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Question 1

What is the premises of a traditionalist interpretation of the Cold War?

Answer 1

• The traditionalist view placed the responsibility of the war on the Soviet Union and their expansionist policy
• The USSR tried to dominate its neighbours and set up influence in Eastern Europe.
• reflected by Berlin blockade
• their aggression caused the US to intervene, leading to the Cold War

Question 2

What is the premises of the revisionist viewpoint on the Cold War?

Answer 2

• U.S involvement in Vietnam created antipathy toward the u.s government and lowered their moral high ground in the war.
• American expansionism war the cause of the Cold War
• Stalins Russia was just trying to recover from the war while America didn’t have to.

Question 3

What is the premises of the post-revisionist viewpoint of the Cold War?

Answer 3

• the foundations of the Cold War were neither at the fault of the U.S nor the Soviet Union, it was inevitable.
• the Cold War emerged from the power vacuum after WW2
• the multipolar situation had given way to a bipolar world

Question 4

What are some arguments for the traditional interpretation?

Answer 4

• the Soviet Union wanted an international revolution (communism spread)
• the United States had no choice but to meet the demands of the Soviet Union
• the US presidents were to accepting of the USSRS demands for influence (the us needed to stand up to communism)

Question 5

What are some arguments for the revisionist interpretation?

Answer 5

• The Cold War was caused by the USA’s desperation to build its capitalist trade markets
• the USA was expansionist trying to create power through the economy
• Stalin was creating buffer states for security and national interest

Question 6

What are some arguments for a post-revisionist interpretation?

Answer 6

• There was mutual self interest, misperceptions and suspicion (Cuban missile crisis, Berlin Wall)
• tensions arose due to each superpowers determination to uphold national security
• the superpowers misconceived each other’s ideology and way of life
• it was more the fault of the aggressive leaders (Truman, Stalin)

Question 7

Winston Churchill

“The Soviet Union has become a danger to the free world”

Answer 7

Traditionalist

Question 8

Herbert Feis
“The Soviet Union were ‘trying not only to extend their boundaries and their control over the neighbouring states, but also beginning to revert to their revolutionary effort throughout the world (e,g Russian revolution)

Answer 8

Traditionalist

Question 9

Arthur Schlesinger Jr
The Cold War could have been avoided only if the Soviet Union had not been possessed by convictions both of the infallibility of the communist word and the inevitability of the communist world

Answer 9

Traditionalist

Question 10

Stalin

The imperialistic powers will wring your necks like chickens

Answer 10

Revisionist

Question 11

William appleman williams
Even the American public came more and more….manipulated and controlled in the effort to establish and maintain the American way as the global status quo

Answer 11

Revisionist

- appeals to the anti-war sentiment, reflects the views of the common American at the time

Question 12

Walter Lafeber
[on the cold war]: it has cost the Americans $4 trillion in defence expenditures, taken the lives of nearly 100,000 of their young men

Answer 12

Revisionist

Question 13

Gar Alperovitz
American officials calculated that using the atomic bomb would enormously bolster U.S diplomacy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union in negotiations over postwar Europe

Answer 13

Revisionist

Question 14

Joyce and Gabriel Kolko

Basic source of the world crisis was an expansive American common policy

Answer 14

Revisionist

Question 15

John Lewis Gladdis
Both the United States and Soviet Union had been born in revolution. Both embraced ideologies with global aspirations: what worked at home, their leaders assumed, would also work for the rest of the world

Answer 15

Post revisionist