Preview
This chapter examines the root motives behind the Soviet struggle against the West and the paradigm of Soviet international behavior related to the Cold War. It suggests that decolonization contributed to the Cold War because the decline of European colonial empires in the 1950s created irresistible temptations for Soviet leaders to intervene in parts of the globe previously beyond their reach. The chapter also suggests that the Soviet Cold War consensus began to crumble when the key tenets of the revolutionary-imperial paradigm became suspect in the 1960s and 1970s. These tenets held that the West was determined to destroy the Soviet Union and its “socialist empire” by force.
Keywords: Soviet Union; Cold War; decolonization; European colonial empires; revolutionary-imperial paradigm; modernity; socialist empire
Article. 8506 words.
Subjects: History ; Cold War ; Asian History ; Contemporary History (Post 1945)
Go to Oxford Handbooks Online » abstract
Full text: subscription required
How to subscribe Recommend to my Librarian
Buy this work at Oxford University Press »
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Please, subscribe or login to access all content.