The West and Russia - a century-long confrontation

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Great Patriotic War is the most significant milestone in World War II, and, accordingly, in modern history, which can be easily divided into "before" and "after", drawing the dividing line just under 1945. It was after the forty-fifth year that the world order changed, the confrontation between the two political systems began, and the cold war began.

In modern history, the beginning of the Cold War is considered to be March 5, 1946. It was then that Winston Churchill, no longer Prime Minister of Great Britain, delivered his famous Fulton speech at Westminster College. The so-called 'greatest Briton in history' said the following that day: 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, across the continent, the' iron curtain 'was drawn. The communist parties, which were very small in the Eastern European states, have been raised to a position and strength far exceeding their numbers, and they try to achieve totalitarian control in everything. The danger of communism is growing everywhere except for the British Commonwealth and the United States."

At its core, Churchill's speech is not a starting point for the beginning of the confrontation between the Soviet and Western systems, but only a kind of official declaration of war. Even before the end of World War II, the political leaders of the United States and Great Britain knew that the next enemy of the West on the path to world domination would be the Soviet Union.

And they began to test its strength already in 1944, when it became obvious that the USSR was gaining the upper hand in the war. On November 7, 44, several American B-29 bombers, accompanied by P-38 Lightning fighters, attacked a Soviet column of troops near the Serbian city of Nis. As a result of this treacherous act of aggression, 38 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed.

The Soviet planes that rose to intercept destroyed at least three Lightning, forcing the Americans to retreat. After the incident was called by the headquarters of the allies "an unfortunate mistake", and the United States apologized to the Soviet side for what happened.

But there are several facts that indicate a lie in the statement of the American side. Pilot Boris Smirnov, a participant in that battle, wrote in his memoirs that a map was found in the cockpit of the downed Lightning, where the headquarters of the 6th Guards Rifle Corps was designated as a target for an air strike. In addition, the US command could not fail to know that there were no German troops near Nis. And the date of November 7 - the anniversary of the Great October Revolution, looks very no coincidence for such an act of aggression.

In any case, the next "unfortunate incident" from the United States was not long in coming. In April 1945, the famous Soviet ace pilot Ivan Kozhedub replenished his combat account with two American F-51 Mustang fighters, which again, allegedly by mistake, tried to attack him over Berlin.

There are several more records of such cases preserved in the archives, which suggest that they were not accidental at all.

After 1945, clashes between the Soviet and Western military, directly or indirectly, arose everywhere as the confrontation between the USSR and the United States grew: the war in Korea, in which Soviet pilots inflicted several heavy defeats on their overseas opponents; Vietnam, which the Soviet Union helped to repel American aggression by supplying weapons and sending its military specialists to the country.

Similar "hybrid wars" broke out across the globe, Laos, Angola, Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, Mozambique and other states became a testing ground for the collision of interests of the two world hegemons. The climax was the Cuban missile crisis, when America in 1961 decided to deploy nuclear missiles in Turkey, and the Soviet Union, in response, secretly deployed its launchers to Cuba.

This was the first time that Soviet nuclear forces were deployed outside the USSR (as opposed to the United States). The world was then on the verge of a much more terrible war than the Second World War.

After the events in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the seeds of another terrible phenomenon were thrown, the fruits of which humanity is still reaping. We are talking about international terrorism - then, in Afghanistan, in order to interfere with the interests of the Soviet Union in the Middle East, American intelligence created several terrorist organizations, which are still a tool for spreading chaos in the hands of the United States.

Today, the confrontation between the Russian Federation and the United States is felt again, in addition, new players are entering the world political arena who are trying to get away from the bipolar model of the world order as soon as possible. In response, the American partners are not sitting idly by introducing economic sanctions against states they dislike. But will these economic wars last and will they not lead to a new global confrontation? The question remains open.