America's Attitude Towards Communism in 1945 - 53

America and the USSR both had different opinions on communism and how

a country should be run. The USSR believed communism was the perfect

way to run its country and people. Communism consisted of a one party

state which owned the whole of the industry business and the

agricultural business too. There would be no individual profit making

and everyone was equal and received an equal amount of money. America,

however was a capitalist state which meant that there was freedom of

speech, free elections and more than one political party. The people

could make individual profits and the state owned neither industry nor

agricultural businesses.

America completely disliked the idea of communism and both it and the

USSR had different governments and their two societies were organised

around very different ideals. America as a superpower felt threatened

by communism both in values and way of life. There was also a dislike

of Stalins dictatorship tactics which had caused many deaths and the

purges of the 1930's. Stalin had also signed the Nazi - Soviet pact in

1939 which had divided Poland and caused America to drift further away

from liking the USSR and its policies such as communism and equality.

America became more against communism when the USSR decided to create

a "buffer" zone of friendly states between it and Germany basically

meaning they wanted to make sure no future invasions of Russia from

the West or Germany were easily carried out. They planned to do this

by redrawing Poland's boundary. These two issues were the main talk of

the peace conferences at Yalta and Postdam in 1945. The Yalta

Conference in February was when Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and

Winston Churchill met at Yalta in the Soviet Union. Because the war

was drawing to an end decisions had to made about how to run Europe

after it which later proved to cause more tension. Even though there

was already tension between the East and West, the tension increased

yet again when the USSR stated that it wanted Poland's boundary moving