The ideology of capitalism requires people to be able to own their own houses and businesses outright. People are paid what other people think they are worth and if there is a disagreement then people go elsewhere. There is freedom in capitalism but the boundaries of that freedom (e.g. how much you can do) is based on the amount of money you have. Capitalism needs free trade between countries to develop so it comes into conflict with communism because communist countries do not allow free trade and businesses are state owned. Karl Marx (the father of communism) stated that the whole world would experience a communist revolution when the working class poor overthrew the middle classes that exploited them. Worldwide revolution was therefore a key part of the communist ideology and Lenin believed that communism would spread out from Russia to other countries. When the Russian revolutions took place in 1917 and the Bolsheviks took control a civil war broke out between the Red Army (communists) and the Whites who were made up of Russians that were opposed to the communist takeover. When this happened, Britain, France, Japan and the USA sent assistance to the Whites. It didn’t work and the Whites lost but it inevitably led to resentment from the communists who were understandably annoyed at the attempt to help defeat them from Western powers. Karl Marx said that religion was ‘the opium of the masses’ (opium is a drug) and the communists clamped down on religion, shutting churches and educating children about how religion was nonsense. John W. Mason, a historian said: The Soviet Union held to Lenin’s belief that conflict between Communism and Capitalism was inevitable. The United States believed that peace and security in the world would only emerge when the evil of communism had been expelled. In this sense co-existence was not possible…’’ History is not laid out in neat little snippets like your GCSE textbooks. Some of this is but it won’t all be. You have to learn to read information, decide what is most useful to your task and to think carefully about what questions you need to ask. You should also use the website and the textbooks pages When the Russian revolutions took place in 1917 and the Bolsheviks took control a civil war broke out between the Red Army (communists) and the Whites who were made up of Russians that were opposed to the communist takeover. When this happened, Britain, France, Japan and the USA sent assistance to the Whites. It didn’t work and the Whites lost but it inevitably led to resentment from the communists who were understandably annoyed at the attempt to help defeat them from Western powers. The church in the countries of Western Powers spoke out often against communism and were amongst the strongest opponents of communism. Russia had been allied with France, Britain and the USA against Germany during WW1, then in 1917 the Russian revolution put the Bolsheviks (communists) in control of Russia. To protect the revolution Lenin agreed a peace with Germany because, quite frankly, the Germans were kicking the Russian bottom quite severely. The Germans took a lot of land from the Russian Empire as part of the deal. When the Germans surrendered in 1918 the Allies did not give Russia back the land that the Germans took, instead giving it to countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Russians wanted it back. There was Polish-Russian War from in which France helped Poland to defeat Russia. In the resulting peace treaty yet more land was taken from Russia and given to Poland.

The capitalists were fearful of the spread of communism after the First World War, especially in Germany. During the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War the allies created the countries of Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia out of former Russian territory to create a buffer (a gap) between the Russian border and central Europe – the fancy word for this would be a cordon sanitaire. The communists set up an organisation called Comintern in 1919 which was set up to assist the spread of communism around the world by helping communist parties. When Stalin came to power in 1927 he abandoned the idea of worldwide communist revolution and it was no longer a priority for the Soviet Union (though they kept Comintern). He agreed to join the League of Nations (a group that met to try to ensure world peace) and he tried to form a defence alliance with France and Czechoslovakia because he was concerned about Hitler’s intentions after French suspicions of communism prevented the development of this. When Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia in 1938 Stalin appeared as though he was ready to intervene so long as the French did likewise. The French ignored this and along with the British met with Hitler to try to prevent the invasion. Stalin wasn’t invited to the conference in Munich and this fed his fears that Western powers were willing to work together against the USSR. Hitler subsequently went against all the promises he made to the French and British and invaded Czechoslovakia anyway in The British and French, seeing war on the horizon, then looked to negotiate a defensive treaty with Stalin but it was too late, Stalin had been snubbed too many times. In 1939 Stalin signed an agreement with Hitler to not fight the Nazis in exchange for half of Poland (much of the land taken from the Russian empire after WW1 by the western allies). Hitler invaded Poland from the West and Stalin from the East. Due to the German invasion the French and British declared war on Germany (but not Russia) and the Second World War began. From the beginning of the Second World War in Sept 1939 until the surprise German invasion of Russia in June 1941, Stalin was concerned about the potential for a German invasion so he seized the territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which had been taken from Russia after the First World War. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour dragging the USA into the Second World War, the Russians ended up in an alliance with Britain and the USA. This was known as the Grand Alliance. Russia took the brunt of the German attack, losing 25 million killed compared to 450,000 British, 420,000 US and 600,000 French. Stalin grew increasingly suspicious that, though the Grand Alliance lasted from December 1941, the British and US did not open a second front and invade France until D-day in June Stalin thought that the British and Americans were quite willing to let the Germans and Soviets fight each other to exhaustion. As the Soviet Union advanced westward, pushing the Germans back, they liberated eastern Europe but did not leave most of those countries, remaining in overall control until the fall of the Soviet Union in Stalin feared future German aggression (they’d been invaded in both world wars) and wanted to create a buffer zone. The Soviets also wanted the territory taken from the Russian empire at the end of the First World War to become integrated back into the USSR. History is not laid out in neat little snippets like your GCSE textbooks. Some of this is but it won’t all be. You have to learn to read information, decide what is most useful to your task and to think carefully about what questions you need to ask. You should also use the website and the textbooks pages 1-18.

In 1943 Stalin disbanded Comintern to try to convince the world that the Soviets were no longer interested in world-wide revolution. The USA was traumatised by the Japanese surprise attack on US soil in 1941 and wanted to establish military security in a series of bases surrounding the US. Stalin saw this as an aggressive move. The US also wanted to encourage free trade across the world along with democratic freedoms for all people which were both totally the opposite to the things that Soviets believed in. In 1943 the Grand Alliance leaders of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met for the first time. They discussed a future United Nations UN group to ensure world peace. Stalin made very clear that he intended to keep the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as part of the USSR and the parts of eastern Poland that the Soviets had taken – though Stalin also said he expected the Poles to be compensated with land in the west taken from German, which they were. Roosevelt and Churchill did not object to this. The US and Britain finally agreed to invade France the following year to take the fight to the Nazis. Churchill met privately with Stalin in October 1944 to try to protect British interests in the eastern Mediterranean. He agreed to the Soviet’s having a ‘sphere of influence’ across much of eastern Europe. Stalin agreed the British could have a ‘sphere of influence’ in Greece. When a civil war broke out in Greece in 1944 Stalin refused to send the Greek communists any support. Churchill quietly dropped this agreement when he realised how angry it would make Roosevelt when he found out they had made agreements without the US. Whenever a former Axis (on Germany’s side) country was conquered by the Allies an ACC was set up which was an Allied Control Commission. The former Axis countries were allowed their own governments but it was the ACCs that were really in control. The first was set up in Italy after the British/US invasion of 1943 and the USSR was not part of it as no Soviet troops were in Italy. When the USSR subsequently took Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Finland they set up their own ACC and the British/US did not get representation. History is not laid out in neat little snippets like your GCSE textbooks. Some of this is but it won’t all be. You have to learn to read information, decide what is most useful to your task and to think carefully about what questions you need to ask. You should also use the website and the textbooks pages 1-18.