Cold War: Historiography
Contents:
1. Balance of power
a. Alexis de Tocqueville
b. Walter LaFeber
2. Pro-Soviet accounts
a. E.H. Carr
3. Traditionalist / orthodox
a. Thomas A. Bailey
b. Arthur Schlesinger
c. John Lewis Gaddis
d. George Kennan
e. Herbert Feis
4. Revisionist
a. William A. Williams
b. Gar Alperovitz
c. Joyce & Gabriel Kolko
5. Post-revisionist
a. John Lewis Gaddis
b. Thomas G. Patterson
c. Ernest May
d. Michael Egan
e. Melvyn Leffler
6. Realpolitik school
7. 21st century scholarship
a. Odd Arne Westad
b. Eduard Mark
c. Tony Smith
, BALANCE OF POWER RATHER THAN IDEOLOGY?
Position: that the origins of the Cold War dated to long before the post-war period, and was
simply a ‘balance of power’ conflict, rather than a conflict of ideology
- Alexis de Tocqueville (in 1835!!)
- “There are at the present time two great nations in the world ... I allude to the
Russians and the Americans ... Their starting point is different, and their courses
are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to
sway the destinies of half the globe.”
- Walter LaFeber (‘America, Russia and the Cold War’)
- That conflict had origins in 19th century over the opening of East Asia to U.S.
trade, markets, and influence
- “The two powers did not initially come into conflict because one was Communist
and the other Capitalist. Rather, they first confronted one another on the plains of
Asia in the late nineteenth century. That meeting climaxed a century in which
Americans had expanded westward over half the globe and Russians had moved
eastward across Asia.”
PRO-SOVIET ACCOUNTS
Position: was under central control, blamed the West for Cold War; regarded USSR as major
progressive force and US as an act of aggression and the prime obstacle preventing the
development of humanity
- E.H. Carr ( focused on 1920s, published 1950-78)
- “Much of what has been written in the English speaking countries during the last
ten years about the Soviet Union […] has been vitiated by this inability to achieve
even the most elementary measure of imaginative understanding of what goes
on in the mind of the other party.”
TRADITIONALIST/ORTHODOX
Position: official government position till around ‘60s - the position that Cold War was result of
Stalin’s Communist expansionist policies - still the ‘official’ US version, still holds ground today
- Thomas A. Bailey ( argued in his 1950 ‘America Faces Russia’)
- That the breakdown of post-war peace was the result of Soviet expansionism in
the years following WWII; that Stalin had broken the promises made at Yalta; that
Stalin imposed the Communist regime on unwilling ‘satellite states’; that the
Contents:
1. Balance of power
a. Alexis de Tocqueville
b. Walter LaFeber
2. Pro-Soviet accounts
a. E.H. Carr
3. Traditionalist / orthodox
a. Thomas A. Bailey
b. Arthur Schlesinger
c. John Lewis Gaddis
d. George Kennan
e. Herbert Feis
4. Revisionist
a. William A. Williams
b. Gar Alperovitz
c. Joyce & Gabriel Kolko
5. Post-revisionist
a. John Lewis Gaddis
b. Thomas G. Patterson
c. Ernest May
d. Michael Egan
e. Melvyn Leffler
6. Realpolitik school
7. 21st century scholarship
a. Odd Arne Westad
b. Eduard Mark
c. Tony Smith
, BALANCE OF POWER RATHER THAN IDEOLOGY?
Position: that the origins of the Cold War dated to long before the post-war period, and was
simply a ‘balance of power’ conflict, rather than a conflict of ideology
- Alexis de Tocqueville (in 1835!!)
- “There are at the present time two great nations in the world ... I allude to the
Russians and the Americans ... Their starting point is different, and their courses
are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to
sway the destinies of half the globe.”
- Walter LaFeber (‘America, Russia and the Cold War’)
- That conflict had origins in 19th century over the opening of East Asia to U.S.
trade, markets, and influence
- “The two powers did not initially come into conflict because one was Communist
and the other Capitalist. Rather, they first confronted one another on the plains of
Asia in the late nineteenth century. That meeting climaxed a century in which
Americans had expanded westward over half the globe and Russians had moved
eastward across Asia.”
PRO-SOVIET ACCOUNTS
Position: was under central control, blamed the West for Cold War; regarded USSR as major
progressive force and US as an act of aggression and the prime obstacle preventing the
development of humanity
- E.H. Carr ( focused on 1920s, published 1950-78)
- “Much of what has been written in the English speaking countries during the last
ten years about the Soviet Union […] has been vitiated by this inability to achieve
even the most elementary measure of imaginative understanding of what goes
on in the mind of the other party.”
TRADITIONALIST/ORTHODOX
Position: official government position till around ‘60s - the position that Cold War was result of
Stalin’s Communist expansionist policies - still the ‘official’ US version, still holds ground today
- Thomas A. Bailey ( argued in his 1950 ‘America Faces Russia’)
- That the breakdown of post-war peace was the result of Soviet expansionism in
the years following WWII; that Stalin had broken the promises made at Yalta; that
Stalin imposed the Communist regime on unwilling ‘satellite states’; that the
