![]() The customary dates of the Cold War, 1947 (the year of the Truman Doctrine) to 1991 (when the Soviet Union voted itself out of existence), pick out the period when the effects of US-Soviet relations became global, and when the struggle boiled down to what was essentially an arms race. Relations warmed and cooled in those years, but at no time did either nation not consider the other to be potentially a threat to its own interests. ![]() If we interpret the Cold War as the name for US-Soviet relations (which is how George Kennan interpreted it), the dates would be 1917 to 1991. And that decision is a function of point of view. ![]() We need to have already decided what the Cold War was, or was about, before we set before-and-after dates to it. It depends on a prior act of interpretation. When we use the term Cold War, what stretch of time are we referring to? But periodization always comes second. It can seem that the first thing a historian needs to do is establish periodization. This paper is an informal look at some of the historiographic issues, as I encountered them, in Cold War studies. But writing history teaches you things about writing history: you run into conceptual and practical problems, and you have to come up with solutions. I was not trained as a historian my field is English literature, and my book is about art and ideas. ![]() I spent ten years writing a book called The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, a history of the period from 1945 to 1965. ![]()
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