The Red Scare: The Impact Of World War I On America

The impact of World War I on America was wide-ranging and covered political, economic and social aspects of life. Paranoia and cruelty swept across the United States during a period known as the Red Scare. According to Florence Harding, Law, Politics and Govt “From the Russian revolution in 1917 until about 1920, the United States was plagued by what turned out to be an irrational fear of communism, socialism, or anything that was thought to be a threat to the "American way of life." In this period, as in a later period in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the term for this fear was The Red Scare." (Maxfield, M. (n.d.). Safety or Civil Liberty) The Red Scare was a period during the early 20th century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear

The Russian Revolution of 1917 marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin seized power and destroyed the tradition of czarist rule. Civil War broke out in Russia between the Red and White Armies. The Red Army fought for the Lenin’s Bolshevik government. The White Army represented a large group of monarchists, capitalists and supporters of democratic socialism. The Russian Civil War ended in 1923 with Lenin’s Red Army claiming victory and establishing the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. (History.com Staff. (2009). Russian Revolution.) In the United States the year 1919 had a large number of social conflicts, including strikes, prohibition and women’s suffrage; the companies and corporations started to reduce wages and lay off workers to keep down operating costs. Many workers joined labor unions, a small group of radicals formed the Communist