The Cold War: The USSR

The western nations watched the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Bolshevik Dictatorship with anxiety. As the Bolsheviks under Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, withdrawing from WWI, nationalized the means of production, made work compulsory, instituted censorship and conducted mass executions of anti-Communists, the US sent 13,000 troops into Russia, where many of them became involved in the Russian Civil War, fighting against the Red Army.

On the homefront in the United States, the First Red Scare (1919-1920) took place. US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer used the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act to round up people suspected of being Bolsheviks in the Palmer Raids. Franklin Roosevelt described Stalin as a dictator and the Nazi-Soviet Treaty of 1939 and Soviet seizures of territory in Poland, Finland, and Romania contributed to the rising tension between the US and the USSR.

In 1941, after Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Britain and Stalin signed the Anglo-Soviet Agreement, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entry into WWII, the United States was forced to treat the Soviet Union as an ally as well. The wartime conferences continued to demonstrate the aggressive and unreliable character of the Soviets, however.

At Tehran in 1943, Stalin demanded territory in the Baltic as well as other territorial concessions. By 1944, it was clear that the war would end with western and Soviet spheres of influence dividing Europe. The “Percentages Agreement” was made between Stalin and Churchill in Moscow. It related to these spheres of influence; for instance, Churchill suggested that the west should retain about 90% dominance over Greece, but Stalin could have 90% dominance over Romania.

At Yalta in 1945, Stalin  promised to allow free elections in areas that had been occupied by the USSR. When the Potsdam Conference took place, the free elections had not come to pass; there was a puppet government in Poland. Stalin pushed the issue of reparations from Germany; the other leaders agreed that each country could take reparations from the piece of Germany it held.

Pointedly, Truman took the opportunity to inform Stalin of the US’s new atomic capability. At the end of the war, the United Nations was formed on October 24, 1945. The Security Council included five permanent members: France, the UK, the US, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China, each with veto power over resolutions. The makeup of the Security Council proved to be a stumbling block during the Cold War.

The Soviets already had an aggressive espionage program in place, collecting information in the US, Canada, and the UK. In 1945, a Russian diplomat in Canada, Igor Gouzenko, defected and revealed a network of spy activity. The “Gouzenko Affair” is sometimes considered the beginning of the Cold War. Furthermore, the Soviets had stolen plans for aircraft and electronic components from the US, and Klaus Fuchs had transmitted information about the development of atomic weapons to the Soviets.

Truman's advisors warned the president about the danger of the spread of Communism, and the need for aggressive action to counter it. Truman, therefore, adopted the policy of containment, which he expressed in the Truman Doctrine, and implemented the Marshall Plan to support that policy.

The Marshall Plan channeled money to Europe to help it rebuild and revive its economy to stabilize Europe and help deter the spread of communism. The lion’s share of the loans and grants went to the UK, followed by France. As a result of the Marshall Plan, Europe’s economy recovered rapidly.

In January of 1949, Stalin responded with his own plan, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or COMECON. At the same time, Stalin had grown dissatisfied with the way that the other allied nations were administering their portions of Germany. Learning that the French, British, and Americans planned to create a single economic unit, introducing a single currency in their areas of occupation, Stalin cut off the Allied portion of Berlin by blocking all routes of access through East German territory and told the allies that they had no further right to be in Berlin.

This crisis (the Berlin Blockade) led to the Berlin Airlift (June 26, 1948 – May 12, 1949). During these 11 months, the Allies flew food, fuel, medical supplies, clothing, and even toilet paper into Berlin. In April, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded as a military alliance to protect against Soviet aggression. In May, Stalin abandoned the blockade and restored access to Berlin.

At the end of the crisis, West Germany became the German Federal Republic (GFR), while in October, East Germany became the German Democratic Republic or GDR, a Soviet satellite state. By this time, the USSR had successfully completed its first atomic weapon.

On the 3^rd of September, 1949, seismic waves alerted US scientists that the Soviets had exploded a nuclear weapon, and on the 23^rd of September, President Truman announced this development to America. The National Security Council recommended massive increases in military funding, and the arms race was on.

The next main hurdle was the creation of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon far more powerful than the atomic devices of WWII. The US exploded its first hydrogen bomb on Enewetak Atoll in 1952, three days before Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected to be the next President of the United States. Eisenhower’s foreign policy, crafted by his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was called the “New Look.”

This entailed spending more on nuclear armaments and less on other military investments. The CIA was also part of the New Look — it was to be used to destabilize communist regimes. The USSR, too, was concerned with its safety. Under the new Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the Warsaw Pact was formed in 1955 as a Soviet equivalent to NATO.

Khrushchev also introduced the policy of de-Stalinization, under which it was possible to criticize Stalin and his legacy, many political prisoners were released, some of Stalin’s monuments were destroyed, and buildings were re-named. Censorship and repression also declined. This period is referred to as the Khrushchev Thaw.

Brinkmanship describes the aggressive anti-communist policy persued by Eisenhower; the word was first used by Dulles in 1956. He defined brinkmanship as the willingness always to go to the very brink of war. In 1956, an uprising in Hungary was crushed by the USSR and about 2,500 were killed. This was the first time the USSR had used force to maintain power over one of its satellite states.

The USSR achieved a triumph in 1957, launching the first satellite, Sputnik. Sputnik’s launch shocked Americans, and the US government realized how powerful Soviet ICBMs had become. The US redoubled its efforts to develop more powerful rockets. The Suez Crisis (October 1956 – March 1957) placed Eisenhower in a very delicate position. The Egyptians under President Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal, which had previously been occupied by the British. Israel, Britain, and France recaptured the Canal, provoking Khrushchev to threaten nuclear war if they did not withdraw. Eisenhower took middle ground, insisting that the Soviets stay out of the conflict, and threatening Britain, France, and Israel with sanctions if they did not withdraw. The crisis was peacefully resolved.

The US’s reputation was soon to take a fall, however. In May of 1960, a U2 spy plane was shot down over the USSR and its pilot captured. Eisenhower was soon to leave for a summit in Paris. Certain that the pilot must be dead, he directed the US to release a statement saying that the U2 was flying a weather mission and experienced mechanical troubles. Immediately before the summit, Khrushchev triumphantly revealed that the pilot was alive and threw the US lies in Eisenhower’s face.

The existence of West Berlin, deep inside communist East Germany, posed a continuing problem for the communists due to frequent defections by Easterners. In August, 1961, barbed wire was strung around West Berlin, beginning the construction of the Berlin Wall. Also in 1961, the Non-Aligned Movement held its first conference. Members of the movement included Yugoslavia, Egypt, India, Ghana, and Indonesia; these countries belonged to neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact and sought to retain their independence during the Cold War.

In 1959, Fidel Castro had become the ruler of Cuba, and in 1961 he announced that he was a socialist, something he had previously denied. In 1961, too, John F. Kennedy became US President. The Kennedy administration made an ill-fated attempt to overthrow Castro with the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Subsequently, Castro and Khrushchev developed a plan to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was revealed in 1963, the Cuban Missile Crisis ensued.

The Cuban Missile Crisis weakened Khrushchev; Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as premier in 1964. In early 1968, Alexander Dubček, the leader of Czechoslovakia, relaxed repressive restrictions. The “Prague Spring” lasted about seven months, but in August the Soviets occupied Czechoslovakia and about 80 Czechs were killed. In 1968, Brezhnev issued the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” stating that any disruption to communist order in the Eastern Bloc was a threat to all communist states, and the USSR would use its power to stop such disruptions.

In the early 1970s, a surprising development in the Cold War took place: détente. Détente was a period of relaxation of tension in the Cold War. Talks had been taking place between the United States and the USSR concerning the arms race; both countries wanted to establish limits.

The first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) was signed on May 26, 1972 by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev. This meeting and even more this agreement were surprising since both Nixon and Brezhnev had been known for their tough Cold War postures. The agreement placed a halt on increases in delivery systems for nuclear weapons — Submarine-launched missiles and ICBMs — and placed limits on anti-ballistic missiles, which were being developed to intercept ICBMs in flight. This was in accord with the concept of “mutually assured destruction” — the idea that the US and USSR would not start a nuclear war if each side had the capability in that war to annihilate the other and if each side was certain the other side would launch its missiles if attacked.

Talks began to create the SALT II agreement, which placed further limits on other types of weapon systems. Another milestone in the period of détente was the finalization of the Helsinki Accords, which were signed by 35 countries, including the USSR and the United States. The Helsinki Accords recognized the borders of European countries and included agreements regarding human rights and cooperation. The SALT II agreement was signed in June, 1979, by Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter.

However, this treaty was not ratified by the Senate and did not go into effect due to the Soviet interference in Afghanistan. The USSR moved into Afghanistan to support the communist government of the county, which was threatened by rebel groups called mujahideen. In December of 1979, the USSR sent 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The United States sent support to the mujahideen, and the USSR eventually had more than 100,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, yet the mujahideen attacks continued.

In February, 1989, the Soviet troops were finally withdrawn, after over 15,000 Soviet deaths. Throughout the 1980s, the US engaged in high levels of military spending, pushing the USSR to attempt to match or exceed those levels. The US also engaged the Soviet Union in proxy wars, stretching their resources still further. At the same time, the Soviets had internal problems within the Eastern bloc.

In 1980, in Poland, a labor union of shipyard workers formed under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa. The union was called Solidarity. They demanded more freedom and the right to strike. The leader of Poland declared Solidarity illegal, but Solidarity survived as a resistance movement. After the death of Brezhnev, two Soviet premiers held office in quick succession in the period from 1982 to 1985; the first was Yury Andropov, and the second Konstantin Chernenko.

Under Andropov, who was introducing reforms to try to bolster the failing Soviet economy, other leaders including Mikhail Gorbachev began to gain power. On the death of Andropov in 1984, the aged and ill Chernenko took power, holding office until his death in March, 1985, when power passed to Gorbachev. Gorbachev began by introducing the idea of transparency, or glasnost, moving away from the secrecy in which Soviet policy and procedures had formerly been cloaked. Censorship of the press was reduced and criticism of communist policies and officials was permitted.

In 1987, perestroika or restructuring was introduced, allowing more economic independence, the opportunity for profits, and increased trade with foreign countries. Unfortunately, some of these plans backfired. Food prices rose, and inflation soared. Perestroika also involved political reform, such as democratic elections and the establishment of new political parties. Gorbachev also ended the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and committed to cease Soviet interference in Eastern bloc countries.

These changes led to a series of revolutions in 1989 as Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and East Germany toppled their communist governments. In Poland, Solidarity re-emerged and its candidates formed a new government. In Czechoslovakia, protests against the communist government led to a non-violent revolution (the Velvet Revolution) and Václav Havel, a playwright who had become a leader of the protests was elected President.

In Hungary, political parties began to spring up, unions appeared, and freedom of the press re-emerged. In August, the border between Hungary and Austria opened, and East Germans began to travel through Hungary and Austria to West Germany. A new constitution was drafted, and a new “Republic of Hungary” was born. In East Germany, the Berlin Wall fell in November, 1989. Bulgaria began the process of moving toward a new non-Communist government, and in Romania the brutal Ceaușescu regime was overthrown. In the USSR, Gorbachev survived an attempted coup in August 1991 by leaders who wanted to stop the changes that were taking place in the USSR. And, on December 25, 1991, the USSR ceased to exist and Boris Yeltsin became the President of Russia.