With World War Two coming to an end however, when there was no common enemy anymore, but suddenly a “power-vacuum” to fill up, the opposing doctrines of both countries became quite clear again. This was firstly the case at the Yalta conference (February 1945). This conference is also sometimes regarded as the establishment of the Cold War, because here for the first time the incompatibility of the American and Russian “ideals” became clear. Now, where Russia and America not simply had to fight a common enemy, and work together militarily, but suddenly also work together politically and economically problems suddenly came up. It seemed as though the underlying conflict had just lain dormant as long as there was a greater problem to distract from it. This meeting of the "Big Three" (Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin) was supposed to find a way of ending the war on terms all victors could agree to, but the difference in opinion between U.S.S.R and U.S, about what was to happen to Europe, overshadowed all agreements. The U.S wanted to enforce their ideas of self-determination and such, while the Russians wanted to secure land for its security.
Here, there can be at least two interpretations of the motives behind the Russian and American policies. It can be said, that the Russian really did, just out of fear of a third war, wanted to protect themselves from the German aggressor, and thus needed to establish these satellite countries. Thus the U.S. assumption, that this was an indication of communisms ambitious expansinism, was merely a misinterpretation of facts. On the contrary, it can also be said that Russia, and with it communism, really did have the intention to spread, seeing the ideal conditions for communism in the weak eastern European countries. Either way, the problem lies within the ideologies, which here have either lead to an act of aggressive expansion, or caused irrational mistrust in the other. From this point on, mistrust had arisen, and the struggle for influence had begun. Both Russia and the U.S now thought they knew, of what to expect from each other, and would oppose everything with great skepticism. After it became clear, that Stalin had not stuck to the agreement at Yalta, not to interfere in the Polish elections, this was another clear message that to the allies, Russia and communism could not be trusted.
At this point, it might seem fairly obvious that the Russians, and communist ideologies were to blame for the Cold War, yet one must consider the following: Russia had been involved in constant conflicts for almost have a century (if this be Revolution or War), of course this leaves marks, and makes a country distrustful. So the Russians were already mistrustful of the Americans ever since their involvement in the Russian revolution. This aversion against the west, and especially the U.S did not exactly decrease with the exclusion of Russia from many World War Two conferences and the late entry of the U.S. in the war. Also seeing as how the Russians had by far the highest amount of casualties, and was also devastated from the war, it seemed only fair that they should receive the biggest share of the reparations, and land. The U.S., entering the war “late” and having only a fraction of the casualties Russia faced, deciding who gets what, must have surely also have been very frustrating to the Russians. Taking this into context, the blame is not to be as easily distributed as might seem evident from the facts up until here.
The next meeting of the “Big Three” after Yalta, was in Potsdam (July-August 1945). This is sometimes referred to as “the bad tempered meeting”, because at this point, positions had clearly been taken by east and west, and this created a lot of tension. Also, this was the first major action of the new American president Harry. S. Truman. The conference also saw the first official” notification of the Russians that the U.S. had successfully tested an Atomic bomb, and were now able (and willing) to make use of it. The main point that this conference resulted in, was that it further confirmed the inability of the Russians to comply with the west. Now that Truman was in power, the Americans did not take this as lightly anymore, and abandoned the appeasing stance toward Russia. After they had dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima (August 6th) they dropped a second bomb, on Nagasaki (August 9th). It is much speculated that this bomb was already a part of Truman’s containment policy, with which he hoped to minimize the spreading of communism. The Americans probably believed that once the Russians were in Japan, they would also want to claim a part of this land, like they had done in Europe. So the dropping of this Atomic Bomb was probably intended to stop the Russians from further advancing. Although this can be rated as (if really so intended) a partial success, since the Russians did not further advance, they were still interested in other countries. By 1947 this “phenomenon”, (known now as the domino effect) that the U.S. feared more and more countries would one by one fall to communism, had reached its peak. Truman wanted to put an end to this, and prevent communism from spreading, so he devise the Truman doctrine. In this doctrine he openly proclaimed the U.S.S.R the enemy, and developed the “Containment” plan. This is considered the official start of the Cold War.
Conclusively, I believe the ideologies of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R where responsible for the outbreak to a big extent. Yet the way that I see it, it was more a matter of the U.S. wanting to “contain” communism, than Russia wanting to spread communism throughout the world. From my perspective, Communism and Capitalism (or Democracy) are not able to co-exist, especially when projected on to such big countries like the U.S. and Russia, conflict is virtually predetermined. This is because their views on economics and politics are too fundamentally different, as to ever being able to accept the other. Thus it would be absurd to assume they did not play any part in the foundation for the “Cold War”. It was the difference in ideologies, that was the driving factor in Russian-American history; the Russian Revolution, the establishment of friendly satellite countries (where friendly meaning communist, and Russia orientated here), the “containment” of communism. Thus, I conclude that the irreconcilable ideologies of Russia and America were responsible to a high degree and without them, the Cold War would most likely not have occurred