Does the Bolshevik Revolution mark the beginning of the Cold War?
The Cold War, even the name itself, open to interpretation. Arguably the closest the world has ever been to all-out nuclear war, with the world’s two strongest entities, against one another. Fighting for this ideology of capitalism or communism, a fact known to most people. However, the argument of where it all began in history is a highly disputed matter. For many historians the ending of the Second World War is seen as the epicentre of the Cold War, describing 1945 as the expiry date for the alliance that USA and USSR had formed, inevitably leading to a conflict to determine the one overbearing superpower of the world. A war said to have not yet ended completely began from another war, is the argument, so exploring the other arguments there is another recurring theme which begs the question of the Bolshevik Revolution being the primary cause of the Cold War. On the 7th of November 1917 forces led Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin seized control of the provisional Tsarist autocracy, called the Bolshevik Revolution as the members of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party were nicknamed Bolsheviks. Exploring the causes of the Revolution historians go so far back as to debate if it was during 1848 with the public release of Karl Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’. To justify the causes of the Cold War having predated the end of World War Two and their validity they must present a clear deterioration of relations between the two superpowers. As there was no clear declaration of war yet a multitude of symptoms alike to those of an actual war, namely the Arms Race, when both were competing to outgun one another. Nor was there any time where either entity was in direct conflict, instead a plethora of lower-level proxy wars took place. The debate for the origins of the Cold War therefore begs many questions. The Bolshevik Revolution marks a point in history where the ideology of Tsarist Russia’s expansionism is opposed against and, tracing back, the causes of Tsar Russia having expansionism at its heart was the thriving land of America at the time. This argument is in line with the revisionist point of view of the Cold War that historians like Walter LaFeber ; present, blaming America intrinsically in his ‘America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2000’. An orthodox historian like John L. Gaddis, in his early works would argue that the Cold War was caused by the threat that USSR presented when Stalinism shifted through to Eastern Europe post WWII, initially biased to blame solely the USSR. Lastly, taking a glance at Martin McCauley’s book on the Origins of the Cold War creates a well balanced retention of outlooks on the predominant causes of the Cold War and whether or not the Bolshevik Revolution is truly the initial cause of the Cold War.
The furthest date in history that the historians take us is 19th century – before the Bolshevik revolution. A time when Alexis de Tocqueville had identified tensions between the worlds superpowers, a time when the Manifest Destiny – the phrase coined in 1845 expressing the ideology that God intended for capitalism and democracy to spread and eventually be accepted and adopted by the world. Gaddis begins We Now Know with the irony of similarity of quotes “by the greatest student of democracy and the vilest practitioner of autocracy.”[] To balance this Gaddis mentions that predictions could just be purely by chance and that they have no relation to the actuality of the 20th century. However, the evidence and reason for said predictions lie in things such as the Manifest Destiny and later, the Bolshevik Revolution – long before World War Two. The Manifest Destiny provided hindsight that the world would break into war over the contrasting ideologies as it motivated one nation with large landmass, resource-rich with small population yet high birth rate (potential to become a superpower) and another one across a single ocean with all the same, bar the one factor – opposing ideology. As one would go down a route of spreading capitalism the other favoured the polar opposite, communism. This paired with the potential for exponential growth on a global scale meant that as seen before, history would repeat itself in bitter ways leading to the outbreak of war. This argument is in line with Gaddis’ however Gaddis places the cause for conflict upon ideologies rather than just Stalin himself. Bolshevik movement, as described by Walter LaFeber, exploited the weakness of the Russian government after WWI. In America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2000 he writes “Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik movement used the devastation, chaos, and poverty caused by World War I to overthrow the Russian government and establish a Soviet Union. The ever-expanding tsarist empire now possessed an ideological force, Marxism […] dedicated to world revolution.”[] This drive towards world revolution, by a nation only dissimilar to America in ideology, stemming from events predating the Second World War truly show that the origins of the Cold War have roots all the way back to 1917. Tensions begin here as it is 1917 when De Tocqueville’s predictions seem like a feasible reality and not just a farfetched statement.
Stalin firmly believes in communism as a deterrent of wartime as he writes in his Economic Problems of the USSR, “They consider that the contradictions between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp are more acute than the contradictions among the capitalist countries”[] what he means by this, he further explains is that although capitalism would be popular and adopted by the majority it would not be a deterrent in fact a catalyst of conflict due to the greed or desire in one capitalist nation to own the next, inevitably leading to conflict. He also takes into consideration the argument from the other side, that indeed after the USA’s demonstration of strength and integrity, during the two world wars, would demotivate capitalist countries coming up to start a battle with other countries under the protection of America. However, Stalin sees the bigger picture and views the temporal peace between capitalist nations as a peace with an expiry limit, like a time bomb because Stalin knows, like everyone else that the peace is not true peace as the nations under Americas protection are under Americas control alike. Stalin proceeds to mention “But it would be mistaken to think that things can continue to "go well" for "all eternity," that these countries will tolerate the domination and oppression of the United States endlessly, that [Western Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Japan] will not endeavour to tear loose from American bondage and take the path of independent development.”[] Gaddis discredits both the soviet union and USA for being illogical in the following point which is a very strong argument and raises the question of whether the Cold War just began due to misinterpretations and wrong choices and did so in the mid 20th century. When Lenin had seized control of Russia and assumed that he would quite easily usurp other “third” world countries that were war torn or in need and/or desire of a communist system, he acquired certain countries with ease. Some of these countries were in Europe – the previous international hub of trade and commerce and with the USSR taking control of Eastern Europe and East Germany the American sphere of influence had to increase in the West just as rapidly. All three historians Gaddis, LaFeber, and McCauley all take the events ensuing WWII as part and/or effects of rather than causes of the Cold War. The discrediting that Gaddis mentions is an idea which he himself came to from D. Michael Shafer’s Deadly Paradigms: The failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy. Gaddis pitches the statement “The idea that any single state could dominate so vast a region, or that its diverse inhabitants might embrace a single ideology, now seems one of the strangest artifacts of Cold War thinking.” This alongside another quote by Gaddis earlier where he reads “American intervention may even have helped the Bolsheviks by allowing them to pose as defenders of Russian nationalism,” are signs marked in history to show as clear as possible that the roots of what we know as the Cold War fundamentally begins with the Bolshevik Revolution, almost 30 years before the end of World War II. To go as far back as to the first diversion of Russia’s path that once ran alongside the United States of America, evidence suggests that after the death of Alexander I at the end of 1825 when the Soviet Union had decided to exit practically all international involvement and became suspiciously secretive in their dealings. The liquidation, in a sense, of Europe’s significant and prominent role in the economy of the world and then a drop of interest in Europe, as a cause of the Cold War is a viable argument in the sense that when both nations had stopped being so engrossed in Europe and came to being more internally focussed, conclusively building their own nations into empires and expanding for as long as they could on an unoccupied Earth until they were at loggerheads by 1945.
Little is spoken of when finding examples of tension between the two nations after the First World War and before WWII however history tells us of the reaction of the American population post-Bolshevik Revolution, referencing the First Red Scare. It caused the association of anarchism and communism. For those in favour of communism level equality, including the groups of those in poverty as well as homosexuals, women and minorities that were actively fighting for their rights at the time, communism seemed like a great direction for the country to head towards. These communities that started ‘sympathising’ for communism were seen by the nation as unloyal and eventually enemies of the state, this led to their deportation by President Wilson, the embedding of social stigma towards supporters of communism – commonly known by the term ‘reds’ – and the poor image it holds in the eyes of American citizens. The majority of the population was fuelled by the fear of losing ownership of land and business – their constitutional rights as citizens. Reasons for the slow buildup to the Cold War exist as not a small amount of big issues yet instead a large amount of smaller issues. Britain and America cost Stalin many lives during WWII, over 20 million, and a lot of them could've been saved had they opened a front in France earlier.[] Yet USSR’s international respect and so recognition as a potential superpower, as such, rose due to the victory of WWII, this meant that Eastern Europeans would be resolute in advocating the communist nations ideologies due to the perks of it. Had more of Europe accepted communism as their way of politics and order then they too would've received support from the Soviet Union and its developing empire. Fitting with this is a line Gaddis writes “The resulting asymmetry would account, more than anything else, for the origins, escalation, and ultimate outcome of the Cold War.”[] Asymmetry in this sense would be the sudden lean towards communism, a repeat of the same event 3 decades prior when the Bolsheviks took Russia, the Soviet Union now taking over war torn nations at their weakest. Although he speaks of the consequence of the Red Army’s denial in Poland killing the slightest chance of any agreement that the Grand Alliance’s European members could have come to. The inability to make ends meet and please all the members meant that Americas involvement became inevitable, as the crusaders for capitalism, thus provoking the Soviet counterpart. In this point, Gaddis’ interpretation places the mark of the beginning of the beginning of the Cold War at the Red Army’s attempt to “liberate”[] Poland. Taking the cause of the Cold War outside of the two nations. External causes then of the Cold War are not to be set aside whilst searching for the root cause. In a sense this alike with the fall of Europe as the worlds economical hub back in
McCauley begins his book with an explanation of the three most common schools of history: the orthodox or traditional; the revisionist; the post-revisionist. In this section of the book he reads “The West regarded Marxist-Leninist ideology and its ambition to expand until it took over the world as the root cause of the Cold War.” Respectively with evidence seen prior seen as a very convincing argument however it is followed by a controversy with Nikolai Novikov’s telegram. The telegram in which he reads the exact words “American monopolistic capital,” inferring that not only does the orthodox school of thought pin the blame on the USSR and in that case Stalin but also fails to realise, or refuses to realise in itself the blame for the exact same thing, simultaneously both nations edging towards a Cold War. This is the school of thought named: pro-soviet, not covered by McCauley in detail however E.H. Carr is a well known author for this style of approach. In his 14-volume history of the Soviet Union he takes his anti-Cold War mindset to a level where he describes the Soviet Union as the major progressive force in the world and the Americas as an obstacle in its way. Reading further into the 14 volumes and Carr himself
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Thomas A. Bailey argued Stalin violated promises he had made at the Yalta Conference, imposed Soviet-dominated regimes on unwilling Eastern European populations and conspired to spread communism throughout the world. This battles with Gaddis’ point, titling the nations as reluctant rather than accepting of communism.
To conclude, by assembling and analysing the depth and rigour behind each argument presented by the three historians alongside the additional sources, a clearer insight into the initial build up of what became the Cold War is seen. This helps to determine a final point at which the Cold War began, having weighted each, valid in every sense, argument for the cause of it. The placement of the blame is generally based on the school of thought and developed from there entirely dependant on the historian and their understanding based on evidence ascertained from their view on events. It is important to note that historians could not make convincing arguments without hard facts to back their claims, which is why yet again taking a quote from Gaddis’ book over the other two shows in itself the distinctiveness of Gaddis’ argument which by nature and apparent school of thought is meant to be post-revisionist however the lack of Gaddis’ approach towards geopolitics, etc. causes his argument as a post-revisionist – argued by Bruce Cumings, MERGE also by Melvyn P. Leffler
Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took [Stalin] in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place. Out of the three historians Gaddis’ pitches the most convincing argument as he argues alike that the Cold War indeed began following the end of the Second World War but the roots of it began in the early 19th Century with the collapse and diminished importance of Europe and the British Empire on a decline
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Europe’s fall becomes a recurring and a very persuasive argument as the first spark that lit the fuse of the Cold War. In the end the Cold War is the aggression between two nations, not with “evil” intentions or nature – as mentioned by President Reagan – yet an aggression caused by the fundamental belief in themselves and distrust towards anything that was foreign thought. An aggression of two nations fought in proxy wars and bringing the world closer and closer to Doomsday, in a sense, mistakenly as usually and ironically occurs in history brought conflict when their sole motive by monopolising the Earth was to avoid conflict itself. A war that would not have occurred if its people saw eye to eye. A war that began because the world lost its man at the top.