European Threat

Was it fair for the Soviet Union to receive control over Eastern Europe? After WWII, the combined effects of the Tehran and Yalta Conferences allowed the Soviet Union to gain control over Eastern Europe. This immediately accelerated the Soviet threat and also eliminated the idea of the balance of power that had shaped the framework of European relations since the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The combined effect of these conferences essentially divided Europe between Soviet and Western European powers and thus inspired Churchill’s “Iron Curtain Speech”. The combined result of these two conferences was undoubtedly severe and detrimental to the European structure and therefore makes me wonder whether such an extreme forfeit of power (on the Western side) was a rational and just solution or whether it was one out of impulse and fear of another war. Personally, I think that the act was one out of impulse and fear, void of any rational thought whatsoever, particularly with Stalin as a leader. In giving so much power to the Soviets, Western Europe pretty much created their own worst enemy and threat, and though it did avoid an immediate war, it did not create any sort of a solution between the capitalist and communist parties, and thus the rivalry between these two parties remained unresolved. The Soviets had suffered great losses during WWII, and, as history has shown with the Germans, when a country suffers greatly during warfare there is a desire to redeem the power and international threat of that country. Although Churchill denied the inevitability of warfare in his “Iron Curtain Speech”, it seems clear to me that the Soviets were not willing to bargain for peace, but rather, they were still hungry to prove themselves and the greatness of the Communist state to the rest of Europe.