How did the Cold War actually start?
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Tensions between the West and the USSR were present almost since the very beginning. Shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks broke off Russia’s previous alliances, refused to pay its foreign debts, and then called for a global revolution by the working classes against capitalism. This angered and unsettled many Western governments, who responded by diplomatically isolating the Bolshevik government and supporting the counter-revolutionary White armies. During the subsequent Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks defeated the Whites and the Western intervention forces pulled out, but Bolshevik attempts to reconquer the former Russian Empire were only partially successful. Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland managed to remain independent. Poland was particularly seen as a valuable ally against the USSR by the Western governments, as they had successfully defeated the Red Army in 1920.
Around 1921, the Bolsheviks temporarily shelved their goal of causing a global revolution and re-established dipolmatic relations with the West. Some were fairly quick to do so, with Germany even agreeing to military cooperation. The USA, meanwhile, refused to recognize the USSR until 1933. This was partly the result of Stalin’s “socialism in one country” policy to strengthen communism in the USSR first before attempting expansion. However, tensions and suspicions toward the Soviets never disappeared. The Soviet government continued to support communist parties around the world and rejected their cooperation with other left-wing parties.
These policies were revised in the 1930s though, as fascist movements (most notably in Germany and Japan) gained more power and influence. Suddenly, Soviet foreign policy became more focused on containing fascism, so foreign communist parties were encouraged to form united fronts with other parties for this purpose. Western powers, while nervous about German, Italian, and Japanese expansionism, were still suspicious of Soviet intentions and reluctant to cooperate with them. The appeasement of Germany in 1938 then caused a reassessment of Soviet foreign policy, as Stalin increasingly felt that the Western powers (mainly Britain and France) weren’t interested in containing Germany. Then, with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Stalin realigned the USSR with Germany to divide up Eastern Europe and avoid conflict between the two in the near future.
During the early years of WWII, the Soviets were seen by many Western governments as effectively German allies. Dividing up Poland, invading parts of Finland, and annexing the Baltic States and NE Romania allowed the USSR to expand considerably further west. Though neither Britain nor France ever declared war, they still saw the Soviets as a potential enemy. Plans were even made in 1940 to bomb Soviet Caucasian oil fields to prevent oil from being sold to Germany. This changed when Germany suddenly invaded the USSR in 1941. By now, Germany was clearly the bigger threat in the eyes of the Western powers, so the Soviets became allies out of necessity. American and British aid helped the Red Army recover from its initial defeats and eventually push back by the end of 1942.
Though they were allies, the USSR and the Western powers (mainly Britain and the USA) had many conflicting goals for the end of the war. Soviet territorial and political gains were seen as inevitable, but the Western allies hoped to limit them as much as possible. They hoped to establish friendly democratic governments across the Axis countries and their occupied lands (including re-establishing Poland). Stalin, meanwhile, hoped to secure Soviet wartime gains, set up friendly communist governments across Central and Eastern Europe, and create a buffer zone to protect the USSR from future attacks. These differences caused tensions right up until the end of the war, but were gradually settled through a series of conferences between Allied leaders (Tehran in December 1943, Moscow in 1944, Yalta in February 1945, Potsdam in July 1945).
Ultimately, it was decided to divide Europe into spheres of Soviet and Western influence. Western Europe, western and southern Germany, Italy, and Greece would remain in the Western sphere. Eastern Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary would be under the Soviet sphere. Yugoslavia and Albania would be “border” areas with split influence. Czechoslovakia and Poland were to be re-established under democratic governments of national unity (which allowed communist participation). However, the implementation of these agreements over the following years proved to be messy.
Largely due to Soviet meddling, any remaining democratic governments under its sphere of influence were soon replaced by communist ones. Meanwhile, communist parties in some countries in the Western sphere of influence were suppressed or marginalized to prevent them from coming to power. The Allies had also occupied Iran during WWII, but when pulling out in 1946, the Soviets briefly tried to establish new communist satellite states in its occupation zone instead. This caused a crisis at the newly-established United Nations, resulting in the Soviets eventually agreeing to pull out. There was also a concurrent crisis involving Turkey in 1946, where the Soviets demanded joint control over the Turkish Straits and then territorial concessions when they refused.
These crises helped to once again reignite Western fears of Soviet expansionism and communist revolutions. The ongoing Chinese and Greek civil wars, both of which involved communist uprisings, did nothing to calm those fears. Churchill famously delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech on March 5, 1946, which Stalin regarded as antagonistic toward the USSR. Many historians will say that the Cold War “officially” began on March 12, 1947, when President Truman announced the Truman Doctrine, declaring the policy of the United States to resist Soviet and communist expansion.
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