Who was to blame?

Historians have changed their views about who was to blame for the Cold War over the years:

Soviet historians

• They blamed the United States.

The Traditionalists

• All western writers before the 1970s, and many since, blamed the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its "attempt to impose its ideology on the rest of the world".

The Revisionists

• In 1959 the historian William Appleman Williams was the first to suggest that America was to blame.
• The Revisionists said America was engaged in a war to keep countries open to capitalism and American trade.
• Revisionists said that Truman's use of the atomic bomb without telling Stalin was the start of the Cold War.

The Post-Revisionists

• John Lewis Gaddis first published this idea in 1972.
• The post-revisionists argued that neither Russia or America was to blame, but that the Cold War was the result of misunderstandings on both sides, and the failure to appreciate each other's fears.

After the collapse of Communism

• Russian historians such as Zubok and Pleshakov have been able to study the Soviet Union's secret files for the first time.
• These files show that Soviet leaders during the Cold War were genuinely trying to avoid conflict with the USA. This puts more of the blame back on America.
• Modern historians stress the Cold War as a clash between capitalism and communism.