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The feelings of the United States towards the USSR and its post-Soviet states (especially Russia) have been deeply ambivalent. Proud of its credo of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by all, as well as its Jeffersonian declaration that all human beings are created equal in the eyes of God, the United States has viewed the Soviet Union with derision. The latter's totalitarianism, anti-religious doctrine, socialistically inclined factory base, and disdain for free market enterprise stirred up deeply negative sentiments in North American political consciousness. Matters were further complicated by the rivalry between the two nations for supreme status among the world nations, Cold War suspiciousness and mutual espionage, Soviet expansionism (towards the Eastern European block of nations, and, later, Afghanistan) and support of military operations in nations that harbored strong anti-American feelings (e.g., the Cuban missile crisis). Soviet, and especially communist, bashing became a popular American political sport. Senator McCarthy's rantings never fully faded; their echo was discernible in President Reagan's designation of the USSR as the “evil empire”.
Clearly, complex sociopolitical factors were at work here. At the same time, it is hard to deny that this hostility drew its strength from projective defenses as well. America's own curtailments of freedom of its citizens (the pre-Civil Rights Movement situation of Blacks, for instance) became a powerful unconscious fuel for the contempt of the Soviet Union's atrocities in this regard. Thus, anxiety regarding its own “self” also underlay America's hatred of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, such hostility coexisted with a history of collaboration (the Soviets were, after all, among the “allies” during the second World War; note, also, the recent collaborative outer space ventures of the two countries), curiosity, sequestered ideological flirtation (see the John Reed affair), envy (e.g., the American reaction to the Sov