Soviet Union, Former (Russia), and U.S. Policy

The impact of the policies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on U.S. national security from the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union not only dominated the foreign policy of both nations for decades but also had a great impact on domestic policy and life in both countries. The rivalry drew the countries into an arms race and military conflicts that cost trillions of dollars and claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Early History

The Soviet Union arose from the chaos of postrevolutionary Russia in the later stages of World War I. In February 1917, with the war going badly for Russia, a popular uprising forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate the Russian throne. He was replaced by a provisional government that continued the war against Germany. Six months later, Bolshevik rebels led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov—better known as Lenin—overthrew the provisional government. Lenin signed a peace treaty with Germany in March 1918 and set up a revolutionary communist form of government.

Lenin, however, had opposition both at home and abroad. The less-revolutionary Mensheviks, who had been partners in the provisional government, were unwilling to accept Lenin's leadership. They soon began an armed resistance to Bolshevik rule, setting off a civil war. The Bolsheviks' revolution also caused great concern among the Western Allies in the war against Germany—the United States, Great Britain, and France. These states were shocked by the coup against and subsequent murder of the czar. Lenin's withdrawal of Russia from the war and his establishment of a hard-line communist government was more than the Allies could take.

After defeating Germany in late 1918, the Western Allies sent troops and equipment to support the Mensheviks in the Russian Civil War. This began a period marked by simultaneous civil war and foreign incursion to which the Bolsheviks responded with a set of policies known collectively as War Communism. It was also a time of economic experimentation, as Lenin centralized the Russian economy. The government in Moscow took ownership of all private enterprises, including farms. Moscow set agricultural and industrial production quotas and state bureaucrats managed the Russian economy.

By 1920, the Bolsheviks had prevailed in the civil war, but Lenin's policies had been disastrous for the Russian economy. Realizing the weaknesses of economic centralization, Lenin introduced the New Economic Period (NEP)—market-friendly measures designed to encourage private ownership and foreign investment in the country—in 1921. During this period, U.S. firms, including General Electric, Ford, and Westinghouse, entered the Soviet market. This move toward capitalist economic philosophy encouraged Western politicians who had grown increasingly concerned about the direction of Lenin's rule.

In 1922, the former Russian Empire was formally renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (The name Soviet was taken from the Russian word for a local worker's council. Such councils were the backbone of the Bolshevik movement during the revolution.) Lenin did not live to see the Soviet Union rise to its eventual status as a world superpower. His death in 1924 set off a struggle between his old ally and revolutionary partner Leon Trotsky and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Joseph Stalin. Although clever and brutally efficient, Stalin was not one of Lenin's favorites. In a political testament dictated before his death, Lenin advised other communist leaders to “think about a way of removing Stalin from that post [general secretary].”

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