To explain what was meant by the Iron Curtain To assess arguments for and against Soviet expansion
HOW DID THE WEST FEEL ABOUT SOVIET EXPANSION?
Soviet expansion – who felt what? We are preserving the borders of the Soviet
Union We fear the spread of Communism I am building ‘buffer’ states to stop future invasion They are drawing a line between Communism in the East and democracy in the West
Soviet expansion – who felt what? We are preserving the borders of the Soviet
Union – Stalin (USSR) We fear the spread of Communism – Truman (USA) I am building ‘buffer’ states to stop future invasion – Stalin (USSR) They are drawing a line between Communism in the East and democracy in the West – Churchill said this but USA also felt this
Albania – Communists took control in 1944. There was little opposition so the USSR did not need to take action.
East Germany
Poland
Hungary
Czechoslovakia
Yugoslavia
Romania
Albania – Communists took control in 1944. There was little opposition so the USSR did not need to take action.
Bulgaria
The Iron Curtain
What is this cartoon saying about the power of the U.N?
How did the West feel about Soviet expansion? Source
Is it for or against Soviet expansion?
Why? Give reasons
1
Against
It shows Stalin trying to spread his communist empire further into Western Europe, beyond a ‘buffer’ zone.
Source 1
Source 2 “Nobody knows what Soviet Russia intends
to do in the future or what are the limits to their expansive tendencies…An iron curtain has descended across Europe. Behind that line lie all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe…all are subject to a very high measure of control from Moscow” Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech, Fulton, USA,
March 1946
Source 3 “As a result of the German invasion the Soviet Union lost about 7 million people. In other words, several times more than Britain and the United States together. What is surprising about the fact that the Soviet Union, worried about its future safety, wants governments friendly to it in Finland, Poland and Romania?” Stalin, responding to Churchill’s speech, 1946
Source 4
‘A peep
under the Iron Curtain’ In fact, the ‘iron curtain’ was a 2,000-km. line of barbed wire, look-out posts and road blocks.
Source 5
Russia saw it as protecting herself from future attack. The West saw it as empire-building.
Source 6 “The Cold War set in. Churchill had given his
famous speech in Fulton urging the forces of the world to fight the Soviet Union. Our relations with Britain, France and the USA were ruined.” Khrushchev, writing in 1971. In 1946 he was a member of the Soviet government
Source 7 “Force is the only thing the Russians
understand. Stalin is planning world conquest.” From a speech by President Truman after the Potsdam conference, 1945