Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev [Paperback]

 

 

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According to this pair of historians, the cause of the Cold War was more a misunderstanding of the other side's position than a deep-seated ideological confrontation between two super-powers. At the close of World War II, Stalin and his henchmen were looking to forge some kind of agreement with the West that would divide the world into spheres of influence; something akin to the imperial divisions arising out of the Congress of Vienna era after the fall of Napoleon. In this case, the Soviets would take Eastern Europe and the Far East as their domain. This sought-after arrangement fell apart when a new set of western leaders emerged shortly after the war with the likes of Truman and Attlee. President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb on Japanese cities seemed to suggest to Stalin that America was not interested in sharing superpower status with any other country. As one firmly committed to the Comiform position of strengthening Communism/Marxism at home, Stalin insisted that the Soviet Union to be, at least, guaranteed substantial war reparations in the form of territorial influence. When the western powers refused to recognize this need by countering with the Marshall Plan and aid to Greece in 1947, Stalin quickly switched to a more antagonistic and aggressive position against Britain and the United States. The late 40s became a time when the Kremlin, under the guidance of the old Marxist guard, reverted to using Revolutionary rhetoric in referring to Russia as democratic and the US as imperialistic. This became the time when a sense of deep suspicion of the other side's motive ruled the day. The spy program, as it related to ferreting out atomic secrets from western sites, started to ramp up. Stalin started to move on consolidating his hold over Eastern Europe, especially Yugoslavia, and China started to appear as the new power in the East. Meantime, Truman and other western leaders were about to set up a two-Germany policy as a line in the sand against any further Soviet westward advances. As this escalation of hostility took only a couple of years to develop into hardened lines of propaganda-based fear and loathing, it was to take many more years before relations would return to a saner level. Both sides, according to Zubok and Pleshakov, were guilty of overstating their fears and powers. The assumption that the other side had the capability of advancing on their territory at a moment's notice was obviously a residual of five years of war that had deeply scarred the psyche of those in leadership. Nobody knows for sure as to when the Cold War broke out and how it was prosecuted along the way, simply because both sides operated behind a veil of secrecy that was only rent in the late 1980s with the collapse of the Berlin War and old Soviet Empire. The authors of this book bring into play a lot of effective insights as to how the Kremlin really looked over this period: from the Machiavellian monsters like Stalin to the hardened ideologues like Zhdanov to the seasoned diplomats like Molotov to the opportunistic reformers like Khrushchev. Like every other power base on the face of the earth throughout history, this was not a group of tyrants collectively committed to a fiendish game of brinkmanship that could end in the destruction of the world at anytime. The problem here was that the other side didn't really know how truly divided and vulnerable they were until well after the crisis was over. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to obtain a more balanced view on what is to this day a period of great mystery.

I found this book an interesting look at the key men who ran Soviet foreign policy between 1945-1964.

The book is arranged into biographical sketches about Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, etc., and each chapter focuses on the foreign policy issue they were most involved with. I found this a little dissatisfying, since it was not strictly chronological, but I assume most readers would have a basic handle on Cold War chronology.

The chapters on Stalin, Molotov and Khushchev were the most interesting. I think this book would be most useful to college undergrads in Russian history or 20th Century diplomacy.

Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Kruschev, opens a new dimension to those who are intrested in reading what had really happened during the Cold War. The sections about the atomic bomb preperations and effort of Stalin and three consequent letters of Khruschev to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile crisis -from which we understand caused a strategic policy change by the CPSU- are valuable pieces of information. A useful insight which could bu read as a thriller.

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