Historians have often disagreed on the origins of the Cold War placing the blame on either the United States, or the Soviet Union, or even maintaining a neutral stance. This is apparent with the various schools of thought as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who is an Orthodox historian, argues that the Soviet Union was aggressively trying to expand its sphere of influence into Europe due to Stalin’s expansionism, his anti-west paranoia and the nature of Marxism-Leninism – that international world revolution was to occur due to the inevitable class conflicts resulting from capitalism, and thus people would adopt communism. Schlesinger’s stance also regarded the United States as a passive and benign nation, only responding to Soviet aggression and hostility. It is also the Orthodox school of thought that believes that Stalin broke agreements at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences whilst also ignoring the Atlantic Charter which outlined post-war democracy in Europe. Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe however, disagree since they belong to the revisionist school of thought which
argues that the United States was predominantly to blame for the beginning of the Cold War. This was because they were increasingly antagonizing and aggressive towards the Soviet Union via the Marshall Plan. The US exploitation of the USSR’s economic vulnerabilities from being war-torn and the advantage of their wealthy, booming economy is what led revisionists to believe that the US was neither passive nor benign but rather driven by economic self-interests and priorities as they could set up a permanent American presence in post-war Europe. The Marshall Plan remains a key aspect of their argument for US aggression and they consider atomic diplomacy too as a key breakdown in relations between the two states. The last main school of thought to come in more recent times was post revisionism which Robert Jervis belongs to. He advocates that neither nation was to blame for the beginning of the Cold War as it was inevitable due to a security dilemma that pushed both countries to prioritize their self-interests with a presence of miscommunication and a clash of social systems.