Up until the establishment of the Soviet Union, the United States had a cordial relationship with the Russian Empire. With the collapse of the Tsarist government, the relationship has turned into a hostile one. During the Cold War years, there was frequent confusion and conflation of terms "Russians" and "Communists"/"Soviets"; in 1973, a group of Russian immigrants in the US founded the Congress of Russian Americans with the purpose of drawing a clear distinction between Russian national identity and Soviet ideology, and preventing the formation of anti-Russian sentiment on the basis of Western anti-communism. Members of the Congress see the conflation itself as Russophobic, believing "Russians were the first and foremost victim of international Communism".