Relations continued in this distant fashion, and as the US reverted to its policy of isolationism and self-preservation, and officially recognised the Soviet State in 1933 after it was clear Bolshevism neither would be defeated nor would it spread. Tensions began to ease slightly, and far from an emerging cold war ‘a special relationship with the USSR appeared to be in reach’ according to McCauley. With this, there was no ideological crusade, no need to spread their respective political systems; both countries were existing, and to a relative extent cooperating, without active conflict. This was to change with the Kirov murder in 1934; with this event emerged a sinister, threatening mood within Russia, which also transcended its foreign relations. Therefore, in practice, the west was actually in opposition to Stalinist terror, which was certainly not a part of Communist ideology. Although Stalin, unconcerned with traditional Marxism, cared little for a world revolution, he did want to secure territory to guarantee the security of Socialism in One Country. Yet despite Russia’s main aim being security, just like that of America, the lack of communication and heightening mutual suspicion resulted in the US interpreting this with ‘the conviction that the Soviet state was expansionist and aggressive’, according to McCauley.
A conflict between the USA and the USSR was looking increasingly probable, and the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 saw their mutual suspicion develop into animosity, bringing the world a step closer to cold war. As the world prepared for a war with Nazism, Russian foreign minister Litvinov chased an alliance with Britain and France that failed to materialise, not for lack of trying on the Russian side. This was largely due to British and French indifference; in the aftermath of Stalin’s military purges, ‘there seemed little military advantage in an alliance with the USSR’ in the words of McCauley. This was a pragmatic reason, not an ideological one; if ideology was being prioritised, the action that could best preserve democracy and freedom would have been to form an alliance against Hitler, given that Fascism was posing a more active threat during the 1930s. Stalin, desperate for an ally, was also not prioritising ideology; perhaps admiring in Hitler his authoritarian approach and success in militarising Germany, according to Gaddis, he ‘himself had long hoped for some kind of co-operation with Nazi Germany, despite ideological inconsistencies’. Fascism and Communism were polar opposites in the political spectrum; if Stalin was willing to work with these conflicting regimes, he could have readily formed a compromise with democratic countries, and the hostility between the west and USSR at this time needn’t have been ominous.
Although the west and Russia began WWII as enemies, this is no way prompted the inevitability of the cold war that was such by July 1945. From 1940, after Operation Barbarossa saw Nazi forces invade the territory of their supposed Russian allies and indeed dominate the Western Front with the occupation of France, ‘[they were thrown] into positions of desperate dependence on one another’ according to Gaddis, and actually worked together successfully with the combination of Russian men and American materiel. Yet given the extent of their mutual suspicion and animosity, and the stark differences that still remained between the two countries, Gaddis is correct in his conclusion that ‘it was too much to expect a few years of wartime cooperation to sweep all of this away’. Both nations at this time were acutely vulnerable; the USA was deeply distrustful of most people and places, something Sewell justifies with the unanticipated attack on Pearl Harbor and ‘the feeling that this generation of Americans must never be caught unaware again’. The Soviets meanwhile, were land-grabbing their way across Europe in ‘a persistent quest for security through territory’. Although war time cooperation didn’t nullify all that had passed before then, it did increase the good feeling between them, and it didn’t need to make conflict inevitable; it would have been possible even at this stage to return to their pre-war non-obtrusive tradition if not for the individual actions of leaders during peace talks. Gaddis posed the question ‘could they liberate their nations’ futures from a difficult past?’ – the leaders’ actions answered ‘no’.
During the peace talks at Tehran, many compromises were reached over the fate of Germany; the Allies were still united against the enemy and Gaddis asserts that ‘there seemed to be no reason to doubt that a long-term agreement could now be negotiated’. Yet they failed to make any real progress on other issues vital for the development of a post-war world without war; this postponing of major issues, and placating, particularly on the part of Roosevelt with regards to Stalin, was especially dangerous as the Russian leader began to think of the west as acquiescing to him. The delay of D-Day was an especially significant turning point, marking the increase once more in mutual suspicion as Stalin was frustrated with the burden being levied on Russia of fighting Germany all alone, ‘quite without regard to the fact that his own policies had left the British to fight Germany alone for a year, so that they were hardly in a position to comply’ and immediately launch a second front according to Gaddis; this situation clearly illustrates the lack of understanding and communication between the two countries that would prove critical. Stalin’s paranoia increased more and more, as did Russian resentment and suspicion, because although the British may not have been in a position to launch a front independently, a joint effort with America could, although the USA was new to war and also active in the Pacific. Churchill’s plan to attack through the ‘soft underbelly’, the Mediterranean, under the facade of allowing the American troops combat experience whilst simultaneously weakening Germany had the ulterior motives of preserving the British Empire and keeping as much of the Mediterranean as possible away from Stalinist control - Stalin, a supposed ally. It can even be argued that the second front was only opened after the battle of Stalingrad that turned the war around and sparked a Russian advance; on the path to victory, the war-time spirit of cooperation was wearing thin.
Further peace talks at Yalta resulted in crucial misunderstandings and the suppression of issues that increased tension that left the newly emerged superpowers increasingly likely to enter an active conflict. Although both sides still desired security above all else, their notions of what this security entailed seemed incompatible with the miscommunication they encountered. ‘Western democracies sought a form of collective security,’ states Gaddis, ‘not a benefit denied to some in order to provide it to others. Stalin saw things very differently: security came only by intimidating or eliminating potential challenges’, and so set about securing as much territory as possible for Russia in the aftermath of the war; perhaps there were few differences between Stalin’s actions here and those of the British in the Mediterranean. Yet this ‘intimidating and eliminating’ attitude was a Stalinist one, it was not inherent in Communism; the particular ideologies of Capitalism and Communism did not clash in this respect. Stalin simply didn’t understand democracies and the electoral pressures facing his American and British counterparts, stating to an aide “Roosevelt is their military leader and Commander in Chief, who would dare object to him?” He did understand spheres of influence, however; the nature of the Percentages Deal between Stalin and Churchill, agreed in 1944 shortly before Yalta, shows how the former was willing to compromise and as long as Russia was secure. Nevertheless, these deals and talks for peace marked the countries involved holding their own interests as paramount, at the expense of another’s, leaving Russia and the west a step further away from their war-time cooperation and one nearer to a future conflict.
However, the actions of the Russian army in Katyn and Warsaw caused the biggest damage to the prospects of future relations between Communism and Capitalism, making conflict far more likely than cooperation. Although Stalin’s inaction in Warsaw, resulting in thousands of Nazi-inflicted deaths despite Russian camps being a matter of miles away, perhaps to some extent can be comparable to the example set by Britain, first after the 1938 invasion of Czechoslovakia, and then the delay in opening the second front, cannot be justified given the nature of the war at that time, and did nothing to enhance the reputation of Russia in the eyes of the American and British publics. The emergence of the Katyn massacre of tens of thousands Polish military figures marked the resurgence in the fear of Stalinist terror for democracies, and according to Gaddis ‘did more than anything else to exhaust the goodwill the Soviet war effort had accumulated in the west, to raise doubts about future cooperation with London and Washington, and to create deep and abiding fears throughout the rest of Europe’. The little value Stalin placed on human life appalled western voters, and dramatically reduced the chances of the electorate supporting cooperation with Russia after these events, especially in regards to territory. Due to the limited understanding between the countries and the evaporation of any camaraderie, the emergence of a cold war-like conflict seemed inevitable.
The change in players of the negotiations, and most significantly the appearance of Truman at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, undid any progress made during the previous peace talks and left the world in no doubt that future conflict would emerge. Roosevelt’s death and Churchill’s election defeat left Stalin confident in his dominance as the most experienced member of the negotiating team, and immediately clashed with Truman who was of the wholly unconstructive war-time attitude of ‘if we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if we see Russia is winning we should help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible’. Further to this, the development of the atom bomb first being withheld from Russia (futilely, it emerged, as Stalin’s spies had already informed him of its creation) and then used as a levy to prevent the participation in the Pacific war that Russia was prepared for, plainly illustrates the mistrust and lack of communication between the leaders of the USA and USSR and thus their countries, as well as the fact that the spirit of war-time cooperation that had once held the nations together had long since disappeared, giving way instead to a hostile relationship guaranteeing future conflict between the superpowers by July 1945.
By nature covert and surreptitious, there can be no precise date either for the beginning or end of a cold war, but rather an amalgamation of tensions that can be observed as they bring conflict to a head so that furtive actions are not only inevitable but readily occurring. However, as the Potsdam conference didn’t finish until August, and thereby the USA and the USSR were still talking and communicating directly, the cold war could not have begun in July 1945. Further to this, the tension that existed between the big three had not yet spread globally as it should do for a cold war, and neither had proxies been engaged in an active conflict. Stalin and his actions in Poland ‘laid the foundations for a resistance that would grow and not fade in time’ in the words of Gaddis, something exacerbated by Truman and the evaporation of wartime spirit to result in the cold war. Although WWII was vital in allowing the superpowers to emerge, it didn’t cause the inevitability of the cold war; rather, it was their interactions. The origins of the Soviet-American cold war stem from a desire on the part of both sides for security, yet miscommunications and suspicion led the two nations to misconstrue the others intentions; namely, the basis for the conflict was a human misgiving rather than an ideological dichotomy. Despite the possibility for the USA and USSR to co-exist peacefully, in the aftermath of WWII, what occurred instead was the drawing of an iron curtain, the beginning of a space race, the rapid development of two devastatingly strong nuclear arsenals; the cold war, which was, by the end of July 1945, an inevitable fate.
Ciara Lally
05.12.2010