Why did the Soviet Union not trust the United States?

Answer 1

The Unites States did not trust the USSR because of the fact that they did not defend them during the war with Japan and they agreed to the non-agression pact with Germany, specicifally Hitler.

Answer 2

The United States did not trust the USSR because of the fact that they did not defend them during the World War 2 with Japan and the battle of Iwo Jima. They also agreed to the non-agression pact with Germany, specicifally Hitler, and in an agreement to not attck each other, they would divide Poland among themselves.

Answer 3

Partly the distrust was due to Stalin's personal paranoia. Stalin trusted no one. The one and only person he ever brought himself to trust was Adolph Hitler, when they were partners in crime, each merrily invading his neighbors between 1939 and 1941. And then his buddy Hitler stabbed him in the back and invaded Russia.

There was a more concrete reason for the distrust though. Both the US, and to a greater extent the UK had sent military forces to Russia just after WWI ended, to try to help the "White Russians" beat the Reds, the communists, of whom Stalin was one, and who nevertheless held on and eventually were able to consolidate their control over Russia. So the US and the UK were unsuccessful in strangling the communist revolution in Russia in the crib. But they had continued to be vocal in denouncing communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular. The Russians had never forgotten this.

Answer 4

You have to remember that the Revolution years for the Soviets were at the time no more than 20 years past. In those early years of the Russian revolution the Western Allies - especially Britain and France - had been active (and also military) supporters of the "Whites", the forces within Russia that actively fought the Communists. Plus, in the Marxist/Leninist thinking, Britain and the USA were the main bastions of Capitalism, the great 'evil' that Communism was supposed to defeat.

Apart from that, Stalin knew full well that both countries had treated the Soviets like pariahs over the past decades and that their present 'friendship' with Russia was highly opportunistic: Russia was needed to help defeat Nazi Germany. Finally Stalin, Russia's dictator, as a matter of principle never trusted anyone, not even his old comrades within the Communist Party. So why should he trust countries that until a few years back had been declared enemies of Communism?

Answer 5

The Soviet Union and the United States had fundamentally different belief systems, leading to distrust on both sides.

Answer 6

They did trust each other in WW2. In fact, they were allies. It was after the war that tension grew between the nations.

Answer 7

They waited before invading France