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Origins of the Cold War. Though the Cold War is considered to be from 1950 to 1991 its origins go back much further.
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Origins of the Cold War Though the Cold War is considered to be from 1950 to 1991 its origins go back much further. The origins of the war can be traced back to a point when the western ideologies of liberal democracy and capitalism found a rival with the birth of the ideology of communism . Communism was, in large part, a response to the excesses and injustices of the capitalist component of our ideology during its growth period; the industrial revolution.
The Birth of communism • Adam Smith wrote his seminal treatise on the virtues of the free market system in which individual actors within the economy directed it while marks wrote about the value of the workers owning all means of production. While it wouldn’t seem, on the face of it, that these two ideas would lead to such tension and conflict it is their underlying assumptions about human nature and measures of control that brought about the Cold War.
What is communism? • Marx and Engels argued that capitalism inherently divided people into classes and that tension between the classes was unavoidable. Communism teaches that this struggle against inequality is at the heart of conflict within and between nations. Remove the inequality and you remove the conflict.
The growth of communism • The gentleman at left, Vladimir IlyichUlyanov took the last name Lenin when he led the Russian Revolution in 1917. He added the idea of a vanguard for the proletariat to Marx’s philosophy. This vanguard would be the Communist Party. Like Marx, Lenin saw communism as a state of transition for people on the path to equality. Unlike Marx, he saw a role for a secret police within the party to help “guide” the workers to their paradise.
Wilson’s Fourteen Points • 1. No more secret agreements ("Open covenants openly arrived at"). • 2. Free navigation of all seas. • 3. An end to all economic barriers between countries. • 4. Countries to reduce weapon numbers. • 5. All decisions regarding the colonies should be impartial • 6. The German Army is to be removed from Russia. Russia should be left to developher own political set-up. • 7. Belgium should be independent like before the war. • 8. France should be fully liberated and allowed to recover Alsace-Lorraine • 9. All Italians are to be allowed to live in Italy. Italy's borders are to "alongclearly recognisable lines of nationality." • 10. Self-determination should be allowed for all those living in Austria-Hungary. • 11. Self-determination and guarantees of independence should be allowed forthe Balkan states. • 12. The Turkish people should be governed by the Turkish government. Non-Turks in the old Turkish Empire should govern themselves. • 13. An independent Poland should be created which should have access to the sea. • 14. A League of Nations should be set up to guarantee the political and territorial independence of all states.
Espionage in the inter-war and World War II period • The Soviets created Comintern, short for Communist International with the stated goal of spreading communism to every corner of the globe. This started and espionage war that continues to this day. • http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/22/us-russia-putin-bomb-idUSTRE81L22H20120222 • http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/18/decoding-the-case-of-alleged-canadian-spy-jeffrey-paul-delisle/ • The most effective spy ring during this time were the atomic spies who successfully stole many of the secrets required to produce an atomic bomb.
Post War revelations • The defection of Igor Gouzenko in Ottawa touched of a Red Scare that would consume much of the western world and smear innocent people with the worst accusation imaginable. The problem was that there were real spies doing real damage and it was always difficult to tell one from the other.
