Talk:Origins of the Cold War

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[edit] NPOV?

This article could do a lot better at NPOV. Sarcasm and scare quotes should be either removed or replaced with descriptions of the rival POVs. The claim that Stalin was not interested in foreign adventures and took eastern Europe only for defensive reasons is not consistent with the terms of the Hitler-Stalin pact. There is no mention of the USSR's takeover of Czechoslovakia when it agreed to take Marshall plan aid. No mention of Moscow's control of foreign communist movements. No mention of the popular front strategy! The USSR's demobilization is mentioned but the US's is not. and so on.


Then Please add content. After all, it's a work in progress.
Before you do, however, your comments leave me with the impression that you're seeing too many signs of "expansionism." Yes, we are dealing with a paranoid regime that constantly saw its ideological prejudices reaffirmed. And yes, the USSR was at its heart hostile to the "bourgeois capitalist" world. However, the Soviets were never willing to compromise the survival of their for the sake of International Communism. Eben as far back as the Brest-Litovsk negotiations with Germany in the 1917, the hotheads and the romanticists in the party would give way to temporary expedients to preserve Bolshevik and later Communist rule in Russia. BTW, this isn't the thesis of the revisionist pinkos. This is essentially George Kennan's thesis on Soviet foreign policy. This school of thought is as "authorized" and "orthodox" as it comes. (BTW, his Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin is a good abridgement, if anyone's interested).
You're a bit off if you see "expansionist" overtones in the "popular front." The "popular front" was born out of concerns in Moscow since 1934 over the attitudes of the new Nazi Regime. First, even after Hitler came to power, there were the continued references to USSR - and particularly to Ukraine - as predestined fields of German expansion of leading Nazis. Earlier, the Soviets had expected the Nazis to moderate their public pronouncements once they had gained power. Second, officials in Soviet establishments in Germany decried Nazi persecution of communists, socialists, and Jews, thus providing a steady stream of anti-fascist activism within the USSR. Third, there were the fears over German rearmament, which were heightened in light of the Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and Poland concluded in 1/34. Stalin took this as an indication that Hitler was turning his back on the Rapallo policy, and was now seeking a revision of Germany's eastern frontiers at the expense of Russia.
The "popular front" owed more to Soviet reaction to Hitler's accession than genuine commitment to world socialist revolution. It was a part of the campaign to persuade the French and the British that it was they who faced the grave challenge from fascism, not Russia. Meanwhile. Stalin pushed Western Comintern parties into alliances with democratic socialists in order to neutralize opposition by rightwing elements in the West to an anti-fascist collective security pact with the Soviets. Note the exhaustive undertakings by Maksim Litvinov in the years 1934-1937.
Later, the Non-Aggression Pact was essentially an outgrowth of the failed moves toward collective security in 1934-37, which was patently clear at Munich. If you need me to elaborate, please ask, but I'm running short on time for now. 172 11:37, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
This was a very pro-Soviet article. I've toned that down a bit in the attempt to make it more neutral. I didn't cut out the bit where Russian Imperialism was justified, and may come back to it later. As for the Popular front strategy it was part of Stalins strategy to involve the West in war with his enemy, Hitler, and not overtly expansionist as you say. However, expansion was constantly on Stalin's mind with the first five-year plan of 1928 as the first step in that direction, any advances that he could get through it was welcome. Prezen 16:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't have time to continue editing the article at present (and don't want to be pushy anyway) but I will comment on a few things.

The US and Britain's desire for a healthy Germany is stated twice without justification. You seem to be hinting at a motive different from both Stalin's conspiratorial view and the anti-punitive view. Why was Germany especially important to US economic prosperity? I hope it doesn't seem far-fetched that the US should want to avoid repeating acts that it saw as contributing to the outbreak of WW2, just as Stalin wanted to avoid them from his POV.

When I referred to Stalin's control of foreign communist parties, that was without limitation. Were there any countries following WW2 where the primary communist party (Communist Party of X) did not receive its official positions and sometimes material support from Moscow? As for Stalin's use of the parties, I was not referring to diplomatic bargaining; the focus was on Stalin's use of communist parties to represent his political interests in democratic states, and to organize guerilla movements in others. This was Soviet policy before and after WW2. CNN's interview with Sergo Beria is informative on this point.

There are now three independent paragraphs on the Greek affair, which is not desirable in the long term. Of course it's appropriate to mention the character of the Greek government, but the present text seems to imply that the US and Britain liked it that way and misrepresented it publicly. Truman's speech was clear that his stated objective was not to support an idealized democracy, but to secure Greece against communist takeover so that a democratic government could develop. Of course the practical results of this theory were varied and often strained the credibility of US policy, but the article can at least present the theory accurately.

The 1948 Italian elections fall within the time period of the article and are just as important to the development of Cold War strategy as the Greek affair.

The above assessment of communist party activities in countries outside the USSR looks accurate to me. One reading of Homage to Catalonia is enough to see the manner in and extent to which Stalin used foriegn communist parties almost exclusively for the benefit of the USSR.

If we give the western view (the original one, aka ussr=evil, usa=good) in the paragraph dealing with the origins of cold war, than, to be NPOV, we should give the eastern view as well (aggressive imperialists armed with nuclear weapons started the cold war; aka usa=evil, ussr=good). With respect, Ko Soi IX 08:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent changes

There was a bit of a POV creep that had gone unnoticed for a while. [1] I failed to notice it given that the vast majority of recent changes have been quite good. I removed an off-topic commentary on the contradictions of containment (while not pointing out the contradictions in the Soviets brandishing their role in leading the "anti-imperialist" and "progressive" camp) that someone had managed to stick into the subsection on the Truman Doctrine. 172 23:54, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tsar or Czar?

The very first section which is entitled "Czarist Russia and the West". Oddly, the spelling 'tsar' occurs five times in this article while 'czar' only occurs one time (not counting the section heading). Am I just confused, or are these two separate words? I thought they were just different spellings. Anyone want to clarify/modify?

Both mean the same thing. The etymology (according to Dictionary.com) is complex, hence the multiple spellings. Tsar is the preferred spelling, as it is closest to the old Russian word "tssar". Czar most likely comes from kaiser and/or caesar.

[edit] Hi

How do you guys suggest i add this?--Striver 12:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of irrelvent or redundant sections

The sections "major schools" and "postwar warning" must be removed. Churchill's speech, while important, does not warrant its own large section. While other parts of the article are very underdeveloped, such a section gives the speech undue weight. The "major schools" section does not fit into the structure of Wikipedia's coverage on the Cold War. Historiography is currently discussed in the main entry. 172 | Talk 06:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Explain why regarding "major schools" and "postwar warning", instead of simply "must be removed". We can remove the speech. Historiography obviously also belongs in this article.Ultramarine 06:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The content under "postwar warning" entirely pertains to the Fulton speech. There is no way to broaden the section. What else would the heading refer to? Regarding historiography, of course it belongs here, as in every historical article. It belongs here integrated with the coverage. As far as treating it as a topic in itself, this is done in the main Cold War entry under "historiography," not in the subarticles. 172 | Talk 06:18, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
We should certainly mention the speech, but we could trim the material. The "major schools" material is my main concern, since it extensivly discusses the origin and therefore should be in this article.Ultramarine 07:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Your section on the "major schools" was more a discussion of the different schools of thought in the general American historiography of the Cold War than a discussion of questions about the origins of the Cold War, the focus of this article. The main article on the Cold War contains the section about the historiography. I have rewritten the section in order to make it relevant to this article, and not a redundant rehashing of a section in the general entry of the Cold War. [2] 172 | Talk 16:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
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