“The rising tension between east and west between 1945-1949 was due to Stalin’s hold over eastern Europe” How far do you agree with this view? (25 marks)
Following the Second World War the post war world was left fragile, disrupted and heavily damaged and it was vital that the future of the East and West were determined quickly and correctly as to avoid a rise in underlying tension. Due to the common enemy of Nazism having been removed, the differences in the political ideologies of the east and west were immediately highlighted consequently causing an initial rise in tension. Although at the time Stalin and the Soviet Union were solely thought to be to blame for the intense rise in tension during 1945-1949, there were more subtle and underlying issues which provoked more aggressive and inflammatory actions from the USSR which created this illusion that the East was the main instigator of tension.
Stalin’s pragmatic political ideas of communist expansion contributed greatly to the increase in tension in the late 1940s; following the ACC granting the USSR a zone of the newly distributed Germany, the Ussr wanted to expand their communist sphere of influence outside of their controlled zones and with the annexation of Eastern Poland came the opportunity to introduce communism even though they had declared through the council that Poland should have the right to choose their own government through free elections. This policy of free elections to those nations who had lost the right to self-govern during the war had been supported in the Atlantic charter by Roosevelt and Churchill in 1941 where it stated that “people should have the right to choose their own form of government”. However, the Atlantic charter was dismissed by Stalin in many countries including Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania where elections were rigged to allow the communist parties existing within