Writing the Cold War: a survey of Cold War historiography

Writing the Cold War:
a survey of Cold War historiography

Ralph Harrington
BA (Lond.), MSt (Oxon.), DPhil (Oxon.)

WHY AND HOW the Cold War ended became the question of the day after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 ... Any explanations for the demise of the Cold War depended, of course, upon answers to another fundamental question: Why and how did the Cold War begin?[1]

Histories of the Cold War, perhaps even more than other branches of modern historiography, have been victims of their own historical circumstances. The fact that for fifty years histories of the Cold War were written from within that war made historical perspective hard to achieve.[2] In the post-Cold-War era, it has been possible for the first time to ‘step outside’ the object of study itself and view the half-century of confrontation between East and West in a more balanced and rational way than has perhaps been feasible before. This process of reassessment has been aided by the opening of archives, most dramatically those in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, that were formerly off-limits to scholars from outside those countries (and to most of those within them) and a parallel, if more limited and less enlightening, release of Cold War information from Western archives. The result has been a process of revision and reassessment of the Cold War reflecting its closure as ‘current affairs’ and its admission to the category of ‘history’. Among the most significant areas to be re-examined by historians in this new climate has been the question of the origins of the Cold War itself; as the 1992 quote from Thomas Paterson with which this paper begins suggests, the ending of the Cold War naturally led many to turn renewed attention to the question of how it began. Related to that question is the issue of what kept it going, over five decades of ceaseless confrontation and tension.

The end of the Cold War has freed scholars from the tendency to reflect the ideological divisions underpinning the confrontation in their own work – to seek to attack or to support particular Cold War positions rather than to analyse and understand from a position of impartiality. The ideological nature of Cold War history itself is reflected in the forms the historiography has taken since the late 1940s. As Thomas T. Hammond noted in 1982,[3] the historiography of the origins of the Cold War passed through three chronologically defined and ideologically distinct phases, which can be called ‘traditionalist’, ‘revisionist’, and ‘post-revisionist’. Each reflected the cultural and political attitudes prevailing in the wider Cold War context of the particular era in which it flourished.

From the end of the Second World War until the mid-1960s the ‘traditionalists’ held the field with a standpoint that can be summarized as essentially pro-American/pro-Western and anti-Soviet. Essentially, such scholars held the Soviet Union responsible for the onset of the Cold War by undermining the Second World War alliance between East and West, increasing the level of military confrontation between Russia and America, and acting aggressively to promote the imposition and spread of Communism in Europe and elsewhere. It was thus argued that the United States was correct in its policy of containment towards the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, and that the American position was essentially a defensive one forced upon it by the hostility and aggression of the Communist East.

The ‘traditionalist’ position came under increasing assault during the 1960s by ‘revisionist’ historians who reflected what can be called the ascendant cynicism of the era towards the United States and its values, both within America and abroad. The experience of Vietnam played an important role in promoting a disillusionment with US diplomacy and foreign policy, and a tendency to see the Soviet and American ‘empires’ as morally comparable. From being perceived as the defender of freedom against Soviet aggression and war-mongering, the United States was increasingly seen as an aggressive imperialist and militarist nation itself, sustaining the Cold War for selfish economic and strategic reasons rather than doing so in the cause of liberty in a world threatened by totalitarianism.

During the 1970s, revisionism in turn began to be questioned by historians who argued that to seek to place the blame on one side or the other was misguided, and that explanation of the Cold War’s origins was to be found in misunderstanding, miscalculation and mutual incomprehension between East and West. Such ‘post-revisionism’ can be understood as an expression of prevailing discontent with rigid ideological positions and tendency to seek for fragmented and contingent rather than cohesive and causal explanations of events.

The concept of the USSR as an aggressive power that had to be contained by the US-led West crystallized as the dominant influence on US policy making immediately after the end of the Second World War. From favoring a combination of persuasion and enticement as the basis of a continuing workable relationship with the Soviets, the American political and military leadership were increasingly convinced by those who argued for a tougher line in the face of what they saw as endemic Soviet hostility and untrustworthiness, and the threat posed by the ultimate Soviet aim of defeating and destroying the capitalist West and establishing global Communism. The leading figures in this movement were George Kennan, Dean Acheson and Averill Harriman,[4] all of whom contributed importantly to the concept of global ideological confrontation that became a foundation of the Cold War world.

This interpretation can be found in a number of prominent historians of the ‘traditionalist’ school during the early Cold War, such as William Hardy McNeill and Herbert Feis, both of whom argue that Stalinist Russia was essentially responsible for the climate of wartime co-operation giving way to one of postwar hostility and suspicion. McNeill and Feis contend that the West could not trust Stalin to co-operate on the vital postwar issues of European and global security, reconstruction and economic co-operation once he broke his promise to ensure popularly-elected governments in Eastern Europe and dragged his heels on issues such as the future of Berlin and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Austria and Iran. McNeill contends that such Soviet actions doomed any attempt for postwar peaceful cooperation between the USSR and the Americans. Wartime unity had been entirely dependent on the existence of a common enemy in the form of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s preparedness to summon up traditional Russian nationalism; with Germany defeated and the war over, Stalin reverted to Bolshevik ideology and the basis of the allied coalition crumbled as Soviet actions made clear their intention of tightening their grip on Eastern Europe and expanding their influence elsewhere. For McNeill and Feis, the Cold War was thus inevitable because of the expansionary nature of Soviet Communism, and the United States had no choice but to adopt a strategy of confrontation and containment.[5] Norman Graebner summarized this position, and his generation of historians’ essential approval of it, in his 1962 study, Cold War Diplomacy:

Measured by the limits of national power, American foreign policy served the country well during the first fifteen years of the postwar era. United States leadership, both Democratic and Republican, accepted the warning of Winston Churchill that the Soviet Union, heavily armed and traditionally aggressive, posed a danger to Western security. If those who determined national policy never agreed on the character and extent of the Russian threat, they chose to build and maintain the Atlantic Alliance as the surest guarantee against Soviet expansion and the recurrence of war.[6]

A variant of this rather one-sided interpretation places the Cold War in the context of great power rivalry as much as expansionist Communism. Hans Morgenthau’s In Defense of the National Interest of 1951 was a pioneering work in this respect, and the thesis was further influentially developed by Martin Herz’s 1966 study Beginnings of the Cold War and Louis Halle’s The Cold War as History of 1967. These authors saw the Soviet Union’s desire to establish a sphere of influence in Europe, and to exploit it free of external interference, as the key element in the development of Cold War hostilities. This interpretation modified the sometimes unbalanced ‘blaming of the Soviets’ that characterized McNeill and his followers, but tended to be equally hostile towards the East and equally positive about the importance of the American-led West maintaining a front against Communism.

As early as 1959, the traditionalist thesis was under assault from historians who were sceptical of US leadership in the Cold War world. In that year, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was published by William Appleman Williams. This work inverts the traditionalist model, arguing that in the postwar years it was the Soviet Union that was flexible and willing to negotiate and the United States that was rigid and doctrinaire, and that it was the Americans who brought about the deadlock of the Cold War. The United States, argues Williams, was so ideologically committed to the ideal of an open global capitalist system that it could not comprehend any other settlement; cohabitation with the Soviet bloc on the basis of mutual acceptance was thus ruled out. This is thus fundamentally an economic explanation rather than an ideological one, but one that sees economics in essentially political terms.[7] As the counter-culture movements of the 1960s and the effects of the Vietnam War exerted their influence on US perceptions of the world and America’s role within it, many scholars developed similar arguments to Williams. Walter LaFeber’s America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1966 of 1967 offered a subtle and very influential model of the revisionist argument, while Joyce and Gabriel Kolko’s The Limits of Power: the World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (1972) presented a more directly anti-American interpretation that stressed US economic self-interest.

This revisionist interpretation for the origins of the Cold War was itself criticized and revised during the 1970s by a theory that was less intent on placing ‘blame’ on either the Americans or the Soviet Union but instead emphasized misunderstandings and misperception. This ‘post-revisionist’ historiography laid stress on the role of particular events, individual perceptions and misperceptions and the processes of bureaucratic decision-making in moving history rather than relying on the grand designs of policy-makers or on sweeping historical theories. The most influential post-revisionist historian was probably John Lewis Gaddis, whose book, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (1972) argued that both US and Soviet intentions following the end of the Second World War were to preserve peace and ensure collective security but their respective efforts led to increased hostility because of the inability of the Eastern and Western blocs to co-operate in the pursuit of these aims.[8] Gaddis argued that American ‘war aims’ continued beyond the end of the Second World War itself, to encompass not only the defeat of the Fascist powers but also an effective guarantee of postwar peace. This aim required the defeat of the enemy, the promotion of independence and self-determination, the prevention of economic depression, and the establishment of new international security structures and organizations. These goals required Soviet cooperation, but the Communist Bloc could not give assent to the American vision for peace in the postwar world as it was perceived as representing an effective American victory over the East. The non-compatibility of the American and Soviet schemes for post-war peace, argued Gaddis, led to the Cold War.[9]

Cold War studies were dominated by this ‘post-revisionist’ interpretation until the Cold War itself came to an end. Only with the fracturing and collapse of the Communist Bloc was a new interpretation able to develop. The new historiography of the Cold War since the early 1990s has been varied in its re-interpretation of existing perceptions. An important strand of recent study has been concerned with the role of ideology in originating and sustaining the conflict. A concern with ideology is not in itself new; as early as 1962 Norman Graebner was noting that the hostile ideological stance adopted by the United States towards the Soviet Union reduced the likelihood of an accommodation between the two sides being reached.[10] However, more recent writers have stressed ideology as the defining element in the Cold War confrontation; Gaddis himself expressed this view in the mid-1990s,[11] and other scholars pursuing this line have included Douglas MacDonald and William Wohlforth. The evidence gleaned from the then recently-opened archives of the Soviet Union, these historians argued, supported the claim that the USSR was ideologically committed to expansionism, as early ‘Cold War warriors’ such as Kennan had claimed.[12] Others, however, see the Soviet archival evidence in a different light, arguing that rather than supporting an ideological interpretation of Soviet foreign policy they suggest that power politics and strategic considerations were more important than ideology in determining Soviet policy and behaviour. This interpretation would seem to conclude that the Cold War resulted from a contest of great powers, not a conflict of ideologies, and that both the United States and the Soviet Union bear responsibility for the origins of the Cold War.[13]

However, the main thrust of recent Cold War historiography has been that the confrontation had its origins in ideological confrontation. In the 1980s Linda Kielen and Hugh Thomas produced important studies stressing the role of ideological incompatibility between East and West in producing a climate of hostility not amenable to resolution,[14] a theme that was picked up in the 1990s by, among others, Powalski, Ball, and Davis.[15] However, while focusing on the importance of ideology, this recent scholarship tends to be more concerned with Eastern ideology rather than that of the West.[16] This can be seen in an important work of the new scholarship which reflected the evolving interpretative perspective of the doyen of Cold War historians, John Lewis Gaddis: We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997). In many ways this We Now Know continues the themes already established by Gaddis’s earlier work and summarized above: an emphasis on the importance of geo-politics and power balances in driving the confrontation. The new element, and one which reflects important trends in modern Cold War scholarship, is a concern with factors such as the personality of Stalin, the nature of authoritarian government, and the character and content of Communist ideology.[17]

It can thus be seen that the historiography of the Cold War’s origins, as it has developed in parallel with the rise and fall of the Cold War itself, has incorporated a very wide range of approaches. Cold War scholarship has found expression in traditionalist accounts of an expansionist Soviet Union that needed to be restrained by an American-led Western alliance, revisionist assaults on the policies and purposes of the United States, and post-revisionist arguments that have sought to explain the confrontation without apportioning ‘blame’ to one side or the other. These interpretations were themselves the product of ideological alignments that reflected the Cold War world, whether they consciously recognized it or not. Since the Cold War itself came to an end, a new consensus has emerged – a ‘fourth phase’ in the historiography of this vital period in modern history. This ‘fourth phase’ emphasizes ideology and, in some ways, represents a return to the orthodoxies of diplomatic history, finding explanations in ideological alignments and great power politics. Greater access to archival evidence has tended to strengthen (while not conclusively proving) the contention that conflicting and irreconcilable ideological ambitions were the ultimate source and driving force of the Cold War.

Not least of the contributing factors to the continuing development and reassessment of our historiography of the Cold War is its centrality to the shaping of the modern age and the way it became enduringly embedded in culture, ideology and society. As a recent study has observed, ‘The Cold War is embedded in America’s political culture. The way we remember this era impacts upon our current sense of purpose and well being … Our stake in Cold War history … remains high’.[18] While the reference here is to the American context, the general principle holds true for other countries, and perhaps has particular relevance for the states of Western Europe. Just as the ideological positions inherent in the Cold War determined the forms and approaches of the historiography of the East-West confrontation, so the post-Cold War world produces historical theorizations of itself and its origins that reflect its own preoccupations and concerns.

© Ralph Harrington 2005. This work is protected by copyright and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Licence. This means that you can copy, distribute and transmit this work freely as long as it is attributed to the original author; you may not alter, transform or build upon this work; and you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

Citation information for this essay
Please note that proper attribution is required by the licence conditions pertaining to this work, as well as being good scholarly practice.
Cite as: Ralph Harrington, ‘Writing the Cold War: a survey of Cold War historiography’ (2005)
Location (stable URL): http://www.greycat.org/papers/coldwar.html

A note on plagiarism
Whatever you do with this essay, do it as far as possible in your words, not in mine, and where you do use my words, acknowledge them as mine. Not to do so is to risk committing plagiarism.

Contact the author.

Notes

1. Thomas G. Paterson, War on Every Front: the Making and Unmaking of the Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), p. ix.

2. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 281-2.

3. Thomas T. Hammond (ed.), Witnesses to the Origins of the Cold War (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982), pp. 3-26.

4. Roger S. Whitcomb, The Cold War in Retrospect: the Formative Years (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), p. 71.

5. William Hardy McNeill, America, Britain and Russia: their Co-operation and Conflict, 1941-1946 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957); Herbert Feis, From Trust to Terror: the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970).

6. Norman A. Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy: American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1962), p. 128.

7. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Delta, 1959).

8. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 61-62.

9. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, pp. 134-6, 198-205

10. Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy, p. 134.

11. John Lewis Gaddis, ‘The Tragedy of Cold War History: Reflections on Revisionism’, Foreign Affairs vol. 73, no. 1 (1994), pp. 142-154.

12. Douglas J. MacDonald, ‘Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Challenging Realism, Refuting Revisionism’, International Security, vol. 20, no. 3 (1995/96), pp. 152-188; William Wohlforth, ‘New Evidence on Moscow’s Cold War: Ambiguity in Search of Theory’, Diplomatic History, vol. 21, no. 2 (1997), pp. 229-242.

13. Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992); Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘Inside the Enemy Archives: The Cold War Reopened’, Foreign Affairs vol. 75, no. 4 (1996), pp. 120-135.

14. Linda R. Kielen, The Soviet Union and the United States: A New Look at the Cold War (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1989); Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1946 (New York: Atheneum, 1986).

15. Ronald Powalksi, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Simon J. Ball, The Cold War: An International History, 1947-1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Nigel Davis, ‘Rethinking the Role of Ideology in International Politics During the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (1999), p. 109.

16. Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘The Cold War: what do “We Now Know”?’, American Historical Review, vol. 104 (1999), pp. 501-24.

17. Gaddis, We Now Know, pp. 285-9.

18. Martin J. Medhurst, Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor and Ideology (Medhurst, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1997), p. 203.

Bibliography

Simon J. Ball, The Cold War: An International History, 1947-1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Nigel Davis, ‘Rethinking the Role of Ideology in International Politics During the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (1999)

Herbert Feis, From Trust to Terror: the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970)

John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972)

John Lewis Gaddis, ‘The Tragedy of Cold War History: Reflections on Revisionism’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 1 (1994)

John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)

Norman A. Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy: American Foreign Policy, 1945-1960 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1962)

Thomas T. Hammond (ed.), Witnesses to the Origins of the Cold War (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1982)

Linda R. Kielen, The Soviet Union and the United States: A New Look at the Cold War (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1989)

Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992)

Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘Inside the Enemy Archives: The Cold War Reopened’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, no. 4 (1996)

Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘The Cold War: what do “We Now Know”?’, American Historical Review, vol. 104 (1999)

Douglas J. MacDonald, ‘Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Challenging Realism, Refuting Revisionism’, International Security, vol. 20, no. 3 (1995/96)

William Hardy McNeill, America, Britain and Russia: their Co-operation and Conflict, 1941-1946 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957)

Martin J. Medhurst, Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor and Ideology (Medhurst, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1997)

Thomas G. Paterson, War on Every Front: the Making and Unmaking of the Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992)

Ronald Powalski, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Hugh Thomas, Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1946 (New York: Atheneum, 1986)

Roger S. Whitcomb, The Cold War in Retrospect: the Formative Years (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998)

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Delta, 1959)

William Wohlforth, ‘New Evidence on Moscow’s Cold War: Ambiguity in Search of Theory’, Diplomatic History, vol. 21, no. 2 (1997)