The USSR or the USA?
Who was to Blame?
Historians have changed their views about who was to blame for the cold war over the years.
Soviet Historians:
They blamed to the United States.
The Traditionalits:
They blamed to the USSR for the Cold War and its attempt to impose its ideology on the of the world
Until the 1960s, most historians followed the official government line – that the Cold War was the direct result of Stalin's aggressive Soviet expansionism.
Allocation of blame was simple – the Soviets were to blame! This view of the Cold War has never really gone away, and there have always been people who have seen the Soviet Union as the cause of the confrontation. It is, by far, the most common opinion of people who post on the web. In the following collection, note that all the contributors seem to come either from America or Britain : An extract form Michael Hart’s Book: The 100: A ranking of the most infuencail persons in History which supports the idea of USSR being blamed for the Cold War.
The Cold War was caused by the military expansionism of Stalin and his successors. The American response… was basically a defensive reaction. As long as Soviet leaders clung to their dream of imposing Communism on the world, the West had no way (other than surrender) of ending the conflict. When a Soviet leader appeared who was willing to abandon that goal, the seemingly interminable Cold War soon melted away.
Summary of Michael Hart’s argument justifying placing Mikhail Gorbachev in his top 100 most influential persons in history.
Michael H Hart worked for NASA and is currently a professor of astronomy and physics at a US college. He holds degrees in physics, astronomy, and law and is author of: The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History (1986) The truth of the matter, Andrew insisted, responding to the statement of Dr James Leutze that US intellectual thought places blame for the Cold War equally between the US and the Soviet Union, is that the whole cost and length of the Cold War rests almost completely with the men who led the Soviet Union to its ultimate implosion. “The Cold War was caused by the Soviet Union , was sustained by the Soviet Union , and was ended by the Soviet Union when it collapsed,” he said emphatically. “It was—and is—as simple as that.”
Report of a Q&A session with Christopher Andrew (a Cambridge University don and expert on Cold War espionage) at the first Raleigh International Spy Conference, August 2003 The cold war was caused by the USSR 's 'imperial appetite'.
US Naval War College Review of Eugene V Rostow, Violent peace and the management of power: dilemmas and choices in US policy (1988) Stalin's bad behavior was the primary cause of the Cold War
J.R. Nyquist styles himself ‘a WorldNetDaily contributing editor and a renowned expert in geopolitics and international relations'. He is the author of "Origins of the Fourth World War." The cause of the Cold War was the totalitarian nature of the Communist system itself.
Posted by ‘Dangus’ on a webforum called @forumz, 11-06-2002 The Cold War happened because Stalin decided that he could not allow the Russians to be behind the US. He chose confrontation because he could not accept the cosquences of being behind … The US is already supreme,why be provocative and upset it further?
Posted by ‘PainRack’ on a webforum called Spacebattles.com, Jun 21st 2001, The Cold War was caused by the attempt of one state to impose its ideology on the rest of the world. That state was not the US , which demilitarized immediately after the war. That ideology was not democracy.
Posted by Brian Grassie, United States of America on Thursday, December 12, 2002
The United Nations OnLine is a virtual model United Nations sponsored by a Non-Profit Organization from Texas . The UNOL Lobbying Area is for students from around the world to discuss topics concerning the work of the United Nations. The puppet governments [of Eastern Europe] were a huge source of anxiety for the West and were the main cause of the Cold War, the forty-five year long period of tension between the Soviets and the capitalists. thinkquest.org - an international website-building competition, sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation. The Cold War was caused by America 's attempt to cooperate with Russia as a country that had common enemies rather than taking a firm stance against Russia from the beginning. posted by someone who calls himself ishalltriumph, 2004-03-16, on a web-forum called 'livejournal' The Rivisionists: • In 1959 the historian William Apple man Williams was the first to suggest that America was to blame. • The revisionists said that America was engaged in a war to keep the countries open to capitalism and American trade. • Rivisionists said that Truman’s use of atomic bomb without telling Stalin was the cause of the beginning of the Cold War.
Canadian Ambassador arguing that The American atomic bomb was the main cause of the Cold War:
The atomic bomb did help seed the Cold War. Let's face it, the bomb was not just meant to buckle Japan into surrender, it was also a political statement towards the Soviet Union . A statement of power towards a nation who practiced a political ideology different from America which was unacceptable to the "free democractic" United States… posted by Michael Hughes, ‘Ambassador from Canada ’, on 11 Dec 2002 on the ONOL webforum
The United Nations OnLine is a virtual model United Nations sponsored by a Non-Profit Organization from Texas . The UNOL 'Lobbying Area' is for students from around the world to discuss topics concerning the work of the United Nations. The Pro-revisionists:
John Lewis Gaddis first published this idea in 1972.The post-revisionists argues that neither Russai nor America was to blame both the sides wanted to keep the peace after the war..the Cold war was a cause of mutual misunderstanding and the failure to appreciate eachother’s ideas.
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|The Cold War was caused by the conflicting interests of the United States and the U.S.S.R., compounded by miscommunication and poor diplomacy. The |o|
|differences in the cultures of the American political leaders and their moral and righteous justifications for diplomacy from Soviet leaders' communist |s|
|expansionist policies led to the unraveling of the new international order nearly established in Roosevelt's wartime conferences with Churchill and |t|
|Stalin. |-|
|Analysis of President Truman’s ideas at a site called Innocents Abroad: Presidents and Foreign Policy |r|
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|The Cold War was caused by the social climate and tension in Europe at the end of World War II and by the increasing power struggles between the Soviet |v|
|Union [and the United States]. Economic separation between the Soviets and the west also heightened tensions, along with the threat of nuclear war. |i|
|A muddled free essay at: netessays.net |s|
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|The most important cause of the Cold War was the suspicion and rivalry between Truman and Stalin. |o|
|Essay title at: coursework.info |n|
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|The Cold War occurred because defensive positions were viewed as aggression, |s|
|Oakland School , US, Social Studies department essay title. |t|
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|The Cold War was caused by fear, not aggression | |
|Statement from IB Standard Level History paper, May 2001 | |
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|and not forgetting some other, very strange 'conspiracy' theories… | |
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|In view of this reviewer… much of the cold war was caused by these NAZI spooks who we hired to watch the Russians and that it was beyond comprehension | |
|the number of NAZI officials who we illegally allowed to come here. America has always had a very strong German base and as one T.V. show observed the | |
|NAZIS did not loose the war they simply had to relocate. | |
|Statement made in a review of a book The Good German by John Acuff, ‘Country Lawyer’, | |
|a Christian lawyer who writes reviews of the 3-books-a-week he reads. | |
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|It's just a coincidence that the "Cold War" was caused by the Second World War which was caused by the First World War which was caused by a | |
|dysfunctional trans-national banking system. | |
|Jonathan P. Chance, Imperial Mammonism is Just a Coincidence on a pro-Palestinian site | |
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After the Collapse of Communism:Post 1991 • Russian historians such as Zabok and Pleshavok have been able to study the Soviet Union’s secret files for the first time. • These files show the Soviet leaders during the cold war were genuinely trying to avoid conflict with the USA.This puts more of the blame on the US. • Modern historians clash the cold war as the clash between capitalism and communism.
Timothy White’s overview of the historiography of the cold war
Despite the divergence of opinion concerning the origin and nature of the Cold War, there is an increasing consensus that shapes Cold War historiography. While scholars may have been blinded by loyalty and guilt in examining the evidence regarding the origins of the Cold War in the past, increasingly, scholars with greater access to archival evidence on all sides have come to the conclusion that the conflicting and unyielding ideological ambitions were the source of the complicated and historic tale that was the Cold War.
Timothy White, Cold War Historiography: New Evidence Behind Traditional Typographies (2000)
This is a difficult but very informative overview on the web of the historiography of the Cold War.
Timothy White is on the faculty of Xavier University, Cincinnati, USA.
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