Soviet-American relations had deteriorated sharply by mid-1946; the wartime Grand Alliance was but a fading memory. Few close observers were all that surprised. Even before World War II had ended, perceptive analysts anticipated that the United States and the Soviet Union would seek to fill the power vacuum sure to follow the armistice, and that friction would result. The two countries had a history of hostility and tension, and both were militarily powerful. Most of all, they were divided by sharply differing political economies with widely divergent needs, and by a deep ideological chasm.
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