Cold War

Cold War

Main article: Cold War

USSR postage stamp depicting the states ruled by self-proclaimed communist parties, launching the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1.

Its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. At the same time the existing European empires were shattered and Communist parties played a leading role in many independence movements.
Marxist-Leninist governments modeled on the Soviet Union took power with Soviet assistance in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Marxist-Leninist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern. Titoism, a new branch in the Marxist-Leninist movement, was labelled "deviationist"^{[by whom?]}. Albania also became an independent Marxist-Leninist state after World War II.^[36]
By 1950, the Chinese Marxist-Leninists had taken over all of mainland China. In the Korean War and Vietnam War, Communists fought for power in their countries against the United States and its allies. With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against perceived Western imperialism in these poor countries.
Communism was seen as a rival of and a threat to western capitalism for most of the 20th century.^[37] This rivalry peaked during the Cold War, as the world's two remaining superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, polarized most of the world into two camps of nations. It supported the spread of their respective economic and political systems. As a result, the camps expanded their military capacity, stockpiled nuclear weapons, and competed in space exploration