Adonis Diaries

Cold War effectively started in 1917 and not in 1945:  Similar reasons for dominating Third-World countries

The US historian John Lewis Gaddis analyzed declassified documents in the 70’s and recounted the causes of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.  Gaddis confirmed, and Chomsky didn’t contradict, that the Cold War indeed started in 1917 and not during the Korean War in the early 50’s.

So far, no historian refuted the date of the origin of the Cold War or even the causes stated by Gaddis.

In 1917,  Tsarist Russia was considered by the western European nations and the USA as the first among the backward third world nations.  Russia was meant to export raw materials, to extend cheap workforce to industries and businesses invested in Russia, and to be an open vast market for the western colonial products.

After the revolution ended the reign of the Tsar in 1917, the Bolshevik communist party, headed by Lenin, managed to take over the revolution and uprooted the absolute Imperial regime in Russia and started reforming the society.

The “communist” revolution main goal was for Russia to become self-sufficient in all kinds of production and transforming Russia from a third country regime reserved to supplement the capitalist nations with raw materials and cheap work force into a productive socialist community, with fair and equitable laws regulating capital and workers/Capitalists relationship.

The Capitalist nations of USA and England quickly financed and armed an army called the “White Russian army” and launched the counter offensive against the Bolshevik revolution in 1918.

It was a very serious war that lasted four years with the disintegration of the “White Russian army”:  Poisonous gas used by the British in WWI were heavily abused on the “Red Army”.

The soldiers of the White Russian army fled to Turkey, Italy, France, USA, and mostly to Germany.

During this Russian civil war, the Bolshevik revolution countered by disseminating its success stories around the world, demonstrating the feasibility of moving forward toward a productive and socialist society.

Italy, Germany, France, and England were basically weakened after WWI and plagued by social unrest.   Germany was on its knees and the Freikorp soldiers were returning to Germany from the Russian front.

The communist parties in the western States were on the ascendance and fast becoming the main well-organized movement with an ideology that responded to the need of the impoverished populations.

Italy and Germany were ripe to fall into communism, and the US was next ripe after the financial crash of 1923.

Trotsky’s political line was to disseminate communism everywhere and encourage western communist parties to take power.

Pragmatic Stalin reasoned as follows: “If any communist party take over in one of these performing western nations, then capital and expert “know-how” will no longer be converging into Russia, a State still very much in need of everything, because the communists in the western nations will invest in improving their own people”.

The consequence would be that the center of gravity will shift to the west and Stalin will no longer be the main representative of communist movement.

The Stalin league forced Trotsky and his supporters to exile and sacrificed the western communist movement for juicy deals. 

The communists in Germany and Italy were decapitated by the fascist Mussolini and the Nazi in Germany.  The communists in Spain were ordered to split the socialist and left Republican alliance and then sold out to Franco.

As Germany was suffering from the heavy constraints imposed by the Versailles “Peace Treaty”, Germany found Russia of Stalin welcoming them in open arms.  Even before the advent of Nazism, Germany was training its army in Russia, operating military production industries, inventing new war planes and tanks, and conducting joint military training with the Russian army…

After 1950, the US strategy was “either you are with us or with the Soviet Union”.

The third world countries that backed the US were submitted to the same demands that Russia suffered before the fall of the Tsar monarchy:  Mainly, open liberal market, cheap manpower, and exploitation of raw materials for the benefit of the capitalist enterprises…  It is the same capitalist colonial way of doing business.

Note:  I read of the idea that the Cold War started in 1917 from the “Reflection on the university” by Noam Chomsky. The remaining of the reasoning in this article is mine.