THE COLD WAR AS HISTORY

larry richette,

The "East" and "West" were both equally responsible. Once the Com-Intern described their goals as world revolution with resultant communist world domination the western nations (U.S., Europe. et.al.) felt they had no choice but to adopt a political policy of " Containment" of the perceived communist threat.

The cold war was obviously bad for both sides. Both had to devote a lot of resources to check the other's advances rather than promote their own abilities and further improve their standard of living. This was most manifest in the U.S.S.R's obsession with surpassing the west's production in both manufacturing and agriculture at the expense of the living standards of its own people.
They were able to make more tanks than the west while failing to keep up with the toilet paper demand of their populace.
The west preferred to make things the old fashion way via capitalism. The resulting taxes from the thriving private sector were then used to arm the west.
A major factor in contributing to the downfall of the East was their emphasis on secrecy. This stunted scientific thought and resulted in less innovations, which further stymied the development of the very defense industry that the East longed for. There is, of course, more but what do you guys/gals think?

JM

I don't think that secrecy stymied the Sovet defense establishment. They matched us weapon for weapon until the very end of the Cold War--we got the A bomb, so did they, we developed the H bomb, so did they, we created ICBM technology, so did they, and so forth.

Larry richette,

It is a historical fact later verified by top Soviet scientists that the major and most important research and development for the Soviet Hydrogen Bomb was obtained from a Dr Fuchs and others who, working on the Manhattan Project, gleaned the technology so afforded and gave it to Stalin's H-Bomb developers saving them years of R&D. This can only support my argument for the detrimental effects of Soviet/Stalin paranoia at the time manifest in the administration's obession for secrecy within the state.

I might also note that the lack of peer-to-peer communication, although significant, was the least of the hurdles soviet scientists had to clear. Stalin's "purges" regularly incarcerated and killed many members of the intelligentsia in addition to reducing the ranks of experienced senior military officers by almost two thirds.
In Stalin's U.S.S.R. you survived by keeping your mouth shut. This was not an atmosphere conducive to sharing knowledge let alone scientific advancement.

Respectfully,

JM

james:

Your "facts" are quite wrong. Klaus Fuchs enabled the Soviets to build the A bomb, not the H bomb. They developed the H bomb without any help from the West. And since Stalin died in 1953, it is debatable how much his reign affected the Soviet intelligentsia for the 36 years in between his death and the collapse of the USSR.

Just to make life interesting: The cold war was a benifit to the entire world.
I say this because, with out the cold war a lot of modern devices would have been developed, but they would have taken longer to create. War, in all its facets, create technology. The development of satelites would have been years behind without the Soviets trying to go one up on the US. Without the launching of Sputnik, the US would not have pressed forward on math and science. Both of which contributed to the fact that we now have computers in our houses and on our laps that can do more than the first 13 appolo's could have done combined!

One of my favorite books on the cold war is Blind Man's Bluff...Its a great book about the importance of submarines in the cold war and the top secret missions they did. My grandfather is mentioned in it and his friends were in charge of some of the missions his best friend Cpt Bradley was well known. So it was cool for me to get a first hand look at the cold war when talking to my grandfather