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History - Cold War Interpretations: The Post-Revisionist approach

Post-Revisionist Approaches

Definition of the Post-Revisionist Approach

In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of historians called the post-revisionists argued that the foundations of the Cold War were neither the fault of the U.S. nor the Soviet Union. They viewed the Cold War as something inevitable. According to the post-revisionists, the Cold War emerged from the power vacuum after World War II, when the European countries were severely weakened by the war. The multipolar situation that had existed before the war had given way to a bipolar world. For both the United States and the Soviet Union it was unacceptable to let the other superpower dominate Europe, as this would seriously disrupt the balance of power. Conflict over spheres of influence was therefore an inevitable result of considerations of national security.

  • Evolved in the 1970s, as European archival material became more accessible and fully formed by the 1980s.
  • Argued that the foundations of the Cold War were neither the fault of the U.S. nor the Soviet Union but something inevitable, emerging from the power vacuum after World War II.
  • Role of third parties alongside USA and USSR came to be appreciated.
  • New materials released by US government, and new developments in the Cold War itself invited scholarly criticism which eroded the Revisionist Approach.

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

Post-revisionist Links

Magazines and websites