Sourcing: Who Started the Cold War Excerpts
WORLD HISTORY 1200/ LESSON 8.2ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “Who Started the Cold War?,” OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/1ProcessAs you read thesedocuments, focus on completing the Point of View, Purpose, and Importance sectionsof the Sourcing Tool. Additionally, keep thisquestion in mindas you read:To what extent were the causes of the Cold War similar in the US and USSR?Source 1: Excerpt from Novikov Telegram1IntroductionNikolai Novikov (1903–1989) was the Soviet ambassador to the United States from April 1946 to October 1947. This telegram was written in response to two 1946 communications: American ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan’s, “long telegram”; and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech. This document was sent to Joseph Stalin (the leader of the Soviet Union) and other top officials at the Kremlin in 1946.1. a) US foreign policy is being pursued right now in a situation quite different from that which existed in the prewar period. ... 2. The increase in peacetime military potential and the organization of a large number of naval and air bases both in the US and beyond its borders are clear indicators of the US desire to establish world domination. For the first time in the country’s history in the summer of 1946 Congress adopted a law to form a peacetime army not of volunteers but on the basis of universal military conscription. The size of the Army, which is to reach 1 million men as of 1 July 1947, has been considerably increased. ... 1This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebookis a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory-level classes in modern European and world history.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1200/ LESSON 8.2ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?2The colossal growth of expenditures for the Army and Navy, comprising $13 billion in the 1946–1947 budget (about 40% of the entire budget of $36 billion) and is more than 10 times the corresponding expenditures in the 1938 budget, when it did not even reach $1 billion. These enormous budget sums are being spent along with the maintenance of a large Army, Navy, and Air Force and also the creation of a vast system of naval and air bases in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. According to available official plans, in the coming years 228 bases, support bases, and radio stations are to be built in the Atlantic Ocean and 258 in the Pacific Ocean. The majority of these bases and support bases are located outside the United States.... All these facts clearly show that their armed forces are designed to play a decisive role in the realization of plans to establish American world domination. ... b) The current policy of the American government with respect to the USSR is also directed at limiting or displacing Soviet influence from neighboring countries. While implementing it the US is trying to take steps at various international conferences or directly in these very same countries which, on the one hand, manifest themselves in the support of reactionary forces in former enemy or allied countries bordering the USSR with the object of creating obstacles to the processes of democratizing these countries but, on the other, in providing positions for the penetration of American capital into their economies. ... e) All these steps to preserve the great military potential are not an end in itself, of course. They are intended only to prepare conditions to win world domination in a new war being planned by the most warlike circles of American imperialism, the timeframe for which, needless to say, no one can determine right now.Source:“Telegram from Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador to the US, to the Soviet Leadership,” September 27, 1946, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AVP SSSR, f. 06. Op. 8, p. 45, p. 759, published in Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’ #11, 1990, pp. 148–154, translated for CWIHP by Gary Goldberg.https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110808
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1200/ LESSON 8.2ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?3Source 2: Excerpt from US National Security Council ReportIntroductionThe following report was written by the US National Security Council and presented to the Executive Secretary for National Security under President Harry S. Truman in 1950. The National Security Council was a relatively new agency within the executive branch of the United States government. Created by an act of Congress in 1947, the council’s directive was to coordinate defense and foreign policy. The President was the chair of the council with the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State acting as key members.II. Backgrounds of the Present World Crisis... the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants [contenders] to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical [opposite] to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic [common] and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency [convenience]. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation [total destruction] should the conflict enter the phase of total war. On the one hand, the people of the world yearn [long] for relief from the anxiety arising from the risk of atomic war. On the other hand, any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled. It is in this context that this Republic and its citizens ... stand in their deepest peril. The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself. They are issues which will not await our deliberations. With conscience and resolution this Government and the people it represents must now take new and fateful decisions. ... III. Fundamental Design of the Kremlin
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT 1200/ LESSON 8.2ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?4The fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority. The design, therefore, calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient [obedient] to and controlled from the Kremlin. To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass. The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark [barrier] of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.Source:National Security Council (1950), “A Report to the President Pursuant to the President’s Directive of January 31, 1950,” Wilson Center: Digital Archive International History Declassified.https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116191