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Ideological Differences Between the Superpowers - Coggle Diagram
Ideological Differences Between the Superpowers
Capitalism vs communism
Soviet Union supported communism, whilst the USA and Britain were capitalist countries
Capitalism advocated that entrepreneurs and businesses compete via innovation to create the best goods & services for consumers
Communism advocated confiscating all private property, with the government owning all assets and controlling all enterprise
Stalin and the Soviet Union
Truman had successfully tested the atomic bomb
Stalin was displeased by this action
Stalin was distrustful of Truman's due to his demands
Stalin was already aware of the progress the USA was making
Churchill and Britain
Britain’s economy had been severely impacted by the war, and it could not act against the Soviet Union on its own
so with more closely allied with the USA
This process led to the divisions which would become known as the Cold War
Churchill believed that a defeated Germany should be rebuilt
Stalin wanted a weaker Germany
Truman and the USA
Truman became president of the USA after Roosevelt’s death
Truman was less sympathetic to the USSR
Roosevelts death ended the grand allaince
Famine and socialism in the 20th century
In Stalin's Russia in the 1930s, up to 3.3 million people died in Ukraine in the 'Holodomor' meaning 'extermination by hunger'
In Mao's China, up to 45 million people are thought to have died from starvation and famine
Between 1917 and 2017, communist governments presided over the deaths of 100 million of their own citizens
Concentration of power and socialism in the 20th century
Stalin succeeded Lenin as the leader of the USSR, the Moscow Trials tried and executed many of Stalin's political rivals - Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin
Stalin had a secret police called the NKVD who arrested 1.5 million people, caused the death of 680,000 people and sent 635,000 to gulags in Siberia (forced work camps).
The NKVD had quotas for the minimum number of people that they had to arrest
socialism, all economic and political decisions in a society are made centrally
Cambodia, a communist party, the Khmer Rouge killed up to 2 million Cambodians, including political rivals and enemies of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader
Incentives and socialism in the 20th century
In socialism, a small number of individuals decide everything that must be produced in a country
here is little incentive for workers to work hard, as people gain no additional benefit for working harder
Although social planners try to guide control economies, they have the brainpower, innovation and information of only a small number of individuals in government
China shifted closer to a capitalist model, companies like Tencent and Alibaba were founded and innovation in China and the standard of living has risen rapidly