Quick questions on Nature and historiography of the Cold War: QCE Modern History Unit 4

Access to Soviet, Eastern European and Chinese archives has refined post-revisionism:

The Cold War was caused primarily by Soviet expansionism. American policy was largely defensive.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Herbert Feis, Samuel Flagg Bemis.

- Stalin's behaviour in Eastern Europe (failure to hold free elections, imposition of communist governments) violated the Yalta agreements. - The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were responses to Soviet expansionism, not provocations. - The USA was building international institutions (UN, IMF, Marshall Plan) consistent with liberal internationalism; the USSR was pursuing communist expansion.

The orthodox view dominated during the height of the Cold War itself. American academic culture supported a view that legitimated US policy. Soviet archives were inaccessible.

Soviet behaviour in Eastern Europe was demonstrably more aggressive than American behaviour in Western Europe. Stalin's Eastern European policy was incompatible with free elections.

Single-cause emphasis. Underplays American agency, especially atomic diplomacy and economic interests. Assumes American motives were transparent and benign.

Critiquing 1950s historians for not knowing 1990s evidence is unfair.

A response that fully endorses one school (especially orthodox or revisionist) without acknowledging the others reads as ideologically committed rather than historically critical.