Immediately once World War II ended, The Soviet Union distance4d itself from the West. In particular, a deep political and diplomatic gap developed between it and the USA. That divide is the Cold War, a period of tense detente that lasted five decades. Political intrigue, diplomatic drama, international espionage and military posturing tensions marked the period, delivering rich literary material for writers of history and fiction alike. A Cold War author concentrates on the political and ideological maneuverings of those years.
During World War II, Soviet Russia fought fiercely against Nazi Germany as a valued ally with the West. Despite that alliance, the relationship between the Soviet Union and western countries was, even at that time, brittle. The relationship was burdened with distrust born out of ideological disdain. Communism and capitalism are not natural bedfellows.
Within the context of the Second World War, the Soviet Union did maintain a reasonably constant dialogue with its western allies in order to defeat Nazism. But once the war ended, the Soviet Union withdrew within itself. It almost totally cut-off dialogue with, and diplomatically distanced itself from the West.
Within a year of WWII ending, the Soviets had already begun to pull away from western countries. Sir Winston Churchill criticized this detente in a speech he presented at the Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, during March 1946. He described Soviet isolationism as having pulled a large Iron Curtain down upon Europe, dividing West from East.
Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, as well as Romania were all subject to Soviet influence or control. In effect, they were nation satellites of the Soviet. The communist parties in these countries were significantly funded and otherwise bolstered by the Soviets. Churchill noted that the power and preeminence of these parties were raised well beyond their underlying support base and that police governments seeking totalitarian control. This Soviet sphere of influence was seen as expansionist and served to destabilize peace in Europe and the West more generally.
Similarly, continual Soviet rebuffs towards establishing lasting friendship with western powers and its insistence instead on a policy of detente created deep doubts and uncertainties for many countries in Europe and around the world. Nobody knows, Churchill said, if Soviet Russia and its global communist organization has expansionist ambitions and, if so, what the limits of those ambitions were, if any.
The imagery painted and rhetoric used by Churchill in his address at Westminster College captured the attention of people all around the world. Churchill originally titled his speech Sinews of Peace but the media and scholars almost immediately dubbed it his Iron Curtain speech. It is one of the early signals marking the beginning of the Cold War.
Limited information about conditions in the Soviet Union was available to western analysts. As a result, the Central Intelligence Agency and many other analysts in the West seriously overestimated the economic wealth and military power of Soviet Russia. That serious miscalculation persisted until the 1990s when Soviet President Gorbachev introduced a set of progressive policies known collectively as Perestroika. Those policies fundamentally changed the country. They opened up the economy, dismantled many of the old communist bureaucracies and constraints and introduced market mechanisms to determine prices and guide resource allocation by decision makers. In short, Perestroika marked the beginning of the end of the intense detente that provided so much literary fodder for a Cold War author.
During World War II, Soviet Russia fought fiercely against Nazi Germany as a valued ally with the West. Despite that alliance, the relationship between the Soviet Union and western countries was, even at that time, brittle. The relationship was burdened with distrust born out of ideological disdain. Communism and capitalism are not natural bedfellows.
Within the context of the Second World War, the Soviet Union did maintain a reasonably constant dialogue with its western allies in order to defeat Nazism. But once the war ended, the Soviet Union withdrew within itself. It almost totally cut-off dialogue with, and diplomatically distanced itself from the West.
Within a year of WWII ending, the Soviets had already begun to pull away from western countries. Sir Winston Churchill criticized this detente in a speech he presented at the Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, during March 1946. He described Soviet isolationism as having pulled a large Iron Curtain down upon Europe, dividing West from East.
Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, as well as Romania were all subject to Soviet influence or control. In effect, they were nation satellites of the Soviet. The communist parties in these countries were significantly funded and otherwise bolstered by the Soviets. Churchill noted that the power and preeminence of these parties were raised well beyond their underlying support base and that police governments seeking totalitarian control. This Soviet sphere of influence was seen as expansionist and served to destabilize peace in Europe and the West more generally.
Similarly, continual Soviet rebuffs towards establishing lasting friendship with western powers and its insistence instead on a policy of detente created deep doubts and uncertainties for many countries in Europe and around the world. Nobody knows, Churchill said, if Soviet Russia and its global communist organization has expansionist ambitions and, if so, what the limits of those ambitions were, if any.
The imagery painted and rhetoric used by Churchill in his address at Westminster College captured the attention of people all around the world. Churchill originally titled his speech Sinews of Peace but the media and scholars almost immediately dubbed it his Iron Curtain speech. It is one of the early signals marking the beginning of the Cold War.
Limited information about conditions in the Soviet Union was available to western analysts. As a result, the Central Intelligence Agency and many other analysts in the West seriously overestimated the economic wealth and military power of Soviet Russia. That serious miscalculation persisted until the 1990s when Soviet President Gorbachev introduced a set of progressive policies known collectively as Perestroika. Those policies fundamentally changed the country. They opened up the economy, dismantled many of the old communist bureaucracies and constraints and introduced market mechanisms to determine prices and guide resource allocation by decision makers. In short, Perestroika marked the beginning of the end of the intense detente that provided so much literary fodder for a Cold War author.
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