The “Long Cold War” Perspective
The National Institute for Civil War Studies (NICWS) presents this timeline as a comprehensive record of the “Long Cold War”—a struggle that began not in 1945, but in 1917 with the Bolshevik rise to power. This period was defined by a unique ideological premise: the Soviet Union’s commitment to a worldwide overthrow of the existing order to usher in a global “proletarian” age.
While the decades that followed consisted of provocations and reactions from both Communist and non-Communist powers, there was no true equivalency in their objectives. The non-Communist world largely sought the stability of the status quo, whereas the USSR’s very existence was predicated on its eventual expansion. This timeline categorizes events into Proactive and Reactionary stances to illustrate this asymmetry.
By analyzing the era through the lenses of political, military, economic, social, and cultural developments, we see that the Cold War was not a mere diplomatic disagreement, but a total conflict of systems. Its conclusion was not marked by a treaty, but by the collapse of the Soviet Union itself—proving that the conflict was inextricably tied to the ideological ambitions of the Bolshevik state.
1917
The October Revolution
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Overt]
ANALYSIS: Seizure of power by Lenin’s faction. This established the foundational state apparatus for global subversion and the use of the Cheka to enforce ideological conformity.
1919
Founding of Comintern
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Duplicitous]
ANALYSIS: Publicly a socialist forum; covertly a mechanism for subordinating foreign parties to Moscow’s directives and training agents for foreign subversion.
1922
Secret Rapallo Accords
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Covert]
ANALYSIS: A clandestine military alliance with Germany to bypass international law, allowing the USSR to acquire advanced engineering while providing training grounds for forbidden weapons.
1924
Death of Lenin / Rise of Stalin
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Overt]
ANALYSIS: Shift from “World Revolution” to “Socialism in One Country,” prioritizing the build-up of a massive industrial-military base to support future expansion.
1929
The First Five-Year Plan
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Overt]
ANALYSIS: Forced industrialization and the creation of a “War Economy.” This turned the USSR into a superpower capable of mass-producing advanced weaponry.
1932
The Holodomor
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Overt]
ANALYSIS: A man-made famine used as a proactive weapon to break Ukrainian national resistance and enforce total state dependency—a prerequisite for internal security and expansion.
1935
Deep Battle Doctrine
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Overt]
ANALYSIS: Formalized by Tukhachevsky, this doctrine emphasized massed, multi-echelon offensive warfare, leveraging stolen or adapted Western technology..
1936
The Great Purge (Yezhovshchina)
STANCE: [Proactive] | NATURE: [Overt]
ANALYSIS: Internal liquidation of the “Old Bolshevik” guard and military leadership. This secured Stalin’s absolute control, ensuring the state functioned as a monolithic weapon for the upcoming global conflict.