Introduction

The Statue of Liberty in the United States

The Motherland Calls in Russia

After World War II, two nations towered above the ruins of a war-weary world: the United States and the Soviet Union. While the confrontation between these two superpowers, the Cold War, is covered in Chapter 3, this chapter will narrate the domestic histories of the US and the USSR after World War II. However, each nation was so obsessed with the Cold War that their domestic histories cannot be disentangled from their ideological conflict.

The United States: Postwar Prosperity and Fear

World War II profoundly changed the United States. Before the war, the US was already the most industrialized nation in the world, although not the most powerful (Nazi Germany had the greatest military in the world at the start of the war, and the US was far behind). The war not only transformed American industry and economics, but also reshaped its role in the world and, most importantly, its view of itself.
Rather than demobilize its military, as it had largely done after World War I, the US would now keep troops stationed around the world to contain communism; this mission was spelled out in the Truman Doctrine of 1947 (see Chapter 3). The doctrine redefined America’s role in the world but, simultaneously, life in America was about to change drastically.

The American postwar economy initially stumbled with the end of wartime rationing and regulation. However, millions of returning servicemen married, had children, and bought homes. They now needed appliances, furniture, cars, and a plethora of other things. This massive consumer need, coupled with America’s new industrial capacity and strong union membership, produced the greatest economic boom in US history. More people rose from poverty to the middle class than ever before, as evidenced by record home ownership. The new marriages also produced the Baby Boom, a surge in births in the first twenty years after World War II. The “Boomers” would change American culture as they moved through history together.

The US invested enormous sums in public projects. A mix of private and federal funds helped produce, then distribute, Salk’s Vaccine, which eliminated the threat of polio. Under the Eisenhower administration, the US invested in its interstate highway system, which improved domestic commerce and travel. Good roads, coupled with low gas prices and inexpensive automobiles, meant that America now moved predominantly by road, instead of by rail as it had done for decades. Cars also contributed to the rise of suburbs, communities outside the cities where people lived but didn’t work. Suburbs consequently led to White Flight, the phenomenon of newly middle-class white Americans moving to the suburbs from the inner cities, leaving the inner cities poorer due to lower tax revenues.

American lifespans increased due to several factors. Not only did medical technology evolve (largely in the forms of vaccinations and antibiotics), but health education also expanded, giving people the information they needed to avoid unhealthy habits. Higher American incomes contributed to better diets and widespread health insurance. All these factors increased the average American lifespan from 62.9 years in 1940, to 76.7 years by 1998.

Another major change in American culture was the development of television. Although created in the 1920s for educational purposes, the Great Depression, and then World War II, had prevented its large-scale introduction. Now TV became a fixture of American life, replacing to some degree the mainstays of cinema and radio. TV was a factor in producing a common culture in America, where people across the country watched the same news and entertainment, creating a common national experience. It also helped popularized professional sports.

TV contributed to youth culture, wherein young people have their own subculture, separate from that of their parents. In preindustrial societies, families worked together daily, mainly on farms; but with industrialization came compulsory education, meaning children are away from their parents at least half the day, spending their time instead with children their own age. It is not surprising, then, that they should develop their own social views, clothing, and slang. TV (and other media) leverages youth culture, and helps create it, by providing programming and advertising which is aimed exclusively at children and youths. The new sensation of rock ‘n’ roll music was a product of youth culture, and helped young adults identify with their own generation. The generation gap which youth culture produces is a constant source of frustration for parents in industrialized cultures, who often fear that they are losing control of their children.

Although America was developing into a superpower on the world stage and an economic powerhouse at home, dark undercurrents cut through American culture which could not be ignored. Racism in America manifest, at its worst, as the Jim Crow laws in the former Confederate states. Although the Civil War had ended slavery, the subsequent Reconstruction Era failed to end systemic racism. Consequently, southern states set up a system of laws known collectively as Jim Crow to prevent African Americans from attaining political and economic equality. These laws prevented blacks from voting (in contravention of the US Constitution), from serving on juries, from studying for certain professions in college, and from marrying white people. They also physically segregated black citizens, in schools and in other public places. This racist system, in place for nearly a hundred years, would shortly be challenged by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s (see Chapter 8 for an in-depth description).

Civil Rights leaders in a march in Washington DC against Jim Crow laws, 1963. From the National Archives.

The Cold War inspired a fear of communist infiltration in the United States, a fear which certain politicians were quick to leverage for their own gain. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) drummed up fear of communist spies to save his failing political career. He ran a campaign of conspiracy theories and false accusations against left-wing politicians and celebrities, creating a climate of paranoia in which simply to be accused of communist sympathies meant losing one’s reputation or even one’s job. It was one of two Red Scares in US history. As with so many witch-hunts, he and other conservatives used this fear to attack any and all political enemies, such as feminists, anti-racists, and homosexuals, accusing them all of disloyalty. Although McCarthy eventually fell from grace, the fear continued, and the possibility of nuclear war with the communists also darkened the American dream.

The United States: Social Change of the 1960s

The decade of the 1960s has a reputation for radicalism, both in the United States and abroad. There are many theories as to why: that World War II had revealed the human rights hypocrisy of imperialism, racism, and sexism in the democracies; that postwar wealth drove the new Baby Boomers to expect more from life; that youth culture rebelled against what it regarded as a very conservative culture of their parents. Certainly, the war in Vietnam, and the subsequent draft (conscription), forced young American men to take a stance on the war one way or another. In the sixties, it seemed that all social conflicts intensified.

The Civil Rights Movement in the US was one such example (see Chapter 8). Led primarily by Rev. Martin Luther King, this movement sought, through direct action, to remove the Jim Crow laws and secure the vote for African Americans, as well as eliminate segregation. It was ultimately successful; President Lyndon Johnson knew that American hypocrisy on race was weakening the country’s anticommunist mission, making democracy seem illegitimate. He passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a result.

The women’s rights movement of the 1960s was known as the Second Wave of Feminism (the First Wave was the push for women’s suffrage, won in 1920). Launched by the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the movement demanded a change in attitude towards women in postwar American society, from regarding them as good only for child-rearing and homemaking, to equals in the realms of career and politics. The movement succeeded in winning American women the rights to birth control and abortion, as well as legislation to prevent employment discrimination.

Other major social movements of the 1960s included the anti-war movement, which might be more accurately described as the “anti-draft” movement. American popular ambiguity towards the war in Vietnam, coupled with reports of American war crimes, meant that Vietnam (see Chapter 7) did not engender the same patriotic surge that Pearl Harbor had. The 1960s also saw the start of the Environmental Movement, launched primarily by the publication of Silent Spring by Rachael Carson in 1962 (again demonstrating the remarkable power of a good book). Corporate America, responsible for so much pollution, was at first disparaging of the movement and ignored it, which proved a critical error. President Richard Nixon, seeing the growing power of the movement, created the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and the newly-regulated corporations found themselves suddenly on the defensive. Other movements of the 1960s sought to protect the rights of homosexuals and American Indians in the United States.

The Cold War heated up along with social tensions in the early 1960s, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. American nuclear missiles in NATO allies Italy and Turkey compelled the USSR to install missiles in post-revolution Cuba (see Chapter 3). This led to a naval stand-off in the Caribbean which very nearly exploded into war, a war which almost certainly would have gone nuclear. Although the two Cold War enemies tried to cool tensions through a process known as détente, they still supported opposing sides in the Second Indochina War and tensions remained fairly high. Another arena of competition between the US and USSR was the Space Race, a competition of “firsts” in space, in which the Soviets held an early lead with the first artificial satellite in 1957, and the first human space flight in 1961. The US, however, “won” the race in 1969 with the first moon landing.

Eventually, the progressivism of the 1960s led to a conservative backlash against racial and gender equality. The nation also experienced a general anti-government sentiment, brought on by the draft and government enforcement of anti-segregation rulings in the South. Richard Nixon leveraged these currents in American society for political gain. He promised to get America out of Vietnam “with honor;” he also promised southern democrats that he would not push for racial equality, as Johnson had. This was part of his “Southern Strategy” to draw southern democrats, opposed to civil rights, into the Republican Party. The strategy worked, and swelled the ranks of the Republican Party.

Nixon changed US policies in the Cold War, particularly in Asia. His process of “Vietnamization” withdrew American troops from Vietnam while providing supplies and training to South Vietnamese troops; this process was popular in America, but could not prop up the corrupt South Vietnamese government, which fell to the North in 1975. In order to pressure the USSR into nuclear weapons reductions talks, Nixon opened diplomatic and economic ties with China, which the US had embargoed since 1949. This new China policy would have economic repercussions for both countries long after Nixon was gone.

The United States: the 1970s

Although the progressive movements of the 1960s and early 1970s made lasting changes to American culture, it was clear that they would not continue at the same intensity into the mid-1970s. People tired of so much rapid change and social tension. Then came the shock of Watergate, when President Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached for covering up his involvement in a break-in and theft at the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington DC; the American failure in Vietnam and the Watergate crisis depressed the American people, leading them to doubt their government and their capabilities. Furthermore, the American economy declined. First, the OPEC Oil Crisis (see Chapter 11) spurred a global recession which hit the Americans hard. Second, the postwar rise of Asian economies, such as Japan and China, now seriously challenged American industry in the global market.

The twin ecological catastrophes of Three Mile Island (a partial meltdown in a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania) and Love Canal (where a New York school was built over a leaking toxic waste dump) reminded Americans that they had not yet solved their environmental problems; it did, however, keep the environmental movement invigorated.

Two events in the 1970s would later have profound consequences for the nation and the world, although few recognized it at the time. The first was the signing of the Helsinki Accords, in which the United States and Europe recognized the borders of the Warsaw Pact in return for a promise that the Soviets would safeguard human rights (see Chapter 3 for more). Subsequent Soviet history demonstrates that this agreement was one of the catalysts for the fall of communism in Europe.

The other major development was the invention of the first commercially-available microprocessor in 1971. Prior to this breakthrough, computers were large and expensive, used only by major corporations, universities, the government, or the military. Microprocessors are tiny electronic apparatus which use a tiny percentage of the power of previous computers. These made computers much smaller and cheaper, allowing them to be used for a great many applications in business, science, and consumer culture. The ubiquitous devices would soon transform everyday life in the United States, although perhaps no one at the time realized just how profound the change would be.

Three events in 1979 shook America’s confidence. First, American citizens were taken hostage as a result of the Iranian Revolution(Chapter 11), humiliating the superpower. Then the successful Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (Chapter 10) convinced the Carter administration that the leftist rebels would turn their country into another Cuba. Finally, the administration feared that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistanat the end of the year (Chapter 13) was a Soviet move to occupy the oil fields of Iran (it wasn’t). To many Americans, it seemed that their enemies were on the march around the world and that they were powerless to stop them.

The United States: The Reagan Revolution

Republican Ronald Reagan exploited this malaise in his 1980 presidential campaign. A former governor of California, Reagan was the first major politician to harness the power of the American evangelical community. This fundamentalist strain of Christianity traditionally avoided politics, but the Roe v. Wade finding of 1973, which legalized abortion in the US, provoked evangelicals into action, and Reagan rode their rising political tide to victory. The “Reagan Revolution” was built on three pillars: small government (the belief that a large federal government is bad), nationalism and anticommunism, and social conservatism.

Reagan shrank the size of the federal government for the sake of reducing taxes (except for the military, which he expanded). He also re-ignited the Cold War, believing that détente had been a mistake and taking the invasion of Afghanistan as proof that the Soviets needed to be pressured. Reagan also promoted a conservative social agenda, which meant anti-homosexual and anti-abortion policies, as well as pushing for mandatory prayer in public schools. He also ran a major anti-drug campaign (the motto was “Just Say No”) and was perceived as tough on crime.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan in 1981. Courtesy of the Reagan Library.

The 1980s were a time of conservative resurgence in America, including a rise of materialism and consumerism as the economy improved; the increasing wealth (not available to all, of course) also allowed for new epidemics of cocaine (for the better off) and crack (for the urban poor). Another major epidemic of the 1980s was biological: the arrival of AIDS in the US. The disease’s cause was not understood in the early days of the epidemic, and people only knew that it was most prevalent among homosexuals and Haitians, causing a backlash against those two communities. It was only with time that AIDS became treatable (though not curable), thus allowing the panic to subside.

Union membership declined in the 1980s, largely due to a loss of manufacturing base to Asian competitors, which brought down relative wages; strong pro-business government policies led to a surging stock market, allowing for an increasing concentration of wealth in the upper classes. The government also cut social spending, increasing the poverty rate. And with the revelation of the Iran-Contra Affair in 1986, in which the Reagan administration broke federal law by providing weapons and money to terrorist groups, the United States learned that its own government did not necessarily respect its own laws.

Reagan’s presidency, two terms long, was probably the most consequential since FDR’s. Since the 1930s, America’s economy had been based on Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was a program of large government to improve the economy. Now, the Reagan Revolution reversed that trend, moving the economy towards small government and concentration of wealth, a trend which continues into the 21st century.

The United States: The 1990s

Reagan was followed by George Bush Sr., scion of a wealthy Connecticut family turned Texas oilman. Bush Sr. was notable for having few policy ideas, apart from refusing to raise taxes (which he ended up doing anyway). However, since the world was about to change dramatically and unexpectedly under his watch, it might be just as well that Bush had no policy commitments, as he would have had to adapt them to changing conditions anyway.

The greatest change came with the end of the Cold War. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was followed by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (see Chapter 13). Naturally, the US welcomed what appeared to many as “victory” in the Cold War; but it also confused policy makers, who did not foresee this tectonic shift in foreign affairs and were left without a plan. The US seemed much clearer regarding the Middle East where, in 1990, Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait. The Saudi royal family asked the United States to send troops to protect their oil fields from possible invasion, and the US responded. Not only did the US protect Saudi Arabia, but the next year attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait to liberate the country in Operation Desert Storm (see Chapter 11).

On the domestic political front, the Democratic Party, under President Bill Clinton, remained progressive on social issues while drifting closer to conservatives on fiscal policy. These “New Democrats” found that shifting to the right on economic issues was useful to getting policies passed, as Republicans were less willing to fight them. This led to the continuation of Reagan’s economic policies, even under a Democratic presidency, though not of his social policies.

A major development in the 1990s was the expansion and practical application of the internet. The growth and spread of microcomputers in the 1980s, thanks mainly to the microprocessor, meant that more and more American homes sported a personal computer. These home computers could be linked, initially by common phone lines, to larger servers, which served as the backbone for the internet. Common protocols allowed computers anywhere in the world to communicate and transmit data between them. The internet infrastructure and home computers evolved in complexity until they could perform secure credit card transactions and stream video and music. Entrepreneurs were quick to exploit this new tool, and the internet soon became an important part of the global economy. Today, more Americans have internet access than have a television.

The United States: The War on Terror, 2001 – 2020

American triumphalism over the fall of the USSR ended on September 11, 2001. An Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda attacked the United States by flying two passenger jets into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon in Washington DC (a fourth aircraft was brought down by the passengers before it could reach its target). This attack started the War on Terror [see Chapter X], a twenty-year military and intelligence campaign by the United States. It included the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and Iraq in 2003. The War on Terror also included the capture and torture of terror suspects abroad (often against international law) and surveillance against Muslims in the United States. This campaign would not end until the last US troops left Afghanistan in 2021, making the War on Terror America’s longest war.

Although September 11th had brought Americans together as few events before it, this unity did not last. The Great Recession, started by a housing bubble in the United States, damaged the American economy and opened the door to the election of Barak Obama, America’s first African American president. Obama fought the recession with a stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act (government-subsidized health care), which proved very controversial in this new age of small government.

Following Obama was the surprising election victory of Donald Trump, a business magnate who ran on a rightist populist ticket. Known for his lively and combative style, Trump’s policies consisted of immigration restrictions (such as trying to build a wall along the US / Mexican border), and an “America First” foreign policy, which seemed to represent a retreat into isolationism. Trump became one of only three presidents to face impeachment, due to a scandal related to aid to Ukraine. Trump’s time in office was also punctuated by severe racial tension in America, mainly owing to police killings of unarmed African Americans. This led to the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. Furthermore, the arrival of the COVID-19 virus in the US initiated the worst American epidemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak, leading to over a million deaths in the US.

Trump was bested in the next presidential election by former Vice President Joe Biden; but Trump and his supporters tried to deny and overturn the results of the election. Besides numerous legal failures, these attempts led to the January 6, 2021 riot at the capitol, which attempted to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory. The last major change in US policy at the time of this writing (2022) was the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe V. Wade in June 2022, meaning that the legality of abortion was now to be determined by the states; this was the first time in American history that a constitutional right was revoked by the Supreme Court.

The United States: Conclusion

Several major trends in American postwar history stand out. First, Americans have been increasingly willing to grant rights and freedoms to traditionally subaltern groups, such as women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, and the disabled. These groups have made economic, political, and social strides which would have seemed impossible before the 1950s, although those rights would later be threatened by a conservative Supreme Court.

The United States is also vastly more ethnically diverse than it was before World War II. In 1965, only 5% of the American population was foreign-born; today it is 14%. Most of this immigration was from Mexico and Central America, although Asians are now the largest immigrant group. By the mid-21st century, the US will probably not have any single ethnic majority.

The traditional American family, consisting of a married man and woman with an average 2.33 children (in 1960), is changing. Marriage rates have declined as divorces have increased, so that now a smaller percentage of Americans are married than ever before. About one-quarter of all American children grow up in single-parent households. And the roles of mother and father are changing, now that women are often the main breadwinner in the family and men do a larger share of child-rearing.

Traditional religion is suffering a similar fate in the US, where the percentage of adults affiliated with an organized religion has decreased. This is particularly true for “Millennials” (born 1981 – 1996), who are over one-third unaffiliated. This trend, incidentally, is by no means an American oddity. In about half the world’s nations, “unaffiliated” is the second-largest religious group.

The United States is also, since about 1971, a much less socially-mobile society than it once was. The middle class, which expanded in the strong postwar economy as more Americans left poverty, has been hollowed out; more Americans are now lower-class than before 1970, as more money has become concentrated in the upper class. In the United States, the richest 10% now own 70% of all the nation’s wealth (almost double the 1970 level), and the poorest 50% own about 2.5 percent. The causes of this inequality trend are numerous. Racism still plays a role in preventing ethnic minorities from getting jobs for which they are qualified; African American families, for example, have barely benefitted from all the economic growth since 1960. Furthermore, college education has become more expensive, making it harder to pay for degrees that lead to well-paid professions. Income taxes on the wealthy are much lower than they once were, especially after the Reagan Era tax cuts, as are taxes on corporations. These factors, plus a growing salary gap between regular workers and corporate CEOs (now at about 278 to 1), allow the wealthy to retain more of their wealth than the middle and lower classes. Loss of jobs to foreign competition and smaller union memberships also contribute to the wealth gap.

Finally, Americans seem less unified than ever, with a wide political divide and increasing radicalization. The shared feelings of Americaness, strong after World War II and September 11, 2001, are clearly fading, with Americans dividing into exclusive political tribes.

The Soviet Union: Founding Through Stalinism

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union) was a multinational union under a socialist government which lasted from 1922 to 1991. The successor to the Russian Empire, it was comprised of fifteen different republics unified under a single government in Moscow. As the world’s first socialist country, it represented a major shift in world politics and power, and influenced millions worldwide while inspiring fear and hostility among the world’s capitalist nations.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 brought few reforms to the Russian empire, and the country became a hotbed for political radicalism. Anarchists and various sorts of socialists vied for power, both against the Tsar and against each other. Russia’s disastrous losses in World War I led to the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which the communist group known as the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized control of the country. For the next seven years, the Bolsheviks fought against the anti-communist White Russians, other communist groups who sought power, unaffiliated anticommunist rebels, and a foreign intervention by the United States, France, England, and Japan. The Red Army defeated all these groups and established the absolute power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, officially founding the USSR in 1922. Lenin served as its first premier, but after his death in 1924, a power struggle emerged within the government over who would be his successor. Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (RCP), proved victorious and became absolute leader of the USSR.

Stalin proceeded to build a cult of personality around himself; controlling all media, he created a public persona as a far-seeing political visionary who would could solve all the nation’s problems. His secret police disposed of those who remained unconvinced. From 1927 to 1941, Stalin consolidated all political and social power into himself and attempted to transform the Soviet economy as per Marx’s theories. He collectivized agriculture, seizing private farms and forming them into huge plantations administered by the state. This led to famine in the early 1930s; it is debated whether Stalin caused this famine in order to eliminate by starvation the wealthier peasants whom he considered to be enemies of socialism.

Stalin also focused on industrialization and heavy industry, both sorely lacking in the new nation. Since this was a true socialist economy, the government owned all means of production, including factories, and exercised complete control over them; independent workers’ unions were illegal. The vast industrialization program led to virtually zero unemployment, although workers were compelled to work very long shifts in the factories, and lateness or absenteeism was punishable by prison time.

Education was greatly increased and illiteracy diminished. Women’s rights in Soviet society were an improvement over Tsarism, with women entering the work force and attending school. Health care was made universal, immunization programs were established, and the average lifespan in the USSR was greatly improved.

The socialist government was highly antagonistic towards religion, particularly the Russian Orthodox Church. Marx believed that religion was a tool of bourgeoise exploitation, and the Soviet leadership declared atheism to be the national philosophy. Religious institutions of all sects were closed and the leaders often executed. During World War II, however, Stalin stopped persecuting the church, believing that religion would improve national morale. The Soviet state in the 1930s was also infamous for its censorship of print materials and other media, and permitted no ideas not approved by the state.

During World War II, Stalin successfully engineered a change in Russian identity. Before the war, Soviet identity was supposedly based on a shared, classless socialist society, rather than on ethnicity or religion, as was the case in most countries. This was thought to neutralize the nationalism of non-Russians (Ukrainians, Uzbeks, etc.) and make them more amenable to socialist control. But, during the war, Stalin believed that identity based on ideology was insufficient, and decided to promote nationalistic sentiments (among the Russians, at least) to strengthen morale. He believed that people were more likely to fight for a nation than for an ideology, and it seemed the gamble paid off. After the war, Soviet citizens were both nationalists and communists, quite against the teachings of Marx, who was ardently anti-nationalist. Stalin, dealing with real people rather than political theories, was forced to be more pragmatic than the German philosopher.

After the war, a certain détente was established between the Soviet government and what the West would call the “middle class” of the USSR. These citizens, usually technical experts or government bureaucrats, demanded a degree of freedom from the state in return for their loyalty and sacrifice during the war. The state needed their technical expertise to build a strong nation, and they knew it. Therefore, the state would often turn a blind eye to the increasing materialism of this class (often manifesting as embezzlement, smuggling, and long vacations in rural dachas), as well as allowing them to read romance novels and watch foreign films, both of which were previously banned. Stalin was not an idealogue and he was not stupid. He acquiesced when necessary. Therefore, viewing the USSR as an Orwellian state where the government had complete control is not quite accurate; the government mostly kept control, and allowed for a certain amount of freedom, simply because it lacked the power to dominate everyone all the time.

Finally, Stalin, who was notably paranoid and fearful, continuously sought to imprison or kill anyone who opposed him, or even had sufficient power and prestige to possibly oppose him. About three-quarters of a million people were accused of sedition and executed in the Great Purge of the late 1930s, while another million were sentenced to hard labor in the gulags (prison camps). Many of those “purged” were officers of the Red Army; the lack of experienced military leaders would prove a serious problem for the USSR in World War II.

Workers imprisoned in a Soviet gulag in the 1930s

World War II (Chapter 1) devastated the USSR; one-third of all wartime casualties were Soviet, mainly civilians. Industry and infrastructure were destroyed in the fighting. Stalin had suspected that Hitler would invade the USSR, but was not expecting the attack so soon. The country had not even mobilized its troops for war and was unprepared for the attack. However, Stalin’s industrialization plan in the 1930s had given the Soviet Union the necessary factories to produce the armaments necessary for victory. The Red Army took Berlin in May, 1945, ending the European theatre of the war.

After the war, in contravention of the Declaration of United Nations, Stalin refused to allow the nations occupied by the USSR to freely choose their own governments, instead opting to create socialist governments vetted by the USSR to run those countries. This effectively turned them into “satellite states,” subservient to the USSR. This convinced the Western democracies that Stalin was attempting to conquer Western Europe, or perhaps the entire world – an accusation which was patently false, but nonetheless compelling in the West (see Chapter 3 for more information). Stalin’s plan was to use the satellite countries as a buffer zone against a feared capitalist attack on the USSR, as well as exploit the resources and industries of those countries. Finally, the old Russian urge to dominate Eastern Europe, going back to the Tsars, no doubt played into Stalin’s plans. Nevertheless, Stalin was more afraid of the West than it was of him. Stalin did, however, end up providing material support to North Korea during the Korean War, although he was initially hesitant to do so, for fear of provoking war with the West (see Chapter 3).

The Soviet Union: the Khrushchev Era

Stalin died in March 1953. He had left no handpicked successor, nor established a method for the transfer of power. The Central Committee of the Communist Party met immediately and established a system of collective leadership among the top eight party members, including First Secretary of the Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev, and Georgi Malenkov, the new Premier of the Soviet Union. These leaders agreed that Stalin’s cult of personality was bad for the USSR and were determined to prevent another one from arising. But this group also began to fight among themselves for control of Soviet policy – and not all of them would survive.

First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Lavrentiy Beria, had been chief of internal security and the secret police under Josef Stalin. Perhaps surprisingly, after Stalin’s death, he urged a liberalization of policy, such as releasing non-political prisoners, ending torture of prisoners, and withdrawing from Eastern Europe. His nemesis, Nikita Khrushchev, did not believe that Beria was honest about his liberalization plans and hated the idea of abandoning Eastern Europe, as he was staunchly anti-capitalist. Therefore, with the help of the army, Khrushchev engineered a coup against Beria, accusing him of treason and arresting, then executing him, after a show trial. Beria’s secret police were reorganized as the KGB so that they would never again be controlled by anyone but the Communist Party leadership. Finally, after out-maneuvering the other members of the committee, Khrushchev became the guiding hand of the Soviet government, although collective leadership nominally continued to function.

Khrushchev shocked not just the Soviet Union, but the entire world, in 1956. During the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s crimes and cult of personality, as well as those who helped him carry them out. He also stated that he did not think that war between capitalism and communism was inevitable, but rather that the USSR should peacefully compete with the West to demonstrate which system was better. This started a period called De-Stalinization, and sent shock waves through the USSR. Some truly believed Stalin was a great hero and denounced Khrushchev; others agreed with his appraisal of Stalin, but questioned why Khrushchev and others had either abetted Stalin at the time, or waited so long to denounce him. Khrushchev did follow some of Beria’s advice and released over a million prisoners.

A political faction within the Communist Party, known as the “Anti-Party Group,” tried to remove Khrushchev and restore Stalin’s policies; Khrushchev defeated this group in the Politburo, but did not imprison or execute them (perhaps the Stalinists appreciated Khrushchev’s new policies a bit more after that). Having defeated his Stalinist rivals, Khrushchev was elected Premier of the Soviet Union in 1958 and consolidated the lion’s share of political power in himself, although he never ruled with the same absolutism as Stalin.

De-Stalinization included reforms in economic planning. Khrushchev reduced Stalin’s obsession with heavy industry for the military and focused more on consumer goods for the common man, improving both the economy and the quality of life in the USSR. Other economic policies were mediocre at best, such as Khrushchev’s strange plan to grow corn in Siberia or drought-prone virgin lands in Central Asia. Industrial output was unimpressive, although the USSR launched the first artificial satellite in 1957 and put the first man in space in 1961, igniting the Space Race.

Probably the greatest effect of De-Stalinization, however, was that it shattered the naïve view of Stalin and the USSR which was still held by so many, including Western communists. Chinese and North Korean leadership, however, remained enamored with the memory of Stalin and criticized Khrushchev. This was another break in global communist unity.

Khrushchev was not very successful in foreign relations. De-Stalinization did not include a change in relations with Warsaw Pact countries; Khrushchev had no plans to liberate Eastern Europe, as Beria had suggested. He brutally suppressed an uprising in Hungary in 1956 (see Chapter 3) and was unable to persuade communist Yugoslavia to join the Soviet orbit; that nation remained neutral in the Cold War. And while Khrushchev hoped to forge a good relationship with the United States, President Kennedy distrusted him. In 1962, this animosity blossomed into the Cuban Missile Crisis (see Chapter 3) which nearly ended in war between the two countries.

The Soviet Union: Brezhnev’s Tenure

In 1964, the Politburo removed Khrushchev from power due to the failure of his economic reforms, his increasingly autocratic methods, and for nearly getting the USSR into a war over Cuba. Leonid Brezhnev was made the First Secretary of the Communist Party and, although he had to rule within the confines of collective leadership, was the man who guided Soviet policy until his death in 1982. This period, from 1964 to 1982, became known as a period of stability, although Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev derisively named it the “Era of Stagnation” for its economic sluggishness and calcified leadership and policies.

The Soviet economy was moribund in the last days of Khrushchev’s reign; Brezhnev now instituted economic reforms to stimulate the economy. These changes were incremental, rather than radical, and involved the decentralization of economic planning. Although these reforms had some initial success, Soviet leadership disapproved, since allowing regional leaders to run their own economic affairs restricted the power of the Central Committee in Moscow. When the leaders chose to ignore the reforms and retain power, they found that making all economic decisions within a command economy was a task beyond their bureaucratic abilities. The economy began to decline, and corruption and black marketeering were rife in the USSR.

Brezhnev and his fellow leaders in the Kremlin did manage to stabilize the Soviet Union, avoiding major political upheavals, but it soon became clear that they had over-corrected. The USSR developed into a gerontocracy, meaning rule by the oldest men. Soviet leadership was very conservative, becoming more and more resistant to reform. This led to a selection method in politics in which older, more conservative administrators were appointed to new posts, rather than reform-minded younger men. Soon, the average age of the Kremlin’s top executives was seventy-one years, and fresh economic and social ideas were nowhere to be seen. The military, which had attained parity with the United States in the early 1970s, was becoming a tremendous expense for the USSR (though the Americans were having the same problem with their own military). Still, the Red Army was a powerful political force, believed to be the only protection against capitalist aggression; this meant that the defense budget could not be cut, and began to bleed the Soviet economy dry.

Early in his tenure, Brezhnev enjoyed some small successes with the United States, such as arms control talks and other treaties. Relations with China remained poor, as Mao Zedong viewed himself, not Brezhnev, as the proper leader of global communism. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 (see Chapter 13), Soviet relations with the United States sharply declined, as President Carter perceived the attack as expansionistic. Relations between the United States and the USSR remained poor until the term of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.
Life in the Soviet Union during this period was an improvement over Stalinist days. The Soviet economy improved until the early 1970s, with more consumer goods available for the average citizen. But after the failure of economic reforms, the economy declined starting in about 1973. The Soviet industrial base was much more primitive than that of the West, so manufactured items were less plentiful and more expensive (also explaining why the USSR had to sink so much money into defense; with more advanced machinery, it was simply cheaper for the West to make all those weapons).

Most Soviet citizens, having no political recourse for change, simply accepted their lot and did the best they could. Certain brave citizens did publicly criticize the system, most notably author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who ended up being exiled from the country, but such dissidents rarely had a lasting effect on society. One important change came with the signing of the Helsinki Accords (see Chapter 3), in which the Soviet government promised their citizens certain human rights which they never actually permitted. This exposed the hypocrisy of the Soviet system, causing people to lose even more respect for their government.

Monument to commemorate the reunification of Ukraine with Russia in Kiev, Ukraine. Completed in 1982 by the Soviet government, it was meant to promote unity in the USSR. The Ukrainian people referred to this monument as “The Yoke” to criticize Russia’s dominance of Ukraine within the Soviet Union. After Ukrainian Independence in 1992, it was renamed the People’s Friendship Arch; after the Russian invasion of 2022, it was partially dismantled. From the author’s personal collection.

The Soviet agricultural sector was so weak that the USSR had to import wheat from the United States – a terrible embarrassment for the country. Women lined up for hours daily to wait for scarce products at supermarkets. Professional life was stagnant, with poor wages, long hours, and lack of promotion opportunity. Alcoholism was rampant, as were divorce and suicide. The average lifespan decreased. People took comfort within a popular non-socialist culture which was tolerated, but not sanctioned, by the government. For example, people listened to Western radio and TV programs, took a liking to Western rock music (especially the Beatles), and sought out Western products (denim jeans were particularly valued). The government even tolerated some homegrown Soviet rock music and locally-produced jeans. Still, a sort of fatalistic despondency settled over the country, with people doing the minimum required to satisfy their bosses. With a government policy of zero-percent unemployment, lazy or incompetent workers were typically moved around instead of fired, so workers figured they had nothing to lose by slacking off. The famous Soviet expression was, “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.”

The Soviet Union: Gorbachev and the Dissolution of the USSR

After Brezhnev died in 1982, he was replaced by Yuri Andropov, who died only two years later. Next came Konstantin Chernenko; that elderly statesman lived only another year. These two leaders made no significant changes to the Soviet system. Finally, in March 1985, the Politburo decided it needed a younger, more dynamic leader to save the failing economy. Mikhail Gorbachev, only fifty-four years old, was groomed for the post of General Secretary by Andropov and had little competition in the Politburo. Gorbachev planned to revive the USSR by implementing radical reforms while still retaining the basic socialist system. What he would soon discover was that he could only do one or the other.

Knowing that the old guard would prevent him from making significant changes, he immediately removed a great many government administrators, replacing them with younger, more talented people. Gorbachev’s policies were called perestroika (political and economic reform and restructuring) and glasnost (“openness”). Gorbachev realized that, in a command economy, economic reform and development could not come without a degree of political restructuring. Therefore, perestroika included such elements as some privatization of business, and even multiparty elections, although both were against Marxist-Leninist principles. Glasnost meant fewer controls on the media, allowing for open discussion of social and political affairs in contrast to the censorship of the past. Gorbachev hoped that these reforms would revive the Soviet economy. But Gorbachev’s most impactful policy was the new relationship between the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries. One of Gorbachev’s signature polices was informally known as the “Sinatra Doctrine,” in which Warsaw Pact countries would be permitted to leave the Soviet orbit if they chose to do so, in direct contravention of the old Soviet policy which had suppressed revolts in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. (The name was a reference to Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way,” since the Warsaw Pact countries would be allowed to go their own way.)

The Sinatra Doctrine would prove one of the most consequential in European history. In 1989, a Polish pro-democracy independence party (Solidarity) participated in, and won, the first multiparty elections in Poland since before World War II (see Chapter 13). Gorbachev, under the new doctrine, refused to intervene in Polish affairs, and Solidarity embraced democracy and capitalism and exited the Warsaw Pact. Very quickly, the rest of Eastern Europe responded; the Berlin Wall was torn down and both Germanies reunited as a democracy. The other socialist nations of the Warsaw Pact did so as well (see Chapter 13), and the Pact was dissolved.
Now came a reckoning in the Soviet Union itself. It started with a strong nationalist resurgence in the various republics of the USSR; people wanted their independence from the USSR and self-governance as sovereign nations. Riots broke out in several places. Gorbachev did not want to dissolve the USSR into its constituent republics, but only to allow more freedom within the existing system. His problem was that too few people in the USSR wanted the system to continue; they wanted to use their new freedoms to push for independence and an end to the Soviet empire. Their own national identities had survived the Soviet effort to drown them within a unified socialist identity, and now they wanted their own countries back.

With this wellspring of nationalism unleashed, Gorbachev quickly lost control of the situation. In August 1991, a group of hardcore communists attempted a coup against the government in order to reverse the reforms and growing nationalism; Gorbachev was detained but refused to relinquish power. Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Republic, opposed the coup and led the resistance to the coup plotters. In the face of overwhelming public resistance, the coup plotters surrendered and Gorbachev was released.

However, Yeltsin was now extremely popular in Russia and, as a nationalist, pushed for the dissolution of the USSR. He even began to unilaterally take Russia out of the Soviet Union, in direct opposition to Gorbachev. By mid-December, 1991, Gorbachev had to admit defeat. On December 26, the Soviet leadership voted to dissolve the USSR into its constituent republics. That officially occurred at midnight, December 31, 1991. The Soviet Union was no more.

Soviet Union: Conclusion

The USSR was founded as the world’s first Marxist-Leninist state and was intended to create a classless society and guide the way to true communism. It was perhaps the grandest social experiment ever carried out. However, the USSR demonstrated the weaknesses inherent in Marxism. Marxism intends to eliminate nationalism and religion and replace them with an internationalist, universalist view of mankind. The USSR failed to eliminate either of these ideologies; and nationalism, in particular, was critical to the overthrow of the socialist government. The command economy of the USSR was unable to compete successfully with Western capitalism. Socialist governments do continue to this day, most notably in China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba.

Compared to the United States, the history of the USSR is deeply tied to the policies of its leaders. Certainly, the policies of American political leaders deeply impact society; but in a democracy, other segments of society (churches, unions, business, the media, etc.) also contribute to and influence the wider society, making American culture a complex environment, difficult for any single sector to dominate. The Soviet Union’s command economy, strict censorship, and police state meant that political leaders such as Stalin held tremendous power over Soviet culture, meaning that a single individual could shape the nation’s destiny, for better or worse.