Making Historiography and

Source Analysis AccessibleJo Leech amp Allan Kerr

Carey Baptist Grammar Schooljoleechcareycomau

allankerrcareycomau

What is historiography

httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=pB3xb1_gp4Y

>

3

Types of Sources

Photographs Diary Entries Letters Newspaper Articles Posters CartoonsComics Journal Articles Statistics Graphs Maps Paintings

Historians

Australian History

5

Recruitment Posters - Australia

3

Types of Sources

Photographs Diary Entries Letters Newspaper Articles Posters CartoonsComics Journal Articles Statistics Graphs Maps Paintings

Historians

Australian History

5

Recruitment Posters - Australia

Australian History

5

Recruitment Posters - Australia

5

Recruitment Posters - Australia

6

WWI Conscription PostersAustralia

7

Women missing in action Why has Anzac become a Boys Own story By Melanie Oppenheimer

From The Australian November 07 2007

RECENTLY I came across an issue of The Soldier the official journal of the RSL published on April 20 1917

On the cover of this threepenny magazine sketched in black and white was Our dinkum Anzac and dinkum Anzacette The grinning Anzac slouch-hatted cigarette in his mouth and the Anzacette a demure sweet young nurse with masses of dark curls and a huge red cross on her bosom were each celebrated with four lines of woeful poetry

Heres an Anzac gloriousOf a band victoriousSound his praise on fife and flute --Anzac We your name salute

And for the Anzacette

So sweet so neat her smiles a treatThe Anzacs love her you can betA girl complete no vain conceitCan spoil this lovely Anzacette

Article cont httpwwwtheaustraliancomaunewsartswomen-missing-in-actionstory-e6frg8px-1111114734537

8

WWII Recruitment PostersAustralia

9

Australian Women Recruitment Posters WWII - Australia

10

Japanese invasion a myth historianBy Mark Forbes June 1 2002

Hes coming south screamed the poster featuring a Japanese soldier poised to trample over a defenceless Australia It was part of a Curtin government campaign that contributed to a state of panic across the nation in 1942 after the fall of Singapore and air raids on Darwin

Across the years history books and high school lessons have repeated the stories of a Japanese invasion plan foiled only by the diggers desperate efforts on the Kokoda Trail and the United States naval victory in the Coral Sea An imaginary Brisbane Line was drawn to represent Australias second line of defence against the approaching hordes

The trouble is someone forgot to tell the Japanese The only real invasion plan appears to have existed in the minds of prime minister John Curtin and the Australian public

Japan never seriously intended to invade Australia a fact known to the Australian Government by mid-1942 and confirmed by intelligence reports principal historian to the Australian War Memorial Peter Stanley said yesterday at a conference examining the events of 1942

Im sick of the myth its time to knock it on the head he said A lie told for wartime propaganda stays with us

Article continued httpwwwtheagecomauarticles200205311022569832145html

9

Australian Women Recruitment Posters WWII - Australia

10

Japanese invasion a myth historianBy Mark Forbes June 1 2002

Hes coming south screamed the poster featuring a Japanese soldier poised to trample over a defenceless Australia It was part of a Curtin government campaign that contributed to a state of panic across the nation in 1942 after the fall of Singapore and air raids on Darwin

Across the years history books and high school lessons have repeated the stories of a Japanese invasion plan foiled only by the diggers desperate efforts on the Kokoda Trail and the United States naval victory in the Coral Sea An imaginary Brisbane Line was drawn to represent Australias second line of defence against the approaching hordes

The trouble is someone forgot to tell the Japanese The only real invasion plan appears to have existed in the minds of prime minister John Curtin and the Australian public

Japan never seriously intended to invade Australia a fact known to the Australian Government by mid-1942 and confirmed by intelligence reports principal historian to the Australian War Memorial Peter Stanley said yesterday at a conference examining the events of 1942

Im sick of the myth its time to knock it on the head he said A lie told for wartime propaganda stays with us

Article continued httpwwwtheagecomauarticles200205311022569832145html

10

Japanese invasion a myth historianBy Mark Forbes June 1 2002

Hes coming south screamed the poster featuring a Japanese soldier poised to trample over a defenceless Australia It was part of a Curtin government campaign that contributed to a state of panic across the nation in 1942 after the fall of Singapore and air raids on Darwin

Across the years history books and high school lessons have repeated the stories of a Japanese invasion plan foiled only by the diggers desperate efforts on the Kokoda Trail and the United States naval victory in the Coral Sea An imaginary Brisbane Line was drawn to represent Australias second line of defence against the approaching hordes

The trouble is someone forgot to tell the Japanese The only real invasion plan appears to have existed in the minds of prime minister John Curtin and the Australian public

Japan never seriously intended to invade Australia a fact known to the Australian Government by mid-1942 and confirmed by intelligence reports principal historian to the Australian War Memorial Peter Stanley said yesterday at a conference examining the events of 1942

Im sick of the myth its time to knock it on the head he said A lie told for wartime propaganda stays with us

Article continued httpwwwtheagecomauarticles200205311022569832145html

11

Vietnam War conscription IssueAustralia

The Sun Thursday 29 April 1965

12

Vietnam War anti- conscription IssueAustralia

13

Paul Ham on War The Australian ndash 4102008

Vietnam too is in danger of being twisted beyond recognition by the civilian hankering for great Australian war victories in the absence of knowledge and context Undoubtedly Long Tan was an extraordinary feat of arms in which 108 men with armor and artillery defeated at least 1500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese And the Australians in Vietnam clearly fought a more humane war than their American allies But it is absurd to hail the Australian achievement in Vietnam without contemplating in a spirit of quiet regret the terrible tragedy of that event and the ghastly aftermath

Nor is it useful to see the Vietnam War as a mere setback in the Cold War As one Australian academics stated ldquoIt is easier now to think of Vietnam not as a war that was lost but as a losing battle within a bigger Cold War struggle that was wonrdquo It may be easy it is also simplistic and dangerous as it portrays this unique human tragedy as the forgettable ephemera in an otherwise triumphant Western victory and tends to absolve the grave political mistakes that led to it In consequence the soldiersrsquo self-sacrifice is diminished and the Vietnam War ceases to be a singular human catastrophe from which we might learn At least our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to have taught us not to attack soldiers for politiciansrsquo decisions

If wersquore honest only by knowing why Australian soldiers went to war the context of their battle honors and their failings as well as their triumphs can we fully appreciate the true nature of sacrifice in war

Paul Ham is the author of Kokoda and Vietnam The Australian War (HarperCollins) Read the full article on http

wwwtheaustraliancomaunewsfeaturespaul-ham-on-warstory-e6frg8h6-1111117656925

12

Vietnam War anti- conscription IssueAustralia

13

Paul Ham on War The Australian ndash 4102008

Vietnam too is in danger of being twisted beyond recognition by the civilian hankering for great Australian war victories in the absence of knowledge and context Undoubtedly Long Tan was an extraordinary feat of arms in which 108 men with armor and artillery defeated at least 1500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese And the Australians in Vietnam clearly fought a more humane war than their American allies But it is absurd to hail the Australian achievement in Vietnam without contemplating in a spirit of quiet regret the terrible tragedy of that event and the ghastly aftermath

Nor is it useful to see the Vietnam War as a mere setback in the Cold War As one Australian academics stated ldquoIt is easier now to think of Vietnam not as a war that was lost but as a losing battle within a bigger Cold War struggle that was wonrdquo It may be easy it is also simplistic and dangerous as it portrays this unique human tragedy as the forgettable ephemera in an otherwise triumphant Western victory and tends to absolve the grave political mistakes that led to it In consequence the soldiersrsquo self-sacrifice is diminished and the Vietnam War ceases to be a singular human catastrophe from which we might learn At least our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to have taught us not to attack soldiers for politiciansrsquo decisions

If wersquore honest only by knowing why Australian soldiers went to war the context of their battle honors and their failings as well as their triumphs can we fully appreciate the true nature of sacrifice in war

Paul Ham is the author of Kokoda and Vietnam The Australian War (HarperCollins) Read the full article on http

wwwtheaustraliancomaunewsfeaturespaul-ham-on-warstory-e6frg8h6-1111117656925

13

Paul Ham on War The Australian ndash 4102008

Vietnam too is in danger of being twisted beyond recognition by the civilian hankering for great Australian war victories in the absence of knowledge and context Undoubtedly Long Tan was an extraordinary feat of arms in which 108 men with armor and artillery defeated at least 1500 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese And the Australians in Vietnam clearly fought a more humane war than their American allies But it is absurd to hail the Australian achievement in Vietnam without contemplating in a spirit of quiet regret the terrible tragedy of that event and the ghastly aftermath

Nor is it useful to see the Vietnam War as a mere setback in the Cold War As one Australian academics stated ldquoIt is easier now to think of Vietnam not as a war that was lost but as a losing battle within a bigger Cold War struggle that was wonrdquo It may be easy it is also simplistic and dangerous as it portrays this unique human tragedy as the forgettable ephemera in an otherwise triumphant Western victory and tends to absolve the grave political mistakes that led to it In consequence the soldiersrsquo self-sacrifice is diminished and the Vietnam War ceases to be a singular human catastrophe from which we might learn At least our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to have taught us not to attack soldiers for politiciansrsquo decisions

If wersquore honest only by knowing why Australian soldiers went to war the context of their battle honors and their failings as well as their triumphs can we fully appreciate the true nature of sacrifice in war

Paul Ham is the author of Kokoda and Vietnam The Australian War (HarperCollins) Read the full article on http

wwwtheaustraliancomaunewsfeaturespaul-ham-on-warstory-e6frg8h6-1111117656925

14

Conflicts Australians have been involved inhellip

the Sudan War the Boer War and the Boxer Uprising First World War Second World War Korean War Vietnam War Gulf War Iraq Afghanistan

15

Australiarsquos involvement in War Ideas for teaching

Recruitment Uniforms Weapons Conscription Role of women Use of language Political views of the dayWar and its issues Methods of persuasion Intended audience of source Validity of Australiarsquos involvement Compare War issues Use of posters newspapers etc

16

Year 12 VCE Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic - WWII Aborigines were given little opportunities to argue change in the early war

years from 1939 ndash 1941 This was due to the strong legislation against Aborigines which gave them little rights Historian Broome terms the early years of the war as ldquothe climax of legislative control over Aboriginesrdquo With the passing of laws such as the Aboriginal Affairs Act of 1939 and the Defence Act and Australian Military Regulations Act of 1939 which blocked the enlistment into the army of anyone who was ldquonot substantially of European origin or descentrdquo (Mirams 2006) Historian Beaumont agrees with the Aboriginersquos inability to argue for change stating that ldquoduring the early years of World War 2 the government also discouraged Aboriginesrsquo enlistment and involvement in the war effortrdquo

Bibliography RBroome SMirams Imagining Australia 2006 J Baumont Australias War 1939-45 1996

15

Australiarsquos involvement in War Ideas for teaching

Recruitment Uniforms Weapons Conscription Role of women Use of language Political views of the dayWar and its issues Methods of persuasion Intended audience of source Validity of Australiarsquos involvement Compare War issues Use of posters newspapers etc

16

Year 12 VCE Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic - WWII Aborigines were given little opportunities to argue change in the early war

years from 1939 ndash 1941 This was due to the strong legislation against Aborigines which gave them little rights Historian Broome terms the early years of the war as ldquothe climax of legislative control over Aboriginesrdquo With the passing of laws such as the Aboriginal Affairs Act of 1939 and the Defence Act and Australian Military Regulations Act of 1939 which blocked the enlistment into the army of anyone who was ldquonot substantially of European origin or descentrdquo (Mirams 2006) Historian Beaumont agrees with the Aboriginersquos inability to argue for change stating that ldquoduring the early years of World War 2 the government also discouraged Aboriginesrsquo enlistment and involvement in the war effortrdquo

Bibliography RBroome SMirams Imagining Australia 2006 J Baumont Australias War 1939-45 1996

16

Year 12 VCE Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic - WWII Aborigines were given little opportunities to argue change in the early war

years from 1939 ndash 1941 This was due to the strong legislation against Aborigines which gave them little rights Historian Broome terms the early years of the war as ldquothe climax of legislative control over Aboriginesrdquo With the passing of laws such as the Aboriginal Affairs Act of 1939 and the Defence Act and Australian Military Regulations Act of 1939 which blocked the enlistment into the army of anyone who was ldquonot substantially of European origin or descentrdquo (Mirams 2006) Historian Beaumont agrees with the Aboriginersquos inability to argue for change stating that ldquoduring the early years of World War 2 the government also discouraged Aboriginesrsquo enlistment and involvement in the war effortrdquo

Bibliography RBroome SMirams Imagining Australia 2006 J Baumont Australias War 1939-45 1996

17

Historianrsquos debate Australiarsquos History

Attwood Bain (2005) Telling The Truth About Aboriginal History

Macintyre Stuart Anna (2003) The History Wars Carlton Victoria Melbourne University Publishing

Manne Robert ed (2003) Whitewash On Keith Windschuttles Fabrication of Aboriginal History

Reynolds Henry (1999) Why Werent We Told Windschuttle Keith (2002) The Fabrication of

Aboriginal History Volume One Van Diemens Land 1803-1847 Sydney Macleay Press

18

Blainey outlasts the History WarsIPA REVIEW ARTICLE ndash Richard Allsop

In his desire to restore the balance between white man and black man and to make up for our scandalous neglect of the Aboriginal heritage he has at times swung too far the other way

That is the Sydney Morning Herald criticising Geoffrey Blainey for being too sympathetic to Australias indigenous population

Yes-criticising Blainey for being too sympathetic These words were published in 1975 and were contained in a review of Blaineys landmark work Triumph of the Nomads

hellip There is much to be said for ending the history wars While history should be debated

strenuously and interpreted in a multitude of ways these discussions should be able to be conducted without every issue being used in a contemporary political debate

And ending the wars may also provide an opportunity to evaluate Geoffrey Blaineys career in a more balanced and rational manner

hellip In each of the past six decades Blainey has produced works of great interest and

importance Odds are that the twenty-tens will be no different Lets hope they can be read on their merits and not through the prism of the history wars

Read more httpwwwipaorgaupublications1785blainey-outlasts-the-history-wars

18

Blainey outlasts the History WarsIPA REVIEW ARTICLE ndash Richard Allsop

In his desire to restore the balance between white man and black man and to make up for our scandalous neglect of the Aboriginal heritage he has at times swung too far the other way

That is the Sydney Morning Herald criticising Geoffrey Blainey for being too sympathetic to Australias indigenous population

Yes-criticising Blainey for being too sympathetic These words were published in 1975 and were contained in a review of Blaineys landmark work Triumph of the Nomads

hellip There is much to be said for ending the history wars While history should be debated

strenuously and interpreted in a multitude of ways these discussions should be able to be conducted without every issue being used in a contemporary political debate

And ending the wars may also provide an opportunity to evaluate Geoffrey Blaineys career in a more balanced and rational manner

hellip In each of the past six decades Blainey has produced works of great interest and

importance Odds are that the twenty-tens will be no different Lets hope they can be read on their merits and not through the prism of the history wars

Read more httpwwwipaorgaupublications1785blainey-outlasts-the-history-wars

19

WebsitesAustralian History Focus

wwwanzacdayorgau httpwwwpictureaustraliaorg httpwwwnlagovauozhistsitehtml httpwwwawmgovau httpjohncurtineduaueducationtlf http

australiagovauabout-australiaaustralian-storyaustn-political-cartooning

httpwwwquadrantorgaumagazineissue20096gallipoli-second-front-in-the-history-wars

httpwwwawmgovauhistoriesfirst_world_warprefaceasp

20

Explorer and Aboriginal guide[ca 1850]White man ndash

Clothing

Height

Standing

AboriginalSeated

Wearing possum skin

Back to viewer

Land looks relatively undisturbed

By 1850 ndash probably more cleared land ndash but white people probably using individual aboriginals as guides

What does the title tell you

21

Fence ndash ownership ndash white lsquocivilisedrsquo view

White man ndash looks relaxed ndash offering a bushel of tobacco

White woman ndash offering food

Aboriginal child ndash carries a bucket of water

Axe ndash symbolic of new technology ndash clearing the land

Aboriginal man ndash working for white family

The cleared land ndash represents white lsquoinvasionrsquo of the land

Settlers Hut ndash ST Gill

22

Down on his luck - 1889Frederick Mc Cubbin

Swagman c1901

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabongUnder the shade of a coolibah treeAnd he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiledYoull come a-Waltzing Matilda with meldquo

AB Paterson

Painting cartoon poem and photoSwagman

The Same Old Tune And a Bad One at That cartoonist Phil May In The Bulletin 21 January 1888

22

Down on his luck - 1889Frederick Mc Cubbin

Swagman c1901

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabongUnder the shade of a coolibah treeAnd he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiledYoull come a-Waltzing Matilda with meldquo

AB Paterson

Painting cartoon poem and photoSwagman

The Same Old Tune And a Bad One at That cartoonist Phil May In The Bulletin 21 January 1888

Twentieth CenturyWorld History

24

Historiography

Every situation can be looked at from so many different angles that it is very difficult for any two people to agree on what is going on Ten people could look at the same situation and create ten different theories or assumptions as to what is occurring This is because no two people have the same backgrounds no two people have the same experiences and no two people think exactly the same hellip

25

Origins WWI - Historiography During the 1930s revisionist historians sought to revise the view of German

responsibility for the war Marxist (Communist) historians believed that the War was the result of the competition of

capitalist businessmen and emphasised the role played by Imperialism Other historians blamed the politicians declaring that diplomacy before the war was

bankrupt of ideas and men of ability they blamed the leaders Many revisionist historians favoured an explanation of the war as being caused by

powerful forces that were pushing Europe into war - nationalism imperialism militarism and the system of alliances

American historian Sydney Bradshaw Fay Anti-revisionists tended to return to the idea of German responsibility In Britain the

historian AJP Taylor wrote a book called The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1954 in which he claimed that German ambitions caused the conflict

Taylor was supported by the German historian Fritz Fischer in his books Griff nach der Weltmacht (Grasp for World Power 1961) and War of Illusions (1969)

the anti-revisionist period is sometimes called the Fischer revolution In 1991 the British historian Samuel Williamson in his book Austria-Hungary and the

Origins of the First World War argued that Austria-Hungary was equally to blame for the war marrying a German expansionism with an Austrian desire to expand into the Balkans

Most recently some historians have been drawing attention also to the feeling in Austria-Hungary and Russia that somehow a war might be the solution for their own internal troubles For example Ruth Henig 1989

26

Page Historianrsquos Name Date Summary of main argument

P24 Erich Brandenburg

German Historian

1927

Sidney Fay

American Historian

1930

P25 GPGooch

British Historian

1938

Gerhard Ritter

German Historian

1951

Fritz Fischer

German Historian

1961

Criticism of Fischer

P29 Supporter of FischerImmanuel GeissHans-Ulrich WehlerJurgen Kocka

John Rohl

Egmont ZechlinKarl Erdmann

P30 Anti-Fischer School

P31ampP37

Paul Kennedy

Diplomatic Historian

Ralf Dahrendorf

Richard Evans

Geoffrey EleyDavid Blackbourn

British Historians

P32 David Kaiser

P 33 Bernadette Schmitt

AJP Taylor

James Joll

Michael Howard

P34 Niall Ferguson

P35 Martel

Joachim Remak

John Leslie

British Historian

P36 John Lowe

Marxist writers amp HistoriansVI Lenin

Marxist ndash Lenin Theory

P37 Konne Zilliacus

38 Carl Stirkwerda

The origins of the First and Second World Wars ndash F McDonough Ch 2 ndash The historians and the origins of the First World War ndash student activity

27

Leaders writehellipIn our attitude towards the war which under the new government of Lvov and Co unquestionably remains on Russiarsquos part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government not the slightest concession to ldquorevolutionary defencismrdquo is permissible

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity and not as a means of conquest in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie it is necessary with particular thoroughness persistence and patience to explain their error to them and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government

Abolition of the police the army and the bureaucracy The salaries of all officials all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker

It is not our immediate task to ldquointroducerdquo socialism but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies

It is of course much easier to shout abuse and howl than to attempt to relate to explain

28

Interpretations over timeThe lsquoSovietrsquo view

bull This viewpoint available in A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- the sections on Lenin have remained consistent stating that the founder of the Communist regime acted in the interests of Marxist ideology and the Russian working people

bull By the late nineteenth century the Russian people were being exploited by traditional Russian feudalism and the newly emergent entrepreneurial capitalist class

bull Lenin realised that Marxism would have to be adapted to Russian conditionsbull The failed 1905 revolution taught the Bolsheviks the need for more effective

organisationbull By 1914 industrial proletariat moving behind the Bolsheviksbull The workers were convinced by Leninrsquos interpretation of a Marxist revolutionbull Bolsheviks used WWI to achieve revolution and the civil war to eliminate lsquocapitalist

exploitationrsquobull Lenin returned from exile In April 1917bull Bolsheviks won the Civil War between 1918 and 1921 ndash liberating Russia to

Communismbull A new democratic system set up Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and a

new federal constitution was introduced in 1918bull By 1924 the Bolsheviks has succeeded in their objectives

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

24

Historiography

Every situation can be looked at from so many different angles that it is very difficult for any two people to agree on what is going on Ten people could look at the same situation and create ten different theories or assumptions as to what is occurring This is because no two people have the same backgrounds no two people have the same experiences and no two people think exactly the same hellip

25

Origins WWI - Historiography During the 1930s revisionist historians sought to revise the view of German

responsibility for the war Marxist (Communist) historians believed that the War was the result of the competition of

capitalist businessmen and emphasised the role played by Imperialism Other historians blamed the politicians declaring that diplomacy before the war was

bankrupt of ideas and men of ability they blamed the leaders Many revisionist historians favoured an explanation of the war as being caused by

powerful forces that were pushing Europe into war - nationalism imperialism militarism and the system of alliances

American historian Sydney Bradshaw Fay Anti-revisionists tended to return to the idea of German responsibility In Britain the

historian AJP Taylor wrote a book called The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1954 in which he claimed that German ambitions caused the conflict

Taylor was supported by the German historian Fritz Fischer in his books Griff nach der Weltmacht (Grasp for World Power 1961) and War of Illusions (1969)

the anti-revisionist period is sometimes called the Fischer revolution In 1991 the British historian Samuel Williamson in his book Austria-Hungary and the

Origins of the First World War argued that Austria-Hungary was equally to blame for the war marrying a German expansionism with an Austrian desire to expand into the Balkans

Most recently some historians have been drawing attention also to the feeling in Austria-Hungary and Russia that somehow a war might be the solution for their own internal troubles For example Ruth Henig 1989

26

Page Historianrsquos Name Date Summary of main argument

P24 Erich Brandenburg

German Historian

1927

Sidney Fay

American Historian

1930

P25 GPGooch

British Historian

1938

Gerhard Ritter

German Historian

1951

Fritz Fischer

German Historian

1961

Criticism of Fischer

P29 Supporter of FischerImmanuel GeissHans-Ulrich WehlerJurgen Kocka

John Rohl

Egmont ZechlinKarl Erdmann

P30 Anti-Fischer School

P31ampP37

Paul Kennedy

Diplomatic Historian

Ralf Dahrendorf

Richard Evans

Geoffrey EleyDavid Blackbourn

British Historians

P32 David Kaiser

P 33 Bernadette Schmitt

AJP Taylor

James Joll

Michael Howard

P34 Niall Ferguson

P35 Martel

Joachim Remak

John Leslie

British Historian

P36 John Lowe

Marxist writers amp HistoriansVI Lenin

Marxist ndash Lenin Theory

P37 Konne Zilliacus

38 Carl Stirkwerda

The origins of the First and Second World Wars ndash F McDonough Ch 2 ndash The historians and the origins of the First World War ndash student activity

27

Leaders writehellipIn our attitude towards the war which under the new government of Lvov and Co unquestionably remains on Russiarsquos part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government not the slightest concession to ldquorevolutionary defencismrdquo is permissible

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity and not as a means of conquest in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie it is necessary with particular thoroughness persistence and patience to explain their error to them and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government

Abolition of the police the army and the bureaucracy The salaries of all officials all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker

It is not our immediate task to ldquointroducerdquo socialism but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies

It is of course much easier to shout abuse and howl than to attempt to relate to explain

28

Interpretations over timeThe lsquoSovietrsquo view

bull This viewpoint available in A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- the sections on Lenin have remained consistent stating that the founder of the Communist regime acted in the interests of Marxist ideology and the Russian working people

bull By the late nineteenth century the Russian people were being exploited by traditional Russian feudalism and the newly emergent entrepreneurial capitalist class

bull Lenin realised that Marxism would have to be adapted to Russian conditionsbull The failed 1905 revolution taught the Bolsheviks the need for more effective

organisationbull By 1914 industrial proletariat moving behind the Bolsheviksbull The workers were convinced by Leninrsquos interpretation of a Marxist revolutionbull Bolsheviks used WWI to achieve revolution and the civil war to eliminate lsquocapitalist

exploitationrsquobull Lenin returned from exile In April 1917bull Bolsheviks won the Civil War between 1918 and 1921 ndash liberating Russia to

Communismbull A new democratic system set up Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and a

new federal constitution was introduced in 1918bull By 1924 the Bolsheviks has succeeded in their objectives

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

25

Origins WWI - Historiography During the 1930s revisionist historians sought to revise the view of German

responsibility for the war Marxist (Communist) historians believed that the War was the result of the competition of

capitalist businessmen and emphasised the role played by Imperialism Other historians blamed the politicians declaring that diplomacy before the war was

bankrupt of ideas and men of ability they blamed the leaders Many revisionist historians favoured an explanation of the war as being caused by

powerful forces that were pushing Europe into war - nationalism imperialism militarism and the system of alliances

American historian Sydney Bradshaw Fay Anti-revisionists tended to return to the idea of German responsibility In Britain the

historian AJP Taylor wrote a book called The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1954 in which he claimed that German ambitions caused the conflict

Taylor was supported by the German historian Fritz Fischer in his books Griff nach der Weltmacht (Grasp for World Power 1961) and War of Illusions (1969)

the anti-revisionist period is sometimes called the Fischer revolution In 1991 the British historian Samuel Williamson in his book Austria-Hungary and the

Origins of the First World War argued that Austria-Hungary was equally to blame for the war marrying a German expansionism with an Austrian desire to expand into the Balkans

Most recently some historians have been drawing attention also to the feeling in Austria-Hungary and Russia that somehow a war might be the solution for their own internal troubles For example Ruth Henig 1989

26

Page Historianrsquos Name Date Summary of main argument

P24 Erich Brandenburg

German Historian

1927

Sidney Fay

American Historian

1930

P25 GPGooch

British Historian

1938

Gerhard Ritter

German Historian

1951

Fritz Fischer

German Historian

1961

Criticism of Fischer

P29 Supporter of FischerImmanuel GeissHans-Ulrich WehlerJurgen Kocka

John Rohl

Egmont ZechlinKarl Erdmann

P30 Anti-Fischer School

P31ampP37

Paul Kennedy

Diplomatic Historian

Ralf Dahrendorf

Richard Evans

Geoffrey EleyDavid Blackbourn

British Historians

P32 David Kaiser

P 33 Bernadette Schmitt

AJP Taylor

James Joll

Michael Howard

P34 Niall Ferguson

P35 Martel

Joachim Remak

John Leslie

British Historian

P36 John Lowe

Marxist writers amp HistoriansVI Lenin

Marxist ndash Lenin Theory

P37 Konne Zilliacus

38 Carl Stirkwerda

The origins of the First and Second World Wars ndash F McDonough Ch 2 ndash The historians and the origins of the First World War ndash student activity

27

Leaders writehellipIn our attitude towards the war which under the new government of Lvov and Co unquestionably remains on Russiarsquos part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government not the slightest concession to ldquorevolutionary defencismrdquo is permissible

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity and not as a means of conquest in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie it is necessary with particular thoroughness persistence and patience to explain their error to them and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government

Abolition of the police the army and the bureaucracy The salaries of all officials all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker

It is not our immediate task to ldquointroducerdquo socialism but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies

It is of course much easier to shout abuse and howl than to attempt to relate to explain

28

Interpretations over timeThe lsquoSovietrsquo view

bull This viewpoint available in A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- the sections on Lenin have remained consistent stating that the founder of the Communist regime acted in the interests of Marxist ideology and the Russian working people

bull By the late nineteenth century the Russian people were being exploited by traditional Russian feudalism and the newly emergent entrepreneurial capitalist class

bull Lenin realised that Marxism would have to be adapted to Russian conditionsbull The failed 1905 revolution taught the Bolsheviks the need for more effective

organisationbull By 1914 industrial proletariat moving behind the Bolsheviksbull The workers were convinced by Leninrsquos interpretation of a Marxist revolutionbull Bolsheviks used WWI to achieve revolution and the civil war to eliminate lsquocapitalist

exploitationrsquobull Lenin returned from exile In April 1917bull Bolsheviks won the Civil War between 1918 and 1921 ndash liberating Russia to

Communismbull A new democratic system set up Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and a

new federal constitution was introduced in 1918bull By 1924 the Bolsheviks has succeeded in their objectives

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

26

Page Historianrsquos Name Date Summary of main argument

P24 Erich Brandenburg

German Historian

1927

Sidney Fay

American Historian

1930

P25 GPGooch

British Historian

1938

Gerhard Ritter

German Historian

1951

Fritz Fischer

German Historian

1961

Criticism of Fischer

P29 Supporter of FischerImmanuel GeissHans-Ulrich WehlerJurgen Kocka

John Rohl

Egmont ZechlinKarl Erdmann

P30 Anti-Fischer School

P31ampP37

Paul Kennedy

Diplomatic Historian

Ralf Dahrendorf

Richard Evans

Geoffrey EleyDavid Blackbourn

British Historians

P32 David Kaiser

P 33 Bernadette Schmitt

AJP Taylor

James Joll

Michael Howard

P34 Niall Ferguson

P35 Martel

Joachim Remak

John Leslie

British Historian

P36 John Lowe

Marxist writers amp HistoriansVI Lenin

Marxist ndash Lenin Theory

P37 Konne Zilliacus

38 Carl Stirkwerda

The origins of the First and Second World Wars ndash F McDonough Ch 2 ndash The historians and the origins of the First World War ndash student activity

27

Leaders writehellipIn our attitude towards the war which under the new government of Lvov and Co unquestionably remains on Russiarsquos part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government not the slightest concession to ldquorevolutionary defencismrdquo is permissible

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity and not as a means of conquest in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie it is necessary with particular thoroughness persistence and patience to explain their error to them and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government

Abolition of the police the army and the bureaucracy The salaries of all officials all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker

It is not our immediate task to ldquointroducerdquo socialism but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies

It is of course much easier to shout abuse and howl than to attempt to relate to explain

28

Interpretations over timeThe lsquoSovietrsquo view

bull This viewpoint available in A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- the sections on Lenin have remained consistent stating that the founder of the Communist regime acted in the interests of Marxist ideology and the Russian working people

bull By the late nineteenth century the Russian people were being exploited by traditional Russian feudalism and the newly emergent entrepreneurial capitalist class

bull Lenin realised that Marxism would have to be adapted to Russian conditionsbull The failed 1905 revolution taught the Bolsheviks the need for more effective

organisationbull By 1914 industrial proletariat moving behind the Bolsheviksbull The workers were convinced by Leninrsquos interpretation of a Marxist revolutionbull Bolsheviks used WWI to achieve revolution and the civil war to eliminate lsquocapitalist

exploitationrsquobull Lenin returned from exile In April 1917bull Bolsheviks won the Civil War between 1918 and 1921 ndash liberating Russia to

Communismbull A new democratic system set up Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and a

new federal constitution was introduced in 1918bull By 1924 the Bolsheviks has succeeded in their objectives

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

27

Leaders writehellipIn our attitude towards the war which under the new government of Lvov and Co unquestionably remains on Russiarsquos part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government not the slightest concession to ldquorevolutionary defencismrdquo is permissible

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity and not as a means of conquest in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie it is necessary with particular thoroughness persistence and patience to explain their error to them and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government

Abolition of the police the army and the bureaucracy The salaries of all officials all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker

It is not our immediate task to ldquointroducerdquo socialism but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workersrsquo Deputies

It is of course much easier to shout abuse and howl than to attempt to relate to explain

28

Interpretations over timeThe lsquoSovietrsquo view

bull This viewpoint available in A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- the sections on Lenin have remained consistent stating that the founder of the Communist regime acted in the interests of Marxist ideology and the Russian working people

bull By the late nineteenth century the Russian people were being exploited by traditional Russian feudalism and the newly emergent entrepreneurial capitalist class

bull Lenin realised that Marxism would have to be adapted to Russian conditionsbull The failed 1905 revolution taught the Bolsheviks the need for more effective

organisationbull By 1914 industrial proletariat moving behind the Bolsheviksbull The workers were convinced by Leninrsquos interpretation of a Marxist revolutionbull Bolsheviks used WWI to achieve revolution and the civil war to eliminate lsquocapitalist

exploitationrsquobull Lenin returned from exile In April 1917bull Bolsheviks won the Civil War between 1918 and 1921 ndash liberating Russia to

Communismbull A new democratic system set up Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and a

new federal constitution was introduced in 1918bull By 1924 the Bolsheviks has succeeded in their objectives

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

28

Interpretations over timeThe lsquoSovietrsquo view

bull This viewpoint available in A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union- the sections on Lenin have remained consistent stating that the founder of the Communist regime acted in the interests of Marxist ideology and the Russian working people

bull By the late nineteenth century the Russian people were being exploited by traditional Russian feudalism and the newly emergent entrepreneurial capitalist class

bull Lenin realised that Marxism would have to be adapted to Russian conditionsbull The failed 1905 revolution taught the Bolsheviks the need for more effective

organisationbull By 1914 industrial proletariat moving behind the Bolsheviksbull The workers were convinced by Leninrsquos interpretation of a Marxist revolutionbull Bolsheviks used WWI to achieve revolution and the civil war to eliminate lsquocapitalist

exploitationrsquobull Lenin returned from exile In April 1917bull Bolsheviks won the Civil War between 1918 and 1921 ndash liberating Russia to

Communismbull A new democratic system set up Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and a

new federal constitution was introduced in 1918bull By 1924 the Bolsheviks has succeeded in their objectives

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

29

Interpretations over timeWestern Approaches

bull Western historians opinions vary from favourable to hostilebull The favourable approach ndash Western observers who visited Russia can into contact

with Lenin and other Bolshevik leadersbull There were some pro-Marxist historians in Western Europe who had positive views

of Lenin were ndash eg Christopher Hill (1947) John Rees bull Hostile views from the West emerged out of the Cold War climate and historianrsquos

negative views of Stalin for example Robert Conquestbull Western historians sympathetic to Lenin emphasise the importance of his ideas and

strategies adjusting Marxist ideology to suit Russian conditionsbull The Bolsheviks were disciplined and professional used propaganda and subversion

to create the environment to seize powerbull Western historians do not agree on the motivation behind Leninrsquos rise to powerbull Until recently however most agree that the coup of October 1917 became a real

revolution between 1918 and 1924 as the Bolsheviks transformed Russiabull Conflict and terror was reinforced by the Chekabull Revolution could not effectively be applied to the economy ndash New Economic Policy

(NEP)

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

30

Interpretations over timeRevisionist Approaches

bull This is a fundamental reassessment of earlier viewsbull One took place before the collapse of the Soviet Union for almost 20 years after

1960 Stalin was written out of Soviet historybull Lenin never demonised like Stalin although some methods were questionedbull Rabinowitch (historian) Russian people were spontaneously revolutionarybull It now seems that the Bolsheviks were the ones that were pushedbull Lenin was responding to pressures from the peoplebull WWI did not assist in the Bolsheviks revolutionbull Lenin was taken by surprise by the February revolution and rushed back from

Switzerland bull From April 1917 Bolsheviks moved in line with the popular demands and to the

expense of earlier Marxist ideologybull Bolsheviks were swept along with the tide in a revolutionbull This gives rise to new perspectives on the Bolshevik state from 1918 to 1924bull They created a repressive regime ruling by terror to guarantee their position

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

31

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull But some like historian Dmitry Tocheny say it is a shame and the city should be given its old name Tocheny believes that ldquoThe civil war that he was responsible for killed up to 13 million people Letrsquos not forget over 2 million the cream of the crop left Russia escaping from his policies He was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerrdquo Hero or villain to some just a souvenir while to others despite all the controversy about his legacy polls show the most common feeling towards Lenin in Russia now is indifference

bull Historian Sergey Kudryashov an editor from ldquoRodinardquo magazine in Moscow believes that public discussion of Lenin and his impact on Russian history may bring the opponents to a common point ldquoFor the past two decades his image changed drastically because in the rsquo90s when the entire system changed Lenin was a sort of symbol of the old regimerdquo Kudryashov told RT ldquoAnd we heard a lot of criticism about that figure and a lot of new documents appeared in Russian archives so a new image of Lenin appeared in Russian historyrdquo

bull ldquoHistorians still argue about his impact on history unfortunately there are still some documents classified in Russian archives but the more we see and the more we discuss the problem I think we reach more or less a joint position on that particular figurerdquo he added ldquoOnly some historians extreme left or extreme right disagree about the role of this politicianrdquo

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

32

he was a bloody dictator just like Stalin and Hitlerhellip

bull Vitaly Semenov historian considers that the role Lenin played in history cannot be underestimated

bull ldquoHe absolutely changed the country changed the societyrdquo says Vitaly Semenov about Lenin ldquoHe created absolutely new laws new conditions of human livesrdquo

bull When assessing whether the changes Lenin introduced were for the better Semenov says there cannot be an unambiguous answer

bull ldquoFrom the question of belief and human morals it was catastrophic for Russia but from the question of new experiences for world society it was something really interesting Other states looked at Russia and learned a lot of lessons about what they should change Russia was like a field of experimentsrdquo says Semenov

bull According to Dr Leonid Dobrokhotov historian and advisor to Russian Communist Partyrsquos leaders Leninrsquos ideas are of great topicality

bull ldquoI believe that Leninrsquos and Marxrsquos teaching is much more actual again today than it was 10 or 20 years agordquo Dobrokhotov told RT

bull On the whole the historian says that the West and Russia are now witnessing a re-emergence of interest in Leninrsquos ideas with young people making up 95 per cent of the new followers in Russia

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

33

those are values of justice when everyone

is born equalhellip

bull And just as you start thinking the spiritual father of the Soviet people is now just a retro souvenir you meet people like historian Yaroslav Listov who still praises Leninrsquos ideas The 27 year-old started admiring Vladimir Ilich Lenin when he was at school at the time he watched Leninrsquos portraits and statues being discarded like rubbish Yaroslav Listov states ldquoFor me he is the person who changed the world I share his values Those are values of justice when everyone is born equal and can achieve something regardless of their social statusrdquo

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

34

UK Cold War Sources on LeninOn Lenin

On November 7 (October 25 according to the Old Calendar) 1917 a new page was opened in the book of world history It was written by the revolutionary workers peasants and soldiers of Russia who proclaimed the country a Republic of Soviets It marked the beginning of a new era In 1917 the peoples of our country began the building of a new society the first of its kindNovosti Press Agency Publishing House

What is the Soviet Union (1980)A propaganda booklet sent free to British teachers at the height of the Cold War It claimed Information for Peace and International Friendship is the motto of the Novosti Press Agency

In November 1917 a group of people called Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the government They said that they were doing it for the proletariat (or working class)

However in spite of all the seemingly good things that Lenin introduced there is much for which he and the Bolsheviks have been criticised He had been in power only for a few days when he decided to ban all newspapers apart from those that supported the new government Most decisions were taken by a small group of men called the Politburo Lenin refused to negotiate with the soviets who were the elected representatives of the workers and in whose name the Bolsheviks had come to power Remember the slogan he used - All power to the soviets

L Hartley the Russian Revolution (1980)A British school textbook published at the height of the Cold War

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

35

Stalin - Historiography In dealing with different historical interpretations of Stalin there are a few things to keep in

mind Which factors does the historian focus on and what keys does the historian use In looking

at different historical periods the answer to your question will be different The historian can choose to believe parts of or all of the following ideas about history

ndash The Structuralist believe that it is structures in society that will determine the actions of history The French revolution is caused by society not by persons storming the Bastille

ndash The Liberal thinks that persons play a major part in history Stalin as a person is interesting in understanding the events he took advantage of other persons weaknesses etc to build his personal power

ndash The Determinist believes that there are actual ldquolawsrdquo determining the historical way that events will take If there are a number of factors present then these factors will lead to that certain event Their approach is similar to a natural scientistrsquos if you heat water it will boil if you have population starving in the cities you will have a revolution etc

ndash The Intentionalists examines the willing and desires of different persons or factors in society had Did Stalin intend for the Purges to take place or not Are there any evidences for this If you are an intentionalist you are most likely to have an liberal perspective too

ndash The Revisionst is an historian who has revised the history out of any reason it doesnrsquot necessarily mean that they belong to a whole new school it only means that they have a different opinion than most other active historians coming from having revised the facts

ndash The Normative approach means that we should use history as a warning example there are dos and donrsquots in history

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

36

Stalin - Historiography

bullStalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality ldquoan emancipator and a tyrantrdquobullStalin was ldquothe great executor of revolutionary policyrdquo

E H CarrA History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)

Adam Ulam Stalin The Man and his Era (1987)

bullStalin impeded Soviet victory in WWII as the purges had liquidated Russian manpower and expertise

bullEconomical amp political forces shaped Stalin but Stalin still a strong figure

bullStalin as an lsquoagent of historyrsquo produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution

bullIf Stalin had not industrialised Russia then someone else would have done so

37

Stalin - HistoriographyMartin McCauleyStalin amp Stalinism (2003)

bullStalin ndash brutal appalling methods but achievement considerablebullIndustrialization in particular meant victory over the Nazis amp that USSR became one of the two superpowers after 1945bull ldquoThe Stalin revolution revitalized

the countryrdquobull ldquo[Stalin] launched a violent

phenomenally ambitious modernization of the countryrdquo

bull ldquo[Stalinism] was phenomenally successful and eventually a crashing failurerdquo

Ian GreyStalin Man of History (1979)

bullMost staunch Western defender of StalinbullBelieved historians have been overly influenced by Trotsky

ldquoSoviet Russia became stronger as a result of Stalinrsquos campaigns of industrialization collectivization and social transformationrdquo

38

IB ndash Historiography Stalin ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Robert Service Revisionist

Alec Nove Economic Historian

Orlando Figes

RWDavies Economic Historian

SG Wheatcroft Economic Historian

Geoffrey Hosking

Robert Conquest

E H Carr Bolshevik historian

39

Leaders write hellipThe book was originally entitled Four Years of Struggle against Lies Stupidity and Cowardice Hitlers publisher reduced it to My Struggle (Mein Kampf) The book is a mixture of autobiography political ideas and an explanation of the techniques of propaganda The autobiographical details in Mein Kampf are often inaccurate and the main purpose of this part of the book appears to be to provide a positive image of Hitler For example when Hitler was living a life of leisure in Vienna he claims he was working hard as a labourer In Mein Kampf Hitler outlined his political philosophy He argued that the German (he wrongly described them as the Aryan race) was superior to all others Every manifestation of human culture every product of art science and technical skill which we see before our eyes today is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative powerldquo

Hitler wrote his own account of his life and thought of course Mein Kampf presents a Hitler who had a relatively happy childhood (despite conflict with his father about his ultimate profession) during which his history teacher Dr Poetsch filled him with a love of Germany

40

Hitler - Historiography John Lukacs The Hitler of History (Vintage Books 1998) Chapter One he gives the reader an historical survey of how historians

have written about Hitler Journalists at the time Heiden was the first person to change the diminutive for National

Socialist (lsquoNasorsquo) to the word lsquoNazirsquo ndash a Bavarian slang word meaning lsquosimpletonrsquo (like lsquoChristianrsquo the term stuck) Heidenrsquos Adolf Hitler The Age of Irresponsibility (1936) is described by Lukacs as lsquodense with details [and] insightful personal commentariesrsquo

1950s After the war many historians (particularly French writers) believed

that it was too soon to write an objective account of Hitler (Lukacs interestingly rejects the very terms lsquoobjectiversquo and lsquosubjectiversquo ndash he believes that since an historianrsquos instruments are words which have to be chosen lsquohis selection of every word is not merely a scientific or stylistic problem but also a moral one ie ALL writing is lsquosubjective)

41

Hitler - Historiography AJP Taylor Although Taylor is not regarded as an authoritative source nowadays his

collected essays in Europe Grandeur and Decline (1967) are still worth reading if only as a source of strong opinions which could fuel a class discussion Taylor found Hitler lsquoloathsomersquo with lsquoa depth and elaboration of evil all his own as though something primitive had emerged from the bowels of the earthrsquo But Hitler lsquothough evil was great in actionrsquo Taylor was one of the first historians to recognise the statesman in Hitler who out-manoeuvred his political opponents (lsquoa man bent on success on the one side and a group of politicians without ideas or principles on the otherrsquo) Taylor was also open in his hatred of Germans (lsquoIt is all very well to like Italians better than Germans Who doesnrsquotrsquo) For him both world wars were part of a wider German lsquostruggle for masteryrsquo over Europe Thus for Taylor it was the Germans who were responsible for Hitler He was their fault lsquoIf there had been a strong democratic sentiment in Germany Hitler would never have come to power No doubt men deserved what they got when they went round crying for a herorsquo

42

Hitler - Historiography

1960s Lukacs dismisses William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

(1960) as lsquosuperficialrsquo Shirer was an American correspondent who worked in Hitlerrsquos

Germany and experienced events at first hand During the lsquo60s two German historians produced books which largely

endorsed this view of Hitler Frederick Heer (1967) demonstrated how Hitlerrsquos ideology could only be understood in the context of Austrian anti-Semitism And Eberhard Jaumlckel (1969) showed that Hitlerrsquos Weltanschauung (world view) was an early-formed ideology to which he remained consistent throughout his life and which led inevitably to the invasion of Russia and the final solution

43

Hitler - Historiography 1970s Joachim Fest the German historian of a highly-regarded 1973

biography - asserted that if Hitler had died in 1938 lsquofew would hesitate to name him as one of the greatest statesmen of Germanyrsquo

John Toland an American journalist - he called Hitler lsquoprobably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century

David Irving (Hitlerrsquos War 1977) - Irving who doubts that Hitler ever gave the order for the final solution ndash which he asserts was small-scale and localised if it ever happened at all ndash ended up as an apologist for Hitler and regular lecturer to neo-Nazi audiences Lukacs dismisses him as an lsquoamateurrsquo and criticises his technique

The 1970s also saw the work of the psycho-historians scholars who tried to apply psychology to our knowledge of Hitler to try to find lsquothe roots of his evilrsquo - Walter Langer Robert GL Waite and Rudolph Binion

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

39

Leaders write hellipThe book was originally entitled Four Years of Struggle against Lies Stupidity and Cowardice Hitlers publisher reduced it to My Struggle (Mein Kampf) The book is a mixture of autobiography political ideas and an explanation of the techniques of propaganda The autobiographical details in Mein Kampf are often inaccurate and the main purpose of this part of the book appears to be to provide a positive image of Hitler For example when Hitler was living a life of leisure in Vienna he claims he was working hard as a labourer In Mein Kampf Hitler outlined his political philosophy He argued that the German (he wrongly described them as the Aryan race) was superior to all others Every manifestation of human culture every product of art science and technical skill which we see before our eyes today is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative powerldquo

Hitler wrote his own account of his life and thought of course Mein Kampf presents a Hitler who had a relatively happy childhood (despite conflict with his father about his ultimate profession) during which his history teacher Dr Poetsch filled him with a love of Germany

40

Hitler - Historiography John Lukacs The Hitler of History (Vintage Books 1998) Chapter One he gives the reader an historical survey of how historians

have written about Hitler Journalists at the time Heiden was the first person to change the diminutive for National

Socialist (lsquoNasorsquo) to the word lsquoNazirsquo ndash a Bavarian slang word meaning lsquosimpletonrsquo (like lsquoChristianrsquo the term stuck) Heidenrsquos Adolf Hitler The Age of Irresponsibility (1936) is described by Lukacs as lsquodense with details [and] insightful personal commentariesrsquo

1950s After the war many historians (particularly French writers) believed

that it was too soon to write an objective account of Hitler (Lukacs interestingly rejects the very terms lsquoobjectiversquo and lsquosubjectiversquo ndash he believes that since an historianrsquos instruments are words which have to be chosen lsquohis selection of every word is not merely a scientific or stylistic problem but also a moral one ie ALL writing is lsquosubjective)

41

Hitler - Historiography AJP Taylor Although Taylor is not regarded as an authoritative source nowadays his

collected essays in Europe Grandeur and Decline (1967) are still worth reading if only as a source of strong opinions which could fuel a class discussion Taylor found Hitler lsquoloathsomersquo with lsquoa depth and elaboration of evil all his own as though something primitive had emerged from the bowels of the earthrsquo But Hitler lsquothough evil was great in actionrsquo Taylor was one of the first historians to recognise the statesman in Hitler who out-manoeuvred his political opponents (lsquoa man bent on success on the one side and a group of politicians without ideas or principles on the otherrsquo) Taylor was also open in his hatred of Germans (lsquoIt is all very well to like Italians better than Germans Who doesnrsquotrsquo) For him both world wars were part of a wider German lsquostruggle for masteryrsquo over Europe Thus for Taylor it was the Germans who were responsible for Hitler He was their fault lsquoIf there had been a strong democratic sentiment in Germany Hitler would never have come to power No doubt men deserved what they got when they went round crying for a herorsquo

42

Hitler - Historiography

1960s Lukacs dismisses William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

(1960) as lsquosuperficialrsquo Shirer was an American correspondent who worked in Hitlerrsquos

Germany and experienced events at first hand During the lsquo60s two German historians produced books which largely

endorsed this view of Hitler Frederick Heer (1967) demonstrated how Hitlerrsquos ideology could only be understood in the context of Austrian anti-Semitism And Eberhard Jaumlckel (1969) showed that Hitlerrsquos Weltanschauung (world view) was an early-formed ideology to which he remained consistent throughout his life and which led inevitably to the invasion of Russia and the final solution

43

Hitler - Historiography 1970s Joachim Fest the German historian of a highly-regarded 1973

biography - asserted that if Hitler had died in 1938 lsquofew would hesitate to name him as one of the greatest statesmen of Germanyrsquo

John Toland an American journalist - he called Hitler lsquoprobably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century

David Irving (Hitlerrsquos War 1977) - Irving who doubts that Hitler ever gave the order for the final solution ndash which he asserts was small-scale and localised if it ever happened at all ndash ended up as an apologist for Hitler and regular lecturer to neo-Nazi audiences Lukacs dismisses him as an lsquoamateurrsquo and criticises his technique

The 1970s also saw the work of the psycho-historians scholars who tried to apply psychology to our knowledge of Hitler to try to find lsquothe roots of his evilrsquo - Walter Langer Robert GL Waite and Rudolph Binion

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

40

Hitler - Historiography John Lukacs The Hitler of History (Vintage Books 1998) Chapter One he gives the reader an historical survey of how historians

have written about Hitler Journalists at the time Heiden was the first person to change the diminutive for National

Socialist (lsquoNasorsquo) to the word lsquoNazirsquo ndash a Bavarian slang word meaning lsquosimpletonrsquo (like lsquoChristianrsquo the term stuck) Heidenrsquos Adolf Hitler The Age of Irresponsibility (1936) is described by Lukacs as lsquodense with details [and] insightful personal commentariesrsquo

1950s After the war many historians (particularly French writers) believed

that it was too soon to write an objective account of Hitler (Lukacs interestingly rejects the very terms lsquoobjectiversquo and lsquosubjectiversquo ndash he believes that since an historianrsquos instruments are words which have to be chosen lsquohis selection of every word is not merely a scientific or stylistic problem but also a moral one ie ALL writing is lsquosubjective)

41

Hitler - Historiography AJP Taylor Although Taylor is not regarded as an authoritative source nowadays his

collected essays in Europe Grandeur and Decline (1967) are still worth reading if only as a source of strong opinions which could fuel a class discussion Taylor found Hitler lsquoloathsomersquo with lsquoa depth and elaboration of evil all his own as though something primitive had emerged from the bowels of the earthrsquo But Hitler lsquothough evil was great in actionrsquo Taylor was one of the first historians to recognise the statesman in Hitler who out-manoeuvred his political opponents (lsquoa man bent on success on the one side and a group of politicians without ideas or principles on the otherrsquo) Taylor was also open in his hatred of Germans (lsquoIt is all very well to like Italians better than Germans Who doesnrsquotrsquo) For him both world wars were part of a wider German lsquostruggle for masteryrsquo over Europe Thus for Taylor it was the Germans who were responsible for Hitler He was their fault lsquoIf there had been a strong democratic sentiment in Germany Hitler would never have come to power No doubt men deserved what they got when they went round crying for a herorsquo

42

Hitler - Historiography

1960s Lukacs dismisses William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

(1960) as lsquosuperficialrsquo Shirer was an American correspondent who worked in Hitlerrsquos

Germany and experienced events at first hand During the lsquo60s two German historians produced books which largely

endorsed this view of Hitler Frederick Heer (1967) demonstrated how Hitlerrsquos ideology could only be understood in the context of Austrian anti-Semitism And Eberhard Jaumlckel (1969) showed that Hitlerrsquos Weltanschauung (world view) was an early-formed ideology to which he remained consistent throughout his life and which led inevitably to the invasion of Russia and the final solution

43

Hitler - Historiography 1970s Joachim Fest the German historian of a highly-regarded 1973

biography - asserted that if Hitler had died in 1938 lsquofew would hesitate to name him as one of the greatest statesmen of Germanyrsquo

John Toland an American journalist - he called Hitler lsquoprobably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century

David Irving (Hitlerrsquos War 1977) - Irving who doubts that Hitler ever gave the order for the final solution ndash which he asserts was small-scale and localised if it ever happened at all ndash ended up as an apologist for Hitler and regular lecturer to neo-Nazi audiences Lukacs dismisses him as an lsquoamateurrsquo and criticises his technique

The 1970s also saw the work of the psycho-historians scholars who tried to apply psychology to our knowledge of Hitler to try to find lsquothe roots of his evilrsquo - Walter Langer Robert GL Waite and Rudolph Binion

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

41

Hitler - Historiography AJP Taylor Although Taylor is not regarded as an authoritative source nowadays his

collected essays in Europe Grandeur and Decline (1967) are still worth reading if only as a source of strong opinions which could fuel a class discussion Taylor found Hitler lsquoloathsomersquo with lsquoa depth and elaboration of evil all his own as though something primitive had emerged from the bowels of the earthrsquo But Hitler lsquothough evil was great in actionrsquo Taylor was one of the first historians to recognise the statesman in Hitler who out-manoeuvred his political opponents (lsquoa man bent on success on the one side and a group of politicians without ideas or principles on the otherrsquo) Taylor was also open in his hatred of Germans (lsquoIt is all very well to like Italians better than Germans Who doesnrsquotrsquo) For him both world wars were part of a wider German lsquostruggle for masteryrsquo over Europe Thus for Taylor it was the Germans who were responsible for Hitler He was their fault lsquoIf there had been a strong democratic sentiment in Germany Hitler would never have come to power No doubt men deserved what they got when they went round crying for a herorsquo

42

Hitler - Historiography

1960s Lukacs dismisses William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

(1960) as lsquosuperficialrsquo Shirer was an American correspondent who worked in Hitlerrsquos

Germany and experienced events at first hand During the lsquo60s two German historians produced books which largely

endorsed this view of Hitler Frederick Heer (1967) demonstrated how Hitlerrsquos ideology could only be understood in the context of Austrian anti-Semitism And Eberhard Jaumlckel (1969) showed that Hitlerrsquos Weltanschauung (world view) was an early-formed ideology to which he remained consistent throughout his life and which led inevitably to the invasion of Russia and the final solution

43

Hitler - Historiography 1970s Joachim Fest the German historian of a highly-regarded 1973

biography - asserted that if Hitler had died in 1938 lsquofew would hesitate to name him as one of the greatest statesmen of Germanyrsquo

John Toland an American journalist - he called Hitler lsquoprobably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century

David Irving (Hitlerrsquos War 1977) - Irving who doubts that Hitler ever gave the order for the final solution ndash which he asserts was small-scale and localised if it ever happened at all ndash ended up as an apologist for Hitler and regular lecturer to neo-Nazi audiences Lukacs dismisses him as an lsquoamateurrsquo and criticises his technique

The 1970s also saw the work of the psycho-historians scholars who tried to apply psychology to our knowledge of Hitler to try to find lsquothe roots of his evilrsquo - Walter Langer Robert GL Waite and Rudolph Binion

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

42

Hitler - Historiography

1960s Lukacs dismisses William Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

(1960) as lsquosuperficialrsquo Shirer was an American correspondent who worked in Hitlerrsquos

Germany and experienced events at first hand During the lsquo60s two German historians produced books which largely

endorsed this view of Hitler Frederick Heer (1967) demonstrated how Hitlerrsquos ideology could only be understood in the context of Austrian anti-Semitism And Eberhard Jaumlckel (1969) showed that Hitlerrsquos Weltanschauung (world view) was an early-formed ideology to which he remained consistent throughout his life and which led inevitably to the invasion of Russia and the final solution

43

Hitler - Historiography 1970s Joachim Fest the German historian of a highly-regarded 1973

biography - asserted that if Hitler had died in 1938 lsquofew would hesitate to name him as one of the greatest statesmen of Germanyrsquo

John Toland an American journalist - he called Hitler lsquoprobably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century

David Irving (Hitlerrsquos War 1977) - Irving who doubts that Hitler ever gave the order for the final solution ndash which he asserts was small-scale and localised if it ever happened at all ndash ended up as an apologist for Hitler and regular lecturer to neo-Nazi audiences Lukacs dismisses him as an lsquoamateurrsquo and criticises his technique

The 1970s also saw the work of the psycho-historians scholars who tried to apply psychology to our knowledge of Hitler to try to find lsquothe roots of his evilrsquo - Walter Langer Robert GL Waite and Rudolph Binion

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

43

Hitler - Historiography 1970s Joachim Fest the German historian of a highly-regarded 1973

biography - asserted that if Hitler had died in 1938 lsquofew would hesitate to name him as one of the greatest statesmen of Germanyrsquo

John Toland an American journalist - he called Hitler lsquoprobably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century

David Irving (Hitlerrsquos War 1977) - Irving who doubts that Hitler ever gave the order for the final solution ndash which he asserts was small-scale and localised if it ever happened at all ndash ended up as an apologist for Hitler and regular lecturer to neo-Nazi audiences Lukacs dismisses him as an lsquoamateurrsquo and criticises his technique

The 1970s also saw the work of the psycho-historians scholars who tried to apply psychology to our knowledge of Hitler to try to find lsquothe roots of his evilrsquo - Walter Langer Robert GL Waite and Rudolph Binion

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

44

Hitler - Historiography 1980s The 1980s were characterised by (occasionally violent) debates about Hitler One debate is known as the Historikerstreit ndash the lsquohistorianrsquos quarrelrsquo The historian Ernst Nolte saw Nazism as a reaction against the tyranny and

dangers of Soviet Bolshevism Andreas Hillgruber who asserted that until 1941 Hitler was fighting a lsquoDual Warrsquo A second much more important ndash and continuing ndash debate is that between the

lsquointentionalistsrsquo and the lsquofunctionalistsrsquo Functionalist historians essentially revolted against the intentionalist idea explicit or implicit in many biographies that Hitler had in some way created the Third Reich

Lukacs tends towards the intentionalists lsquoZeitgeist [the spirit of the times] may have assisted Hitlerrsquos coming to power but in the end he created his own Zeitgeistrsquo

The modern German historian Rainer Zitelmann (who interestingly asserts that we need to use the primary sources much more critically) argues that Hitler intentionally modernised Germany

The British historian Tim Mason who argues that by 1939 Hitler had got the German economy into such a mess that he was propelled into war as the only way to prevent economic melt-down

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

45

Hitler -Historiography

lsquoFunctionalismrsquo is seen as being true both generally (great men do not make history) and of Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust specifically (where the impetus is seen as coming from lower-ranking officials rather than simply Hitler) This is the viewpoint that is generally accepted in its moderate form by most academic historians

Saul Freidlaumlnder is a lsquofunctionalistrsquo historian - Nazi Germany and the Jews (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1997)

Daniel Goldhagen Hitlerrsquos Willing Executioners (1996) Ian Kershaw Hitler 1889ndash1936 Hubris (Penguin 1998)

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

46

Leaders write hellipThe books official name should be the Quotes of Chairman Mao however people always call it Little Red Book As in its name this book is the collection of Maos quotes This book was edited by Lin Bao who was once considered as Maos successor Lin edited the little red book to earn Maos confidence he wanted to stabilise his status in the Chinese Communist Party During the Chinese Cultural Revolution this red book was popularly used by the Little Red Guard which created the cult of Mao

Famous sayings from the Little Red Book include 1) Modesty helps one go forward whereas conceit makes one lag behind 2) Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth To investigate a problem is indeed to solve And 3) People of the world unite and defeat the US aggressors and all the running dogsMonsters of all kinds shall be destroyed

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

47

Mao - Historiography Historians in the Mao era Yang Jisheng author an authoritative account of the Great Famine told the New

York Review of Books ldquoTraditional historians face restrictions First of all they censor themselves Their thoughts limit them They donrsquot even dare to write the facts donrsquot dare to speak up about it donrsquot dare to touch it And even if they wrote it they canrsquot publish it And if they publish they will face censure So mainstream scholars face those restrictionsBut there are many unofficial historians like me Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled lsquoRightistsrsquo or lsquocounter-revolutionariesrsquo There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death There are many authors who have written about how their families starved[Source Ian Johnson New York Times Review of Books December 20 2010]

On why officials didnrsquot destroy the files Yang said ldquo Destroying files isnrsquot up to one person As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you canrsquot so easily destroy it Before it is in the archives it can be destroyed but afterwards only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intactmdashhow many people died of hunger cannibalism the grain situation all of this was recorded and still existsrdquo [Ibid]

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

48

Mao - Historiography

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists in the Early Days of Their Struggle

American journalist Edgar Snow toured the communist bases around Yanan in northern China The resulting book Red Star Over China (1937) portrayed Mao in a positive light and was widely credited with introducing the communists and their leadership to the rest of the worldhellip

hellip Theodore White then a reporter for Time who visited Yanrsquoan in 1944 concluded that the Communists were ldquomasters of brutalityrdquo but had won peasants over to their siderdquo hellip

Henry Luce who saw the Christian convert Chiang Kai-shek as a vital facilitator of the lsquoAmerican Centuryrsquo fired White from Timerdquo

Source - Passport to Peking by Patrick Wright (Oxford 2010)

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

49

Mao - Historiography Sympathetic Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists ldquoMany Western intellectuals recoiling from the excesses of McCarthyism and

hampered by lack of firsthand information gave the benefit of the doubt to Mao in the decade that followedrdquo Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker Dec 20 2010

Western Perceptions of Mao and the Communists Turn Sour Pankaj Mishra wrote in The New Yorker ldquoIn the seventies and eighties American

scholars and journalists could finally experience the realities they had only guessed at and they began compiling a grim record of China under Maomdasha task that was speeded up by Deng Xiaopingrsquos repudiation of the Cultural Revolution after Maorsquos death in 1976 More Chinese also began to travel outside their countryhellip

Jung Chang and Jon Hallidayrsquos best-selling biography Mao The Unknown Story (2005) - Mao killed more than seventy million people in peacetime and was in some ways a more diabolical villain than even Hitler or Stalin

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

50

IB ndash Historiography Mao ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

Jack Gray Revisionist

Mike Sewell

Jung Chang (Wild Swans) Scar Literature

Jonathan Fenly

Jonathan Spence

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

51

Cold War HistoriographyOrthodox View Revisionists or New Left Historians Post-Revisionists

Historians argued that it was clearly Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and then other parts of the world that had caused the Cold War The United States had no choice but to meet the challenges posed by Soviet actions ndash whether those actions were seen as the result of traditional Russian imperialism or of an ideologically-driven expansionism that arose ultimately from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Revisionists place the blame on the United States rather than the Soviet Union for the start of the Cold War as the end of the wartime alliance need not in itself have led to cold war They argued that the Soviets did nothing more in Eastern Europe than any great power would have done in terms of looking after their national interests especially after two German invasions in less than thirty years In any event the Russians were often merely reacting to what the revisionists portrayed as aggressive American demands for business markets and political access into this region

They tried to show that both sides had their faults and that over time both superpowers pushed their own interests and misunderstood the other side even to the point on occasions of leading to the possibility of nuclear war (In fact the views that are often regarded as post-revisionist have a long pedigree Realists like Hans Morgenthau George Kennan and William H McNeillrsquos were interpreting the origins of the cold war in a lsquopost-revisionistrsquo way even before the revisionists came along) The post-revisionists have tended to accept the revisionistsrsquo view that Stalin was more concerned with Soviet security and to that end the creation of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern and Central Europe than with world domination or aggressive ambitions towards Western Europe but at the same time they have argued that that Western leaders at the time could not be certain of what Stalin was up to that even a Soviet Union preoccupied with what Stalin perceived to be lsquosecurityrsquo could still threaten Western interests and that the Western powers therefore had legitimate and understandable concerns about Russia

Herbert Feis Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (New York 1957) Feis From Trust to Terror The Onset of the Cold War (New York 1970) Arthur Schlesinger Jr ldquoOrigins of the Cold Warrdquo Foreign Affairs 46 October 1967 pp 22-52

William Appleman Williams The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1959) Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York 1969) Gabriel Kolko and Joyce Kolko The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy 1945-1954 (New York 1972) Thomas G Paterson Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore 1973)

John Lewis Gaddis We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (New York 1997)

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

52

Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography

The freeing up of Soviet academic life in the late 1980s and then western access to increasing amounts of Soviet archival material since 1991 means it is now possible to re-examine the origins of the Cold War using former Soviet sources It should be noted that there are at present real limitations on these sources Only a very small amount of the archival material has been released

Peter Bastian ldquoInterpreting the Cold War from Soviet Sourcesrdquo Teaching History Vol 35 No 4 December 2001 pp5-10

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

53

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Russian historians blamed Churchill (the British Prime Minister) and Truman (the American president 1945ndash1953) They said Truman and Churchill wanted to destroy the USSR which was just defending itself

The Traditional View At first western writers blamed Russia They said Stalin was trying to build up a Soviet empire The Revisionist View Later however some western historians blamed America They said Truman had not understood

how much Russia had suffered in the Second World War The Post-Revisionists Later still historians think BOTH sides were to blame ndash that there were hatreds on both sides Most recently historians agree that the Cold War was primarily a clash of beliefs - Communism

versus Capitalism

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

54

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Traditionalists Until the 1960s most historians followed the official government line ndash that the

Cold War was the direct result of Stalins aggressive Soviet expansionism Allocation of blame was simple ndash the Soviets were to blame The Revisionists In 1959 however William Appleman Williams published his The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy Williams blamed the US for the Cold War Williams and the historians who followed him were called the lsquorevisionistsrsquo This lsquorevisionistrsquo approach reached its height during the Vietnam War when many people suggested that America was as bad as Russia

Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam (1965) placed the blame for the Cold War on the Americans for their use of the atomic bomb

One of the most extreme revisionists was Gabriel Kolko who wrote The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy in 1972

He suggested that Truman should have given Stalin the atomic bomb in 1945 claimed that Russia treated Poland well in 1945 and blamed South Korea for the Korean War of 1950-3

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

55

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

The Post-Revisionists As time went on however a group of historians called the lsquopost-revisionistsrsquo tried

to present the foundations of the Cold War as neither the fault of the Americans or the USSR

The first was John Lewis Gaddis The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (1972) who believed that both America and Russia wanted to keep the peace after the war but that conflict was caused by mutual misunderstanding reactivity and above all the American inability to understand Stalins fears and need to defend himself after the war

Martin P Leffler in his book A Preponderance of Power National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) saw the Cold War as a clash of two military establishments both seeking world domination

Marc Trachtenberg A Contested Peace The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963 (1999) claimed that the Cold War was really about settling the German question in the aftermath of World War II

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

56

Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography

Post ndash 1991 In 1991 Communism in the Soviet Union collapsed This

has allowed historians to get to see the Russian archives and to investigate what Russia was REALLY about in this period In Inside the Kremlins Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev (1997) the Russian historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov use de-classified Soviet documents to analyse Stalinrsquos part in causing the Cold War They reveal a fanatic belief in Communism lots of personal faults and mistakes but ndash above all ndash a genuine desire to avoid confrontation with the USA

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

57

IB ndash Historiography Cold War ndash Papers 2 amp 3

Task ndash go through your texts handouts and Internet (where relevant) ndash find the name of various key historians include their perspective and then a comment they make regarding the knowledge area Try and create a table for each of the topics studied over the two years below are some examples started for you

Historian PerspectiveDate Comment

SE Ambrose

Walter La Feber Post - Revisionist

J L Gaddis

A Schlesinger

Andre Fontaine

Louis Halle

William Appleman Williams

Gor Alperovitz

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

58

Websites

httpwwwanzasaartsusydeduauahascworigins_historiographyhtml

httpwwwjohndclarenet httpwwwmarxistsorgarchivekrupskayaworksrolrol

26htm httprtcomnewslenin-anniversary-attitude-opinions httpwwwmarxistsorgarchiveleninquoteshtm http

factsanddetailscomchinaphpitemid=72ampcatid=2ampsubcatid=6100

59

Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic ndash Spanish Civil War Carrrsquos view is that if Russia had not come to the Republicrsquos aid in the 1936 autumn

Franco might have won the war in months not years George Orwell wrote that the ldquooutcome of the Spanish war was settled in London Paris Berlin- at any rate not in Spainrdquo Salvado agrees ldquothe reply given by the European chancelleries determined the course and outcome of the conflictrdquo and thus a failed uprising was transformed into a long civil war and international intervention ultimately assisted the rebels to victory Thomas puts beyond dispute the key influence of Nazi intervention in July to September 1936 by acknowledging they ldquorescued the geographically dispersed military insurgents against the Republic from isolation and piecemeal defeatrdquo Jackson and others argue that the successful Republic defense of Madrid turned Francorsquos military strategy from a fast finish to a war of attrition as no side had the strength for a knock-out blow

Bibliography Carr Raymond Spain (1808-1939) Part One of Two Oxford University Press London

1966 p 682 Orwell G Homage to Catalonia p 240 Ibid p 95 Thomas The Spanish Civil War 3rd Edn Harmonds-Worth 1977 p370 G Jackson p 109 In making his argument he also cites Jose Manuel Martinez Bande

Claude Bowers and Louis Fischer Jackson Gabriel A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War Thames and Hudson

London 1974

60

Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic ndash Women in Maorsquos China In her novel Wild Swans Jung Chang depicts the traditional role of women in

Chinese society ldquoI had been brought up to be courteous and respectful to anyone older than merdquo This view however is juxtaposed by historian Laurel Bossen who states that ldquothe stereotype of women as domestic subordinates politically powerless and economically burdensome is increasingly modified by evidence that Chinese women were not easily restrained they were productive and expressive and they found ways to pursue their own interestsrdquo hellip Despite conflicting views on the subjugation of women in Chinese society historians Zang Xiaoei and Bossen agree that child bearing in large numbers was an expectation in imperialist Chinahellip

Bibliography Rosemarie Tong Anne Donchin Susan Dodds Linking visions Feminist

bioethics human rights and the developing world Rowman and Littlefield 2004

Laurel Bossen- httpswwwciagovlibrarypublicationsthe-world-factbookgeoschhtml

60

Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic ndash Women in Maorsquos China In her novel Wild Swans Jung Chang depicts the traditional role of women in

Chinese society ldquoI had been brought up to be courteous and respectful to anyone older than merdquo This view however is juxtaposed by historian Laurel Bossen who states that ldquothe stereotype of women as domestic subordinates politically powerless and economically burdensome is increasingly modified by evidence that Chinese women were not easily restrained they were productive and expressive and they found ways to pursue their own interestsrdquo hellip Despite conflicting views on the subjugation of women in Chinese society historians Zang Xiaoei and Bossen agree that child bearing in large numbers was an expectation in imperialist Chinahellip

Bibliography Rosemarie Tong Anne Donchin Susan Dodds Linking visions Feminist

bioethics human rights and the developing world Rowman and Littlefield 2004

Laurel Bossen- httpswwwciagovlibrarypublicationsthe-world-factbookgeoschhtml

61

Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians

Topic ndash Cult of Stalin Liberal historians such as Richard Pipes and Robert Conquest place great importance on the

role of Stalinrsquos cult of personality and tend to focus on Stalinrsquos purges and his use terror tactics in the control and manipulation of the masses These liberal historians had few resources available to them and relied on publicized information the accounts of Soviet exiles and documents such as the census Robert Conquestrsquos perspective in his book titled The Great Terror Stalinrsquos Purge of the Thirties is criticized by revisionist historian Lewis Siegelbaum as being a ldquoclassical interpretation of a paranoid ruler who ruthlessly exterminated former colleagues and millions of others in his unquenchable thirst of powerrdquo (Skolov and Siegelbaum 2000 p22) Historians from the liberal school of thought accredit the many millions of deaths during the Stalinist period to Stalinrsquos megalomania and despotism whilst rejecting the argument that Stalin had a base of social support ldquoThe totalitarian modelhellip emphasized the omnipotence of the totalitarian state and its lsquolevers of controlrsquo paid considerable attention to ideology and propaganda and largely neglected the social realm (which was seen as passive fragmented by the totalitarian state)rdquo (Fitzpatrick 2007 p6)

Bibliography Siegelbaum L and Sokolov A (2000) Stalinism as a Way of Life A Narrative in Documents

(Annals of Communism Series) Yale University Press USA Fitzpatrick S (2007) The Russian Revolution 3rd revised ed Oxford University Press

London p147

• Making Historiography and Source Analysis Accessible
• What is historiography
• Types of Sources
• Australian History
• Recruitment Posters - Australia
• WWI Conscription Posters Australia
• Women missing in action Why has Anzac become a Boys Own story
• WWII Recruitment Posters Australia
• Australian Women Recruitment Posters WWII - Australia
• Japanese invasion a myth historian By Mark Forbes June 1 2002
• Vietnam War conscription Issue Australia
• Vietnam War anti- conscription Issue Australia
• Paul Ham on War The Australian ndash 4102008
• Conflicts Australians have been involved inhellip
• Australiarsquos involvement in War Ideas for teaching
• Year 12 VCE Student Essay Sample writing using historians
• Historianrsquos debate Australiarsquos History
• Blainey outlasts the History Wars IPA REVIEW ARTICLE ndash Richard
• Websites Australian History Focus
• Slide 20
• Slide 21
• Slide 22
• Twentieth Century World History
• Historiography
• Origins WWI - Historiography
• Slide 26
• Leaders writehellip
• Slide 28
• Slide 29
• Slide 30
• Slide 31
• Slide 32
• Slide 33
• Slide 34
• Stalin - Historiography
• Stalin - Historiography (2)
• Stalin - Historiography (3)
• Slide 38
• Leaders write hellip
• Hitler - Historiography
• Hitler - Historiography (2)
• Hitler - Historiography (3)
• Hitler - Historiography (4)
• Hitler - Historiography (5)
• Hitler -Historiography
• Leaders write hellip (2)
• Mao - Historiography
• Mao - Historiography (2)
• Mao - Historiography (3)
• Slide 50
• Cold War Historiography
• Soviet Archives Cold War Historiography
• Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography
• Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography (2)
• Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography (3)
• Who was to blame for the Cold War - historiography (4)
• Slide 57
• Websites
• Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians
• Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians
• Year 12 IB Student Essay Sample writing using historians (2)