The Label, the Start, the Players

*** A GREAT timeline of Cold War events can be found at this link...

www.history-timelines.org.uk/events-timelines/03-cold-war-timeline.htm

The term Cold War was derived from part of a speech given by Bernard Baruch- presidential advisor, stating "Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war," speaking in regards to the mounting tensions between the USSR and the Allies after WWII.

WHY IT STARTED:

Though the relationships between the USA, Europe and Russia had long since been stressed and hanging loosely by a thread, the Cold War did not set full pace until 1945 when a struggle began over who would be the great power and the moral debate over communism began. The war was between the East and West and was the only war "characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs" with the only actual combat being in the 'proxy wars" of other countries involved in the dispute.

THE HISTORY OF THE CAUSE:

After WWI and the "abdication" of the tsar, The Provisional government was overthrown during the Red October Revolution, giving the Soviets the reigning power with the Bolsheviks as their leaders. In an attempt to strengthen Russia by creating unity under a central power, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution created "the newly-formed government" with the "philosophy of socialism with the eventual and gradual transition to Communism." The Communist system, "eventually transformed into a totalitarian," form of governing, giving them complete control over the nation's affairs and every aspect of the people's lives. This sort of political revision was unpopular with Russia's allies in the West and soon lead Soviet Russia to find itself "isolated in international diplomacy."

This next paragraph taken from the Wikipedia website brings together the many, many actions of the Communist Party in bringing itself many enemies instead of allies in the early years of the Cold War and helps to explain why so many other countries were involved in the dispute.

" Several events fueled suspicion and distrust between the western powers and the Soviet Union: the Bolsheviks' challenge to capitalism; the 1926 Soviet funding of a British general workers strike causing Britain to break relations with the Soviet Union; Stalin's 1927 declaration that peaceful coexistence with "the capitalist countries . . . is receding into the past"; conspiratorial allegations in the Shakhty show trial of a planned French and British-led coup d'etat, the Great Purge involving a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in which over half a million Soviets were executed; the Moscow show trials including allegations of British, French, Japanese and German espionage; the controversial death of 6-8 million people in the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic from famin in 1932-33; western support of the White Army in the Russian Civil War; (1917 - 1923) was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed and the Soviets under the domination of the Bolshevik party assumed power; the US refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933; and the Soviet entry into the Treaty of Rapallo. This outcome rendered Soviet-American relations a matter of major long-term concern for leaders in both countries."

The next strain on the relationship between nations was Russia's suspicion that the Americans and the British had backed down in the battle against the German Nazis, leaving Russia to ward them off on their own. "Thus, Soviet perceptions of the West left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers."

At the Yalta conference- 1945, the Soviet Union and the Western democracies met to discuss the affects of World War II and the current post-war situations. Tensions continued to rise between nations, especially the USA and the USSR, and were sparked into a full dispute when Winston Churchill warned in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. Joseph Stalin (head of the USSR) "deepened the estrangement between the United States and the Soviet Union when he asserted in 1946 that World War II was an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of "capitalist imperialism" and implied that such a war might reoccur."