42 SOCIAL SCIENTIST those of all Western allies combined. Property damage was estimated at 679,000 million roubles. The destruction included 6,000,000 buildings in 1700 devastated cities, 70,000 ruined villages, including 48,000 schools, 43,000 libraries, 31,000 factories, 13,000 bridges, 40,000 miles of railway track... The USA would have suffered a comparable disaster... with 27,000,000 homeless and most of the area east of the Mississippi occupied and destroyed.6 And furthermore: So fearful was the toll taken by the Horsemen of the Apocalypse that even in 1956 the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania had fewer inhabitants than in 1940. So appalling was the devastation-of homes and lives and livelihoods that no alien observer could reasonably imagine any recovery within less than a generation... However, a decade later the USSR was a land transformed... The miracle of restoration, unlike its counterpart in West Germany, Normandy, and the other battle-scarred regions, was achieved without foreign aid. Lend-Lease was abruptly terminated with the cessation of hostilities... During the decade after victory, the USSR was among the few countries denied American largess. Soviet Muscovy, out of its own resources, nevertheless, restored and further developed an expanding economy, and this more swiftly and effectively than did Britain and Western nations of the continent, and other beneficiaries of Yankee charity.7 Cold War Myths and Realities The postwar picture of the United States presented a striking contrast. Apart from the 300,000 killed (which is microscopic in comparison to the European human loss), its land was untouched and its economy booming. Its industrial growth was phenomenal. Its GNP went up from $ 91 billion to $ 166 billion. Lend-Lease supplies to the allies were worth $ 30 billion.8 Tor most Americans, World War II spelled neither hardships nor suffering but a better way of life99.9 As a Soviet paper wryly commented: The USA is the richest capitalist country. It profited particularly at the time of the two world wars, 1914-18 and 1939-45. Ttiese wars laid waste all the countries of the world, carried off millions of human beings, resulted in enormous destruction. But they did not touch America. To the1 United Stares fell the remunerative role of supplier of weapons and other goods to the belligerent armies. Production in the USA expanded, the profits of the capitalist doubled, many countries incurred debts of hundreds of millions of dollars to America.1 ° As early as in 1946, the US champions of the Gold War, more than anyone else, were well aware that the Soviet Union just did not have the capability to go in for war. Dean Acheson the liberal architect of the Gold War, has admitted that the early postwar fears of Soviet