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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
The conflict between East and West had its origins in diverging views of how society should be organised which emerged in the course of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industrialisation: the contrast between the pluralism of ‘Western’ civilisation, which in principle permitted a multiplicity of ways of life and patterns of power, and the centralised all-powerful state with its ‘Asiatic’ imprint; the contrast between capitalist means of production and socialist planning; the contrast between a parliamentary state under the rule of law and a totalitarian state. Such contrasting attitudes appeared to be irreconcilable, but they were indissolubly linked, at the latest, from the time of the Bolshevik victory in the October Revolution of 1917. Furthermore, the Bolshevik's seizure of power in Russia turned these conflicting views into an international political problem. By claiming to be the vanguard of an historically necessary world revolutionary movement the leadership of the Soviet Union tied a particular combination of socialist and anti-Western attitudes to the advancement of Soviet national interests, thus introducing into the international system a specific conflict between ‘Western’ industrialised nations and the Soviet state.
2 Cf. the conclusions drawn in my research, The Division of the World 1941–1955 (London: Routledge, 1988).Google Scholar
3 This is shown with especial impressiveness in the records prepared by Wilhelm Pieck of the discussions he had with the Soviet leaders. Cf. Badstübner, Rolf / Loth, Wilfried (eds), Wilhelm Pieck: Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschlandpolitik 1945–1952 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993).Google Scholar
4 Cf. also Loth, Wilfried ‘Containment on Two Sides. The Origins of the Cold War reconsidered’ in Migliazza, Alessandro and Decleva, Enrico (eds), Diplomazia e storia delle relazioni internazionali: Studi in onore di Enrico Serra (Milan: Guiffre Editore, 1991), 479–492.Google Scholar
5 I am here referring to Herz, John H. ‘Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, Vol. 2. no. 2 (1950), 157–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar However, I consider that Herz underestimates the possibilities of escaping from the dilemma.
6 Cf. here the contributions in Loth, Wilfried, Ost–West-Konflikt und deutsche Frage. Historische Ortsbestimmungen (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1989).Google Scholar
7 More on this in detail in Loth, Wilfried, Das Ende der Nachkriegsordnung aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 18 (26 April 1991), 3–10.Google Scholar
