Editing History of Russia (section)

===Cold War===
{{Main|Cold War}}
[[File:US Army tanks face off against Soviet tanks, Berlin 1961.jpg|thumb|right|US Army tanks [[Berlin Crisis of 1961|face off]] against Soviet armor at [[Checkpoint Charlie]], Berlin, October 1961.]]
Collaboration among the major Allies had won the war and was supposed to serve as the basis for postwar reconstruction and security. USSR became one of the founders of the [[UN]] and a [[Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council|permanent member]] of the UN Security Council. However, the conflict between Soviet and U.S. national interests, known as the [[Cold War]], came to dominate the international stage.

The Cold War emerged from a conflict between Stalin and U.S. President [[Harry Truman]] over the future of Eastern Europe during the [[Potsdam Conference]] in the summer of 1945.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/The+Cold+War.htm|title=The Cold War|work=John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum|access-date=22 July 2007|archive-date=14 February 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090214004725/http://jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/The+Cold+War.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> Stalin's goal was to establish a buffer zone of states between Germany and the Soviet Union.<ref name="Gaddis">{{cite book|last=Gaddis|first=John Lewis|author-link=John Lewis Gaddis|title=Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An Interpretive History|year=1990|publisher=[[McGraw-Hill]]|page=[https://archive.org/details/russiasovietunio00gadd/page/176 176]|isbn=0-07-557258-3|url=https://archive.org/details/russiasovietunio00gadd/page/176}}</ref> Truman charged that Stalin had betrayed the [[Yalta]] agreement.<ref name="theoharis-orginsOfColdWar">{{cite journal |last1=Theoharis |first1=Athan |title=Roosevelt and Truman on Yalta: The Origins of the Cold War |journal=Political Science Quarterly |year=1972 |volume=87 |issue=2 |page=226 |doi=10.2307/2147826 |jstor=2147826 }}</ref> With Eastern Europe under Red Army occupation, Stalin was also biding his time, as his own [[Soviet atomic bomb project|atomic bomb project]] was steadily and secretly progressing.<ref>Cochran, Thomas B., Robert S. Norris & Oleg Bukharin. [http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/nuc_01019501a_138.pdf ''Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070809124538/http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/nuc_01019501a_138.pdf |date=9 August 2007 }} (PDF). Boulder,. CO:. Westview Press, 1995. {{ISBN|0-8133-2328-2}}.</ref><ref>[[Gaddis, John Lewis]]. ''We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History''. Oxford: Clarendon press, 1997. {{ISBN|0-19-878071-0}}.</ref>

In April 1949 the United States sponsored the [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization]] (NATO), a mutual defense pact. The Soviet Union established an Eastern counterpart to NATO in 1955, dubbed the [[Warsaw Pact]].<ref>[[Vojtech Mastny (historian)|Mastny, Vojtech]], Malcolm Byrne & Magdalena Klotzbach (eds.). ''Cardboard Castle?: An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991''. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005. {{ISBN|963-7326-08-1}}.</ref><ref>Holloway, David & Jane M. O. Sharp. ''The Warsaw Pact: Alliance in Transition?'' Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. {{ISBN|0-8014-1775-9}}.</ref><ref>Holden, Gerard. ''The Warsaw Pact: Soviet Security and Bloc Politics''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. {{ISBN|0-631-16775-7}}.</ref> The division of Europe into Western and Soviet blocks later took on a more global character, especially after 1949, when the U.S. nuclear monopoly ended with the testing of [[Joe-1|a Soviet bomb]] and the [[Communist Party of China|Communist]] takeover in [[China]].

The foremost objectives of Soviet foreign policy were the maintenance and enhancement of national security and the maintenance of [[Eastern Bloc|hegemony over Eastern Europe]]. The Soviet Union maintained its dominance over the Warsaw Pact through crushing the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956]],<ref>Litvan, Gyorgy, Janos M. Bak & Lyman Howard Legters (eds.). ''The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt and Repression, 1953–1963''. London – New York: Longman, 1996. {{ISBN|0-582-21504-8}}.</ref> suppressing the [[Prague Spring]] in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and supporting the suppression of the [[Solidarity (Polish trade union)|Solidarity]] movement in Poland in the early 1980s. The Soviet Union opposed the United States in a number of [[proxy conflicts]] all over the world, including the [[Korean War]] and [[Vietnam War]].

As the Soviet Union continued to maintain tight control over its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the Cold War gave way to ''[[Détente]]'' and a more complicated pattern of international relations in the 1970s. The [[nuclear race]] continued, the number of nuclear weapons in the hands of the USSR and the United States reached a menacing scale, giving them the ability to destroy the planet multiple times. Less powerful countries had more room to assert their independence, and the two [[superpower]]s were partially able to recognize their common interest in trying to check the further spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons in treaties such as [[SALT I]], [[SALT II]], and the [[Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty]].

U.S.–Soviet relations deteriorated following the beginning of the nine-year [[Soviet–Afghan War]] in 1979 and the [[1980 U.S. presidential election|1980 election of Ronald Reagan]], a staunch [[anti-communist]], but improved as the [[communist bloc]] started to unravel in the late 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia lost the superpower status that it had won in the Second World War.