War years of the Cold War. What does "cold war" mean?

The main events of international politics in the second half of the 20th century were determined by the cold war between the two superpowers - the USSR and the USA.

Its consequences are felt to this day, and moments of crisis in relations between Russia and the West are often called the echoes of the Cold War.

What started the cold war

The term "cold war" belongs to the pen of the prose writer and publicist George Orwell, who used this phrase in 1945. However, the beginning of the conflict is associated with the speech of the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, delivered by him in 1946 in the presence of American President Harry Truman.

Churchill declared that an "Iron Curtain" would be erected in the middle of Europe, to the east of which there was no democracy.

Churchill's speech had the following premises:

• the establishment of communist governments in the states liberated by the Red Army from fascism;
• the activation of the left underground in Greece (which led to civil war);
• the strengthening of the communists in such Western European countries as Italy and France.

Soviet diplomacy also took advantage of this, laying claims to the Turkish straits and Libya.

The main signs of the beginning of the cold war

In the first months after the victorious May 1945, in the wake of sympathy for the eastern ally in the anti-Hitler coalition, Soviet films were freely shown in Europe, and the attitude of the press towards the USSR was neutral or benevolent. In the Soviet Union, for a while, they forgot about the stamps that represented the West as the kingdom of the bourgeoisie.

With the onset of the Cold War, cultural contacts were curtailed, and the rhetoric of confrontation prevailed in diplomacy and the media. Briefly and clearly, the peoples were told who their enemy was.

All over the world there were bloody skirmishes of the allies of one side or another, and the Cold War participants themselves unleashed an arms race. This is the name given to the build-up in the arsenals of Soviet and American military weapons of mass destruction, primarily nuclear weapons.

Military spending drained state budgets and slowed down post-war economic recovery.

Causes of the Cold War - briefly and point by point

There were several reasons for this conflict:

1. Ideological - the insolubility of contradictions between societies built on different political foundations.
2. Geopolitical - the parties feared each other's dominance.
3. Economic - the desire of the West and the Communists to use the economic resources of the opposite side.

Stages of the Cold War

The chronology of events is divided into 5 main periods

The first stage - 1946-1955

During the first 9 years, a compromise was still possible between the victors of fascism, which both sides were looking for.

The United States strengthened its position in Europe thanks to the Marshall Plan economic assistance program. Western countries united in NATO in 1949, and the Soviet Union successfully tested nuclear weapons.

In 1950, the war broke out in Korea, where both the USSR and the USA participated to varying degrees. Stalin dies, but the Kremlin's diplomatic position does not change significantly.

The second stage - 1955-1962

Communists face opposition from the populations of Hungary, Poland and the GDR. In 1955, an alternative to the Western Alliance appeared - the Warsaw Pact Organization.

The arms race is moving to the stage of creating intercontinental missiles. A side effect of military developments was space exploration, the launch of the first satellite and the first cosmonaut of the USSR. The Soviet bloc is strengthened at the expense of Cuba, where Fidel Castro comes to power.

Third stage - 1962-1979

After the Caribbean crisis, the parties are trying to curb the military race. In 1963, an agreement was signed to ban atomic tests in air, space and under water. In 1964, the conflict in Vietnam begins, provoked by the desire of the West to defend this country from leftist rebels.

In the early 1970s, the world entered the era of "détente". Its main characteristic is the desire for peaceful coexistence. The parties limit strategic offensive weapons and prohibit biological and chemical weapons.

The peace diplomacy of Leonid Brezhnev in 1975 was crowned with the signing by 33 countries in Helsinki of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. At the same time, the Soyuz-Apollo joint program was launched with the participation of Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts.

Fourth stage - 1979-1987

In 1979, the Soviet Union sent an army to Afghanistan to install a puppet government. In the wake of aggravated contradictions, the United States refused to ratify the SALT-2 treaty, signed earlier by Brezhnev and Carter. The West is boycotting the Olympics in Moscow.

President Ronald Reagan showed himself as a tough anti-Soviet politician by launching the SDI program - strategic defense initiatives. American missiles are deployed in close proximity to the territory of the Soviet Union.

Fifth period - 1987-1991

This stage was given the definition of "new political thinking".

The transfer of power to Mikhail Gorbachev and the beginning of perestroika in the USSR meant the renewal of contacts with the West and the gradual abandonment of ideological intransigence.

Crises of the Cold War

The crises of the Cold War in history are called several periods of the greatest aggravation of relations between rival parties. Two of them - the Berlin crises of 1948-1949 and 1961 - associated with the formation of three political entities on the site of the former Reich - the GDR, the FRG and West Berlin.

In 1962, the USSR deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, threatening the security of the United States - these events were called the Caribbean Crisis. Subsequently, Khrushchev dismantled the missiles in exchange for the Americans withdrawing the missiles from Turkey.

When and how did the Cold War end?

In 1989, the Americans and Russians announced the end of the Cold War. In fact, this meant the dismantling of the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, right up to Moscow itself. Germany united, the Department of Internal Affairs collapsed, and then the USSR itself.

Who won the cold war

In January 1992, George W. Bush declared: "With the help of the Lord God, America won the Cold War!" His jubilation at the end of the confrontation was not shared by many residents of the countries of the former USSR, where a time of economic upheaval and criminal chaos began.

In 2007, a bill was submitted to the US Congress establishing a medal for participation in the Cold War. For the American establishment, the theme of the victory over communism remains an important element of political propaganda.

Results

Why the socialist camp turned out to be weaker than the capitalist one and what was its significance for humanity are the main final questions of the Cold War. The consequences of these events are being felt even in the 21st century. The collapse of the left forces led to economic growth, democratic reforms, a surge of nationalism and religious intolerance in the world.

Along with this, the armaments accumulated during these years are preserved, and the governments of Russia and Western countries act largely on the basis of the concepts and stereotypes learned during the armed confrontation.

The Cold War, which lasted 45 years, is for historians the most important process of the second half of the twentieth century, which determined the outlines of the modern world.

War is incredible
peace is impossible.
Raymond Aron

Today's relations between Russia and the collective West can hardly be called constructive, let alone partnership. Mutual accusations, loud statements, growing saber-rattling and furious propaganda - all this creates a strong impression of deja vu. All this once was and is repeated now - but already in the form of a farce. Today, the news feed seems to return to the past, at the time of the epic confrontation between two powerful superpowers: the USSR and the USA, which lasted more than half a century and repeatedly brought humanity to the brink of a global military conflict. In history, this long-term confrontation has been called the Cold War. Historians consider its beginning to be the famous speech of the British Prime Minister (at that time already former) Churchill, delivered in Fulton in March 1946.

The era of the Cold War lasted from 1946 to 1989 and ended with what the current Russian President Putin called "the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" - the Soviet Union disappeared from the map of the world, and with it the entire communist system sank into oblivion. The confrontation between the two systems was not a war in the truest sense of the word, a clear clash between the armed forces of the two superpowers was avoided, but the numerous military conflicts of the Cold War that it gave rise to in different regions of the planet claimed millions of human lives.

During the Cold War, the struggle between the USSR and the United States was not only in the military or political sphere. No less intense was the competition in the economic, scientific, cultural and other fields. But the ideology was still the main one: the essence of the Cold War is the sharpest confrontation between the two models of the state system: communist and capitalist.

By the way, the very term "cold war" was coined by the cult writer of the 20th century, George Orwell. He used it even before the start of the confrontation in his article "You and the atomic bomb." The article was published in 1945. Orwell himself in his youth was an ardent supporter of the communist ideology, but in his mature years he was completely disillusioned with it, therefore, probably, he understood the issue better than many. Officially, the term "cold war" was first used by the Americans two years later.

The Cold War was not only fought by the Soviet Union and the United States. It was a global competition involving dozens of countries around the world. Some of them were the closest allies (or satellites) of the superpowers, while others were drawn into the confrontation by accident, sometimes even against their will. The logic of the processes required the parties to the conflict to create their own zones of influence in different regions of the world. Sometimes they were reinforced with the help of military-political blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact became the main alliances of the Cold War. On their periphery, in the redistribution of spheres of influence, the main military conflicts of the Cold War took place.

The described historical period is inextricably linked with the creation and development of nuclear weapons. Mainly, it was the presence of this most powerful means of deterrence in the hands of the opponents that did not allow the conflict to go into a hot phase. The Cold War between the USSR and the USA gave rise to an unheard of arms race: already in the 70s, the opponents had so many nuclear warheads that they would be enough to destroy the entire globe several times. And that's not counting the huge arsenals of conventional weapons.

Over the decades, there have been both periods of normalization of relations between the US and the USSR (détente) and times of tough confrontation. The crises of the Cold War several times brought the world to the brink of a global catastrophe. The most famous of these is the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place in 1962.

The end of the Cold War was swift and unexpected for many. The Soviet Union lost the economic race with the West. The lag was already noticeable at the end of the 60s, and by the 80s the situation had become catastrophic. The most powerful blow to the national economy of the USSR was dealt by the fall in oil prices.

In the mid-80s, it became clear to the Soviet leadership that something must be changed in the country immediately, otherwise a catastrophe would come. The end of the Cold War and the arms race were vital for the USSR. But perestroika, started by Gorbachev, led to the dismantling of the entire state structure of the USSR, and then to the collapse of the socialist state. Moreover, the United States, it seems, did not even expect such a denouement: back in 1990, American Soviet experts prepared for their leadership a forecast for the development of the Soviet economy until the year 2000.

At the end of 1989, Gorbachev and Bush officially announced during a summit on the island of Malta that the global cold war was over.

The theme of the Cold War is very popular in the Russian media today. Speaking of the current foreign policy crisis, commentators often use the term "new cold war". Is it so? What are the similarities and differences between the current situation and the events of forty years ago?

Cold War: causes and background

After the war, the Soviet Union and Germany lay in ruins, and Eastern Europe suffered greatly during the fighting. The economy of the Old World was in decline.

On the contrary, the territory of the United States was practically not affected during the war, and the human losses of the United States could not be compared with the Soviet Union or Eastern European countries. Even before the start of the war, the United States had become the world's leading industrial power, and military supplies to the allies further strengthened the American economy. By 1945, America had managed to create a new weapon of unheard of power - a nuclear bomb. All of the above allowed the United States to confidently count on the role of a new hegemon in the post-war world. However, it soon became clear that on the way to planetary leadership, the United States had a new dangerous rival - the Soviet Union.

The USSR almost single-handedly defeated the strongest German land army, but paid a colossal price for it - millions of Soviet citizens died at the front or in occupation, tens of thousands of cities and villages lay in ruins. Despite this, the Red Army occupied the entire territory of Eastern Europe, including most of Germany. In 1945, the USSR, no doubt, had the strongest armed forces on the European continent. No less strong were the positions of the Soviet Union in Asia. Literally a few years after the end of World War II, the communists came to power in China, which made this huge country an ally of the USSR in the region.

The communist leadership of the USSR never abandoned plans for further expansion and spread of its ideology to new regions of the planet. It can be said that throughout almost its entire history, the foreign policy of the USSR was quite tough and aggressive. In 1945, especially favorable conditions developed for the promotion of communist ideology in new countries.

It should be understood that the Soviet Union was incomprehensible to most American, and Western politicians in general. A country where there is no private property and market relations, churches are being blown up, and society is under the complete control of the special services and the party, seemed to them some kind of parallel reality. Even Hitler's Germany was somewhat more understandable to the average American. In general, Western politicians had a rather negative attitude towards the USSR even before the start of the war, and after its completion, fear was added to this attitude.

In 1945, the Yalta Conference took place, during which Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt tried to divide the world into spheres of influence and create new rules for the future world order. Many modern researchers see the origins of the Cold War in this conference.

Summarizing the above, we can say: the cold war between the USSR and the USA was inevitable. These countries were too different to coexist peacefully. The Soviet Union wanted to expand the socialist camp to include new states, and the US sought to reshape the world to create more favorable conditions for its large corporations. However, the main causes of the Cold War are still in the realm of ideology.

The first signs of a future Cold War appeared even before the final victory over Nazism. In the spring of 1945, the USSR made territorial claims against Turkey and demanded that the status of the Black Sea straits be changed. Stalin was interested in the possibility of creating a naval base in the Dardanelles.

A little later (in April 1945), British Prime Minister Churchill instructed to prepare plans for a possible war with the Soviet Union. He later wrote about this in his memoirs. At the end of the war, the British and Americans kept several divisions of the Wehrmacht undisbanded in case of a conflict with the USSR.

In March 1946, Churchill gave his famous Fulton speech, which many historians consider the "trigger" of the Cold War. In this speech, the politician called on Britain to strengthen relations with the United States in order to jointly repel the expansion of the Soviet Union. Churchill considered the growing influence of communist parties in the states of Europe to be dangerous. He urged not to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s and not to be led by the aggressor, but to firmly and consistently defend Western values.

“... From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, the Iron Curtain was lowered across the entire continent. Behind this line are all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. (…) The communist parties, which were very small in all the eastern states of Europe, seized power everywhere and gained unlimited totalitarian control. (…) Police governments predominate almost everywhere, and so far, apart from Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy anywhere. The facts are as follows: this, of course, is not the liberated Europe for which we fought. This is not what is needed for permanent peace…” – this is how Churchill, undoubtedly the most experienced and insightful politician in the West, described the new post-war reality in Europe. The USSR did not like this speech very much, Stalin compared Churchill with Hitler and accused him of inciting a new war.

It should be understood that during this period, the Cold War confrontation front often ran not along the external borders of countries, but within them. The poverty of Europeans, ravaged by the war, made them more receptive to leftist ideology. After the war in Italy and France, about a third of the population supported the communists. The Soviet Union, in turn, did everything possible to support the national communist parties.

In 1946, the Greek rebels became more active, led by local communists, and the Soviet Union supplied weapons through Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia. It was not until 1949 that the uprising was put down. After the end of the war, the USSR for a long time refused to withdraw its troops from Iran and demanded that it be granted the right to protectorate over Libya.

In 1947, the Americans developed the so-called Marshall Plan, which provided for significant financial assistance to the states of Central and Western Europe. This program included 17 countries, the total amount of transfers was 17 billion dollars. In exchange for money, the Americans demanded political concessions: the recipient countries were to exclude communists from their governments. Naturally, neither the USSR nor the countries of the "people's democracies" of Eastern Europe received any assistance.

One of the real "architects" of the Cold War can be called the Deputy American Ambassador to the USSR George Kennan, who sent telegram No. 511 to his homeland in February 1946. It went down in history under the name "Long Telegram". In this document, the diplomat recognized the impossibility of cooperation with the USSR and called on his government to oppose the communists harshly, because, according to Kennan, the leadership of the Soviet Union respects only force. Later, this document largely determined the position of the United States in relation to the Soviet Union for many decades.

In the same year, President Truman announced the "containment policy" of the USSR throughout the world, later called the "Truman Doctrine".

In 1949, the largest military-political bloc was formed - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. It included most of the countries of Western Europe, Canada and the United States. The main task of the new structure was to protect Europe from the Soviet invasion. In 1955, the communist countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR created their own military alliance, called the Warsaw Pact Organization.

Stages of the Cold War

The following stages of the Cold War are distinguished:

• 1946 - 1953 The initial stage, the start of which is usually considered to be Churchill's speech in Fulton. During this period, the Marshall Plan for Europe is launched, the North Atlantic Alliance and the Warsaw Pact Organization are created, that is, the main participants in the Cold War are determined. At this time, the efforts of Soviet intelligence and the military-industrial complex were aimed at creating their own nuclear weapons; in August 1949, the USSR tested its first nuclear bomb. But the United States for a long time retained a significant superiority both in the number of charges and in the number of carriers. In 1950, the war on the Korean Peninsula began, which lasted until 1953 and became one of the bloodiest military conflicts of the last century;
• 1953 - 1962 This is a highly controversial period of the Cold War, during which there was the Khrushchev "thaw" and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost ended in a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. These years saw anti-communist uprisings in Hungary and Poland, another Berlin crisis and a war in the Middle East. In 1957, the USSR successfully tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States. In 1961, the USSR conducted demonstrative tests of the most powerful thermonuclear charge in the history of mankind - the Tsar Bomba. The Caribbean crisis led to the signing of several documents between the superpowers on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons;
• 1962 - 1979 This period can be called the apogee of the Cold War. The arms race reaches its maximum intensity, tens of billions of dollars are spent on it, undermining the economy of rivals. Attempts by the government of Czechoslovakia to carry out pro-Western reforms in the country were thwarted in 1968 by the entry of troops of members of the Warsaw Pact into its territory. Tensions between the two countries, of course, were present, but the Soviet Secretary General Brezhnev was not a fan of adventures, so acute crises were avoided. Moreover, in the early 1970s, the so-called "detente of international tension" began, which somewhat reduced the intensity of the confrontation. Important documents relating to nuclear weapons were signed, joint programs in space were implemented (the famous Soyuz-Apollo). In the conditions of the Cold War, these were out of the ordinary events. However, "détente" ended by the mid-1970s, when the Americans deployed medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. The USSR responded by deploying similar weapon systems. Already by the mid-1970s, the Soviet economy began to noticeably slip, and the USSR was lagging behind in the scientific and technical sphere;
• 1979 - 1987 Relations between the superpowers deteriorated again after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. In response, the Americans staged a boycott of the Olympics, which was hosted by the Soviet Union in 1980, and began to help the Afghan Mujahideen. In 1981, a new American president came to the White House - Republican Ronald Reagan, who became the most tough and consistent opponent of the USSR. It was with his submission that the program of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) began, which was supposed to protect the American territory of the United States from Soviet warheads. During the Reagan years, the United States began to develop neutron weapons, and appropriations for military needs increased significantly. In one of his speeches, the American president called the USSR an "evil empire";
• 1987 - 1991 This stage is the end of the Cold War. A new general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power in the USSR. He began global changes within the country, radically revised the foreign policy of the state. Another discharge has begun. The main problem of the Soviet Union was the state of the economy, undermined by military spending and low energy prices - the main export product of the state. Now the USSR could no longer afford to pursue a foreign policy in the spirit of the Cold War, it needed Western loans. Literally in a few years, the intensity of the confrontation between the USSR and the United States practically vanished. Significant documents were signed concerning the reduction of nuclear and conventional weapons. In 1988, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan began. In 1989, one after another, pro-Soviet regimes began to crumble in Eastern Europe, and at the end of the same year the Berlin Wall was broken. Many historians consider this event to be the true end of the Cold War era.

Why did the USSR lose in the Cold War?

Despite the fact that every year the events of the Cold War are getting further and further away from us, topics related to this period are of increasing interest in Russian society. Domestic propaganda tenderly and carefully nurtures the nostalgia of a part of the population for those times when "there were two to twenty sausages and everyone was afraid of us." Such, they say, the country was destroyed!

Why did the Soviet Union, having huge resources at its disposal, having a very high level of social development and the highest scientific potential, lost its main war - the Cold War?

The USSR appeared as a result of an unprecedented social experiment to create a just society in a single country. Such ideas appeared in different historical periods, but usually they remained projects. The Bolsheviks should be given their due: for the first time they managed to realize this utopian plan on the territory of the Russian Empire. Socialism has a chance to take its place as a just system of social organization (socialist practices are becoming more and more evident in the social life of the Scandinavian countries, for example) - but this was not feasible at a time when they tried to introduce this social system in a revolutionary, coercive way. We can say that socialism in Russia was ahead of its time. It is unlikely that he became such a terrible and inhuman system, especially in comparison with the capitalist one. And it is all the more appropriate to recall that historically it was the Western European "progressive" empires that caused the suffering and death of the largest number of people around the world - Russia is far in this respect, in particular, to Great Britain (probably, it is she who is the true "evil empire"). ", a tool of genocide for Ireland, the peoples of the American continent, India, China and many others). Returning to the socialist experiment in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, it should be recognized that the peoples living in it cost innumerable victims and suffering throughout the century. The German Chancellor Bismarck is credited with the following words: "If you want to build socialism, take a country that you do not mind." Unfortunately, it turned out not to be a pity for Russia. However, no one has the right to blame Russia for its path, especially given the foreign policy practice of the past 20th century in general.

The only problem is that under Soviet-style socialism and the general level of productive forces of the 20th century, the economy does not want to work. From the word at all. A person deprived of material interest in the results of his labor does not work well. Moreover, at all levels, from an ordinary worker to a high official. The Soviet Union - having Ukraine, Kuban, Don and Kazakhstan - already in the mid-60s was forced to buy grain abroad. Even then, the food supply situation in the USSR was catastrophic. Then the socialist state was saved by a miracle - the discovery of "big" oil in Western Siberia and the rise in world prices for this raw material. Some economists believe that without this oil, the collapse of the USSR would have happened already in the late 70s.

Speaking about the reasons for the defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, of course, one should not forget about ideology. The USSR was originally created as a state with a completely new ideology, and for many years it was its most powerful weapon. In the 1950s and 1960s, many states (especially in Asia and Africa) voluntarily chose the socialist type of development. Believed in the construction of communism and Soviet citizens. However, already in the 1970s, it became clear that the construction of communism was a utopia that could not be realized at that time. Moreover, even many representatives of the Soviet nomenklatura elite, the main future beneficiaries of the collapse of the USSR, stopped believing in such ideas.

But at the same time, it should be noted that today many Western intellectuals admit that it was the confrontation with the “backward” Soviet system that forced the capitalist systems to mimic, to accept unfavorable social norms that originally appeared in the USSR (8-hour working day, equal rights for women , various social benefits and much more). It will not be superfluous to repeat: most likely, the time of socialism has not yet come, since there is no civilizational base for this and an appropriate level of development of production in the global economy. Liberal capitalism is by no means a panacea for world crises and suicidal global wars, but rather, on the contrary, an inevitable path to them.

The loss of the USSR in the Cold War was due not so much to the power of its opponents (although it was certainly great), but to the insoluble contradictions inherent within the Soviet system itself. But in the modern world order, there are no fewer internal contradictions, and certainly no more security and peace.

Results of the Cold War

Of course, the main positive outcome of the Cold War is that it did not develop into a hot war. Despite all the contradictions between the states, the parties were smart enough to realize what edge they were on and not cross the fatal line.

However, other consequences of the Cold War cannot be overestimated. In fact, today we live in a world that was largely shaped during that historical period. It was during the Cold War that the current system of international relations emerged. And at the very least, it works. In addition, we should not forget that a significant part of the world elite was formed back in the years of confrontation between the US and the USSR. We can say that they come from the Cold War.

The Cold War had an impact on almost all international processes that took place during this period. New states arose, wars broke out, uprisings and revolutions broke out. Many countries in Asia and Africa gained independence or got rid of the colonial yoke thanks to the support of one of the superpowers, which thus sought to expand their own zone of influence. Even today, there are countries that can safely be called "cold war relics" - for example, Cuba or North Korea.

It is impossible not to note the fact that the Cold War contributed to the development of technology. The confrontation of the superpowers gave a powerful impetus to the study of outer space, without it it is not known whether the landing on the moon would have taken place or not. The arms race contributed to the development of rocket and information technologies, mathematics, physics, medicine and much more.

If we talk about the political results of this historical period, then the main one, without a doubt, is the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the entire socialist camp. As a result of these processes, about two dozen new states appeared on the political map of the world. Russia inherited from the USSR the entire nuclear arsenal, most of the conventional weapons, as well as a seat in the UN Security Council. And as a result of the Cold War, the United States has significantly increased its power and today, in fact, is the only superpower.

The end of the Cold War led to two decades of explosive growth in the global economy. Huge territories of the former USSR, previously closed by the Iron Curtain, have become part of the global market. Military spending dropped sharply, and the freed funds were directed to investments.

However, the main result of the global confrontation between the USSR and the West was a clear proof of the utopian nature of the socialist model of the state in the conditions of social development at the end of the 20th century. Today in Russia (and other former Soviet republics) disputes about the Soviet stage in the history of the country do not subside. Someone sees in it a blessing, others call it the greatest catastrophe. At least one more generation must be born in order for the events of the Cold War (as well as for the entire Soviet period) to be viewed as a historical fact - calmly and without emotions. The communist experiment is, of course, the most important experience for human civilization, which has not yet been “reflected”. And perhaps this experience will still benefit Russia.

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Who called the war "cold": 10 facts from the history of the confrontation between the USA and the USSR

Editorial response

On February 1, 1992, the Russian-American declaration was signed on the end of the Cold War, which was waged by the United States and the USSR, as well as their allies from 1946 to 1991, within the framework of which an arms race was carried out, economic pressure measures were applied (embargo, economic blockade) were created by military political blocs and military bases were built. Signed on February 1, 1992 at Camp David, the joint declaration between Russia and the United States officially put an end to ideological rivalry and confrontation.

The Cold War was invented by George Orwell

The term "cold war" was launched in 1946 and came to mean a state of political, economic, ideological and "semi-military" confrontation. One of the main theorists of this confrontation, founder and first head of the CIA Allen Dulles considered it the pinnacle of strategic art - "balancing on the brink of war." Expression "cold war" first heard on April 16, 1947 in a speech by Bernard Baruch, adviser to US President Harry Truman, before the South Carolina House of Representatives. However, he was the first to use the term "cold war" in his work "You and the Atomic Bomb" George Orwell, wherein "cold war" meant a prolonged economic, geopolitical and ideological war between the United States, the Soviet Union and their allies.

The United States planned to drop 300 atomic bombs on the USSR

In 1949, the Pentagon adopted the Dropshot plan, according to which it was planned to drop 300 atomic bombs on 100 Soviet cities, and then occupy the country with 164 NATO divisions. The operation was to begin on January 1, 1957. Due to the bombing, they wanted to destroy up to 85% of Soviet industry. Massive attacks on Soviet cities were supposed to force the USSR and its allies to surrender. It was planned to involve about 6 million 250 thousand people in the war against the Soviet Union. The developers set the goal of conducting not only military operations, but also psychological warfare, emphasizing that “psychological warfare is an extremely important weapon for promoting dissent and betrayal among the Soviet people; it will undermine his morals, sow confusion and create disorganization in the country.”

Operation Anadyr on Liberty Island

The Cuban Missile Crisis became a serious test of the Cold War. In response to the deployment of American medium-range missiles near the Soviet borders - in Turkey, Italy and England - the Soviet Union, in agreement with the government of Cuba, began installing its own missiles. In June 1962, an agreement was signed in Moscow on the deployment of Soviet armed forces on Svoboda Island. The first combat units participating in the operation, codenamed "Anadyr", arrived in early August 1962, after which the transfer of nuclear missiles began. In total, the number of the Soviet group in Cuba was to be 44 thousand people. However, the blockade of Cuba prevented the plans from being realized. The United States announced it after they managed to find launch pads on the island for launching medium-range ballistic missiles. Before the blockade was declared, about 8,000 soldiers and officers arrived in Cuba and 2,000 vehicles, 42 missiles and 36 warheads were deployed.

Beginning of the arms race

August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union conducted the first test of the atomic bomb, which was the beginning of the arms race. Initially, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. But between 1955 and 1989, an average of 55 tests were conducted each year. In 1962 alone, 178 tests were carried out: 96 by the United States and 79 by the Soviet Union. In 1961, the most powerful nuclear weapon, the Tsar Bomba, was tested in the Soviet Union. The test took place at the Novaya Zemlya test site in the Arctic Circle. During the Cold War, many attempts were made to negotiate a universal ban on nuclear weapons testing, but it was not until 1990 that the Nuclear Test Limitation Treaty began to be implemented.

Who will win the Cold War?

Since the second half of the 60s, doubts appeared in the USSR about the possibility of winning the war. The leadership of the USSR began to look for the possibility of concluding treaties on the prohibition or limitation of strategic nuclear weapons. The first consultations on possible negotiations were started in 1967, but no mutual understanding was reached at that time. In the USSR, they decided to urgently eliminate the backlog in the field of strategic weapons, and it was more than impressive. Thus, in 1965, the United States had 5,550 nuclear warheads on strategic launchers, while the USSR had only 600 (these calculations do not include warheads on medium-range missiles and nuclear bombs for bombers with a range of less than 6,000 km).

Eight zeros for ballistic missiles

In 1960, the United States began production of ground-based intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles. Such missiles had a mechanism for protection against accidental launch - using a digital display, the operator had to enter a code. At that time, the command ordered to install the same code 00000000 (eight zeros in a row) on all such missiles. This approach was supposed to ensure a quick response at the outbreak of a nuclear war. In 1977, taking into account the threat of nuclear terrorism, the command decided to change the simple and well-known code to an individual one.

Plan to Bomb the Moon

During the Cold War, the United States sought to prove to the USSR its superiority in space. Among the projects was a plan to bombard the moon. It was developed by the US Air Force after the Soviet Union launched its first satellite. It was supposed to launch a nuclear rocket to the surface of the moon to provoke a terrible explosion that could be seen from Earth. Ultimately, the plan was not realized, because, according to scientists, the consequences of the mission would be catastrophic if it ended in failure. The rockets of those times could hardly go beyond the Earth's orbit. Priority was given to expeditions to the moon, and the existence of plans to detonate the bomb remained a secret for a long time. Most of the documentation about the "Project A119" was destroyed, its existence became known in 2000. The American government has not yet officially acknowledged the existence of such plans.

Secret underground city in Beijing

Starting in 1969 and over the next decade, by order of Mao Zedong An underground emergency shelter for the government was being built in Beijing. This "bunker" stretched under Beijing for a distance of 30 kilometers. The giant city was built during the period of the Sino-Soviet split, and its only purpose was to defend itself in case of war. The underground city contained shops, restaurants, schools, theatres, hairdressers and even a roller skating rink. The city could simultaneously accommodate up to 40 percent of the inhabitants of Beijing in the event of war.

$8 trillion in ideological confrontation

Cold War Victory Medal (USA) Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry

Famous historian Walter Lafaber estimated U.S. military spending during the Cold War at $8 trillion. This amount does not include military operations in Korea and Vietnam, interventions in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Chile and Grenada, many CIA military operations, and spending on research, development, testing and manufacturing of nuclear ballistic missiles. At the height of the Cold War, the US and the USSR were preparing for a possible attack from the enemy, so they spent a total of $ 50 million daily on weapons.

The United States was awarded medals for participation in the Cold War

In April 2007, a bill was introduced in the US House of Congress to establish a new military award for participation in the Cold War (Cold War Service Medal), which was previously supported by senators and congressmen from the Democratic Party, led by Hillary Clinton. The medal was awarded to all those who served in the armed forces or worked in US government departments from September 2, 1945 to December 26, 1991. The award does not have a specific status and is not formally a state award of the country.

A term that arose after the Second World War, when the US imperialists, claiming world domination, together with other imperialist states, began to escalate tension in the international situation, create military bases around the USSR and other socialist countries, organize aggressive blocs directed against the socialist camp, threaten it nuclear weapons.

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COLD WAR

global ideological, economic and political confrontation between the USSR and the USA and their allies in the second half of the 20th century.

Although the superpowers have never entered into direct military clashes with each other, their rivalry has repeatedly led to outbreaks of local armed conflicts around the world. The Cold War was accompanied by an arms race, due to which the world more than once teetered on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe (the most famous case is the so-called Caribbean crisis of 1962).

The foundation of the Cold War was laid during the Second World War, when the United States began developing plans to establish world domination after the defeat of the countries of the Nazi coalition.

The coming world Pax Americana was supposed to be based on the decisive preponderance of US power in the world, which meant, first of all, limiting the influence of the USSR as the main force in Eurasia. According to adviser F. Roosevelt, director of the Council of Foreign Relations I. Bowman, “the only and indisputable criterion for our victory will be the expansion of our dominance in the world after victory ... The United States must establish control over key regions of the world that are strategically necessary for world domination.”

After the end of World War II, the US leadership moved to the implementation of the "containment" plan, which, according to the author of this concept, D. Kennan, consisted in establishing control over those regions where geopolitical, economic and military power could be formed and consolidated. Of the four such regions - Great Britain, Germany, Japan and the USSR - after the war, only the Soviet Union retained its real sovereignty and even expanded its sphere of influence, taking the countries of Eastern Europe under protection from American expansion. Thus, relations between the former allies on the issue of the further arrangement of the world, spheres of influence, and the political system of states sharply escalated.

The United States no longer concealed its hostile attitude towards the USSR. The barbaric bombardment of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which instantly claimed the lives of half a million civilians, was intended to demonstrate to the Soviet leadership the possibilities of nuclear weapons. On December 14, 1945, the Joint Military Planning Committee of England and the United States adopted Directive No. 432D, which designated the first 20 targets of nuclear bombing in the territory of the Soviet Union - the largest cities and industrial centers.

The myth of the communist threat was planted in Western public opinion. The former Prime Minister of England W. Churchill (1874-1965) became its herald. On March 5, 1946, he delivered a speech to the students of Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri) about the need to resist Soviet Russia by creating an "Iron Curtain". On March 12, 1947, the Truman Doctrine was proclaimed, which set the task of containing communism. The same tasks were pursued by the "Program for the Reconstruction of Europe", or the "Marshall Plan", which, according to its author, Secretary of State J. Marshall, "military actions carried out with the help of the economy, the purpose of which, on the one hand, is to make Western Europe completely dependent on America, on the other hand, to undermine the influence of the USSR in Eastern Europe and pave the way for the establishment of American hegemony in this region ”(from a speech on June 5, 1947 at Harvard University).

On April 4, 1949, an aggressive NATO military bloc was created to ensure American military advantage in Eurasia. On December 19, 1949, the Dropshot military plan was developed in the United States, which envisaged a massive bombardment of 100 Soviet cities using 300 atomic bombs and 29,000 conventional bombs and the subsequent occupation of the USSR by 164 NATO divisions.

After the USSR conducted its first nuclear tests in 1949 and acquired nuclear sovereignty, the question of a preventive war against the Soviet Union was dropped due to its military impossibility. American experts stated that in addition to the “nuclear shield”, the USSR has other important advantages - a powerful defensive potential, a large territory, geographical proximity to the industrial centers of Western Europe, the ideological stability of the population, and huge international influence (“The CPSU is the most effective replacement for sea power in history”, - stated in the article "How strong is Russia?", published in the magazine "Time" of November 27, 1950).

Since that time, the main form of warfare has been ideological, diplomatic and political influence. Its nature was specifically defined by Directives of the US National Security Council NSC 20/1 (August 18, 1948) and NSC 68 (April 14, 1950).

These documents set for the United States the primary tasks regarding the Soviet Union: the transition of Eastern Europe into the sphere of American influence, the dismemberment of the USSR (primarily the separation of the Baltic republics and Ukraine) and undermining the Soviet system from within by demonstrating the moral and material advantages of the American way of life.

In solving these problems, NSC 20/1 emphasized, the United States is not bound by any time limits, the main thing in it is not to directly affect the prestige of the Soviet government, which "would automatically make war inevitable." The means of implementing these plans were the anti-communist campaign in the West, the encouragement of separatist sentiments in the national republics of the USSR, support for emigrant organizations, waging an open psychological war through the press, Radio Liberty, Voice of America, etc., subversive activities of various NGOs and NGOs .

For a long time, these actions had almost no effect. In the 1940s-50s. the world authority of the USSR as the winner of fascism was very high, no one believed that the "country of widows and disabled people" with a half-destroyed economy posed a real threat to the world. However, thanks to the erroneous policy of N. Khrushchev, who was extremely unrestrained in foreign policy statements and actually provoked the Caribbean crisis (the installation of our missiles in Cuba almost led to an exchange of nuclear strikes between the USA and the USSR), the world community believed in the danger of the USSR.

The US Congress significantly increased appropriations for subversive measures and authorized an arms race that was exhausting for the Soviet economy. Significant support of anti-Soviet circles in the West was enjoyed by dissidents (from the English dissident - a schismatic), whose "human rights" activities were aimed at undermining the moral authority of the USSR.

A slanderous book by A. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago" (1st ed. - 1973, YMCA-Press) was published in Western countries in huge editions, where the data on repressions during the reign of Stalin were exaggerated hundreds of times, and the USSR was presented as a concentration camp country, indistinguishable from Nazi Germany. The expulsion of Solzhenitsyn from the USSR, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to him, his world success brought to life a new wave of the dissident movement. It turned out that being a dissident is not dangerous, but extremely beneficial.

A provocative step on the part of the West was the presentation in 1975 of the Nobel Peace Prize to one of the leaders of the “human rights” movement, nuclear physicist A. Sakharov, author of the brochure “On Peaceful Coexistence, Progress and Intellectual Freedom” (1968).

The United States and its allies supported activists of nationalist (Chechen, Crimean Tatar, Western Ukrainian, etc.) movements.

During the Brezhnev leadership, many steps were taken towards disarmament and "détente of international tension." Treaties on the limitation of strategic arms were signed, and a joint Soviet-American space flight Soyuz-Apollo took place (July 17–21, 1975). The culmination of the détente was the so-called. The Helsinki Accords (August 1, 1975), which consolidated the principle of the inviolability of the borders established after the Second World War (thus Western countries recognized the communist regimes in Eastern Europe) and imposed on the countries of both blocs a number of obligations to build confidence in the military and on human rights issues.

The softening of the position of the USSR in relation to dissidents led to the intensification of their activities. The next aggravation in relations between the superpowers occurred in 1979, when the Soviet Union sent troops to Afghanistan, giving the Americans a reason to disrupt the ratification process of the SALT-2 Treaty and freeze other bilateral agreements reached in the 1970s.

The Cold War also unfolded on the fields of sports battles: the United States and its allies boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and the USSR boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

The Reagan administration, which came to power in 1980, proclaimed a policy of ensuring a decisive preponderance of US power in the world and establishing a "new world order", which required the removal of the Soviet Union from the world arena. Released in 1982–83 Directives of the US National Security Council NSC 66 and NSC 75 determined the methods for solving this problem: economic warfare, massive underground operations, destabilization of the situation and generous financial support for the "fifth column" in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries.

Already in June 1982, the CIA funds, the structures of George Soros and the Vatican began to allocate huge funds to support the Polish Solidarity trade union, which was destined to play in the late 1980s. decisive role in organizing the first "velvet revolution" in the socialist camp.

On March 8, 1983, speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan called the USSR an "evil empire" and declared the fight against it his main task.

In the autumn of 1983, a South Korean civilian airliner was shot down by Soviet air defense forces over the territory of the USSR. This "asymmetric" response to the obvious provocation from the West became the reason for the deployment of American nuclear missiles in Western Europe and the development of the Space Anti-Missile Defense (SDI, or "Star Wars") program.

Subsequently, the American leadership's bluff with this technically dubious program forced M. Gorbachev to make serious military and geopolitical concessions. According to former CIA officer P. Schweitzer, author of the famous book “Victory. The role of the secret strategy of the US administration in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp”, there were 4 main directions of attacks on the USSR:

1. Poland (provocations, support for the dissident movement Solidarity.

2. Afghanistan (provocation of conflicts, support of militants with modern weapons).

3. Technological blockade of the Soviet economy (including sabotage and distracting technological information).

4. Decline in oil prices (negotiations with OPEC to increase oil production, as a result of which its price on the market fell to $10 per barrel).

The cumulative result of these actions was the actual recognition by the Soviet Union of its defeat in the Cold War, which was expressed in the renunciation of independence and sovereignty in foreign policy decisions, the recognition of its history, economic and political courses as erroneous and requiring correction with the help of Western advisers.

With a shift in 1989–90. The communist governments in a number of countries of the socialist camp implemented the initial setting of Directive NSC 20/1 - the transition of Eastern Europe into the sphere of American influence, which was reinforced by the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact on July 1, 1991 and the beginning of NATO expansion to the East.

The next step was the collapse of the Soviet Union, "legalized" in December 1991, the so-called. "Belovezhsky agreements". At the same time, a more ambitious goal was set - the dismemberment of Russia itself.

In 1995, in a speech to members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US President B. Clinton stated: “Using the mistakes of Soviet diplomacy, the excessive arrogance of Gorbachev and his entourage, including those who openly took a pro-American position, we have achieved that was going to make President Truman through the atomic bomb. True, with a significant difference - we received a raw materials appendage that was not destroyed by the atom ... However, this does not mean that we have nothing to think about ... It is necessary to solve several problems at the same time ... dismemberment of Russia into small states through interreligious wars, similar to those organized by us in Yugoslavia , the final collapse of the military-industrial complex and the army of Russia, the establishment of the regime we need in the republics that have broken away from Russia. Yes, we allowed Russia to be a power, but now only one country will be an empire - the United States.

The West is diligently trying to implement these plans by supporting the separatists of Chechnya and other republics of the Caucasus, by whipping up nationalism and religious intolerance in Russia through Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Yakut, Tuva, Buryat and other nationalist organizations, through a series of "velvet revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, attempts to destabilize the situation in Transnistria, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan.

The George Bush administration essentially reaffirmed its adherence to the ideas of the Cold War. Thus, at the NATO summit in Vilnius in May 2006, US Vice President R. Cheney delivered a speech that was very reminiscent of the content and general mood of the notorious Fulton speech. In it, he accused Russia of authoritarianism and energy blackmail of neighboring countries and voiced the idea of ​​creating the Baltic-Black Sea Union, which would include all the western republics of the former Soviet Union that cut Russia off from Europe.

The West continues to use the methods of the Cold War in the fight against Russia, which is again gaining political and economic weight. Among them are support for NGOs/NGOs, ideological sabotage, and attempts to interfere in political processes on sovereign Russian territory. All this indicates that the US and its allies do not consider the Cold War to be over. At the same time, talk about the loss of the USSR (in fact, Russia) in the Cold War is a symptom of defeatism. The battle is lost, but not the war.

Today, the former methods (and most importantly, the US ideology) are no longer successful and are not able to produce an effect, as at the end of the 20th century, and the US has no other strategy.

The moral authority of one of the victorious countries, the “country of freedom”, which was the main weapon of the United States, was seriously shaken in the world after operations in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. The United States appears before the world as a "new evil empire", pursuing its own interests and not carrying new values.

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Causes, stages and consequences of the Cold War.

After the end of World War II, which became the largest and most violent conflict in the history of mankind, a confrontation arose between the countries of the communist camp on the one hand and the Western capitalist countries on the other. Between the two superpowers of that time, the USSR and the USA. The Cold War can be briefly described as a rivalry for dominance in the new post-war world.

The main cause of the Cold War was the irresolvable ideological contradictions between the two models of society, socialist and capitalist. The West feared the strengthening of the USSR. The absence of a common enemy among the victorious countries, as well as the ambitions of political leaders, played their role.

Historians distinguish the following stages of the Cold War:

· March 5, 1946 - 1953 - The beginning of the Cold War was marked by Churchill's speech delivered in the spring of 1946 in Fulton, which proposed the idea of ​​creating an alliance of Anglo-Saxon countries to fight communism. The goal of the United States was an economic victory over the USSR, as well as achieving military superiority. In fact, the Cold War began earlier, but it was precisely by the spring of 1946, due to the USSR's refusal to withdraw troops from Iran, that the situation seriously escalated.

· 1953 - 1962 - During this period of the Cold War, the world was on the brink of nuclear conflict. Despite some improvement in relations between the Soviet Union and the United States during Khrushchev's "thaw", it was at this stage that the anti-communist uprising in Hungary, the events in the GDR and, earlier, in Poland, as well as the Suez crisis took place. International tension increased after the development and successful testing of the USSR in 1957 of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

However, the threat of nuclear war receded, as the Soviet Union now had the opportunity to retaliate against US cities. This period of relations between the superpowers ended with the Berlin and Caribbean crises of 1961 and 1962, respectively. It was possible to resolve the Caribbean crisis only during personal negotiations between the heads of state - Khrushchev and Kennedy. Also, as a result of the negotiations, a number of agreements on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons were signed.

· 1962 - 1979 - The period was marked by an arms race that undermined the economies of rival countries. The development and production of new types of weapons required incredible resources. Despite the presence of tension in relations between the USSR and the USA, agreements on the limitation of strategic weapons are signed. A joint space program "Soyuz-Apollo" is being developed. However, by the beginning of the 80s, the USSR began to lose in the arms race.

· 1979 - 1987 - Relations between the USSR and the USA again become aggravated after the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. In 1983 the United States deploys ballistic missiles at bases in Italy, Denmark, England, the FRG, and Belgium. An anti-space defense system is being developed. The USSR reacts to the actions of the West by withdrawing from the Geneva talks. During this period, the missile attack warning system is in constant combat readiness.

· 1987 - 1991 - Gorbachev's coming to power in the USSR in 1985 led not only to global changes within the country, but also to radical changes in foreign policy, called "new political thinking". Ill-conceived reforms finally undermined the economy of the Soviet Union, which led to the country's virtual defeat in the Cold War.

The end of the Cold War was caused by the weakness of the Soviet economy, its inability to support the arms race any longer, and also by the pro-Soviet communist regimes. Anti-war speeches in various parts of the world also played a certain role. The results of the Cold War were depressing for the USSR. A symbol of the victory of the West. was the reunification in 1990 of Germany.

Effects:

In fact, the Cold War had an impact on almost all aspects of human life, in addition, its consequences in different countries had their own characteristics. If we try to highlight some of the main, most general consequences of the Cold War, we should mention the following:

· division of the world according to ideological principle - with the beginning of the Cold War and the formation of military-political blocs. Led by the USA and the USSR, the whole world found itself in a state of division into "us" and "them". This created numerous practical difficulties, as it put many obstacles in the way of economic, cultural and other cooperation, but first of all it had negative psychological consequences - humanity did not feel like a single whole. In addition, the fear was constantly fanned that the confrontation could go into an acute phase and end in a world war with the use of nuclear weapons;

· the division of the world into spheres of influence and the struggle for them - in fact, the entire planet was considered by the opposing sides as a springboard in the fight against each other. Therefore, certain regions of the world were spheres of influence, for control over which there was a fierce struggle between the superpowers at the level of economic policy, propaganda, support for certain forces in individual countries and secret operations of special services. As a result, severe disagreements were provoked in various regions, which, after the end of the Cold War, led to numerous hotbeds of tension, the emergence of local armed conflicts and full-scale civil wars (the fate of Yugoslavia, “hot spots” on the territory of the former USSR, numerous conflicts in Africa, and so on) ;

· Militarization of the world economy - huge material resources, natural, technical and financial resources were directed to the military industry, to the arms race. In addition to the fact that this undermined the economic potential of many countries (primarily from the socialist camp), it also became a very serious factor in the subsequent emergence of local conflicts and global terrorism. After the end of the Cold War, a large number of weapons and weapons remained, which, through the black market, began to feed "hot spots" and organizations of extremists;

· the formation of a number of socialist regimes - the end of the Cold War marked the anti-communist and anti-socialist revolutions in many countries, primarily in Europe. However, a number of countries have retained socialist regimes, and in a rather conservative form. This is one of the factors of instability in modern international relations: for example, it is still very unprofitable for the United States to have a socialist state (Cuba) at its borders, and the DPRK, whose political regime is very close to Stalinism, is an irritant for the West, South Korea and Japan in view of information about the work on the creation of North Korean nuclear weapons;

· the cold war was actually not so "cold" - the fact is that this confrontation was called the cold war because it did not come to an armed conflict between the superpowers and their most powerful allies. But meanwhile, in a number of parts of the world, full-scale military conflicts took place, partly provoked by the actions of the superpowers, as well as with their direct participation in them (the war in Vietnam, the war in Afghanistan, a whole list of conflicts on the African continent);

· The Cold War contributed to the emergence of some countries in the leading positions - after the Second World War, the United States actively supported the economic revival and development of West Germany and Japan, which could be their allies in the fight against the USSR. The Soviet Union also provided some assistance to China. At the same time, China developed independently, but while the rest of the world focused on the confrontation between the USA and the USSR, China received favorable conditions for transformation;

Scientific, technical and technological development - the Cold War stimulated the development of both fundamental science and applied technologies, which were originally sponsored and developed for military purposes, and then were repurposed for civilian needs and influenced the growth of the standard of living of ordinary people. A classic example is the Internet, which originally appeared as a communication system for the US military in the event of a nuclear war with the USSR;

· the formation of a unipolar model of the world - the United States, which actually won the Cold War, became the only superpower. Relying on the NATO military-political mechanism created by them to counter the USSR, as well as on the most powerful military machine that also appeared during the arms race with the Soviet Union, the States received all the necessary mechanisms to protect their interests in any part of the world, regardless of the decisions of international organizations and interests of other countries. This was especially evident in the so-called "export of democracy" carried out by the United States since the turn of the 20th-21st centuries. On the one hand, this means the dominance of one country, on the other hand, it leads to an increase in contradictions and resistance to this domination.