Was 1921-1941 the first Cold War? Testing a Hypothesis

Tuesday 2 December, 4pm

Old Common Room, Balliol College, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BJ. Coffee will be served from 4pm.

Professor Cyrus Schayegh, Geneva Graduate Institute, with response from David Priestland, Professor of Modern History (St Edmund Hall)

Historians habitually recognize the Cold War had roots predating the mid-1940s. I am writing an article testing the hypothesis that the Cold War began after the Russian civil war. I unpack the hypothesis by discussing six possible objections: the socialist-capitalist confrontation did not (fully) structure the interwar years’ inter-state system; the system wasn't bipolar; the Soviet challenge to that system stopped with Stalin’s turn to “socialism in one country;” the US wasn't yet central to that system; fascism created a tripolar reality; and nuclear weapons did not yet exist. The payoff of this exercise is that it qualifies some presumably distinctive features of 1945-1991.