Attribute the outbreak of the Cold War to Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union
They argue that the soviet regime intiated the Cold War by seeking to expand and exert control over Europe and Asia
Argue that Stalin broke the agreements forged at Yalta and Potsdam, in order to expand Soviet communism into Eastern Europe and throughout the world.
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Revisionist View
Attribute greater responsibility for the Cold War to the United States
US policy after WW2 was neither passive nor benign. It was driven more by economic considerations and national self-interest than the principles of democracy and self-determination
American policymakers pushed to contain soviet communism in Europe for selfish reasons: they wanted a European continent populated with capitalist nations open to trade and American exports.
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Post-Revisionist view
Post Revisionist historians looked for middle ground between Orthodox and Revisionist histories of the Cold War
Believed that both countries were to blame for the start of the Cold War
A historian Gaddis identified several factors that contributed to the emergence of a US-Soviet cold war: historical problems pre-1941, including a lack of communication and formal recongition; the delay in opening up a second Allied front in Europe, leaving soviets three years to battle the Nazis unaided
Suggest that Stalin was an opportunist and a pragmatist, rather than an international revolutionary who hell-bent on exporting communism around the world. They also accept that American foreign policy often involved overreach and was driven, at least in part, by economic imperatives.
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