Evaluate the reasons for the emergence of the Cold War by 1949.

The question requires that candidates make an appraisal of the importance or otherwise of the various factors that led to the Cold War in Europe by 1949. Candidates may detail these factors separately and consider the significance of each, they may group factors (for example, long-, mid- and short-term causes) or they may separate them into East and West factors. Long-term causes may include intervention in the Russian Civil War and the isolation and suspicion of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s (for example the Riga Axioms, and Soviet exclusion from the League of Nations until 1934). Medium term causes may include wartime tensions and suspicions (delay over opening the Second Front or the future of Poland). In the short term, it was arguably the policies and actions of both superpowers and their leaders that led to the collapse of wartime co-operation.