COLD WAR: ITS ORIGINS AND INEVITABILITY 1945-1947

This essay analyzes the relative positions of the United States and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Second World War and discusses the origins of the Cold War, including whether its coming was inevitable. A power vacuum was created in the center of Europe and other areas on the periphery of the Soviet Union by the defeat of the Axis. The methods used by the Soviets to pursue their interests provoked vigorous defensive countermeasures by the United States and its allies. No other response from the West could have been realistically anticipated so long as the Soviet Union remained under the control of Josef Stalin.

According to La Feber, "the Cold War developed on a foundation of a half century of Russian-American distrust and apprehension" (6). Relations between the West and Russia were interrupted and distrust between the two blocs was sown by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Russia's departure from the First World War, the repudiation of its war debts, communist subversive activities in Europe and Allied, including American, half-hearted military intervention in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1921. The antagonism between Russia and the West was somewhat muted during the early interwar period as Stalin concentrated on building socialism in Russia. It flared up again in the late 1930s after the West and the Soviet Union failed to form an effect alliance against Hitlerism and reached its nadir

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delivered in early March 1946 and which Chace says "brought the crisis to an end by encouraging Stalin to work out a deal with the Iranians" (144). Deciphering Soviet Intentions A number of factors contributed to the hardening of the American position vis-a-vis the Soviets in 1946. One was a speech given by Stalin to the Supreme Soviet on February 9. It curiously forecast further antagonisms within the capitalist world, which might lead to war within it, but also called for renewed and enormous sacrifices by the Russian people and continued emphasis on industry to the detriment of consumer goods (La Feber 30). American Supreme Court Justice William Douglas called it "the Declaration of World War III" (La Feber 30). On February 22 Kennan sent his Long Telegram to the State Department from the American Embassy in Moscow which helped reshape American attitudes toward the Soviet Union. In it he warned that the hostile Soviet attitude toward the outside world was a mixture of traditional "Oriental secretiveness and [Bolshevik[ conspiracy" (La Feber 53). Kennan cut the ground out from under Westerners such as Vice President Henry Wallace who argued that Soviet actions could be explained as reactions to Russian feelings of insecurit
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Approximate Word count = 2419
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)