Historiography
There have been three dominant perspectives on the origins of the Cold War particularly from historians in the United States. The first was the Orthodox view that held sway in the nineteen fifties and much of the nineteen sixties. It was the product of a society heavily influenced by the breakdown of the wartime alliance and the expansion of Soviet power in Europe, the ‘loss’ of China to communism, the Korean War, and domestically the rise of McCarthyism with its anti-communist hysteria. Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War. The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions – whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose, ultimately, from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Even though Americans had hoped to return to peacetime conditions in 1945 and to continue their wartime cooperation with the Soviets, these expectations were soon dashed by Russian behaviour. Typical of such approaches are Herbert Feis, Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York, 1957); Feis, From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War (New York, 1970); and Arthur Schlesinger Jr, “Origins of the Cold War” Foreign Affairs, 46, October, 1967, pp. 22-52.
During the nineteen sixties, as the United States became involved in an ugly war in Vietnam, other historians took a different view of the origins of Cold War as they began to question the motives of the US government and the American business system. The so-called Revisionists or New Left historians tended to place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war. They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests, especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years. In any event, the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region. According to the revisionists, the United States dominated Western Europe and expected to do the same over the Eastern half of the continent despite legitimate Russian security interests. The revisionists saw US foreign policy as inherently imperialistic and a response to the allegedly insatiable requirements of American capitalism; that in order to survive, it required foreign markets, investments and sources of raw materials – and that these needs, and the need to have political regimes throughout the world that will protect American economic interests, formed the central aims of US foreign policy. It should also be noted that some of the moderate revisionists preferred to emphasise personalities rather than structures/institutions by arguing that if only Roosevelt had lived the Cold War would have been avoided and that it was Truman and the red baiters around him who are to blame for the tension. See William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1959); Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York, 1969); Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York, 1972); Thomas G. Paterson, Soviet-American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore, 1973).
This line of argument by the revisionists eventually produced a series of counter-arguments by the post-revisionists. These historians did not necessarily refute every one of the revisionist claims at once. They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point, on occasions, of leading to the possibility of nuclear war. (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree. Realists like Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan and William H. McNeill’s were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a ‘post-revisionist’ way even before the revisionists came along). The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionists’ view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security, and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe, than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe; but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to, that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be ‘security’ could still threaten Western interests, and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia. However despite accepting that there were problems on both sides, a number of the post-revisionists have also become highly critical of the Soviet Union. John Lewis Gaddis, one of the leading historians in this area, has engaged in what could best be described as a post revisionist /orthodox interpretation especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of Soviet archives. See John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York, 1997).
The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources. It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources. Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released. There are large amounts of KGB, foreign office, military and Politburo documents that remain highly classified. Also, access has not always been consistent: there have been cases in which material has been released but then closed again on the grounds that it is too controversial or that it threatens the interests of the Russian political elite. The material certainly helps to fill in details on key events but it does not necessarily resolve everything and in some cases it has been used to fuel further controversy. Indeed, some post revisionist historians such as Gaddis appear to have used selected Soviet material to revert to a Cold War interpretation from the nineteen fifties that blames the Russians for everything. See Peter Bastian, “Interpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sources”, Teaching History, Vol. 35, No 4. December, 2001, pp.5-10.