“There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place amongst the nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.”
“Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
– Closing two paragraphs of the 1835 portions of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” Book 1, Conclusion (again, written in 1835)
What are the roots of the rivalry between America and Russia during the Cold War?
In 1700, a war began in Northern and Eastern Europe. It was called the “Great Northern War.” Russia was one of a number of participants in that war. This war lasted for more than twenty years, and only ended in 1721. Its “Treaty of Nystad” is often marked as the beginning of the “Russian Empire.” The Russian Empire was then officially proclaimed later in that same year: 1721. In many ways, this war had facilitated the rise of Russia. In 1722, Russia’s “Peter the Great” introduced the “Table of Ranks.” As Wikipedia puts it, this was “a formal list of positions and ranks in the military, government, and court of Imperial Russia” (see source). This would last for nearly two centuries. In 1776, the United States declared its independence from the British Empire. This independence was then recognized by the mother country in 1783. Thus, the Russian Empire and the United States were born in the same century: the eighteenth century – although the nation of Russia (obviously) had been around for much longer than this massive Empire. The American War of Independence had seen a young John Quincy Adams dispatched to the court of Russia’s “Catherine the Great,” as a secretary to the American diplomat Francis Dana. But the two countries’ histories would soon become parallel in the Napoleonic Wars, which would have a great effect upon both nations.
Peter the Great of Russia
Their parallel histories in the Napoleonic Wars, each seeing some major events in 1812
In 1803, the Napoleonic Wars soon broke out. In 1804, the Russians then entered the conflict as allies of the British. But, in 1807, a “Treaty of Tilsit” then put the Russians on the French side instead, allying them with Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1812, the Russians then switched sides again, allying back with Great Britain. In retaliation, Napoleon launched a massive invasion of Russia itself. But, perhaps partially because of the Russian winter, the French invasion soon failed. Thus, Napoleon went back to continental Europe to lick his wounds. The Russians would later remember this as the “Patriotic War of 1812.” On the other side of the world, the United States was drawn into these same Napoleonic Wars in that same year: 1812. Specifically, a series of British provocations had led the United States to declare war on Britain. This was the American “War of 1812.” It would actually last a little bit beyond 1812, for a few additional years. Incidentally, Tchaikovsky’s famous classical music piece “The 1812 Overture” is about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in that year. It has nothing to do with the American “War of 1812.” But back to the Napoleonic Wars.
Fire of Moscow, 1812 – during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia
Russia’s “Decembrist Revolt,” America’s expansion and civil war, and emancipations
In February of 1815, the British then made peace with the distant United States. The American “War of 1812” was now over. Thus, the British war aims were now focusing more on defeating Napoleon himself in mainland Europe. In June of 1815, the British and their allies finished off Napoleon’s army at Waterloo. The Napoleonic Wars were now finally over. In November of 1815, they were formally ended by the “Second Treaty of Paris,” as it is sometimes called. The Russian Empire was a signatory to that same treaty. From 1817, the Russians began to fight a war against the indigenous mountain tribes of the Caucasus. This war would last until 1864. Back in 1825, there was a failed coup d’état in Russia. It was called the “Decembrist Revolt.” Five of the rebellion’s leaders were hanged. Others were imprisoned, or exiled out to Siberia. It was in 1835 that Alexis de Tocqueville (a Frenchman) made the aforementioned prophecy about the rise of America and Russia. In the 1840s, the United States fought a war with Mexico. This greatly expanded the territory of the United States, but came at a great (and sad) cost to Mexico. In the 1850s, Russia then faced a bitter alliance of three nations in the Crimean War. But back to the United States. Many American slave states, including Texas, were now being added to the American Union. This contributed to the American Civil War, which broke out in 1861. Also in 1861, the Russian czar passed an “Edict of Emancipation.” This emancipated the Russian serfs. However, few of the serfs were ever able to get any land after their emancipation. Thus, their problems continued for many years after that, making one wonder about how “emancipated” they really were. In 1865, the United States then abolished slavery within its own borders. But, in a similar way, few of the freed African Americans were ever able to get any land after the Civil War. And there were still other ongoing problems for them, during the Reconstruction Era – and the even more problematic decades that soon followed it.
Decembrists at Peter’s Square – Russia, 1825
Peasants reading the Emancipation Manifesto – Russia, 1861
The Russians sell Alaska to the United States, which soon expands its empire farther
Earlier in that century, the Russians had begun to colonize Alaska in earnest. But the Russians were somewhat worried about their border dispute with nearby British Canada. The Russians felt that they could not successfully defend Alaska from the United Kingdom. Thus, in 1867, Russia instead sold Alaska to the United States. The United States immediately inherited the Russians’ border dispute with British Canada – specifically, regarding the Alaskan border. This dispute would later intensify in the decades of the 1890s and the 1900s. But, back in the late 1870s, Russia fought a war against the Ottoman Empire. This conflict was just the latest round of the Russo-Turkish Wars, where the Russians had been fighting the Turks. For decades, the United States had been gaining much land from the local Native Americans. This was greatly intensified in the 1870s. The United States would basically win these prolonged conflicts by 1900, at the sad expense of the Native Americans. In 1898, the United States fought a war with the Spanish Empire. In the Spanish-American War of that year, the United States gained Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. The United States also gained Guam and the Philippines in the distant Pacific. In 1900, the Americans also annexed the territory of Hawaii. This would become important in a much later war. But, in 1904, the Russo-Japanese War soon began in East Asia. And the American president, Theodore Roosevelt, would soon be mediating the dispute between the two sides. Thus, the war was actually over with by 1905.
Signing of the Alaska Treaty, 1867
Japanese assault on entrenched Russian forces – Russo-Japanese War, 1904
1905 Russian Revolution and its aftermath, our “Great White Fleet,” and World War One
But, also in 1905, a revolution began in Russia – and it’s probably not the one that you’re thinking of. Later in that year, there was an “October Manifesto.” This was a predecessor to the new Russian Constitution. This was soon passed in the following year: 1906. This particular revolution then ended with a government victory in 1907. From 1907 to 1909, the United States sent the “Great White Fleet” around the world. The message was clear: America had now arrived as a serious power on the world stage. But both America and Russia would soon be tested by some events in continental Europe. In particular, events in the Balkans were now pushing the continent closer to war. A series of minor wars and crises were just adding more gunpowder to the magazine. And, in 1914, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand lit the fuse, and Europe exploded. Russia was one of a number of nearby countries with some affected interests in the Balkans. Thus, the Russians had now been drawn into the First World War, where they were on the Allied side. But the war would soon become cataclysmic for the Russians, as an even greater revolution was now on the horizon. But, in the meantime, the Germans sank the RMS Lusitania in 1915. 1,197 of the ship’s passengers were killed, including 128 Americans. This angered many Americans, including the former president Theodore Roosevelt. But the sitting president, Woodrow Wilson, instead contented himself with an apology from Germany. It was going to take more than the sinking of the Lusitania to get the United States involved in the war.
Artistic impression of Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, during the Russian Revolution of 1905
Corpses of Jewish victims of the Białystok pogrom – Poland (Russian Empire), 1906
America enters the war, Russia (sadly) goes communist, and the war ends in Europe
When the United States finally entered the war, it was actually over events in nearby Mexico. Specifically, the Germans had been trying to encourage Mexico to make war against the United States. This was because the Germans were hoping that a war on America’s southern border would keep the United States busy, and thus keep them out of the war in Europe. But, when the Zimmermann Telegram revealed these things to the American government in 1917, this completely backfired on the Germans. The American public was now outraged, and clamoring for a war with Germany. Thus, in April of 1917, the United States now declared war on Germany – exactly the outcome that the Germans had been trying to prevent. But the Russians had recently gone through the “February Revolution.” And they would soon go through the far more infamous “October Revolution.” This is the one that instituted communism in Russia. The aforementioned “Table of Ranks,” introduced nearly two centuries earlier, was then ended. This also ended the aforementioned “Russian Empire” itself. Thus, Russia had an early exit from the First World War in March of 1918, giving the Germans much of their prior territory. Sadly, the Germans were now free to pour even more of their troops into the Western Front. But the American troops were now starting to tip the balance there in the Allies’ favor. I should gratefully acknowledge that the British and the French had done most of the fighting and dying before then on the Western Front. But the sheer numbers of the Americans were now helping them to tip the balance there. Thus, the Germans finally surrendered in November of 1918. In Europe, the First World War was now over. But there was a brief Allied intervention in Russia, which included some American troops. Thankfully, these troops were soon withdrawn, as the Russian Civil War was still going on. In fact, it continued until 1922. This coincided with an early Soviet war in Poland.
Russian Revolution of 1917
Polish-Soviet War, 1920 – which coincided with the Russian Civil War
Soviet expansionism and Great Purges, and Russia and America each enter World War II
Also in 1922, the Soviet Union annexed Ukraine, Belarus, and Transcaucasia. And the Russians would soon see the Great Purges of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1927, Joseph Stalin rose to power in Soviet Russia. A new (and bitter) era in Soviet foreign policy was about to begin. There was a famine in Soviet Kazakhstan, part of some wider Soviet famines. The famine in Ukraine, also known as the Holodomor, sometimes resembled a sort of genocide. This was because food was actively being taken from the peasants. In fairness, the United States was simultaneously being racked by the Great Depression at that same time. Nonetheless, the vaunted system of “Marxism-Leninism” was producing far greater famines within the Soviet Union. During the 1930s, the Soviet Union had border conflicts with the Japanese in Mongolia. And, in the late 1930s, there was ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Union, mostly against those of Polish descent. Like their contemporaries (and future enemies) in Europe’s Nazi Germany, the Soviets had some bitter racial beliefs. In 1939, there was soon a Soviet war with Finland, called the “Winter War.” This war would last until 1940. Other Baltic states were also being annexed in 1940. A few months later, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in “Operation Barbarossa” in 1941. The Soviet Union was now being drawn into World War II. But, in Russia, it would instead be known as the “Great Patriotic War.” The United States was already participating in the Battle of the Atlantic. But, with the sinking of the Lusitania in the last war, America was reluctant to get involved in another costly European war. But everything changed in 1941, when the Imperial Japanese suddenly attacked the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the aforementioned American territory of Hawaii. This then drew the United States into World War II as well. In Europe, Hitler soon declared war on the United States. This also drew the United States into the war’s European theater. This would become important for all concerned.
Soviet children during a German air raid, 1941
Victims of Soviet NKVD in Estonia, 1941
American territories are captured and freed, and Germany surrenders to all of the Allies
In the Pacific, the Japanese temporarily succeeded in taking Guam and the Philippines from the United States. Joseph Stalin was soon pushing the Western Allies to invade Western Europe as soon as possible. In 1944, the United States and its allies did so, on D-Day at Normandy. During the Pacific War, the Americans eventually managed to regain their possessions in Guam and the Philippines. However, after the war, the United States would eventually grant independence to the Philippines. But back to the war itself. The Soviets were now penetrating even further into Eastern Europe. By 1945, the Western Allies were actually invading Germany from the west, while the Soviet Union was then invading Germany from the east. The Russians were even entering into Berlin itself. Thus, Hitler soon committed suicide there in 1945. A final German surrender soon followed this. Thus, Germany was now being divided right down the middle by the “Iron Curtain.” West Germany, including West Berlin, would now be free. But East Germany (including East Berlin), by contrast, would be ruled by the Soviet Union. And other precursors to the Cold War would soon be taking place, in the ominous shape of a mushroom cloud.
Soviet and American troops meet at the Elbe – Germany, April 1945
“Trinity” explosion – New Mexico, United States – 16 July 1945
Atomic bombs explode at home and abroad, and the actual Cold War officially begins
Specifically, in July of 1945, the United States tested its first atomic bomb in the American state of New Mexico. This was the “Trinity explosion.” They soon deployed two of these atomic bombs in Japan, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia soon invaded Japanese Manchuria around this same time. But, when Japan’s emperor eventually surrendered, his surrender speech was giving somewhat greater emphasis to a “most cruel bomb” in his arguments for the surrender. Nonetheless, it’s true that Japan was now spared from the horrors of a Soviet occupation, and probably had reason to fear such an occupation. This was the advantage of being occupied by the Americans instead. World War II finally ended with the signing of the surrender agreement aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2nd, 1945. I personally believe that the Cold War began right then, at this very moment. The alliance between America and Russia (among other nations) had defeated the Axis powers. But Russian aggression in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia would soon be drawing these two nations, along with many other nations, into the massive “Cold War.” The Soviet Union soon exploded their own atomic bomb in 1949. This was thanks to a number of American scientists who went traitor. China also went communist in 1949. And, in these early Cold War years, this conflict would soon see the crises of the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War.
Hiroshima explosion (left) and Nagasaki explosion (right), 6 and 9 August 1945
Soviets’ first nuclear detonation, 29 August 1949
An epilogue about the Cold War itself, and what its aforementioned roots had wrought
Thankfully, this earliest phase of the Cold War soon ended with the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Indeed, his death may have allowed the Korean Armistice Agreement to be reached in the Korean War soon afterwards. Like the distant region of Germany, the Korean Peninsula was now going to be divided right down the middle. That division continues to this day. This would be another fateful remnant of the Cold War, which was important for both America and Russia. In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became (respectively) the 49th and 50th states to enter the American Union – an epilogue to our prior discussions of these two territories. And, in 1961, the Russians constructed the infamous Berlin Wall in East Germany. The conflict between America and Russia would then continue to play out in a number of other places, in the decades that followed this time. For example, the Cold War would soon become hot in Vietnam, Angola, and twentieth-century Afghanistan – albeit without any direct shooting wars between the two great superpowers. And, in the background, there was always the chilling threat of a global nuclear war. This would even lead the world to a number of serious crises, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to “Able Archer 83.” (More about that latter crisis here.) And, to some degree, these problems continue to this day.
John F. Kennedy meeting with Nikita Khrushchev – Vienna, 1961
A meeting of Russian war veterans from Afghanistan, 1990
Conclusion: There is much to learn from the prior histories of both America and Russia
It’s true that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. It’s also true that West and East Germany were reunified in 1990. And it’s even true that the Soviet Union collapsed two years later in 1991. But post-Soviet Russia continues to be causing some problems, at the time that I write this. There is even some talk today of a “Second Cold War.” Thus, the legacy of the Cold War is ever with us, continuing to affect us in both good and bad ways in our twenty-first-century world. The roots of this Cold War can be traced to many things, including the actions of the Germans and the Japanese during World War II. But it can also be traced back to the respective histories, with good and bad aspects alike, of the two future superpowers of America and Soviet Russia. One hopes that we will thus learn from the many mistakes of this often-forgotten history. And, if I may be so bold, we can also learn from the successes of the great Western powers like the United States. Indeed, they kept the communist world at bay during the (First) Cold War. It’s true that they sometimes failed to contain communism to its then-current borders, with a notable defeat in Vietnam. But the Allies also stopped the Soviet bear in its tracks, and freed Eastern Europe from over four decades of communist tyranny. This is a truly astonishing achievement, in a Cold War that was often believed to be “unwinnable.” We may not have won the second round yet, but we did win the first such round. Thus, in the process, we made the world much safer for democracy.
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