During the peak years of the Cold War, when the inscrutability of the Kremlin's agenda left many Western observers fearing imminent nuclear war, Americans could only speculate about what Soviet leaders might be thinking and planning. What were the Soviet's true intentions? Did they have a comprehensive strategy in their confrontation with the West? Was there a Communist blueprint for every action, or were they engaging in the same cautious "realpolitik" that leaders in the West practised as well? Using archival materials, personal interviews and a broad familiarity with Russian culture, two young Russian historians have written an interpretation of the Cold War as seen from the Soviet shore. Covering the volatile period from 1945 to 1962, Zubok and Pleshakov explore the personalities and motivations of the key people who directed Soviet political life and shaped Soviet foreign policy. They begin with the figure of Joseph Stalin, who was driven by the dual dream of a Communist revolution and a global empire.
They reveal the scope and limits of Stalin's ambitions by taking us into the world of his closest subordinates, the foreign minister Molotov and the Party's chief propagandist, Zhdanov. The authors expose the machinations of the secret police chief Beria and the party cadre manager Malenkov, who tried but failed to set Soviet policies on a different course after Stalin's death. Finally, they document the motives and actions of Nikita Khrushchev, who overturned many of Stalin's policies with strategizing on a global scale. The authors show how, despite such attempts to change Soviet diplomacy, Stalin's legacy continued to divide Germany and Europe, and led the Soviets to the split with Maoist China and to the Cuban missile crisis. Zubok and Pleshakov's work reveals how Soviet statesmen conceived and conducted their rivalry with the West within the context of their own domestic and global concerns and aspirations. The authors demonstrate that the Soviet leaders did not seek a conflict with the United States, yet failed to prevent it or bring it to conclusion. They also document why and how Kremlin policy-makers triggered the crises of the Cold War in Korea, Berlin and Cuba.
Zubok and Pleshakov present portraits of the men who made the West fear, to reveal why and and how they acted as they did.
Industry Reviews
Reads like a page-flipping thriller...Accounts of [Cold War] events are now bolstered for the first time with firm, enlightened documentary evidence...Offers--both to historians and to the lay generations who inherited the fear without the facts--invaluable insights into the pervasive, simmering war that forged the dominant mindset of the latter part of the twentieth century. -- John O'Mahony Financial Times [The authors] have produced a remarkably readable book...[where] new details are brought to light and several old suspicions confirmed...Zubok and Pleshakov are to be commended for their efforts. They have written a book which is as scholarly profound as accessible to a broad audience. -- Kees Boterbloem Canadian Slavonic Papers [This book is] the most significant addition to the literature on Soviet foreign policy to have appeared since the end of the Cold War. -- Robert Legvold Foreign Affairs A Russian publishing a book in the bygone Soviet era that analyzed foreign policy in terms of its architects would have been unthinkable...Most Americans of the time would have found equally unthinkable the suggestion that the Kremlin was home to anyone other than evil tyrants cut from the same drab cloth...What pleasure it is, then, that such previously unthinkable thoughts pop from every page of Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov's Inside the Kremlin's Cold War. -- Jane E. Good Washington Post Book World The most significant addition to the literature on foreign policy to have appeared since the end of the Cold War. -- Robert Levgold Foreign Policy This is a much-awaited book from two prominent young Russian historians. Covering the period from 1945 to 1962, Zubok and Pleshakov provide a fascinating look at the issues and, in particular, the personalities involved in the shaping of Soviet foreign policy from the end of World War II to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Largely relying on recently opened Soviet archives, the authors weave a picture of the Kremlin's elite, their internal struggles, differences of opinion, how they viewed the West and their Communist allies, and why they triggered some of the gravest Cold War crises (Berlin, Korea, Cuba, and so on)...The authors must be commended for one of the most important books on the Soviet side of the Cold War to have appeared in the last decade. -- J. Hanhimaki The Slavonic Review Despite the plethora of books on the origins and course of the Cold War, none have provided a documented inside account of the Soviet role in that conflict. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov are the first to help close the gap by drawing on official archives opened since the Soviet collapse...Calling for a rethinking of the Soviet role in view of new evidence, the authors say that the 'human factor,' or how personality skewed policy, has been underplayed in the literature. They offer a revealing account of the actions of Stalin and his lieutenants and then of Khrushchev and his circle. -- Carl A. Linden American Historical Review
