USSR: The Doomed Empire Introduction: The 1940's and the next four decades after, were a time of bitter struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. National identity as well as ideological differences brought both countries to the brink of nuclear war, a revolutionary style of warfare causing the most disastrous demographic disaster known to man. There are numerous speculations on who actually started the war. It can be argued both ways that both the US and the USSR acted offensively towards each other. But the only real fact is that “one represented an open democracy and the other