Origination of the Cold War

Cold War

The origination of the Cold War cannot be attributed to any specific event in history, instead it developed as a series of chain reactions as a struggle for supremacy. It can be argued that the Cold War was inevitable due to the differences in the capitalist and communist ideologies. It was only the need for self-preservation that had caused the two countries to sink their differences temporarily during the Second World War. Yet many of the tensions that existed in the Cold War can be attributed to Stalin's policy of Soviet expansion. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the role of Stalin (insert pic 1) as a catalyst to the Cold War.

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 spreading communism across the world now that his “one-state” notion had been fulfilled. The western view also saw Stalin as wanting unchallenged personal power strong enough to withstand capitalist encirclement.

The Russians claim, and have always claimed, that Stalin's motives were purely defensive. Stalin's wished to create a buffer zone of Communist states around him to protect Soviet Russia from the capitalist West. In this sense, his moves were not aggressive at all, they were truly defensive moves to protect the Soviet system. His suspicions of Western hostility were not unfounded. The British and U.S. intervention in the Russian Civil War were still fresh in Stalin's memory when he took power. Furthermore, Stalin was bitter because he was not informed of U.S. nuclear capabilities until shortly before the atomic bomb (insert pic 2) was dropped on Hiroshima. Compounding tensions was the fact that Stalin's request that Russia be allowed to participate in the occupation of Japan was denied, even though Russia had declared war on Japan on 8th August (the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 10th August). This fa...

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...nd it was not coincidental that Russian troops in Austria were moved up to the Czech border. Czechoslovakia was the final east-west bridge, and with the fall of it, the ‘iron curtain' was complete.

The final hostile movement of Stalin of importance was the Berlin blockade (insert pic 5) and airlift. When Russia grew dissatisfied with the economic disparity that had developed in Berlin, it responded by closing all road, rail and canal links between West Berlin and West German. The goal was to force western powers from West Berlin by reducing it to the starvation point.

While the blame for the Cold War cannot be placed solely on either country (USA & USSR), Stalin's expansionist policy was clearly an ever-present catalyst in the war. Certainly Truman was not blameless, but the U.S. was not expanding its empire, the Soviet Union was. Whether the expansion was for self-preservation, or whether it was merely imperialistic expansion, is relatively immaterial. What Stalin's actions unarguably did was start a string of chain-reactions within the western powers, and therefore, a good deal of the blame must rest with him.