a) How far has the historical debate about the origins of the Cold War changed since the collapse of
the USSR in 1991? (Nov 2002 and 2005)
b) How far has the collapse of the USSR affected the historical debate about the origins of the Cold
war?
Introduction
Define:


The Cold War / The Cold War debate
The opening of the archives, ugh?

Soon after the August coup in 1991

So what? For the first time historians would get an insight into what the Soviet leadership was
thinking/ planning/ motivated by in the early post-war period. Up until 1991, historians had
access to many US documents, but they had had to speculate about Soviet motivations.

So what? With the opening of the archives, historians could now see the documents and
hopefully answer one of the central questions of the Cold War: What were Soviet aims?
Answering this central question would go a long way in not only explaining the outbreak of the
Cold War, but also allow the apportioning of causal responsibility.
ATBQ:
1. In some senses the debate has changed - some historians have changed their own
perspective, and that access to the documents seems once more to point to a
greater degree of Soviet responsibility than had previously been accepted, at least
immediately prior to 1991.
Part 1 of essay
2. However, in other ways, the opening of the archives simply meant a reversion to
previously held viewpoints, to the extent that some historians views have been
described as ‘orthodoxy with documents’.
Part 2
3. Overall, however, in some senses, the debate remains very much as it always was,
one characterised by uncertainty and ongoing dispute.
Part 3
With the opening of the archives there was significant change. By the early 1990s, most
historians had come to share the responsibility between the US and USSR.
However, with the opening of the archives, the debate did change significantly in the sense that it
marked a revision of earlier assessments by some historians. The documents seemed to show that the
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interpretations of those historians which wither apportioned more causal responsibility to the US, or at
least shared causal responsibility between the two powers.
These earlier [pre 1991] interpretations had stressed the following interpretations:

Revisionist historians such as Alperovitz and William Appleman Williams' landmark 1959
volume, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Williams challenged the long-held assumptions of
"orthodox" accounts, arguing that Americans had always been an empire-building people, even
while American leaders denied it.
Following Williams, "revisionist" writers placed more responsibility for the breakdown of
postwar peace on the United States, citing a range of U.S. efforts to isolate and confront the
Soviet Union well before the end of World War II[ According to Williams and later "revisionist"
writers, U.S. policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining capitalism
domestically. In order to achieve that objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad,
aimed at increasing access to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture. From this
perspective, a growing economy domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of U.S.
power internationally.
"Revisionist" scholars challenged the widely accepted notion that Soviet leaders were committed
to postwar "expansionism". They cited evidence that the Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern
Europe had a defensive rationale, and that Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid
encirclement by the United States and its allies. In this view, the Soviet Union was so weak and
devastated after the end of the Second World War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to
the United States; moreover, the U.S. maintained a nuclear monopoly until the USSR tested its
first atomic bomb in August 1949.

Post-revisionist historians such as JL Gaddis. The seminal work of this approach was John
Lewis Gaddis's The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (1972). Gaddis then
maintained that "neither side can bear sole responsibility for the onset of the Cold War.".
Gaddis has, in addition, criticized some "revisionist" scholars, particularly Williams, for failing to
understand the role of Soviet policy in the origins of the Cold War.
From this perspective, the Cold War was not so much the responsibility of either side, but
rather the result of predictable tensions between two world powers that had been suspicious of
one another for nearly a century. For example, Ernest May wrote in a 1984 essay:
After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union were doomed to be
antagonists.... There probably was never any real possibility that the post-1945 relationship
could be anything but hostility verging on conflict... Traditions, belief systems, propinquity, and
convenience ... all combined to stimulate antagonism, and almost no factor operated in either
country to hold it back.
However, with the opening of the Soviet archives, the debate did seem to shift, and the
positions taken by individual historians shifted as well.

The archives seemed to once more shift the responsibility for the Cold War back to the Soviets,
a return to an interpretation of earlier Cold War interpretations in what has sometimes been
described as ‘Orthodoxy with documents.’ [explain this – who/ what of Orthodox]
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
Gaddis in particular modified his view. Gaddis’ new interpretation came in a 1997 essay, We
Now Know: Rethinking Cold War.He had always stressed the part responsibility of Stalin, but now
he emphasized this role and now saw in the documents and clear ideological intent:
Obscure hack in the NYT:
‘Take the question of the role played by Communist ideology. Mr. Gaddis, like many historians in the
West, had come to believe that Marxism-Leninism had declined into little more than the empty armour
of legitimacy, an after-the-fact justification for measures actually taken for reasons of Realpolitik. But
looking at the new documents, he points to critical junctures when, he says, Communist ideology not
only mattered, but actually determined the behaviour of East-bloc leaders.’
For Stalin, Gaddis continues, "World politics was an extension of Soviet politics, which was in turn an
extension of Stalin's preferred personal environment: a zero-sum game, in which achieving security for
one meant depriving everyone else of it."
Why did the Cold War begin? Gaddis sees the Cold War as a result of Stalin's insecurity and brutal Soviet
conduct in Eastern Europe. Given the conduct of Soviet Armies and Stalin's aggressive foreign policy,
the USA and its Western European Allies had no choice but to respond to Stalin in some form of
confrontation.

Emphasis was now on the nature of Stalin’s rule [brutal, totalitarian] and on Stalin’s
personality [paranoid and suspicious, perpetuated by brutality alone]

Gaddis exonerates the US – there was no US grand design for economic hegemony;
Washington was merely responding to Stalin’s brutal expansion of power, which, it was
now claimed, was ideologically underscored.
This new direction in interpretation, which stresses the responsibility of Stalin, was further taken up by
other historians who had access to the archives:
Zubok; Pleshakov
‘It was the promise of Communist revolutionary universalism combined with the necessities of survival
of the Soviet Union’ that drove Stalin, ‘and the transformation of the world under the aegis and with the
assistance of the Soviet Union remained a powerful raison d’etre for the Soviet political elites.’
However, n some senses, the debate has not changed fundamentally. Despite the Gaddis’
claim, others have challenged the notion, for example Mervin Leffler in the article What do we
Now Know? Contrary to what Gaddis has claimed, many of the old debates on the origins
continue much the same as ever.
Marvin Lefler [in What Do We Now Know?]
On Gaddis:
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Generally:
And overall:
Conclusion
Plus ca change, plus se le meme chose

Debate continues over the interpretation of the sources made newly available
Bastian:
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‘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.’
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