The post-revisionist historian who, after the Soviet archives opened, argued Stalin bore primary responsibility for the Cold War
It took Stalin, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock the chain of causation into place.
An American Cold War historian whose 1972 first book, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, founded the post-revisionist school by arguing that neither superpower bore sole responsibility. After the Soviet archives opened in the 1990s, his 1997 We Now Know reversed course: using newly available documents, Gaddis contended that Stalin's personality and decisions were the decisive cause of the Cold War, a shift widely seen as a return to the orthodox interpretation. He won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his authorized biography of George F. Kennan, and as Yale's Robert A. Lovett Professor was hailed by The New York Times as 'the dean of Cold War historians.' His intellectual arc from post-revisionism back toward orthodoxy is itself a map of how Cold War history has been rewritten as evidence has emerged.
Career Timeline
- 1963B.A., University of Texas at Austin
- 1968Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
- 1969–1997Professor, Ohio University (Distinguished Professor 1983)
- 1972Published The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947: founded post-revisionist school
- 1987Founded the Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University
- 1991Helped establish the Cold War International History Project, Wilson Center
- 1997–현재Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University
- 2012Pulitzer Prize for Biography for George F. Kennan: An American Life