Who Was To Blame For The Cold War?

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

of the tsars
that preceded him, or worse, spreading communism across the world now that
his "one-state" notion had been fulfilled. It also must be mentioned that
Stalin is seen as wanting "unchalleged personal power and a rebuilt Russia
strong enough to withstand 'caplitalist encirclement.'"1

Admittedly, the first view of Stalin, as an imperialist leader, may
be skewed. The Russians claim, and have always claimed, that Stalin's
motives were purely defensive. Stalin's wished to create a buffer zone of
Communist states around him to protect Soviet Russia from the capitalist
West. In this sense, his moves were not aggressive at all -- they were
truly defensive moves to protect the Soviet system. His suspicions of
Western hostility were not unfounded: the British and U.S. intervention in
the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) were still fresh in Stalin's memory when
he took power. Furthermore, Stalin was bitter because he was not informed
of U.S. nuclear capabilities ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

was not aware of the secret assurances of security Roosevelt had
made to Stalin. His policy towards Soviet Russia, then, was much more
severe than that of Roosevelt. He was quoted as saying "We must stand up
to the Russians...We have been too easy with them."4 Both Truman and
Churchill were annoyed because Germany east of the Rivers Oder and Neisse
were being occupied by Russian troops and were being run by the pro-
communist Polish government, who expelled over five million Germans. This
went directly against the agreements made at Yalta earlier in the year.
The west viewed this as an act of aggression on the part of the Soviet
Union. The Soviet Union responded with a statement ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: