Interwar Politics

The futile attempt of the Western community to overthrow and undo Soviet Communism in
Russia led to strain and anxious ties between the Soviet Union and the West. Before the end
of the 1930s, diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the major Western countries
hardly existed at any practical level. During this time, these major Western powers made full
attempt to prevent the spread and dissemination of Communist ideas in the West. In this
spirit, these powers also tried to isolate the Union by all means they could employ. It took as
late as 1924 for the government in London to recognize the sovereign status of the Soviet
Union. Washington waited till 1933. What was practically implicated in the absence of
formal diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union was the sheer unavailability of any proper
channels of communication. This led to guesswork as a formal strategy of all parties
because it was virtually impossible to know what the other is up to without any way to
discuss and negotiate. This model of non-commination becomes particularly frightening
when we learn that the United States and the Soviet Union both gain power without
precedent; they both emerge as Super-Power giants by the end of the wars. One cannot
undermine the part Stalins politics and policies have played to ameliorate this conflict in the
1920s and 1930s. Some of Stalins measures have even led to mass starvation and
consequential deaths of many Soviet citizens. He was brutal to political opponents and took
the strictest action against them. So much so that he was known for his vicious purges; of
which it is estimated that about a million deaths are accounted for. The West took issue with
these human right violations, but more importantly, these actions proved more and more that
what we had in Communism was the antithesis of Western style democracy. During the
second World War, the West did not bother much about the way Stalin did government, but
as soon as the war alliance broke apart, things returned to surface. The West tried its level
best to exclude the Soviets from the workings of International Politics after the first war. This
paranoia was a mistake in retrospect, and the politics following the next war were more
cautious, and yet, more fragile and stressful.
Propaganda and the Red Scare
The Soviets were all too active in propaganda, especially in the years of the 1920s and
1930s. This aspect was an addition to the silent war taking form between the East and the
West during this time. The imagery of the West that was reproduced was one of a gluttonous,
greed and money crazy society, seeking to pursue its narrow materialistic ambitions which
culminate at global domination. This contributed the ideological apparatus of the communist
state that was the Soviet Union. The ideological production was also crucial in the making of
certain prejudiced and misled leaders, as much as citizens, of the Soviet political
establishment who were simply difficult to talk to. In Western societies, the propaganda
against the Soviets was of no less consequence. The Soviets were portrayed as irrational
subjects, people you could simply not talk to, because all they were bent for was to make
the whole world communist, and nothing short of it. This propaganda reached its peak in the
United States with the anticommunist crusade that came as the Red Scare in 1918-1921. In
desperate campaigns of witch-hunting, so many civil right violations proceeded against
Americans themselves.