The Cold War

[marcelina44]

This is going to sound very ignorant, but, for History we have to decide in a paper whether the cold war started with stalin or with lenin.

any thoughts?

[Random Precision]

Okay, well first of all that is an incredibly stupid question, and I fear for the quality of the history teaching you and your classmates have.

So, down to business. The Cold War, as I understand it, was a decades-long face-off, sometimes militarily, between the United States and the Soviet Union, the world's two largest imperialist powers at the time for dominance of the world. It was generally understood that an arrangement at least somewhat like this would emerge during the end of World War II. Historians have variously traced its beginning to the Yalta Conference, the Berlin Blockade, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Various causes have also been cited, but I think, as with all other conflicts between empires, that at its root were profits, e.g. both the US and Soviet Union wanted domination of trade and the wealth that would bring to each power. Traditionalist historians have attributed the blame to a "conflict of worldviews" between the two, but this is garbage. They also tend to place a great deal of blame on the USSR for its beginning, this is garbage as well, as both powers were equally responsible. I don't know much about the subject, but that's a brief summary of what I've learned.

So as for the actual question. The Soviet Union under Lenin was a workers' state, and only after his death would it develop into a bureaucratic imperialist regime. So on the face of the question, I would go with Stalin. But the question seems to imply that it was either Lenin's or Stalin's responsibility. So I would say neither if that is the case. The best answer would go something along the lines of describing what a stupid question that is, and then going on to describe how it was solely an economic conflict between two imperialist giants that each did as muchas the either to precipitate.

There was a really good book by the historian Gabriel Kolko that dealt with this. I'll try to remember the title.

[marcelina44]

dear god thank you. I thought i was complelely ignorant on the subject because the question confused me. I too thought of an answer similar to yours and felt absolutely wrong when he gave us the lecture.


thank u

[Kwisatz Haderach]

It must have been a very bad (or very dumb) lecture, I'm afraid.

The notion that the Cold War was anything other than inevitable after the end of WW2 is idiotic. Whenever you have two superpowers dominating the whole world, OF COURSE they will compete with each other for supremacy. I mean, honestly, what would your history teacher expect, that they should have just hugged and got along? It didn't matter who was in charge of the Soviet Union, or the United States for that matter. They were left in a position where there could have been no other possible outcome than competition between the two.

Also, given that the Cold War was a product of World War 2, I can't possibly imagine what Lenin might have had to do with it, seeing how he was long dead by the time the Cold War began.

[marcelina44]

well put it this way, the proff. also uses the term a " communist state". The lecture was terrible, and it confused me.

[marcelina44]

I wrote a nice introduction about how neither side was "responsible" and talked about the competition between the two imperalistic powers.

the teacher just added two more parts to the essay, I was hoping someone could help me out a bit.

1. what were the reasons for the cold war's longevity?
2. why did communism fall in the 1990s?

[Random Precision]

1. what were the reasons for the cold war's longevity?

I believe the main reason was that each side had a sizable amount of influence in the developing world, the United States dominating Western Europe, most of Latin America and Africa, and the Soviet Union dominating Eastern Europe and parts of Asia and the Middle East. This is a generalization, as obviously it changes for different countries. Also, a non-military conflict between two imperialist powers naturally has to be pursued in other venues besides, well, the military. Although it sometimes did come to outright fighting, such as in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. These and other conflicts were proxy wars that allowed the two powers to struggle for influence without doing it directly, which of course cost less. It also expanded into such realms as the space race, the arms race et cetera.

2. why did communism fall in the 1990s?

Well, "communism" didn't fall, the Soviet Union did. This was because the economic system built by Stalin and continued by the Soviet Union until perestroika was unable to sustain itself. Stalin's system was based on bureaucratic central planning, which grows more and more inefficient over time as the bureaucracy develops. Stalin's way of dealing with this was violently purging the bureaucracy to get the economy fully functioning. It was not a problem for him, because he was happy to apply that violence, however his successors were not because it meant violence against the bureaucratic caste they themselves were part of. Thus, the Soviet economy, and that of Eastern Europe which emulated it, grew increasingly inefficient up until the Brezhnev stagnation period, where the growth rate was always at or near zero. There was also an increase beyond all reasonable porportion in military spending in relation to the economy. So it was really only a matter of time...

[marcelina44]

Thank you so much! I'm truly learning so much out of this dumb paper. It isn't what he is looking for at all, but I feel happy to do it anyway.

Any more information would thrill me. And thank you so much for taking your time and helping me out!

[Wanted Man]

Originally posted by marcelina44@October 04, 2007 01:55 am
This is going to sound very ignorant, but, for History we have to decide in a paper whether the cold war started with stalin or with lenin.

any thoughts?

It wasn't started BY either of them, but whether it started WITH them is a different matter entirely. It all depends on your attitude towards history. If you think that the mere existence of a workers' state means a cold war between it and the capitalist states, Lenin's your man. If you think that it was the result of the emergence of capitalist and socialist superpowers after WWII, it started with Stalin. Research how historians define "Cold War" and what they have to say about historical precedents, and you'll be able to formulate an answer.

[Random Precision]

Well, now you'll need data to back up your thesis. The political stuff should be relatively easy to prove. As for the economy (try to cut through the capitalist bullshit on these tho):

http://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/1284.html World Bank Paper on Soviet Economic Decline

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7069-15.cfm This has stuff about the military and economy

I'll try to find more, especially on Stalin's economy....

[marcelina44]

catbert- awesome, your awesome for helping so much.

gracias

[¡Viva la Libertad!]

Last year in my 8th grade class my history teacher "taught" us about communism when we started to read about the Cold War. He said, "Communism means the total lack of freedom. The government owns your house, your car, your property, everything." He just happened to watch Fox News. And this year, my history teacher, though we haven't even gotten to the chapter about Ancient Persian States, will probably say the same thing when we get to the section about the Yalta Conference and the Berlin Blockade. He just happens to have a "Bush/Cheney '04 Poster" in his room. It's a shame that my history teachers couldn't have been more open-minded to these things. Of course, my 8th grade teacher was "taught"--rather, brainwashed-- along with the rest of his generation that the "wicked commie bastards" would drop a nuke on their city and the best way to save yourself was to duck under your desk.

[Tatarin]

"Communism means the total lack of freedom. The government owns your house, your car, your property, everything."

That is always such a funny argument. But who owns them in capitalism? A few handful of people. Who owned the media in the Soviet Union? The state did. And who owns it today? About 5 corporations.

The argument is funny in a couple of ways. First, the western world is going into a controlled society, if we aren't controlled enough. Secondly, let us say that the state owns your car. But who owns the state? The people, of course. So in a sense, you do own your car, only the government issue cars and stuff.

"Foxists" always see the state as something external to the otherwise perfect American society, but always keep babling about Bush's war and how great the Republicans are and all...

[¡Viva la Libertad!]

Originally posted by Tatarin@October 08, 2007 09:24 pm

"Communism means the total lack of freedom. The government owns your house, your car, your property, everything."

"Foxists" always see the state as something external to the otherwise perfect American society, but always keep babling about Bush's war and how great the Republicans are and all...

The scary thing is that FOX is the cable news network that receives the largest number of regular viewers. I pity anyone who believes in what they tell them, who have obviously been deceived and would not know an unbiased source if they read or saw one.
The fact is is that the paranoia that existed in the Cold War is still evident today. That is how Bush gained a lot of his support after 9/11--through fear. And the propaganda continues.