Introduction to the Cold War
There is a video in the earlier post that will give you a brief introduction of the cold war.
But if you are too lazy to see it, i will give you an even shorter introduction here.
The cold war was a conflict between the Soviet Union, USSR, and the United States of America, USA. The conflict was brought about by many disagreements between these two superpowers. It was a "cold war" because a "hot war"-full-scale war, did not occur. Instead this war was waged over other means like:
1. Economical means
2. Propaganda in the media
3. Fighting over certain issues like the Lublin and London Poles
4. Some, but very few, military confrontations
5. Diplomacy, this caused the "iron curtain"
While many can argue about when the Cold War began, a safe date could be March 12 1947 when the Truman Doctirine was read out. It was a direct confrontation against the USSR read out by Truman, the president of the USA. This can be read here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1947truman.html
There is a video in the earlier post that will give you a brief introduction of the cold war.
But if you are too lazy to see it, i will give you an even shorter introduction here.
The cold war was a conflict between the Soviet Union, USSR, and the United States of America, USA. The conflict was brought about by many disagreements between these two superpowers. It was a "cold war" because a "hot war"-full-scale war, did not occur. Instead this war was waged over other means like:
1. Economical means
2. Propaganda in the media
3. Fighting over certain issues like the Lublin and London Poles
4. Some, but very few, military confrontations
5. Diplomacy, this caused the "iron curtain"
While many can argue about when the Cold War began, a safe date could be March 12 1947 when the Truman Doctirine was read out. It was a direct confrontation against the USSR read out by Truman, the president of the USA. This can be read here: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1947truman.html
Part ONE of THREE of ORIGINS OF COLD WAR
There were many reasons that led to the outbreak of the cold war. There was ideological differences, disagreements and misunderstandings, different leaders and their style of leadership and also superpower rivalry. I would examine all of these causes over the course of a few events i am focussing on.
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The long standing tension between USSR and USA erupted due to many reasons, however earliest known origin would be the 1917 Russian Revolution. The USA had joined the whites against the communists in the Russian Civil War.
They wanted to prevent the Bolsheviks from coming into power as they had differing ideologies from the them. While Americans' capitalism focussed on:
democracy,
human rights,
free will and enterprise,
the Bolsheviks' communism focussed on
making everyone equal and
the state was to be put over human rights.
This was the huge contrast between the two nations ideology.
USA was a country afraid of change and were suspicious of the Bolsheviks' intentions, thinking that they might be attempting a world wide communist take over. Therefore, the USA did not want the rise of communism as this was seen as threathening their system of capitalism and their national security. Thus they took part in the Russian civil war against the Bolsheviks.
Fear of CommunismWhen the Bolsheviks were successful in gaining control of Russia, they formed the Soviet Union or USSR. They were suspiscious and unhappy with the USA as they had attempted to prevent them from taking control of Russia. Therefore relationship between the two nations were not good.
However the cold war did not erupt then as USSR was not seen as a superpower yet and furthermore, facism and nazism were seen as more urgent matters.
As both countries had their points, they saw that the other nation was in the wrong, leading to the start of the long standing misunderstanding between the two countries.
kangraye
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