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On Moral Equivalency and Cold War History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

John Lewis Gaddis
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Abstract

The controversies over the “National History Standards” and the Smithsonian's abortive effort to mount a fiftieth anniversary exhibit on the decision to drop the atomic bomb, along with insights drawn from the opening of former Soviet and Eastern European archives, highlight the “moral equivalency” debate being waged over the writing and teaching of Cold War history. Gaddis suggests the need for historians to rethink some of their academic approaches to this subject, using a moral as opposed to a materialist framework.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 10 , March 1996 , pp. 131 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1996

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References

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3 Robert S. McNamara, with VanDeMark, Brian, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1995), xviGoogle Scholar. For two examples of such Soviet memoirs, see Arbatov, Georgi, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Times Books, 1992);Google Scholar and Dobrynin, Anatoly, In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995Google Scholar).

4 The best single source for these new materials is the Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institution, indefatigably edited by James HershbergGoogle Scholar.

5 Bibliographies on both of these controversies are already enormous. The most balanced coverage has probably appeared in the Chronicle of Higher EducationGoogle Scholar.

6 This appeared to be the conclusion of a roundtable at the 1995 annual convention of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations on “Culture and Diplomacy,” which featured Emily Rosenberg, Walter Hixson, Robert McMahon, and Jessica GienowGoogle Scholar.

7 See, on this point, Macdonald, Douglas J., “Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Challenging Realism, Refuting Revisionism,” International Security 20 (Winter 1995/96), 152–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Malia, Martin, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York: Free Press, 1994),Google Scholarstrongly criticizes Soviet studies for neglecting the importance of ideology.

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24 A point now made clear by Holloway, David, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Rhodes, Richard, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995Google Scholar).

25 See Gaddis, John Lewis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 142Google Scholar.