Cold War origins - 2. developing tensions up to 1948

• Feb 1946 - Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ is sent 
• March 1946 - Churchill delivers his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech
• June 1946 - Communist-led Democratic Bloc wins the Polish elections 
• Oct 1946 - Communists win 75% popular vote in Bulgaria 
• Nov 1946 - Communists win 80% of the votes in Romania
• March 1947 - Truman announces his doctrine
• Sept 1947 - Cominform is created
• June 1948 - Communists control Czechoslovakia
• Pro-agrarian parties – many EE states had political parties that focused on representing the interests on the farming communities; the redistribution of land was a political priority for such parties 
• Economic imperialism – the idea that a state could use its economic power to ensure that an economically weaker state becomes dependent upon it; this dependency would be used by the stronger state to exercise influence over the weaker one. 
• Isolationism – an approach to foreign policy favoured by the USA before its intervention in WW2; it was based on minimal involvement in external affairs, beyond those seen to relate to US interests in places geographically close to the USA.
• Sovereignty – the recognition by the international community of a state’s independence and its right to govern itself without external interference.
• Veto – the right to vote against something, and that single vote is sufficient to bring the whole plan to a shop  
• Pravda – means ‘truth’ in Russian, started as an opposition newspaper without a particular political affiliation in the early 20th century, but was shut down by the officials in the regime of Tsar Nicholas II. After the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, it became the official newspaper of the Communist Paper of the Soviet Union. This made it a very reliable source for stating official government views, but the content was questionable, as it never published anything critical of the USSR, the Communist Party, its leadership or its decision-making 
• Paris Peace Conference, 1946 – in September and October 1946, leaders from France, the USSR, the UK and the USA met to draw up peace treaties for the defeated European powers: Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Romania. Although settlements were not reached for Austria or Germany, treaties were drafted for the other countries and signed in 1947. All treaties included clauses regarding territorial adjustments, reparations and anti-fascist requirements for the post-war governments
• Containment – a strategy announced by Truman. Its aim was to prevent the spread of communism by aiding those states who might be exposed to it. The USA presented this aid as a necessary defence of freedom and it was available to any state who called upon the USA for it 
• Greek Communists – Stalin had not been aiding the Greek communists and there was no indication that he would start to do so when British aid to anti-communists ended. British aid to anti-communists ended. Stalin was unsympathetic to communist revolutions in independent states because he couldn’t ensure Moscow’s control. Such realities had little impact on Truman
• Cominform – often regarded as a response to the USA’s introduction of the Marshall Plan in June 1947. The USSR felt that there was a need to consolidate communist states to fend off what it saw as the rise of US imperialism through the Marshall Plan 
• Zhdanov Doctrine – Zhdanov viewed the world as being divided into 2 camps: the imperialists led by the USA and the democrats led by the USSR. This thinking was transferred to Soviet cultural policy and it forced artists, writers and intellectuals to reflect this worldview through their work
• Wladyslaw Gomulka (1905-82) – communist who believed in the notion of different national versions of socialism. He worked, after 1945, to crush any opposition to communism in Poland. In 1947, he supported the rigged elections, which succeeded in finally eliminating opposition. He became a victim of the factional rivalry within the Polish communist movement. He supported the so-called ‘home’ faction and stood against the pro-Moscow faction. He was expelled from the Polish Communist Party in 1951 as Stalinisation gripped Poland, but in 1956 was seen as a national hero who could deliver change.
• Edvard Benes (1884-1948) – led the Czechoslovak government in exile in London during the war. He was not a communist but he was willing to work with Stalin, having decided that there was more to gain from such co-operation than an alliance with Poland. He returned as Czech president in 1946. He tried, and failed, to resist a communist-dominated government 
• Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) – the communist leader of Yugoslavia and one of the founding members of Cominform, but also the first to reject Soviet dominance. His Cold war stance was one of non-alignment with East or West. This enabled Yugoslavia to flourish and it contributed to holding together national unity in a very disparate state 
• George Kennan <3 (1904-2005) – often attributed with the responsibility for persuading Truman to commit the USA to the containment of communism and to controlling the international power of the USSR. He later rejected this link 
• Andrei Alexsandrovich Zhdanov (1896-1948) – hard-line Stalinist who bought his extremism into his responsibility for Soviet culture. He was responsible for developing Cominform. His restraint in bringing Yugoslavia into line led to his disgrace and dismissal from office in 1948