something new about American people's real life and personality. A

new developing stage of relations with the United States has begun with the

collapse of the Soviet Union on independent states. And in order to direct

these relations in the right way it is necessary to study events of Cold

War very carefully and try to avoid past mistakes. Therefore this subject

is so much popular in our days.

This graduation paper consist of three chapters. The first chapter

maintain the historical documents which comment the origins of the Cold

War.

The second chapter maintain information about the most popular Cold

War's events.

The third chapter analyze the role of Cold War in World policy and

diplomacy. The chapter also adduce the Cold War issues.

Chapter 1: The Historical Background of Cold War.

1.1 The Historical Context.

The animosity of postwar Soviet-American relations drew on a deep

reservoir of mutual distrust. Soviet suspicion of the United States went

back to America's hostile reaction to the Bolshevik revolution itself. At

the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson had sent more than ten

thousand American soldiers as part of an expeditionary allied force to

overthrow the new Soviet regime by force. When that venture failed, the

United States nevertheless withheld its recognition of the Soviet

government. Back in the United States, meanwhile, the fear of Marxist

radicalism reached an hysterical pitch with the Red Scare of 1919-20.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered government agents to arrest

3,000 purported members of the Communist party, and then attempted to

deport them. American attitudes toward the seemed encapsulated in the

comments of one minister who called for the removal of communists in "ships

of stone with sails of lead, with the wrath of God for a breeze and with

hell for their first port."

American attitudes toward the Soviet Union, in turn, reflected profound

concern about Soviet violation of human rights, democratic procedures, and

international rules of civility. With brutal force, Soviet leaders had

imposed from above a revolution of agricultural collectivization and

industrialization. Millions had died as a consequence of forced removal

from their lands. Anyone who protested was killed or sent to one of the

hundreds of prison camps which, in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's words,

stretched across the Soviet Union like a giant archipelago. What kind of

people were these, one relative of a prisoner asked, "who first decreed and

then carried out this mass destruction of their own kind?" Furthermore,

Soviet foreign policy seemed committed to the spread of revolution to other

countries, with international coordination of subversive activities placed

in the hands of the Comintern. It was difficult to imagine two more

different societies.

For a brief period after the United States granted diplomatic

recognition to the Soviet Union in 1933, a new spirit of cooperation

prevailed. But by the end of the 1930s suspicion and alienation had once

again become dominant. From a Soviet perspective, the United States seemed

unwilling to join collectively to oppose the Japanese and German menace. On

two occasions, the United States had refused to act in concert against Nazi

Germany. When Britain and France agreed at Munich to appease Adolph Hitler,

the Soviets gave up on any possibility of allied action against Germany and

talked of a capitalist effort to encircle and destroy the Soviet regime.

Yet from a Western perspective, there seemed little basis for

distinguishing between Soviet tyranny and Nazi totalitarianism. Between

1936 and 1938 Stalin engaged in his own holocaust, sending up to 6 million

Soviet citizens to their deaths in massive purge trials. Stalin "saw

enemies everywhere," his daughter later recalled, and with a vengeance

frightening in its irrationality, sought to destroy them. It was an "orgy

of terror," one historian said. Diplomats saw high officials tapped on the

shoulder in public places, removed from circulation, and then executed.

Foreigners were subject to constant surveillance. It was as if, George

Kennan noted, outsiders were representatives of "the devil, evil and

dangerous, and to be shunned."

On the basis of such experience, many Westerners concluded that Hitler

and Stalin were two of a kind, each reflecting a blood-thirsty obsession

with power no matter what the cost to human decency. "Nations, like

individuals," Kennan said in 1938, "are largely the products of their

environment." As Kennan perceived it, the Soviet personality was neurotic,

conspiratorial, and untrustworthy. Such impressions were only reinforced

when Stalin suddenly announced a nonaggression treaty with Hitler in August

1939, and later that year invaded the small, neutral state of Finland. It

seemed that Stalin and Hitler deserved each other. Hence, the reluctance of

some to change their attitudes toward the Soviet Union when suddenly, in

June 1941, Germany invaded Russia and Stalin became "Uncle Joe."

Compounding the problem of historical distrust was the different way in

which the two nations viewed foreign policy. Ever since John Winthrop had

spoken of Boston in 1630 as "a city upon a hill" that would serve as a

beacon for the world, Americans had tended to see themselves as a chosen

people with a distinctive mission to impart their faith and values to the

rest of humankind. Although all countries attempt to put the best face

possible on their military and diplomatic actions, Americans have seemed

more committed than most to describing their involvement in the world as

pure and altruistic. Hence, even ventures like the Mexican War of 1846 - 48

- clearly provoked by the United States in an effort to secure huge land

masses - were defended publicly as the fulfillment of a divine mission to

extend American democracy to those deprived of it.

Reliance on the rhetoric of moralism was never more present than during

America's involvement in World War I. Despite its official posture of

neutrality, the United States had a vested interest in the victory of

England and France over Germany. America's own military security, her trade

lines with England and France, economic and political control over Latin

America and South America - all would best be preserved if Germany were

defeated. Moreover, American banks and munition makers had invested

millions of dollars in the allied cause. Nevertheless, the issue of

national self-interest rarely if ever surfaced in any presidential

statement during the war. Instead, U.S. rhetoric presented America's

position as totally idealistic in nature. The United States entered the

war, President Wilson declared, not for reasons of economic self-interest,

but to "make the world safe for democracy." Our purpose was not to restore

a balance of power in Europe, but to fight a war that would "end all wars"

and produce "a peace without victory." Rather than seek a sphere of

influence for American power, the United States instead declared that it

sought to establish a new form of internationalism based on self-

determination for all peoples, freedom of the seas, the end of all economic

barriers between nations, and development of a new international order

based on the principles of democracy.

America's historic reluctance to use arguments of self-interest as a

basis for foreign policy undoubtedly reflected a belief that, in a

democracy, people would not support foreign ventures inconsistent with

their own sense of themselves as a noble and just country. But the

consequences were to limit severely the flexibility necessary to a

multifaceted and effective diplomacy, and to force national leaders to

invoke moral - even religious - idealism as a basis for actions that might

well fall short of the expectations generated by moralistic visions.

The Soviet Union, by contrast, operated with few such constraints.

Although Soviet pronouncements on foreign policy tediously invoked the

rhetoric of capitalist imperialism, abstract principles meant far less than

national self-interest in arriving at foreign policy positions. Every

action that the Soviet Union had taken since the Bolshevik revolution, from

the peace treaty with the Kaiser to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact and Russian

occupation of the Baltic states reflected this policy of self-interest. As

Stalin told British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden during the war, "a

declaration I regard as algebra ... I prefer practical arithmetic." Or, as

the Japanese ambassador to Moscow later said, "the Soviet authorities are

extremely realistic and it is most difficult to persuade them with abstract

arguments." Clearly, both the United States and the Soviet Union saw

foreign policy as involving a combination of self-interest and ideological

principle. Yet the history of the two countries suggested that principle

was far more a consideration in the formulation of American foreign policy,

while self-interest-purely defined-controlled Soviet actions.

The difference became relevant during the 1930s as Franklin Roosevelt

attempted to find some way to move American public opinion back to a spirit

of internationalism. After World War I, Americans had felt betrayed by the

abandonment of Wilsonian principles. Persuaded that the war itself

represented a mischievous conspiracy by munitions makers and bankers to get

America involved, Americans had preferred to opt for isolation and

"normalcy" rather than participate in the ambiguities of what so clearly

appeared to be a corrupt international order. Now, Roosevelt set out to

reverse those perceptions. He understood the dire consequences of Nazi

ambitions for world hegemony. Yet to pose the issue strictly as one of self-

interest offered little chance of success given the depth of America's

revulsion toward internationalism. The task of education was immense. As

time went on, Roosevelt relied more and more on the traditional moral

rhetoric of American values as a means of justifying the international

involvement that he knew must inevitably lead to war. Thus, throughout the

1930s he repeatedly discussed Nazi aggression as a direct threat to the

most cherished American beliefs in freedom of speech, freedom of religion,

and freedom of occupational choice. When German actions corroborated the

president's simple words, the opportunity presented itself for carrying the

nation toward another great crusade on behalf of democracy, freedom, and

peace. Roosevelt wished to avoid the errors of Wilsonian overstatement, but

he understood the necessity of generating moral fervor as a means of moving

the nation toward the intervention he knew to be necessary if both

America's self-interest-and her moral principles-were to be preserved.

The Atlantic Charter represented the embodiment of Roosevelt's quest

for moral justification of American involvement. Presented to the world

after the president and Prime Minister Churchill met off the coast of

Newfoundland in the summer of 1941, the Charter set forth the common goals

that would guide America over the next few years. There would be no secret

commitments, the President said. Britain and America sought no territorial

aggrandizement. They would oppose any violation of the right to self-

government for all peoples. They stood for open trade, free exchange of

ideas, freedom of worship and expression, and the creation of an

international organization to preserve and protect future peace. This would

be a war fought for freedom—freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom

of religion, freedom from the old politics of balance-of-power diplomacy.

Roosevelt deeply believed in those ideals and saw no inconsistency

between the moral principles they represented and American self-interest.

Yet these very commitments threatened to generate misunderstanding and

conflict with the Soviet Union whose own priorities were much more directly

expressed in terms of "practical arithmetic." Russia wanted security. The

Soviet Union sought a sphere of influence over which it could have

unrestricted control. It wished territorial boundaries that would reflect

the concessions won through military conflict. All these objectives-

potentially-ran counter to the Atlantic Charter. Roosevelt himself-never

afraid of inconsistency-often talked the same language. Frequently, he

spoke of guaranteeing the USSR "measures of legitimate security" on

territorial questions, and he envisioned a postwar world in which the "four

policemen"-the superpowers-would manage the world.

But Roosevelt also understood that the American public would not accept

the public embrace of such positions. A rationale of narrow self-interest

was not acceptable, especially if that self-interest led to abandoning the

ideals of the Atlantic Charter. In short, the different ways in which the

Soviet Union and the United States articulated their objectives for the

war—and formulated their foreign policy—threatened to compromise the

prospect for long-term cooperation. The language of universalism and the

language of balance-of-power politics were incompatible, at least in

theory. Thus, the United States and the Soviet Union entered the war

burdened not only by their deep mistrust of each other's motivations and

systems of government, but also by a significantly different emphasis on

what should constitute the major rationale for fighting the war.

1.2 Causes and Interpretations.

Any historian who studies the Cold War must come to grips with a

series of questions, which, even if unanswerable in a definitive fashion,

nevertheless compel examination. Was the Cold War inevitable? If not, how

could it have been avoided? What role did personalities play? Were there

points at which different courses of action might have been followed? What

economic factors were central? What ideological causes? Which historical

forces? At what juncture did alternative possibilities become invalid? When

was the die cast? Above all, what were the primary reasons for defining the

world in such a polarized and ideological framework?

The simplest and easiest response is to conclude that Soviet-American

confrontation was so deeply rooted in differences of values, economic

systems, or historical experiences that only extraordinary action— by

individuals or groups—could have prevented the conflict. One version of

the inevitability hypothesis would argue that the Soviet Union, given its

commitment to the ideology of communism, was dedicated to worldwide

revolution and would use any and every means possible to promote the

demise of the West. According to this view—based in large part on the

rhetoric of Stalin and Lenin—world revolution constituted the sole

priority of Soviet policy. Even the appearance of accommodation was a

Soviet design to soften up capitalist states for eventual confrontation.

As defined, admittedly in oversimplified fashion, by George Kennan in his

famous 1947 article on containment, Russian diplomacy "moves along the

prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile, wound up and headed in

a given direction, stopping only when it meets some unanswerable force."

Soviet subservience to a universal, religious creed ruled out even the

possibility of mutual concessions, since even temporary accommodation

would be used by the Russians as part of their grand scheme to secure

world domination.

A second version of the same hypothesis—argued by some American

revisionist historians—contends that the endless demands of capitalism for

new markets propelled the United States into a course of intervention and

imperialism. According to this argument, a capitalist society can survive

only by opening new areas for exploitation. Without the development of

multinational corporations, strong ties with German capitalists, and free

trade across national boundaries, America would revert to the depression

of the prewar years. Hence, an aggressive internationalism became the only

means through which the ruling class of the United States could retain

hegemony. In support of this argument, historians point to the number of

American policymakers who explicitly articulated an economic motivation

for U.S. foreign policy. "We cannot expect domestic prosperity under our

system," Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson said, "without a

constantly expanding trade with other nations." Echoing the same theme,

the State Department's William Clayton declared: "We need markets—big

markets—around the world in which to buy and sell. . . . We've got to

export three times as much as we exported just before the war if we want

to keep our industry running somewhere near capacity." According to this

argument, economic necessity motivated the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall

Plan, and the vigorous efforts of U.S. policymakers to open up Eastern

Europe for trade and investment. Within such a frame of reference, it was

the capitalist economic system—not Soviet commitment to world

revolution—that made the Cold War unavoidable.

Still a third version of the inevitability hypothesis—partly based on

the first two—would insist that historical differences between the two

superpowers and their systems of government made any efforts toward postwar

cooperation almost impossible. Russia had always been deeply suspicious of

the West, and under Stalin that suspicion had escalated into paranoia, with

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