The Cold War

There had always been tension between the Communist system of Russia and the Capitalist system of the West. Before the war, this tension had never threatened world peace. The Russians were too weak and occupied with building up their own country. But in 1945, Russia emerged as the world's second most powerful state. Relations between the Western powers, such as the USA, Britain and France, and Communist Russia grew tense and frosty in the years following the end of the war. This 'Cold War' ('cold' because it was not a real, shooting or 'hot' war) dominated international relations for the next 45 years - until Russia abandoned its Communist system in 1991.

Soviet expansion

The Russian 'Red Army' had driven the Germans out of all of eastern Europe and the Russians had been welcomed as liberators from Nazi oppression by these countries. Unfortunately for the peoples of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and eastern Germany, the Red Army had no intention of leaving. Instead, Communist dictatorships were set up in these states and the leaders of these governments took their orders from Stalin in Moscow. Churchill, in a speech in 1946, referred to the countries under Russian control as being behind 'the Iron Curtain'. This was because the Communists set up barbed wire fences and observation towers to stop people leaving the areas they now controlled.

Stalin wanted to establish a ring of Communist 'satellite' states in eastern Europe in which the Red Army would be based. Russia had twice been invaded in 1914 and 1941. Now she had a protective ring of eastern European Communist states to act as a buffer against another invasion.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 72 f.