Talk:Historiography of the Cold War

Pop-culture?
Is there honestly a need for the two-liner section on how the phrase "height of the Cold War" has been misused? Many other phrases have been used as exaggerations; it is a common linguistic occurrence and not notable. The section and footnote are neither of them related to the historiography of the Cold War. I suggest removal. -Denihilonihil (talk) 14:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. It looks like original research, too (its footnote refers only to a Google hit count).  I'm removing it, since the citation is so weak and there's no obvious rationale for its inclusion. —Eric S. Smith (talk) 14:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Post-revisionism
Ultramarine, as I've pointed out several times, your edit gives a skewed picture of Gaddis' book. Whereas the paragraph selected by User 172 presents a balanced summary of Gaddis' thesis (as I requested), the two additional paragraphs that you insist on putting in give disproportionate emphasis to one particular element; the existing paragraph makes the point quite adequately, there's no need to ram the point home with two more, excessively long excerpts -- that's overkill. I would also point out that no other book referenced in the article is allotted more than a single paragraph excerpt, there's no good reason for this book to be the lone exception. Please don't keep restoring those excerpts; when you simply disregard my plainly explained objections and persist in putting them back, you are engaging in POV-pushing, which is disallowed under WP:NPOV.

And PS: in your haste to get those excerpts back in, you also (3 times) made two unrelated paragraphs of text disappear into the footnotes. Would it be asking too much to request that you take more care with your edits? Cgingold 01:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * See this diff, you are incorrect. . Stop distorting what the book says. What you delete is the central conclusions of the book. If there is anything that should be changed, it is the general misrepresentation in "Post-revisionism" paragraph, misleadingingly impying that views from the 70s, such as Gaddis views then, are the best current consensus and what he thinks now after being able to read the Soviet archives.Ultramarine 12:28, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Ya know, I'm not sure what bothers me more, your persistent POV-pushing, or your utterly careless editing, which -- once again -- made two entirely innocent paragraphs of text "disappear" into the footnotes.


 * How on earth can you can accuse me of "distorting what the book says"? -- that's absurd. All I've done is remove two excessively long excerpts that expanded on the very same "Stalin theme" which is nicely summarized in the other excerpt. "...and it took [Stalin] in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place." That states things pretty plainly, if you ask me. Sorry, but you're the one who is pushing a POV here, insisting that two entire additional paragraphs are somehow required to make that point. Evidently you either haven't bothered to read, or somehow don't comprehend -- or simply don't care about -- the issue of undue emphasis.


 * So, how do we get beyond this impasse? There's no way I'm going to sign off on including those long excerpts in this article. However, in the interest of achieving an outcome that we both can live with, I've read over the relevant parts once again, and I have selected an additional passage that pointedly reinforces the "Stalin theme". If you can improve on this, please do -- but please don't go any longer than what I've come up with. Cgingold 13:54, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Please give a diff for you claim of "-- once again -- made two entirely innocent paragraphs of text "disappear" into the footnotes. " Instead of the cited paragraphs, the alternative is to change the rest of the text to reflect their content, which clearly puts most of the blame on Stalin, instead of citing the views popular during the 70s.Ultramarine 14:10, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

First, here's the text you "disappeared" into the footnotes 4 times:
 * Out of the "post-revisionist" literature has emerged a new area of inquiry that is more sensitive to nuance and interested less in the question of who started the conflict than in offering insight into U.S. and Soviet actions and perspectives.[31] From this perspective, the Cold War was not so much the responsibility of either side, but rather the result of predictable tensions between two world powers that had been suspicious of one another for nearly a century. For example, Ernest May wrote in a 1984 essay:


 * After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union were doomed to be antagonists.... There probably was never any real possibility that the post-1945 relationship could be anything but hostility verging on conflict... Traditions, belief systems, propinquity, and convenience ... all combined to stimulate antagonism, and almost no factor operated in either country to hold it back.

As to your other comment, what you are suggesting is that the views of a single historian take complete precedence over everything else that has ever been written on the subject. That's a ridiculous proposition, regardless of which historian you choose. Even if I believed that you would implement that proposal with scrupulous neutrality and balance, it would still be unacceptable to give any one author the final say on such a complex and contentious subject.

Please take a look at the sentence I've added and tell me what you think. Cgingold 14:28, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Again, give a diff for you claim regarding "disappeared". It is ridiculous to cite the views of 70s, 30 years later, after the Soviet archives were opened.Ultramarine 14:32, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've looked over your latest edit, and I think we've made some real headway on this. It had also occurred to me that those paragraphs which you moved up probably ought to come before the Gaddis section -- at least before the latter part of it. (By the way, 2 of those paragraphs were the paragraphs that you "disappeared". Just look at each of your own diffs, and you will see that they vanished from the main body of the article, showing up in the footnotes instead.) I think what you've done with your edit is basically on the right track, but it needs a little work here and there. I will come back to it later in the day when I have the time to do it right. Cgingold 14:47, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Revisionism
I certainly think it deserves to be mentioned that the revisionist camp also included denying the victims of Stalin's persecutions during the thirties as well ("may be less than 100.000" as one of its leading proponents put it) as maintaining the offical Soviet position on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.216.198.112 (talk) 22:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Added a section on historical scholarship in 2000s
It's high time this article had some content on Cold War history after Gaddis et al. Feel free to expand the section. Nautica Shad es  11:36, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Effects on the American Population
What appears to be a high school essay on the 'Effects of the Cold War on the American Population' has been added and re-added no less than five times by editors, , and , likely all the same individual. It is speculative, largely unsourced, unencyclopedic in content and tone, and largely irrelevant to the topic of the article. As such, I believe it should be removed. Nautica Shad es  13:21, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree as well. Rjensen (talk) 12:54, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Anything except origins?
There seems to be a profound lack of material on the historiography of anything except the origins. I lack publicly available sources as is but would suggest, probably, a renaming of this page to "Historiography of the origins of the cold war". Something along the lines of the "regionalization of the cold war debate", the debate over how best to interpret the vast amount