Abstract：

The environmental history of the Cold War is a new research field on the basis of the practical issues which were caused by the impact of the U. S.-Soviet conflict on the environment, as well as the academic background of the development of the study of military environmental history. It is also the result of the research diversion and intersection of the studies of the Cold War history and the environmental history. In term of the subject attribute, the study of the Cold War environmental history is a unique branch of above two research fields. It inherits the research methods of trans-national borders and interaction from the study of military environmental history, and also absorbs the method of documentary analysis which is emphasized by the study of the Cold War history. As far as the content is concerned, the existing researches mainly focus on the environmental evolution of the national defense construction by countries during the Cold War, the intensive relations among wars, environment and regional situation, the environmental problems arising from the economic development and its subsequent impact of the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, and the connection among technology promotion, environment and geopolitics in the third world. It is a new trend for the study of the Cold War environmental history to carry out transnational studies, emphasize the interaction between environmental issues and the Cold War situation, and conduct the research of the Cold War history with the help of exploiting archives and documents. However, some questions still exist. For example, the data exploring is insufficient enough, and the status and the role of the environment in the Cold War are excessively elevated. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the collection and collation of the original data and investigate the commonness and individuality of the research objects to further deepen the study of the Cold War environmental history.

Published on World History, Issue 2, 2019.