In a Soviet classroom, a little boy is asked to define capitalism.
'The oppression of man by man', he says.
'Good', says the teacher, 'and what is communism?'
The little boy replies: 'The opposite'.
This joke definitely illustrates the polarity of the two economic ideologies and how irreconcilable people thought they were. “Perception is reality,” and although these two ideologies were different, they might have been reconciled. Yet, the perception that these two superpowers were too different to coexist overpowered political thought and eventually became reality. President Truman’s 1949 Inaugural Address also illustrated the conflict in ideologies.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
The events that initiated the cold war also show how these ideologies were ultimately incompatible with each other. By 1945, at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union obtained the Curzon Line as her new boundary line with Poland and also the control of the eastern zone of Germany. As the war was drawing to a close in May 1945, the Soviet Union quickly consolidated her control of Eastern Europe. The Red Army began by influencing the post-war elections. They intimidated the voters and changed the voting lists as they desired. President Roosevelt was friends with Stalin and believed he would keep the promises he made at Yalta to set up freely elected parliamentary governments. United States Policy changed when Roosevelt died and President Harry Truman took over. The new President was a complete contrast to Roosevelt. He did not believe the communists. He thought that the communists would not set up democratic governments in Eastern Europe. He also believed that after the Soviet Union had established her control in Eastern Europe, she would continue to extend her influence into Western Europe. Thus President Truman favored a policy of strong resistance against Russian expansion. The 1947 Truman doctrine showed the Presidents feelings towards communism. It stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling under Soviet control. Truman called upon the U.S. to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.
The ideological differences also provided for other tensions in other forms. For example, there was also an overwhelming American fear of communist attack. President Truman had a strong dislike of Stalin. There was a Russian fear of American Nuclear Weapons and an American refusal to share nuclear secrets. Russia’s actions in the Soviet zone of Germany, provided for more tension
The cause of the war however is still hotly contested, just as the cold war was itself. There are three main schools of thought. The first is the orthodox version. This "orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe Thomas A. Bailey, for example, argued in his 1950 America Faces Russia that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result of Soviet expansionism in the immediate postwar years. Bailey argued Stalin violated promises he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet-dominated regimes on unwilling Eastern European populations, and conspired to spread communism throughout the world. From this view, U.S. officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with the Truman Doctrine, plans to contain communist subversion around the world, and the Marshall Plan.. The second view is the revisionist one. "Revisionist" accounts emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War,. This can bee seen in William Appleman Williams' landmark 1959 volume, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Williams challenged the long-held assumptions of "orthodox" accounts, arguing that Americans had always been an empire-building people, even while American leaders denied it. According to Williams, U.S. policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining capitalism domestically. In order to achieve that objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad, aimed at increasing access to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture. From this perspective, a growing economy domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of U.S. power internationally. Finally, there is the most recent “post-revisionist” view of the outbreak of the cold war. This view can be illustrated by Peter Calvocoressi in his popular book World Politics Since 1945. Calvocoressi believes that it was the conflict in ideologies between these two superpowers that led to this general disdain and mistrust.
In conclusion, the cold war was caused largely due to the conflicting ideologies of Communist Russia and Capitalistic America. These disagreements led to arguments, which led to mistrust, and finally a great uneasy tension that almost boiled over into ultimate annihilation in the form of nuclear warfare. However, as historian Isaac Deutscher writes “It is useless to try to discover who made the first move to break the alliance. It is impossible to trace the first ‘broken promise’.”
