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History - Cold War Interpretations: The Revisionist approach

The Revisionist Approach

Definition of The Revisionist Approach

A new account emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War. U.S. involvement in Vietnam disillusioned some historians and created antipathy towards the American position. In the 1960s and 1970s, the revisionists stressed that American expansionism was the cause of the Cold War. They pointed out that, at the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union was severely weakened, whereas the United States prospered and possessed a monopoly on the atomic bomb. According to the revisionists, Stalin’s main priority was to recover from the devastating war years. They placed the cause of the Cold War in the nature of capitalism and viewed Marshall Aid as a way of seeking new markets and expanding the U.S. economy. The Soviet Union thus correctly understood that their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe was in danger.

  • Emerged in the 1960s, in the midst of the Vietnam War.
  • Still based on Western sources only.
  • USSR painted as defensive and passive,  USA as the aggressor.
  • USA foreign policy driven by domestic politics, the search for markets or raw materials, and the demands on advanced capitalism.
  • Due to lack of access to Soviet source information, there was an over concentration on US actions and only a schematic image of the USSR.

Sources:
https://historiana.eu/case-study/cold-war/traditionalist-vision
"The Cold War", Cambridge Perspectives in History, Mike Sewell, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp1-7

 

Revisionist Approach links

Magazines and websites

 

  • The Cold War in Retrospect: The Formative years
    Prager, Westport, CT, 1998, Roger S. Whitcomb
    An analysis and critical commentary on the general approach of American foreign policy toward Soviet Russia during the formative years of the Cold War. Whitcomb contends that the United States must bear a major share of the responsibility for the endless litany of conflicts, crises, and military confrontations that came to mark our foreign relations after 1945.

  • Teaching the Revisionist Interpretation of the Cold War. O'Reilly, Kevin. OAH Magazine of History, vol. 2, no. 1, 1986, pp. 21–23. JSTOR