Preface Prologue: The View from the Kremlin, 1945 Stalin: Revolutionary Potentate Stalin and Shattered Peace Molotov: Expanding the Borders Zhdanov and the Origins of the Eastern Bloc Beria and Malenkov: Learning to Love the Bomb The Education of Nikita Khrushchev Khrushchev and the Sino-Soviet Schism Khrushchev and Kennedy: The Taming of the Cold War Postmortem: Empire without Heroes Notes Index
Two of Russia's most accomplished Cold War historians have brought us a treasure trove of arresting new information, insights, and judgments that do much to change our understanding of the Soviet Union's motives and behavior during its long and tragic confrontation with the West -- Michael R. Beschloss, author of The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963
Vladislav Zubok is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. Constantine Pleshakov is a writer who lives in Moscow.
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.
*Financial Times*
[This book is] the most significant addition to the literature on
Soviet foreign policy to have appeared since the end of the Cold
War.
*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.
*Washington Post Book World*
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.
*American Historical Review*
[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.
*Canadian Slavonic Papers*
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.
*Slavonic Review*
Two of Russia’s most accomplished Cold War historians have brought
us a treasure trove of arresting new information, insights, and
judgments that do much to change our understanding of the Soviet
Union’s motives and behavior during its long and tragic
confrontation with the West.
*Michael R. Beschloss, author of The Crisis Years: Kennedy and
Khrushchev, 1960–1963*
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