Emergence of Two Power Blocs (World after World War II) | History Optional for UPSC (Notes) PDF Download

Introduction

The Cold War was a period of intense political and military tension between the Western Bloc, led by the United States and its NATO allies, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, following World War II. While historians debate the exact dates, the Cold War is commonly considered to have lasted from 1947 to 1991. The term "cold" reflects the absence of direct large-scale fighting between the two sides, although significant regional conflicts, such as those in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, saw both sides providing support to opposing factions.

• Emerging from the temporary alliance formed to combat Nazi Germany during World War II, the Cold War left the USSR and the US as superpowers with stark economic and political differences. The Soviet Union was a single-party Marxist-Leninist state, while the United States was a capitalist democracy with generally free elections. Despite never engaging in direct full-scale combat, both superpowers heavily armed themselves in preparation for a potential nuclear world war. This led to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), where each side's nuclear deterrent prevented the other from launching an attack, knowing it would result in total destruction.
• The Cold War was marked by the development of nuclear arsenals, the deployment of conventional military forces, and a struggle for dominance expressed through proxy wars, psychological warfare, propaganda, espionage, and technological competitions like the Space Race.
• Origins of the Term: The term "Cold War" was first used to describe the post-war geopolitical confrontation between the USSR and the United States in a speech by Bernard Baruch, an influential advisor to Democratic presidents. Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann popularized the term in his book "The Cold War." When asked about the origin of the term in 1947, Lippmann traced it back to a French term from the 1930s.

A self-proclaimed neutral bloc emerged with the Non-Aligned Movement, founded by countries such as Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia. This movement rejected alignment with either the US-led West or the Soviet-led East.

Events that Led to the Cold War

Russian Revolution:

• In 1917, the Bolshevik takeover in Russia led to the country's isolation in international politics. Vladimir Lenin, the leader at the time, believed that the Soviet Union was surrounded by hostile capitalist nations. He saw diplomacy as a tool to keep Soviet enemies divided, which led to the creation of the Soviet Comintern aimed at promoting revolutionary movements abroad.
• Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin, viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island" within a capitalist world. He believed that the capitalist encirclement needed to be replaced by a socialist one. By 1925, Stalin perceived international politics as a struggle between capitalist and socialist countries, anticipating the eventual collapse of capitalism.
• The concept of bipolarity emerged, where two powers dominate global influence. During the Cold War, this meant that most Western and capitalist countries fell under U.S. influence, while communist states aligned with the USSR. Both superpowers then competed for influence in unclaimed regions.

Mistrust before the Second World War:

• Before the Second World War, events deepened the mutual distrust between Western powers and the Soviet Union, beyond the philosophical clash between communism and capitalism.
• The West supported anti-Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War. In 1926, Soviet funding of a workers' strike in Britain led to a break in diplomatic relations.
• Other factors included Stalin's 1927 declaration of peaceful coexistence fading, allegations of a British-French coup during the 1928 Shakhty trial, the American refusal to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933, and espionage accusations during the Stalinist purges.

Suspicion during the Second World War:

• The Soviet Union initially signed a non-aggression pact with Germany but later allied with Britain and the United States after being invaded by Germany in 1941.
• Stalin remained suspicious of the Western allies, believing they conspired to weaken the Soviet Union by delaying the second front against Germany. This suspicion fostered lingering tensions even during their wartime alliance.

Differences of Principle:

• The core conflict arose from fundamental differences between communist and capitalist states.
• Communism, based on Marx's ideas, advocates for collective ownership and central planning to safeguard the working class's interests. In contrast, capitalism relies on private ownership, profit-driven enterprise, and the power of private wealth.
• Since the establishment of the first communist government in Russia in 1917, capitalist states viewed communism with suspicion and fear of its spread.
• The civil war in Russia prompted several capitalist nations, including the USA, Britain, France, and Japan, to intervene on behalf of anti-communist forces.
• Despite the communist victory, Stalin remained convinced of future capitalist attempts to undermine communism, a belief reinforced by the German invasion in 1941.
• The necessity of self-preservation against Germany and Japan briefly united the USSR, USA, and Britain. However, as the defeat of Germany became imminent, tensions resurfaced, with Stalin aiming to expand Soviet influence in Europe.

Stalin’s Foreign Policies:

• Stalin sought to expand Soviet influence in Europe by occupying as much German territory as possible and annexing land from neighboring countries like Finland, Poland, and Romania as Nazi forces retreated.
• This expansionist approach alarmed the West, which interpreted Stalin's actions as aggressive and indicative of a desire to spread communism globally.

US and British Hostility:

• During the war, President Roosevelt of the USA trusted Stalin and supported the Soviet Union through the Lend-Lease program. However, after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, President Truman adopted a more suspicious and confrontational stance toward communism.
• Some historians suggest that Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan was partly intended to send a message to Stalin.
• Stalin suspected that the USA and Britain intended to destroy communism, believing their delay in launching the Second Front was a strategy to weaken the Soviets.
• The West's possession of the atomic bomb and the USSR's lack of it further fueled tensions.

Blame for the Cold War:

• In the 1950s, many Western historians blamed Stalin for the Cold War, arguing that he aimed to spread communism and destroy capitalism.
• George Kennan advocated for the containment of the USSR, leading to the formation of NATO and American involvement in the Korean War.
• Conversely, some Soviet historians and American historians in the 1960s and 1970s argued that the Cold War was not solely Stalin's fault. They believed that Russia's wartime losses justified Stalin's efforts to secure friendly neighboring states.
• Revisionist historians contended that the USA's actions, particularly its atomic monopoly and industrial strength, provoked Russian hostility and contributed to the Cold War.
• In the 1980s, post-revisionist historians suggested that both sides shared blame for the Cold War. They believed that American economic policies like Marshall Aid aimed to increase US influence while acknowledging Stalin's opportunism in expanding Soviet influence.
• The entrenched positions and mutual suspicion of both the USA and USSR created an environment where every international action could be interpreted as aggressive or defensive, avoiding open war but fostering a tense rivalry.

Situations at the End of World War II (1945–47)

After World War II ended in 1945, there were significant disagreements among the Allies about how Europe should be reshaped. Each side had different ideas about how to ensure safety and stability in the post-war world.

Western Allies' Vision:

• The Western Allies wanted a system where democratic governments were established widely. They believed in resolving conflicts peacefully through international organizations.

Soviet Union's Approach:

• In contrast, the Soviet Union, having suffered immense losses (around 27 million people) and destruction during the war, aimed to increase its security by dominating neighboring countries. This was driven by a history of invasions and a desire for greater control.
• During the war, Stalin had set up special training centers to prepare Communists from various countries to establish secret police forces loyal to Moscow once the Red Army took over. Soviet agents took charge of the media, particularly radio, and quickly suppressed independent civic institutions such as youth groups, schools, churches, and rival political parties.

Stalin's Goals:

• Stalin also aimed to maintain peace with Britain and the United States to focus on internal reconstruction and economic growth.

Divergent Western Allies' Visions:

• The Western Allies were divided in their vision for the post-war world. President Roosevelt's goals were more global, aiming for military victory in Europe and Asia, American economic supremacy over the British Empire, and the creation of a world peace organization.
• In contrast,Churchill's focus was primarily on securing control over the Mediterranean, preserving the British Empire, and ensuring the independence of Central and Eastern European countries as a buffer against the Soviets.

Negotiations and Agreements:

• Differences between Roosevelt and Churchill led to separate deals with the Soviets. In October 1944,Churchill visited Moscow and agreed to divide the Balkans into spheres of influence.
• At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Allied leaders discussed the post-war balance, but there was no firm consensus on the framework for a post-war settlement in Europe.

Development of Cold War between 1945-1953

Yalta Conference (February 4–11, 1945):

• The Yalta Conference was a significant meeting during World War II where the leaders of the three major Allied powers—U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—gathered in Yalta, Crimea, to discuss the final stages of the war against Nazi Germany and the post-war reorganization of Europe.

Initially, the conference appeared successful, with agreements on several key points:

• Formation of the United Nations: A new organization, the United Nations, was to be established to replace the ineffective League of Nations. The charter for the UN had already been drafted, and the leaders worked out a compromise on voting procedures for the Security Council.
• Division of Germany: Germany was to be divided into zones of occupation—Russian, American, and British, with a French zone added later. Berlin, located within the Russian zone, would also be divided into corresponding zones. Similar arrangements were made for Austria.
• German Military Industry: The German military industry was to be dismantled or confiscated, and major war criminals were to be tried by an international court, as established at Nuremberg.
• Reparations: The determination of reparations was assigned to a commission.
• Free Elections: Free elections were to be held in Eastern European states.
• Soviet Involvement in Japan: Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan in exchange for territorial gains in Sakhalin Island and Manchuria.

However, there were underlying tensions, particularly regarding Poland. As the Soviet army advanced through Poland, they established a communist government in Lublin, despite the existence of a Polish government-in-exile in London. The Yalta agreement aimed to compromise by allowing some non-communist members of the London government to join the Lublin government while conceding some Polish territory to the Soviet Union. The leaders disagreed on Stalin's demand for territory east of the Oder and Neisse rivers.

• After the Yalta agreements were made public in 1946, they faced criticism in the United States because Stalin did not uphold his promise of free elections in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Instead, communist regimes were established in these countries, suppressing non-communist political parties and preventing genuine democratic elections.
• At the time of the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill trusted Stalin to honor his commitments, underestimating his intention to impose communist control over popular front governments in Europe. They also believed Soviet assistance would be crucial in defeating Japan in the Pacific and Manchuria.
• The Soviet Union became the military occupier of Eastern Europe after the war, limiting the ability of Western democracies to enforce Stalin's promises made at Yalta. As James F. Byrnes, a member of the American delegation, later noted, the issue was not what the Russians could be allowed to do, but what could be negotiated with them.
• After Roosevelt's death in April 1945, Harry S. Truman became president and was more distrustful of Stalin. Truman sought advice from foreign policy experts and opposed the Soviet support for the Lublin government.
• Following the Allied victory in May 1945, the Soviet Union occupied Central and Eastern Europe while strong U.S. and Western Allied forces remained in Western Europe. In Allied-occupied Germany, the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control.

The Allied conference in San Francisco in 1945 established the United Nations (UN) for maintaining world peace, but the Security Council's effectiveness was hindered by the veto power of individual members, rendering the UN largely inactive.

The Potsdam Conference (July 1945)

The Potsdam Conference had a notably different atmosphere compared to Yalta. The leaders at the outset were Stalin, Truman (who had succeeded Roosevelt after his death), and Churchill. However, after Churchill was replaced by Clement Attlee following the Labour Party’s victory in the British elections, the dynamics shifted.

Although the war with Germany had concluded, the conference failed to reach a consensus on Germany’s long-term future. Key decisions included:

• Germany was to be disarmed, the Nazi party disbanded, and its leaders tried as war criminals.
• Reparations were to be paid by Germany for the damage caused during the war, primarily benefiting the USSR. The Soviets were allowed to take non-food goods from their zone and the other zones, provided they supplied food to the western zones in return.

The main contention arose over Poland. Truman and Churchill were displeased because German territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line had been occupied by Soviet troops and were being administered by the pro-communist Polish government, which had expelled about five million Germans from the area. This situation had not been agreed upon at Yalta.

During the conference, Truman did not disclose the full details of the atomic bomb to Stalin, although he informed Churchill. Shortly after the conference, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, leading to a swift end to the war on August 10, 1945, without the need for Soviet assistance. The Soviets had declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, and invaded Manchuria, annexing southern Sakhalin as per the Yalta agreement, but they were not involved in the occupation of Japan.

Nuclear Bomb and Hydrogen (Thermonuclear) Bomb:

• The United States developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II. Soviet scientists were aware of the potential of nuclear weapons and were conducting their own research in this area. The Soviet Union was not officially informed about the Manhattan Project—the U.S. government’s research project that produced the first atomic bombs—until Stalin was briefed by U.S. President Harry S. Truman at the Potsdam Conference on July 24, 1945, eight days after the first successful test of a nuclear weapon.
• Despite their alliance during the war, the United States and Britain did not trust the Soviets enough to keep the Manhattan Project confidential from German spies. There were also concerns that the Soviet Union, as an ally, would request technical details about the new weapon.
• When President Truman informed Stalin about the atomic bomb, he was surprised by Stalin’s calm reaction, thinking Stalin had not fully understood the significance of the news. In reality, Stalin was already well-informed about the program. Spies within the Manhattan Project had kept Stalin updated on American progress, providing detailed designs of the implosion bomb and the hydrogen bomb.
• The first Soviet atomic bomb was detonated on August 29, 1949. Both the United States and the Soviet Union invested heavily to improve and expand their nuclear arsenals. They also began developing hydrogen bombs, with the United States detonating its first hydrogen bomb on November 1, 1952. The Soviets surprised the world by exploding their thermonuclear device in August 1953.

Differences between Yalta and Potsdam

There were significant differences between the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. While the issues discussed were similar, the goodwill to resolve them was absent in Potsdam because the countries no longer had a common need to stick together.

Beginnings of the Eastern Bloc

Formation of the Eastern Bloc:

• During the early phase of World War II, the Soviet Union began forming the Eastern Bloc by annexing several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics. These territories were initially ceded to the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.
• The annexed regions included eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, parts of eastern Finland, and eastern Romania.

Post-Potsdam Influence:

• After the Potsdam Conference, the Soviet Union systematically intervened in Eastern European countries to establish pro-communist governments.
• This interference occurred in countries like Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania.

Establishment of Satellite States:

• The territories liberated from Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces during World War II were transformed into satellite states within the Eastern Bloc.
• Examples of these newly formed satellite states include:
• East Germany
• The People’s Republic of Poland
• The People’s Republic of Bulgaria
• The People’s Republic of Hungary
• The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
• The People’s Republic of Romania
• The People’s Republic of Albania

Imposition of Soviet Regimes:

• The Soviet-style regimes established in these Bloc countries mirrored Soviet command economies and adopted the repressive methods of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet secret police to suppress opposition.

Soviet Expansion in Asia:

• In Asia, the Red Army had overrun Manchuria in the final month of World War II and subsequently occupied a large portion of Korean territory north of the 38th parallel.

Western Concerns:

• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed concern over the large Soviet military presence in Europe post-war and perceived Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as unreliable, prompting fears of a Soviet threat to Western Europe.

Concept of the Eastern Bloc:

• The term Eastern Bloc was used by NATO-affiliated countries to refer to the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact.

“Long Telegram” and “Iron Curtain Speech”

George F. Kennan’s “Long Telegram”:

• In February 1946, George Kennan, the American charge d’affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State outlining his views on the Soviet Union and U.S. policy toward it.
• This telegram helped shape the U.S. government’s hardline stance against the Soviets and became the foundation for U.S. strategy during the Cold War, particularly the policy of containment.
• Stalin further alarmed the West with a speech in February 1946, asserting that communism and capitalism could never coexist peacefully and that future wars were inevitable until communism triumphed.
• Russian historians have claimed that the Western interpretation of Stalin's speech was biased, particularly by Kennan.

Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech:

• In response, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in March 1946, where he described an iron curtain descending across Europe from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.
• Churchill argued that the Russians were intent on expanding their power and called for a strong Western alliance to counter the communist threat.
• The Iron Curtain symbolized the division of Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
• It represented the Soviet Union’s efforts to isolate itself and its satellite states from the West.
• Stalin responded sharply to the speech, expressing his concerns about Germany and the need for Soviet security.
• While the rift between East and West deepened, not everyone in the West agreed with Churchill; over a hundred British Labour MPs criticized his stance.

Novikov Telegram

• In September 1946, the Soviet Union issued the Novikov telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the United States.
• This telegram depicted the U.S. as being under the control of monopoly capitalists who were building military capability to prepare for global supremacy through a new war.
• On September 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes delivered a speech in Germany rejecting the Morgenthau Plan and warning the Soviets that the U.S. intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely.
• The Morgenthau Plan, proposed by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, suggested that the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II include measures to eliminate Germany’s ability to wage war by dismantling its armament industry and removing or destroying other key industries essential to military strength.

Soviet Control in Eastern Europe:

• As the Russians tightened their grip on Eastern Europe, by the end of 1947, every state in the region, except for Czechoslovakia, had a fully communist government.
• Electoral processes were manipulated, non-communist members of coalition governments were expelled, many were arrested or executed, and eventually, all other political parties were dissolved.
• This occurred under the surveillance of secret police and Russian troops.
• Additionally, Stalin treated the Russian zone of Germany as if it were Russian territory, allowing only the Communist Party to operate and draining it of essential resources.
• The only exception was Yugoslavia, where the communist government led by Marshal Tito had been legitimately elected in 1945.
• Tito’s government gained popularity due to his leadership during the anti-German resistance, and his forces, not the Russians, liberated Yugoslavia from German occupation. Tito resented Stalin’s attempts to interfere in Yugoslavia’s affairs.

Western Reaction:

• The West was deeply troubled by the Soviet Union’s treatment of Eastern Europe, which violated Stalin’s promise of free elections made at the Yalta Conference.
• However, the West should not have been entirely surprised by these developments, as even Churchill had agreed with Stalin in 1944 that much of Eastern Europe would fall under Russian influence.
• Stalin justified his actions by claiming that friendly governments in neighboring states were necessary for self-defense, that these states had never had democratic governments, and that communism would bring progress to these historically backward countries.
• What disturbed the West were Stalin’s methods of gaining control, which led to the subsequent major developments in the post-war period.