Using recently uncovered archival materials, personal interviews, and a broad familiarity with Russian culture,
two young Russian historians have written a major interpretation of the Cold War as seen from the Soviet shore.
"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
"[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. Hanhimäki, 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
"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
Table of Contents
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
