Transcription
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Hi there and welcome to the history teacher. This revision video covers superpower relations and the Cold War, 1941 to 1991, from the GCSE Edexcel nine to one course. Hopefully, you'll also find it useful if you're studying any of the other exam boards, or if, like me, you just love history.
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Hi there, guys. We're starting out onto the superpowers and Cold War topic today. The Cold War was a period of tension between the USA and the USSR, who became known as the superpowers. In order to understand how and why this conflict began, it's useful for us to look at a recent history of each of the countries and the ideological differences between them.
The Russian Revolution took place in 1917. The Russian workers, fed up with the poor management of World War One, extreme poverty, and an inept government, overthrew the Tsar and set up a communist government in his place. The idea of communism was based on the work of Karl Marx and aimed to create an equal, classless society. All property was taken by the state. This means that there were no more private companies or private land. All the assets of Russia now belong to the government, and the profits of all businesses were supposed to be for the good of all. The government would also be able to control the prices of goods. Communism prioritizes the needs of the society over the needs of the individual. So, for communists, it's not important if one person is imprisoned or is treated unfairly, only that the good for everyone is considered.
The revolution was very insecure at first, and there were threats from within and outside of Russia. As a result, the leaders were paranoid and arrested anyone who disagreed with what the revolutionaries were doing. This continued through the 20s and 30s under Stalin's rule. By this time, Stalin was murdering up to 1.2 million people, using the excuse to purge Russia of his opponents. This paranoia also led to a lack of political and press freedom. Newspapers were forced to print what the Soviet government wanted them to, and bad news was censored. No other political party was allowed to stand for election in Russia. The citizens voted for which member of the Communist Party they wanted, rather than which party.
The American structure, on the other hand, had been around much longer. Democratic capitalism was the idea that private ownership and competition would create the best prices and wages. In other words, people would sell their products for whatever people would pay for them, and other producers would be able to charge less, forcing the original manufacturer to put their prices down. However, capitalism created huge inequality, with those owning the property being much wealthier than those who were employed by them. Unlike communism, there was inequality of opportunity and education because wealth could buy better schooling, and therefore the children of the rich continued to get richer. Capitalism prioritizes the rights of the individual, although these are still constrained by the needs of the society. For example, the need to protect the health service during the pandemic meant that some individual rights were constrained. There is a free market where any individual can own property and make money, and so too can any individual stand for election. Democracy meant that more than one party could stand for election. However, in practice, in America, only one of two parties were ever likely to be elected.
The Second World War saw the two superpowers needing to cooperate. United in their opposition to the Nazis, they had to work together to defeat Hitler and Germany and bring an end to the war. However, the three nations of the so-called Grand Alliance had a history which caused them real problems when it came to their cooperation. The relationship between Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain, and Stalin, the leader of the USSR, was probably the most abrasive. In the early years of the alliance, Churchill had been the Minister of War during the First World War and had provided the White Army, who were fighting against the communists in Russia, with weapons and men. Churchill hated the communists and was quoted as saying, "The Soviet regime should have been strangled at birth." Stalin had never forgotten this, and it put real strain on their relationship.
The USA and Britain also felt threatened by communism. Governments and rich industrialists feared the idea of communism spreading to the working classes of their own countries and threatening their wealth and privilege. Countries of the West were also horrified as some of the atrocities carried out by Stalin, especially during the purges of the 1930s, where Stalin is estimated to have killed over 1 million of his supposed enemies. Finally, Poland had been a source of contention for decades, particularly after World War One, when the border of Poland was moved to include those areas which had previously been partitioned, which the Soviet Union believed had been taken from them in the treaties that followed the war, and the Soviet Union had tried to claim back in its invasion of Poland in 1939.
Okay, that is everything you need to know about the ideologies of the USA and the USSR and the historic differences between the countries of the Grand Alliance. Don't forget to check out my website for worksheets and revision guidance, and I will see you next time.