Blackwell Reference Online

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A half-century after the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that this cataclysmic event grew from a series of developments under the Old Regime. The mass upheaval of 1789 transformed the landscape of Europe, but it also shared important continuities with social and political activities during prior decades. Historical perspective did not diminish the importance of the French Revolution; it blurred the lines of rupture between one era and another ( de Tocqueville 1998 ). The scholarship on the early Cold War has reached a similar Tocquevillian moment. More than fifty years removed from the “origins” of the Soviet–American conflict, historians have shifted their gaze from some of the questions that animated scholars of a prior generation: Who was responsible for the Cold War? When did the Cold War begin? What were the alternatives to the Cold War? These questions remain interesting, but they no longer dominate research and debate. Recognizing that the Cold War grew from conditions and circumstances in prior decades, historians now focus on the inherited assumptions, memories, and institutions that made Soviet–American hostility difficult to avoid. The most influential recent works have explained the events of the early Cold War in light of pre-1945 legacies. Conflict in Europe and Asia between 1945 and 1949 reflected the “lessons” that leaders believed they had learned ... log in or subscribe to read full text