United States and Soviet Union/Russia Relations in the 20thCentury
This exhibition will review the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia during the 20thcentury. The project will mainly focus on three main events in which both countries where involved starting with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and followed by World War II and the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union had a fluctuating relationship throughout the 20thcentury which the exhibition will display and explain the tension that was present between both countries.
To begin talking about the history behind the United States and the Soviet Union and present-day Russia, the story begins with the Russian Revolution of 1917. The United States government was initially hostile to the Soviet leaders for taking Russia out of World War I and was opposed to a state ideologically based on communism. To illustrate the hostility of the United States towards Russia,the exhibition starts with an image depicting American soldiers in the Russian city of Vladivostok. This was the first instance of American intervention during the Russian revolution (1). The United States had invested billions of dollars in guns and other military equipment that were transported along the Trans-Siberian Railway and they felt the need to protect that investment. The exhibition continues with the Unites States aiding the Soviet Union after it had been ravaged due to the world war and the civil war. The Soviet Union was going through a country-wide famine due to crops not being able to grow. This aide improved the relationship between both countries, but they did not establish diplomatic relations until 1933(2). By that time, Joseph Stalin’s ideologies had been cemented in the Soviet Union and it presented a difficult road to friendly relations with the Soviets.
The exhibition will then shift to talking about WWII to portray how even though Soviet Union and the United States were allies, tensions between both countries was building.Although the relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before WWII, both countries had to cooperate to be able to secure victory against Nazi Germany. In 1939, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany which caused the relationship between Soviet Union and the United States to worsen (3). Following the defeat of France by Nazi Germany, President Roosevelt tried to make some amends with the Soviets because he grew wary of the increasing German aggression (4). In January of 1941, the U.S. government agreed to lift the embargo that they had on Soviet imported products. Furthermore, Roosevelt blocked attempts to exclude the Soviet Union from receiving U.S. assistance. In June of 1941, Nazi Germany decided to invade the Soviet Union and after a couple one-on-one meetings with the Soviets, Roosevelt decided to assist the Soviets and entered the war (5).
Several issues arose during the war that threatened the alliance. These included the Soviet refusal to help the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, and the decision of British and U.S. officials to exclude the Soviets from secret negotiations with German officers in March of 1945 to try to make German troops surrender in Italy (6). The most important disagreement was over the opening of a second front in the West (7). Stalin’s troops struggled to hold the Eastern front against Nazi troops, and the Soviets began pleading for a British invasion of France immediately after the Nazi invasion in 1941. In 1942, Roosevelt promised the Soviets that the Allies would open the second front that autumn, but it did not happen and although Stalin only complained when the invasion was postponed until 1943, he exploded the following year when the invasion was postponed again until May of 1944. Stalin withdrew his ambassadors from London and Washington and there was a fear that the Soviets might want a separate peace with Germany.
Although there were differences, defeating Nazi Germany would not have been possible if it weren’t for the cooperation between the countries of the allied powers. When the United States and Great Britain finally invaded France in 1944, the Allies were finally able to drain Nazi Germany of its strength on two fronts. Finally, the two atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. on Japan and the Soviet’s decision to invade Manchuria, led to the end of the war in the Pacific. Furthermore, during the wartime conferences at Tehran and Yalta, Roosevelt secured political concessions from Stalin and Soviet participation in the United Nations. Roosevelt had hoped that if the United States made an effort to satisfy some of the Soviet demands and to integrate the Soviet Union into the United Nations, then both countries would have a positive and peaceful relationship. Unfortunately, soon after the war, the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union began to falter due to both nations facing complex decisions after the war.
The United States came out of WWII as a major power economically, politically, and in the military. The production of materials for the war pulled the economy out of depression and made U.S. gain huge profits. During the years after WWII, the United States began to offer economic assistance to countries in Europe and Asia that had been destroyed due to the war. The Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the Marshall Plan in 1948 are two of the most famous cases of economic assistance to countries to rebuild their shattered economies. This came at a time when communism was spreading, and U.S. tried to contain the spread of communism by helping countries that were being threatened by it with economic, political, and military assistance. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created by the United States and several western European nations to protect each other against Soviet Union (8). The United States thought that helping the countries that had struggled to rebuild their economies would be vital in the prevention of communist expansion. All this competition of ideologies led to the involvement of U.S. and Soviet troops in foreign wars. Two of the most famous examples of this would be the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
During the latest stages of the Cold War, specifically the 1980’s, resulted in a dramatic transformation between the United States and Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War was rather peacefully and abrupt between both countries. As Gorbachev’s economic reforms foundered and his political base crumbled in 1991, the Bush administration increasingly engaged Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin turned back a coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, but in the months that followed consolidated authority over political and military institutions, and increasingly supported Russian independence and dissolution of the Soviet Union (9). On December 25, after speaking to Gorbachev on the telephone, Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office to announce that the Soviet Union had seized to exist.
Notes:
Smith, Gibson Bell. “Guarding the Railroad, Taming the Cossacks.” National Archives and Records Administration. 2002. Accessed May 09, 2019. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/winter/us-army-in-russia-1.html.
Smith, S. A. The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Beardsley, E. H. “Secrets between Friends: Applied Science Exchange between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during World War II.” The SHAFR Guide Online7, no. 4 (1977): 447-73. doi:10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim130100002.
U.S. Department of State. Accessed April 04, 2019. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/us-soviet.
Brick, Philip, Kevin J. Fernlund, Bruce Hevly, and John M. Findlay. “The Cold War American West, 1945-1989.” The Journal of American History88, no. 2 (2001): 725. doi:10.2307/2675235.
Goral, Pawel. “Cold War Rivalry and the Perception of the American West.” 2014. doi:10.1057/9781137364302.
Lemelin, Bernard. “The American Midwest and the Early Cold War.” Middle West Review5, no. 1 (2018): 142-50. doi:10.1353/mwr.2018.0073
U.S. Department of State. Accessed April 04, 2019. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/foreword.
Kahn, Martin. “‘Russia Will Assuredly Be Defeated’: Anglo-American Government Assessments of Soviet War Potential before Operation Barbarossa.” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies25, no. 2 (2012): 220-40. doi:10.1080/13518046.2012.676498.