THE RED THREAT
Why the Color Red? After the Russian Revolution of 1917, power was not immediately consolidated or agreed upon. The Red Army was led by Vladmir Lenin, who fought specifically for their Bolshevik form of socialism. Meanwhile, The White Army, made up of various other factions of socialists, fought for their form of government. The color red was used in leftwing European movements long before Russian socialism, but in specifically Russian, and later Chinese socialism, red represents the blood of the workers that sacrificed for the revolution and the country. The reference to the color would stick, as the Bolsheviks carried out mass killings later referenced as “The Red Terror” as they consolidated power in 1918. Incidentally, both the flags of the Soviet Union and China are primarily red. Because of all this, Americans began to refer to communists as “the Reds” when The Cold War broke out, hence the title “The Red Scare” or “Red Threat” when referencing the decades of communist witch hunts.
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower led the country as it entered into the Cold War after serving as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II. However, the Cold War was fought in a different way than most wars, and was an especially stark contrast to the devastation of World Wars I and II. The United States and the Soviet Union competed covertly, legally, technologically, culturally, and most terrifyingly-through a nuclear arms race. Americans would watch on their family television sets as the United States beat the Soviet Union to land a man the moon, and school children learned what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
The U.S. along with other democratic nations, passed several measures attempting to curb the Soviet Union’s influence on developing countries. These indirect ways of fighting each other were why it was termed a “cold” war. American life was affected every day as the atmosphere of paranoia, fear, and suspicion spread rapidly. Citizens began to distrust their neighbors and question any behavior that deviated from the social norm. Even the small possibility that one’s coworker might be a spy was enough to drive Americans and lawmakers to sell each other out as a risk to the country.
Estonia was “assigned” to the Soviet sphere of influence in a secret pact with the Nazis during World War II. The Soviet occupation of Estonia (before it became an independent country) was brutal and unwelcomed. There were mass arrests and deportations of natural born Estonians to remote parts of the Soviet Union. All traces of their native culture erased by the Soviet forces. Though there was Estonian resistance, it ended by 1956 and remained under heavy Soviet occupation until the 1990s.
Though no war was fought on United States or Soviet soil, several countries became proxies for the two countries’ ideological feud. These wars, known as proxy wars, competed for each country’s military resources. The United States used them to contain Communism’s spread into countries with American diplomatic interests. The Middle East, and the ‘Near East’ (including China, Vietnam), and Latin America were the most vulnerable areas of the world to be fought over in these proxy wars, and ultimately led to greater instability for these countries. In 1957,
THE RED THREAT
