American Policy Toward Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1946: An Alternative Interpretation

Abstract

From the earliest days of the Cold War few have doubted that it was principally the issue of Eastern Europe that rent the Grand Alliance. A similar unanimity long obtained with regard to American policy toward the region. Orthodoxy held that the United States, misled by fond hopes and a false ally, had watched with startled indignation as the Soviet Union imposed Communist dictatorships upon its neighbors in violation of solemn compacts. At length, however, revisionist scholars charged that the initiative had actually lain with the United States which, desiring an international Open Door for corporate capitalism, had intervened in Eastern Europe to forestall a Soviet sphere of inimical to trade and investment. From this perspective, the enforced sovietization of the region was a reaction to check the spread of Western influence in a quarter vital to the security of the USSR. ' For all their contention, the two schools of Cold War historiography are largely in agreement about the fundamental aims of American foreign policy. Particularly do they agree that the United States opposed spheres of influence, both having found the soul of American diplomacy in Wilsonianism or universalism. Though one stresses the political roots of American doctrine and