{"id":3094,"date":"2017-04-03T09:13:46","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T09:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/?p=3094"},"modified":"2026-03-05T07:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T07:00:08","slug":"soviet-expansionism-in-the-cold-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/soviet-expansionism-in-the-cold-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Soviet Expansionism in the Cold War: A Detailed Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Soviet expansionism in the Cold War<\/a> was significant because it increased global tensions and caused the United States and its allies to adopt the policy of containment<\/a> to resist the spread of communism<\/a>. The Cold War lasted from the end of World War II<\/a> in 1945 until the early 1990s, and was one of the most significant events of the 20th century.\u00a0 At its heart, the Cold War was essentially a \u2018face off\u2019 or competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in the years following World War II.\u00a0 This conflict between the two major superpowers led to different foreign policy strategies, including the policy of expansionism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SOVIET EXPANSIONISM IN THE COLD WAR – SUMMARY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Expansionism as a foreign policy strategy was used by the Soviet Union in the timeframe of the Cold War.\u00a0 For instance, the Soviet Union sought to spread communism and its influence to other regions of the world in the years following the end of World War II.\u00a0 This is important, because in the Cold War both the United States and the Soviet Union worked to spread their \u2018sphere of influence\u2019.\u00a0 Both wanted to expand their influence around the world in order to gain support for their separate ideologies, which included communism (for the Soviets) and liberalism<\/a> (for the Americans).\u00a0 Soviet expansionism in the Cold War was often met with containment on the part of the United States, because the Americans hoped to stop the spread of communism.\u00a0 As such, Soviet expansionism and American containment<\/a> led to many different examples of conflict between the two superpowers, which heightened tensions throughout the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Containment
Containment in the Cold War was significant because it was a major factor of American foreign policy for decades, especially in relation to conflicts, such as: Korean War and Vietnam War.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

As stated above, the Soviet Union used the foreign policy of expansionism regularly throughout the timeframe of the Cold War.\u00a0 They did this in the hopes of gaining access to new territory and influence over specific regions, which they considered to be economically, politically and militarily important.\u00a0 One of the first examples of Soviet expansionism in the Cold War was the spread of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II.\u00a0 During the Second World War, the Soviet Union was allied with the other Allied Powers, which included: France, Britain and the United States.\u00a0 As such, near the end of World War II, when Nazi Germany<\/a> began to lose the war, each of the Allied armies pushed in towards German territory.\u00a0 For their part, the Soviet Army captured large sections of Eastern Europe including the Eastern half of Germany.\u00a0 While the other Allied Powers (such as Britain and the United States) liberated Western Europe, the Soviet Union chose to maintain control over the territories in Eastern Europe.\u00a0 Winston Churchill, the famous Prime Minister of Britain during World War II, famously referred to this as an \u2018Iron Curtain<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 In fact, the Soviet Union held control over Eastern Germany until the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the two halves of Germany were reunited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the Cold War, there were several more examples of Soviet expansionism.\u00a0 In each of the examples, the Soviet Union was attempting to increase its influence and gain an advantage over the United States.\u00a0 These examples include: Berlin Blockade<\/a>, Korean War<\/a> and the Vietnam War<\/a>.\u00a0 In the Berlin Blockade, which took place from 1948 until 1949, the Soviet Union was trying to gain control over Western Berlin.\u00a0 Berlin was the German capital, and had been split into four zones by the Allied Powers, at the end of World War II.\u00a0 However, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin<\/a>, was unhappy with this arrangement and sought to control the entire city of Berlin.\u00a0 It led to a major conflict, in which the United States (and its allies) \u2018fought\u2019 back against the Soviet expansion attempt with the events of the Berlin Airlift<\/a>.\u00a0 Second, the two proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam involved the Soviet Union trying to expand its influence into regions in the South Pacific areas of Asia.\u00a0 This worried the United States and led to the events of both the wars, which saw American soldiers invade each of the two countries.\u00a0 In fact, the wars in Korea and Vietnam were some of the largest conflicts following the events of World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Berlin
Citizens of Berlin watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport in 1948 during the events of the Berlin Airlift. (Colorized by historycrunch.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Soviet Union used the foreign policy of expansionism regularly throughout the timeframe of the Cold War. This article details the history and significance of Soviet expansionism in the Cold War.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":33,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,27,26],"tags":[103,15,115,104,102],"class_list":["post-3094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cold-war","category-korean-war","category-vietnam-war","tag-cold-war","tag-history","tag-korean-war","tag-soviet-union","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6200,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions\/6200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}