Origins of the Cold War

• The Cold War was a period of political, economic and cultural confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, together with their respective allies.
• The Cold War process occurred between the end of World War II (1945) and the fall of the Soviet Union (1991).
• It was called the Cold War because the powers did not star in war clashes directly, although they were involved in subsidiary wars in strategic territories.
• The countries involved were:
  • The members of NATO, led by the United States (with Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom).
  • The members of the Eastern Block, through the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union (with Eastern European countries, such as Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, German Democratic Republic and Romania).

Background of the Cold War

The most important conference had been held before the end of the war, in February 1945, in the city of Yalta. In it, the leaders Churchill (United Kingdom), Roosevelt (USA) and Stalin (USSR) reached an agreement on the friction points that separated them with respect to the future of Europe after the war.

Among other issues, at the Yalta conference it was established that:

• Germany would be divided into four occupancy zones between the US, France, the United Kingdom and the USSR.
• Poland would be “displaced west.” It would give in the eastern territories that were under Soviet domain (by the Pact of German-Sovistic Non-aggression of 1939) and, in return, it would gain German territories.
• A new United Nations organization would be created, in which the winning powers would have a fundamental role in maintaining future peace.
• The winning powers committed to ensure that the reconstruction of European states after the war would be through the constitution of democratic governments that represent all the non -fascist elements of each nation, elected through free elections.

These issues were key in increasing posterior tensions that led to the cold war. Once the war was over, the development of events in the different places in Europe led to the increase in competition for the influence and control of the great powers.

Common interests of powers

Roosevelt had dreamed of a world in which the two superpowers that arose from the war, the US and the USSR, could collaborate despite representing so different economic, political and ideological systems.

Stalin needed the cooperation of the other great powers to rebuild his country and had American collaboration for German repairs.

In addition, the general spirit of European peoples was of a deep desire for renewal and social justice. In these years, the different socialist or workers movements obtained electoral triumphs in different European countries. For example, in the United Kingdom the Labor Party won, in France and Italy the communists obtained more than 25 % of the votes and in Czechoslovakia, the left forces reached 38 % in the elections.

For a moment it was thought that the collaboration between the capitalist and communist superpowers was possible. The best example was Czechoslovakia: after the 1946 elections, the President of the Republic, Edvard Benes, representative of the European liberal and democratic tradition, formed a national union government in which one third of the ministers were communists.

The victorious powers also maintained for a short time various common actions: Nüremberg's judgments, who judged and condemned the high Nazi dignitaries accused of crimes against humanity or the peace treaties of Paris signed in 1947 with the former allies of Germany and Italy are examples of this.

1946: The growing confrontation

The rarefied atmosphere that had already begun to breathe at the Potsdam conference ended up emerging clearly in 1946.

In January there was a first encounter in the UN, when the Iranian delegation protested by the prolongation of the Soviet occupation of its northern provinces, which violated an agreement signed by the allies during the war. The hard American reaction got the USSR to retire within a few months.

In February, in addition to discovering a network of Soviet spies in Canada, Stalin pronounced a hard speech in Moscow in which he did not hesitate to affirm that capitalism and communism were “incompatible” and that the USSR had to prepare for a period of rearmament .

Two weeks later, George Kennan, an expert in Soviet affairs of the American State Department, sent a telegram to Washington. This sixteen pages telegram contained a devastating analysis: the Soviet Union was an irrevocably hostile state for the West, and would continue with its expansionist policy.

On March 5, 1946, Churchill visited the USA and pronounced a famous speech at the University of Fulton, in the state of Missouri. The British politician consecrated the expression “steel curtain” to refer to the border that separated Europe dominated by the Soviet army from the rest.

As a replica to Kennan's telegram, the Soviet ambassador to Washington, Nikolai Novikov, also sent a long telegram to Moscow in September. In him he claimed that the US sought to dominate the world and was preparing a war for it. The telegrams of diplomatic envoys were a good proof of the growing deterioration of relations between the former allies.

The year 1946 was the end of understanding among the allies. Although Western communist parties still participated in coalition cabinets in countries such as France and as Italy, two bloody civil wars faced communists and conservatives in Greece and China, and the tension between Western and Soviet occupation administrations in Germany was growing.

1947: The year of rupture

The year 1947 marks the final end of the former Alliance. The reconstruction in Europe had not yet begun. Hunger and social discontent caused distrust between former allies.

While the western countries distrusted from Soviet expansionism in the areas where the Red Army had settled, the Soviets complained that the Westerners did not send the corresponding part of the repairs that should be extracted in their occupancy areas, and this made it difficult to recover a ruined USSR.

The year began with a clear Soviet violation of Yalta's agreements regarding Poland. At the Yalta conference, the commitment to guarantee free elections in European countries, without the intervention of external political forces, had been established. However, the USSR intervened in the elections that were held in January, in an atmosphere of lack of freedom and arbitrariness that allowed the triumph of communist candidates.

The Truman doctrine

In February 1947 an alarming note of the British government arrived in Washington. It was reported that London was unable to continue supporting the conservative government of Athens in his fight against Greek communist guerrillas. The note also indicated that Great Britain was unable to continue financially helping Turkey.

The US administration reacted quickly. In a speech delivered on March 12 before Congress, President Harry S. Truman demanded the approval of an aid of 400 million dollars for Greece and Türkiye .

In this speech, the president stated what Truman doctrine came to be called: United States announced his intention to help any government in front of the communist threat. Tuman proclaimed his country's will to apply a policy of “containment of communism.”

The Marshall Plan

The second measure adopted in the US. To contain communism it was necessary to create economic conditions that prevent its expansion. On June 5, 1947, the US Secretary of State, George Marshall, announced the European recovery program (European Recovery Program), popularly known as the Marshall Plan.

It was a massive economic aid program to Europe. Although the plan clearly served the diplomatic and geostrategic interests of US.

Stalin's refusal that the countries of his orbit accept the aid made the Marshall plan divide Europe into two:

• Western Europe, which in a few years began rapid economic growth.
• Eastern Europe, influenced by the USSR and with great development difficulties.

Among the exceptions of this scenario was Spain, which Washington denied his help for the fascist character of the Franco dictatorial regime and his collaboration with the axis powers.

The Soviet answer

The USSR reacted in September 1947 with the creation of the Kominform (Information Office of Communist and Workers' Parties), which sought to coordinate and harmonize the policies of European communist parties.

In his constitutive meeting, the Soviet representative, Andrei Jdanov, leader of the Kominform, proclaimed that the world had divided into two blocks and that the countries of the “anti -fascist and democratic field” (that is, the USSR and its allies) had to follow the leadership of Moscow faithfully.

In just two years, the rupture had been consummated. From now on, world international relations were determined by the confrontation between the two superpowers arising from the World War.

Who was George F. Kennan?

George F. Kennan was an American diplomatic politician who had a fundamental role in the growth of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that led to the Cold War. In that context, He was one of the main promoters of the “containment policy” that the United States began against the expansion of communism.

Kennan was born in Wisconsin in 1904. He studied law and entered the American diplomatic service in 1925. In the following years he worked in Switzerland, Germany, Estonia, Latvia and other countries with which the United States had no diplomatic relations. In 1933, The North American Government recognized the government of the Soviet Union and Kennan was sent to the Moscow Embassy, ​​where he remained until 1937.

At the end of World War II, in 1944, he was sent again to Moscow as the senior counselor of Ambassador Averell Harriman. From there, two years later, Kennan sent his famous telegram in which he warned that Soviet politics was based on the permanent hostility towards the West. This telegram confirmed the convictions of the Washington administration and led to the concretion of the so -called “Truman doctrine.”

In 1947, under the pseudonym Mr. X, he published in the magazine Foreign Affairs An important article entitled “The sources of Soviet behavior” in which the telegram analysis basically repeated and requested a “patient but firm and vigilant containment.”

Despite having collaborated decisively in the creation of the containment policy (“Contament“) and collaborate in the Marshall Plan, Kennan disagreed with the Truman administration tendency to emphasize military measures as the basis of containment and opposed the creation of NATO. Herein, He maintained critical positions and opposed the Vietnam War and the Nuclear Armament Carrera .

Kennan's telegram (1946)

Among the main events of the growth of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, is what is known as the “Kennan Telegram.” In February 1946, two weeks later of a speech by Stalin, A long sixteen pages telegram was sent to Washington from the American embassy in Moscow . He had been written by George Kennan, the main expert in Soviet affairs of the State Department.

According to Kennan, the USSR, driven by the traditional feeling of insecurity of Russia and its fiercely anti-capitalist Marxist-Leninist vision, was irremediably hostile to the West. The Soviet regime was a brutal dictatorship (“A police regime par excellence, lighting in the dark world of Tsarist intrigue and accustomed to thinking essentially in terms of power policy”).

Moscow needed foreign enemies to justify its brutal government. Therefore, Kennan warned that the Soviet government would try to continue its expansionist policy towards Western Europe, putting the security of the United States in serious danger. Uu. Kennan did not propose concrete policies, but pointed out that the Soviet government was “little influential due to the logic of reason (…), but very sensitive to the logic of force.” The telegram concluded by pointing out that despite the danger of the malevolent character of the communist dictatorship, The USSR was still weaker than the West who, if he maintained his “cohesion, firmness and vigor”, would be able to influence the behavior of the Moscow government.

Kennan telegram

February 9, 1946

“Soviet policy has always been oriented towards a ultimate end that is the world revolution and the domination of the world by the communists. Soviet policy has never changed in this regard and, therefore, it is possible to anticipate that it will not change in the future (…).

The vituperations of state men and the Soviet press against imperialism, aggression, the initiation of war, interference in internal affairs and all the pretended tentatives of domination of the world, are so faithful reflection of the customs, procedures and purposes of the Soviet Union that sometimes we wonder why Moscow has so much effort to calling attention to it.

The Soviet tactics has often been modified in the course of the last twenty years, but the more the statements and policy of the USSR are studied, the more we realize to what extent the basic principles of Leninism-Stalinism are intangible and to what extent they are opposed to the objectives, desires and ways of Western democracy. It will be warned when reading the statements made for two decades by the bosses and the spokesmen of the regime in the meetings of the party that there is no solution of continuity in Soviet thought, and the slogan that is always maintained is: the fundamental hostility to Western democracy, to capitalism, liberalism, to social democracy and all groups and elements that are not completely subjected to Kremlin.

This immutable purpose was underlined by Stalin in the speech he delivered in 1927 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the revolution. The Soviet Union, he said, should become “the future amalgam prototype of workers in all countries in a single world economy.”

In 1927, Stalin also declared an American workers' delegation: «In the course of the future development of the international revolution, two world centers will be formed: the Socialist Center, which will attract all countries that gravitate around socialism, and the capitalist center, which will attract all countries that gravitate around capitalism. The struggle between these two centers for the conquest of the world economy will decide the fate of capitalism and socialism throughout the world »(…)

At the end of World War II, the Soviet Government was at a crossroads. Not only the Soviet Union had acquired respect and not only fear as a power, but also the legitimacy of its regime was accepted. Almost everywhere in the world he was willing to give evidence of all the good possible will towards her. The Soviet Union could have continued to live in peace satisfied with the conquests and the victories achieved during the war and of which he owed much to his recognized and confident allies. If I had wanted to show a spirit of cooperation acting honestly in the international game, these benefits would not have been inferior to those who had obtained ultimately and would have achieved them with much more security in a relatively calm and peaceful world.“

References

• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia (2023). “George F. Kennan”. Britannica Encyclopedia https://www.britannica.com/
• Hobsbawn, Ex (1998). The cold war. 20th century history. Criticism.
• McMahon, R. (2009). The cold war. A brief introduction. Alliance.
• Tucker, SC, & Roberts, PM (2007). The Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND MILITARY HISTORY, 5 VOLUME SET. ABC-Clio.