"A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" : American diplomatic history and the debate over Soviet foreign policy in the early Cold War
Date
2003
Authors
Bengtson, Tate Alexander
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Abstract
Diplomatic historians have made diverse claims about the nature of Soviet motivation and its significance to the early Cold War (1945-50) period. State motivation, a nebulous concept in any case, was particularly difficult to define for the Soviet Union; historians writing during the Cold War had to contend with a "black box" situation in which little primary source material was available on the inner workings of the Kremlin's foreign policy apparatus. Several major characterizations of Soviet motivation were advanced, each embedded with assumptions about Moscow's policy objectives that were difficult to disprove, and each connected to plausible but discrepant narratives of the superpower struggle. Curiously, the popularity of the various explanations for Soviet foreign policy mirrored the contemporary political situation in the West, and this phenomenon extended into the post-Cold War era as well, with the present shaping the interpretation of new
evidence from communist archival sources.