Josef Stalin and the Cold War

Almost everyone knows what a monster Adolf Hitler was, but most people do not know that one of the great ally leader of World War II, Joseph Stalin, had committed even greater atrocities than Hitler. Joseph Stalin was a ruthless and yet diligent dictator of the Soviet Union, whose rise to power influenced a multitude of major events in his country’s history. Due to Stalin’s impactful reign, he made the Soviet Union become a global superpower, underwent difficult hardships such as the Great Famine in the Soviet Union, and after his death, caused the Soviet Union to go through a process known as de-Stalinization.

There are many opinions on who started the Cold War, whether it be the USSR’s fault or the United States. With old trust issues rising up again, the next forty years resulted in constant tension and aggression between the two rival powers. But, when it’s time to place the blame for this tedious conflict, it is clear the United States can be blamed, for they were constantly imposing their greater power, and led the USSR to lose their trust due to international acts of aggression from the US. From 1945-1991 the US took action abroad to stop the USSR from gaining more global power, they misinterpreted Soviet motives, and threatened the USSR with acts of aggression through major bomb threats. With both nations having different motives after WWII,

MacDonald’s article Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War, four schools of thought surrounding the origins of the Cold War are laid out. Specifically, MacDonald argues mostly in favor of the traditionalist school, which emphasizes the expansionist, offensive nature of Soviet expansion into Asia and Eastern Europe. Also, MacDonald makes an important point regarding the accuracy of information and historical texts regarding the origins of the Cold War, explaining that “The argument over the origins of the Cold War is important not only for historical accuracy, but also for the consequences it will have on theoretical questions and therefore on their implications for policy.” Not only is this true, but also extremely relevant to scholars studying the Cold War with regard to international relations, as it points out the importance of the correct application of paradigms and perspectives to the Cold War case study. In MacDonald’s argument in favor of the traditionalist school, he

Stalin’ actions were responsible for initiating the Cold War, through his machination to expand communism throughout Eastern Europe. In 1945, Stalin violated the Yalta agreement and inflicted Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe provoking tension. Stalin’s expansion of communism was enacted with invigorating force , as diplomatic historian Richard H. Ullman states, ‘communist regimes had been thrust upon them

Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin in the real world and he was really important during these events. Joseph Stalin is the one who had the most impact on these series of events that happened. Stalin was a very important man in the world either for good things he did or bad things he did, but he is still very famous and popular for what he has left behind. He was really important because he helped rebel against Nicholas II and made a lot of good things happen to the Russian Empire. Stalin industrialized the nation. He made it sufficiently solid to survive a Fascist attack. He likewise figured out how to make the war a partnership between the West and the Soviet Union. This implied that post-war, numerous thoughts the West had imparted to Fascism were tossed out. These are good things he did, but it only gets worse because Stalin did 21 million times more bad than good. He tricked, lied, killed, manipulated, and threatened many of his people. There are many where that came from including the Holodomor and the Great Purge. Stalin has done many things to the Russian Empire and will be remembered as a world leader either for good or bad. Joseph Stalin was born in a confused life meaning that his parents didn’t know what to do with his future. His mom wanted him to be a priest while his dad wanted him to become a cobbler. Once his mother persuaded his father to make him a priest, his father got divorced and left. At this time Joseph knew that he didn’t want to become anything that

When historians discuss the Cold War, there are a number of categories amongst which there are heated debates. These include, but are not limited to, who the primary aggressor was, what were the motivations of the aggressor, what lead to its end, and whether or not the Cold War happened at all. Within these arguments, there are various camps among whom the beliefs are contested. There are the orthodox historians, such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., that imagine the Cold War as “the brave and essential response of free men to communist aggression,” essentially placing sole blame for the Cold War on the ideological aims of the Soviet Union. Then there are revisionists, such as Melvyn P. Leffler, who believe that the blame should be shifted

The Cold War was not a normal conflict. The US and the USSR never fought. However, they often supported different warring sides. Nevertheless, we can say that the Cold War is a political, military and media conflict, which has a large effect over the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. The Cold War is a battle between totalitarianism and democracy, battle for a new world turn between two opposing systems. This essay will look at three different theories that explain why the Cold War came to an end. First will be discussed the Revisionist and Gorbachev leadership theories. Second, this paper will look at the “Triumphalist” theory by the Realist school of historians who believe that Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies during the Cold War

The traditional, orthodox interpretation places the responsibility of the Cold War on Stalin’s personality and on communist ideology. It claims that as long as Stalin and the authoritarian government were in power, a cold war was unavoidable. It argues that Stalin violated agreements that he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet policy on Eastern European countries aiming at political domination and conspired to advocate communism throughout the world. As a result, United States officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with foreign policies such as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Yet revisionists argue that there was “no proof of Stalin promoting communism outside Russia” and that Stalin’s decisions were first and foremost, pro-Soviet and not of communist intentions. Up until 1947, it is evident through Marshall Plan as well as statements and interviews made by Stalin that he was still thinking of cooperation with the United States, Britain and France. Despite post-war conflicts and instability of Soviet-American relations, the USSR’s initial embrace of the Marshall Plan at its announcement expressed

Given a pathological obsession of the Soviet government with secrecy, it was a remarkable phenomenon that Joseph Stalin did allow hundreds of Soviet specialists, many of them recent GULAG inmates, travel to postwar Germany and work side by side with their German colleagues on the development of rocket technology. Inevitably, the whole endeavor had a temporary nature, aimed to train Soviet cadre in the industry that was virtually nonexistent in the USSR at the time. From the outset of the program, Soviet authorities had grave concerns about engaging thousands of Germans, who had relative freedom of movement, into the sensitive defense project.

There have been many attempts to explain the origins of the Cold War that developed between the capitalist West and the communist East after the Second World War. Indeed, there is great disagreement in explaining the source for the Cold War; some explanations draw on events pre-1945; some draw only on issues of ideology; others look to economics; security concerns dominate some arguments; personalities are seen as the root cause for some historians. So wide is the range of the historiography of the origins of the Cold War that is has been said "the Cold War has also spawned a war among historians, a controversy over how the Cold War got started, whether or not it was inevitable, and

I read this book called Stalin: Russia's Man of Steel. The book was written by a guy named Albert Marrin. There are seven chapters and 235 pages. The book has a compelling historical

Many historians argue that the development of the cold war in the years 1945-48 owed more to soviet expansionism than to the USA’s economic interests. Source 7 supports this view to an extent as it argues that the USSR ‘tightened its grip over the countries of central and eastern Europe’ and how the ‘western attitudes had hardened’ due to this. However source 8 disagrees with source 7 completely as it suggests that there were ‘important economic advantages for the USA in starting a cold war’. Source 9 rejects the view of both sources as it acknowledges the need for Stalin’s

George H. Quester, in his article, “Origins of the Cold War: Some Clues from Public Opinion,” never really blames the United States or the Soviet Union for being the instigators that started the Cold War. Instead, he concludes that the cold war “may have been a necessary result of a global situation that drove the powers to mutual confrontation” (p. 654). Essentially, the deep-seated mistrust and completely different postwar visions of the United States and the Soviet Union made the prospects of tension between them inevitable, and resulted in both sides making predictions, and ultimately decisions, that lead to political and military (although not large in scale) troubles between both superpowers following World War II.

The term “Cold War” refers to the second half of the 20th century, usually from the end of the World War II until 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the 1940s and 1950s the scholars have disagreed on the topic of the origins of the Cold War. There are several groups of historians and their interpretations are very different, sometimes even contradictory. The three main schools are the orthodox, the revisionist and the realist. The classification is not completely accurate because we can find several differences in theories of scholars within the same group and often the authors reevaluated their ideas over time.

Examining the literature focused on the Cold War Period, it seems that some scholars argue that the Cold War came to an end and that the Soviet Union collapsed, as a result of the American effectiveness in the war against communism (Gaddis 1992). Many claim that the United States won this more than 40 year period of conflicts against the USSR because its ideology was simply superior, and add to such statements that American policies at the time were highly successful on containing and defeating the communist superpower on the economic battle, the arms and technological race, and on the degree of their political influence on other areas of the world. (Newcombe 1997, 32-34). At simple sight, there appears to be a tendency to present external factors as the key elements for the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the Cold War.