Russia-United States

relations: A History
The rise of the Soviet Union

1917
The October Revolution led by the Bolshevik Party of
Vladimir Lenin in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) on 7
November 1917 was an armed insurrection along with
belligerent uprisings that was radically leftist. They
overthrew Russia's Czar Nicholas II, ending centuries of
Romanov rule. The Bolsheviks established a socialist state
in the territory that was once the Russian Empire.

The first dispute

1918

After Lenin withdrew Russia from WW1, the Germans had opportunities to relocate and
further maneuver troops on the Western Front. This marked the first dispute between the
Soviet Union and the U.S., as the Western superpower as well as other Entente Powers
to consider the Soviet as traitorous for temporarily seceding amid the zenith of tension.
Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union was ruled by terror during the
phase Karl Marx predetermined as “dictatorship of the proletariat” when striving
towards socialism. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant
society into an industrial and military superpower, yet millions of his own citizens died
during his brutal reign. This violation of human rights, along with the wide promulgation
of Marxist-Leninist communism in the Western world has particularly concerned the U.S.

Temporary bilateralism

1939
The emergence of WW2 deescalated said tensions,
when the Allied Powers reconciled in the next major fight
against (Nazi) Germany and the Axis powers.
Subsidization and military support between the Soviet
Union and the US was mediocre compared to other
cooperation within the allied forces, which is
attributable to the aforementioned geopolitical
entanglements.

The Cold War

1947
After WW2 ended, disputes between the superpowers resurged; namely, by the
occurrence of the Cold War–a period of geopolitical tension between the
United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. This conflict was
heavily ideological: the nonconcurrence was fueled by the controversy between
the two antithetical economic systems: communism vs. capitalism. A series of
minor offenses were launched between the two forces, and additional alliances
such as West Germany allying with NATO to deter aggression and instigate fear
upon Eastern countries, and the Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty
signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern
Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, in response
to West Germany affiliating with NATO. After all dissension, in the Malta Summit
of December 1989, both the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union
declared the Cold War over after over 50 years of irreconciliation.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

1991
The public’s heavy dissatisfaction towards Soviet
president (at the time) Mikhail Gorbachev due to
loosened policies of perestroika and glasnost that
contributed to democratization eventually
destabilized Communist control and contributed
to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As we’ve seen, this relationship is evidently not

beneficial; the back-and-forth support during the
World Wars did not outweigh the consequences
both superpowers suffered as a result of the Cold
War, which eventually terminated with the
dissolution of the Soviet. Fifteen states emerged
from the Soviet Union, in which Russia was the
biggest.

Present
Tensions
Since the conflicts from the Cold War 30 years ago, the relationship has
aggravated due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and their intervention in

relationship
Ukraine. Sanctions on each other were imposed by both sides and significantly
expanded as a consequence of said events, which immensely deteriorated the
political, economic, and social ties. In the current conflict, leaders of both
countries were also hostile toward each other; US Defense Secretary Lloyd
Benefits Austin has said he hopes Russian losses in Ukraine will deter its leadership from
The preeminence of both nations surmises that their
repeating its actions elsewhere, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has
interests may be reconcilable. The importance of
accused the West of attempting to "split Russian society and destroy Russia
Russia-United States relationships could be
from within."
beneficial towards:
- Impeding the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction
- Managing the rise of China
- Coping with political entanglement in the Middle
East
- Modernizing and incentivizing one another’s
markets
- Maintaining global security and stability; the
shared burden of world superpowers

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