Reconstructing the Cold War

Ted Hopf, in his book Reconstructing the Cold War, recognizes and explains why “societal constructivism” is best used to explain the Soviet Unions’ actions during the early years of the Cold War. He acknowledges that other scholars have attempted to explain and solve Cold War puzzles, but simply fall short of explaining why there were conflicts after World War II. Hopf argues that other theories fail to recognize the role and importance of what it means to be Soviet and how that idea distinctly shapes the Soviet Union’s relations with other countries. Hopf presents much background information throughout the introduction from which many puzzles can be detected: Why was the Marshall Plan considered much more threatening than the Truman Doctrine? How is it possible for Yugoslavia to fall from being a strong socialist country and become an enemy of the Soviet’s just weeks after Western European countries signed the Brussels pact? Why would the Soviets again befriend and ally with Yugoslavia at a time when their defense contributions were far less needed? How is it possible for the Soviet Union to allow their alliance with China, which was their most important strategic, to fail? Why would the Soviets ignore many countries in the de-colonizing world that wished to become allies? After de-Stalinization, why did the Soviets begin a global power struggle in the third world? These aforementioned questions, which deal with early cold war causes, all fall under the central question and puzzle which animates the book: What caused the Cold War?

Hopf offers an explanation to the central puzzle, as well as the supplemental puzzles, through his societal constructivism approach. Societal constructivism explains many of the seemingly unexplainable twists during early Cold War years, by arguing that how the Soviets saw themselves dictates and explains how they related to other states. The author is very careful to explain that he does not mean Soviet elites, politicians, and leadership, but he presents the Soviet Union as an idea of what it means to be a Soviet and a socialist. Also, it is important to understand that the idea of Soviet identity is present throughout many aspects of culture including novels and films.

Hopf believes it is key to clearly define many of the ideas. He defines constructivism as a theory of reality, or ontology, in which there are three main theories of reality: objective, subjective, and intersubjective. He states that from the constructivist perspective interpretations and meanings that we come up with to make sense of the objective world are social products. Social identity, how you understand yourself in relation to others, is a main idea throughout constructivism, and social identity can be developed through one’s interactions with other people, ideas, arts and media. Hopf believes societal constructivism hypothesizes that the identities that are being generated in society as a whole inform elite understandings