Conclusion: Reinterpreting the Origins of the Cold War

Our understanding of twentieth-century history is fundamentally predicated on the assumptions of the underlying incompatibility of liberal democracy and communism and of the inevitability of the Cold War between the Western democratic powers and the Soviet Union. This work analyses a period in which these assumptions appeared not to hold. In 1941–47, there existed a real, if circumscribed, positive engagement between communists and democratic parties in most European countries, both in Eastern and Western Europe, and a genuine, if limited, cooperation between the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union. Whilst this cooperation ultimately proved unsustainable, at both the domestic and the international levels, it is important to analyse not only the causes that led to its failure, but also the reasons for its brief existence and its effects on subsequent developments. The analysis presented in this work can cast a new light on existing interpretations of the origins of the Cold War, in particular with regard to the evolution of Stalin’s strategy in the transition from cooperation with the United States and Britain during the Second World War to ideological and geopolitical confrontation, and his impact on communist party policy in the complex interaction between democracy and communism in the national political systems of European states in the aftermath of the Second World War. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.