Origins of the Cold War
Origins of the Cold WarOrigins of the Cold War
The Cold War can be summed up as a lengthy period of high tension and rivalry between the two world dominating superpowers, the USA and USSR, although which never involved direct conflict between the forces of the two powers. Starting around 1950, the Cold War kept all mankind and society on the brink of mass destruction for the best part of half a century, ending finally in 1990 with the collapse of the USSR as an empire and global superpower. The origins of the Cold War itself stem mainly from the end of the Second World War, when the two superpowers emerged victorious from the ashes of Europe and both looked to seize the advantage in gaining control in Europe. When the atomic bomb and the advent of long-range military technologies greatly increased the chance of hostilities between the two states, the fact that they occupied opposite sides of the globe became less of a barrier to potential conflict. The origins of the friction and disharmony between the two states, which served as a prelude to the Cold War disunity, can be traced back to the First World War. The War, the Russian revolution and the Russian civil war brought the armies of the two powers together for the first time, and paved the way for a continuing struggle for mutual survival, influence and dominance.
The fundamental cause of the tension between America and Russia was the conflict of ideologies and incompatibilities between the two massively different societies - communism and capitalism. Therefore, perhaps the best place to start looking for the origins of the Cold War is the dawn of communism in Russia in 1917. The atrocities and mass killings by the Red Army in the Russian civil war in the period 1917 - 1921 paved the way for the first clash between the communist society and the West. It came in the form of armed intervention by the allied states of the West, including America, who landed at Vladivostock and attempted to fight back the advancing Reds. The battle was brief, yet it was one of the first events to demonstrate the growing disharmony between Russia and the West. Throughout the history of the Cold War and the pre Cold War rivalry, the general policy of 'containment' of communism by the West and specifically America remained largely unchanged. This again supports the idea that the communist revolution can be marked as the very first of Cold War origins.
The most lasting and important effect Western intervention had on Russia had been the impression of the West left in the minds of the Russian people and their leaders. The Russians had just been through a terrifyingly costly war with Germany, followed by a disruptive revolution and a civil war in which millions upon millions had died from famine, disease, or fighting for the causes of the Whites or Reds. The West had intervened to crush the...
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