Anti-USSR Projects during the Cold War: Strategy and Evolution

Abstract

Anti-USSR projects constituted a comprehensive long-term strategy used by the Global West in its confrontation with the Soviet state during the Cold War. The Russian Federation is currently facing a challenge of protecting its sovereignty in the changing world. Historically speaking, this problem has remained relevant since the onset of the Cold War. All this time, the ongoing contradictions between Russia and the Global West have complicated the international relations. This article describes the genesis and evolution of the antiUSSR project during the Cold War as a doctrine aimed at weakening and eliminating the Soviet Union and, subsequently, the Russian Federation as a geopolitical competitor. It ranged from containment to soft power methods. The problem-chronological principle combined with the cause-and-effect analysis also involved such standard historical-genetic and comparative historical methods. The evolution of various anti-Russian programs demonstrated a certain strategic continuity. Starting with the Operation Unthinkable, Winston Churchill’s Fulton speech, and the so-called Dulles Doctrine, the ideological confrontation between Capitalism and Socialism has escalated into a full-scale hybrid war that combines informational, political, and economic weapons. For example, the Harvard Project, which studied the Soviet mentality, was aimed at destabilizing Russian society by exercising mind control, supporting separatism, and cultivating Russophobia, i.e., through the so-called soft power.