The USSR's Voracity for Power - Essay Example

The two powers distrusted each other. America resented Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship and communism in the USSR. The USSR, also referred to as the Soviet Union also distrusted America for not accepting them into the international community. They were also unhappy with America’s delay to participate in the World War II, leading to the death of many Russians. Therefore, even though the Soviet Union and the United States fought during the Word War II as allies, they had only joined hands to fight a common enemy, the Nazi Germany.

The major cause of the Cold War was the move by the Soviet Union to try and gain power and influence in East European countries. After the World War II ended, the Soviet Union separated itself from the Western allies. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin initiated aggressive policies in order to gain influence in east European countries. The United States intervened to stop the Soviet Union’s expansion, and this resulted in the Cold War. After Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union was taken over by Khrushchev and later by Brezhnev.

These leaders implemented various foreign policies. This discussion explores the Soviet Union’s voracity for power and influence as the chief cause of the Cold War, and the impact of Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s foreign policies. Origination of the Cold War Before World War II began, the United States and the Soviet Union had several differences. Firstly, the two nations supported different types of governments. The United States supported democracy while the Soviet Union favoured communism.

There were also economic differences whereby the United States supported world free trade. However, the Soviet Union was against international trade as the Russians felt it would bring in influences from the west that would threaten their dictatorial system. Moreover, when Europe was weakened in World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States were the most influential powers and each of them wanted to control the other. When the World War II ended, the distrust between the Soviet Union and the United States was heightened by the domination of the USSR in Eastern Europe and the confrontational and domineering attitude of the United States to international matters, as well as their possession of an atomic bomb (Painter, 1999: 15).

The Soviet Union had gained considerable influence in Eastern Europe even before World War II ended. The Red Army was in control of some parts of Eastern Europe by 1944. The Soviet Union also obtained the control of eastern Germany and obtained a new border line with Poland at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Towards the end of the war in 1945, the Soviet Union actively dominated the eastern European control and influenced the elections to ensure communist domination in their governments. Moreover, communists in these countries took charge of the most significant ministries of Military and Defence.

The Soviet Union also influenced Western Europe’s post-war elections in countries like France and Italy in 1946 (Phillips, 2001: 123). Stalin consolidated the Soviet authority in east European countries and used the Soviet Union’