For more than forty years, the confrontation between the capitalist West and the communist East continued. Entire generations grew up under a phenomenon called the Cold War. They were saturated with its meanings and clichés, once and for all defining for themselves a clear world enemy. And they raised their children in the same ideological paradigm. Now, after twenty-odd years, it turned out that the thinking, embedded in the consciousness, into the subcortex, has not disappeared: neither of the parties.
After the Second World War, the always implied confrontation between the countries of the capitalist West and the communist East received a logical development. The ending of the war, with the moral superiority of the Soviet Union and the new territorial borders in Europe, exacerbated ideological contradictions in the post-war world. The West considered it necessary to develop a system of checks and balances so that the communist - Stalinist - ideology could not find new allies in the world. In turn, the USSR, as a victorious country, could not but be offended by the snobbish arrogance of the West.
“And let's quickly invent some other calendar so that it’s not the 20th century now?”, -
Stanislav Jerzy Lets.
One day in March
Once Winston Churchill went on vacation. The war had already ended six months ago, his party had lost the election, so he was no longer the prime minister and quietly went into opposition. Having lived through several stressful years before this, he finally allowed himself to rest and decided that it was best to go to a country that he loved almost as much as England and where, according to him, he would like to be born in his next life - in the USA. He went to the small town of Fulton, in Missouri. The weather in Fulton in early March was rainy and windy. That did not stop the politician from talking a little with young people, numbering a little over 2800 thousand, speaking on March 5, 1946 at the local Westminster College.
“I’m afraid I haven’t come to a final conclusion on the title of the speech, but I think it’s possible it will be World Peace.”
from a letter from Churchill to McCluer, February 14, 1946
The former prime minister, speaking exclusively on his own behalf, as a private person, and by no means on behalf of the United Kingdom, delivered a very beautiful speech, built according to all the criteria of oratory, where, among other things, the phrase "iron curtain" was heard.
In short, the essence of his speech was what he openly said, as a matter of course, about the confrontation between the former allies of the anti-Hitler coalition formed by the end of World War II: the countries of the West and the Soviet Union.
His short and simple speech, in addition to a brief description of the world order that had developed by the end of the war, contained a prediction of the relationship between the countries of the West and the eastern camp for a long 40 years. In addition, it was in her that he raised the idea of organizing a Western military bloc, later called NATO, and endowed the United States with a special mission, as a regulator and a global restorer of the status quo.
In fairness, it must be said that before Mr. Churchill, many political figures raised the topic of the confrontation between the West and the growing communist East. Churchill splendidly formulated and voiced what was being prepared and pronounced for many years before March 5, 1946.
“Power more often passes from hand to hand than from head to head, ” - Stanislav Jerzy Lets.
And then there was the life of countries and people - entire generations - who lived in this confrontation for more than forty years. A confrontation resembling a woman's condition in menopause: with ebbs and flows, with nervous irrational seizures and apathetic hassle.
