Roots of the Cold War

* Precursors

- Marx and the communists

-> since 1848, Leftist worker-based movement a challenge to capitalism

- 1910 Revolution in Mexico

-> Zapata's agrarian quasi-communism and Villa's lower-class oriented struggles

-> shows how determined and powerful lower class movements can be

- 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia

-> a vanguard communist groups leads the revolution

-> despite pressures from "the West" and internal dissent, Rev. thrives

-> quick economic development and national integration

=> achieved at heavy human cost and with iron fist employed

- 1930 civil war in China

-> Mao Zedong's communists against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists

- Hitler and Mussolini's Fascisms had been oriented as anti-communist

- WWII had made us uncomfortable bedfellows with the USSR

* build-up to "Cold War"

- subversions in Europe

-> USSR set up pro-communist puppet governments in much of eastern Europe

=> Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia as the most famous cases where democratic decisions

were disallowed

+> Eastern Europeans lose right of self-determination to serve Soviet interests

=> USSR was determined to have a buffer between them and invasion

=> desired a broken Germany

-> US ensured that western European nations did not go communists

=> very popular communists in Italy severely opposed by US

=> communists had been only consistent foes of Mussolini

+> had a great deal of popular prestige as a result

=> US paid for opponent's political campaigns

=> threatened publicly to cut off reconstruction aid

=> Italy voted against the communists

- led to Churchill's Iron Curtain speech

-> described the de facto border between the communist and

non-communist side

Polarity: divided into two sides, poles; nothing in the middle

Leftist: a radical of the pro-worker, pro-socialist stripe

Vanguard: the leaders; in military, the group in the front; in politics, the party that leads the way

Proxy: the function of a deputy (or nation in this case) who takes the place of another