"More a result of mutual misunderstanding than of expansionist policies by either the U.S.A or the U.S.S.R." Discuss this view of the out break of the Cold War in the period 1945-53.

... "More a result of mutual misunderstanding than of expansionist policies by either the U.S.A or the U.S.S.R." Discuss this view of the out break of the Cold War in the period 1945-53. This view of the outbreak of the Cold War in 1945-53 refutes the extremism of the orthodox and revisionist views, attesting a middle ground of "mutual understanding" that avoids appropriating blame to the policies of either superpower. However, the issue is less dichotomous than the hypothesis allows for. To call the Soviet Union's foreign policy "expansionist" indicates that it has been interpreted as such, and is therefore subject to a possible misunderstanding of their motives for doing so. For example, Melvyn Leffler stresses the "reasonable criterion" when judging American and Soviet security demands, emphasizing that especially in the case of the Soviet Union, security was very much a reasonable imperative given their historical experience with invasions from contiguous

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