Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary - Hardcover

Fursenko, Aleksandr; Naftali, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393058093 ISBN 13: 9780393058093

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006

Synopsis

What the Kremlin wanted during the Cold War and what it was willing to do to get it.

Nikita Khrushchev was a leader who risked war to get peace during the most dangerous years of the twentieth century. In Khrushchev's Cold War, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, authors of the Cuban missile crisis classic "One Hell of a Gamble," bring to life head-to-head confrontations between Khrushchev and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Drawing from their unrivaled access to Politburo and Soviet intelligence materials, they reveal for the first time three moments when Khrushchev's inner circle restrained him from plunging the superpowers into war. Combining new insights into the Cuban crisis, startling narratives on the hot spots of Suez, Iraq, Berlin, and Southeast Asia, and vivid portraits of leaders in the developing world who challenged Moscow and Washington, Castro, Lumumba, Nasser, and Mao Khrushchev's Cold War provides one of the most gripping and authoritative studies of the crisis years of the Cold War. 16 pages of illustrations

About this title

About the Author

Aleksandr Fursenko, one of Russia’s leading historians, is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Timothy Naftali, a frequent contributor to Slate and NPR, is director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

From Publishers Weekly

In the crowded field of Cold War historiography, Fursenko and Naftali continue to unearth valuable gems from newly available Soviet government documents, a portion of which were first put to use in their history of the 1962 U.S.-Soviet standoff over Cuba (One Hell of a Gamble). Building on increased access to such material, they develop a fascinating picture of the inner dynamics of the Soviet state and its leadership during the Khrushchev era that far surpasses anything U.S. intelligence could manage at the time. They make a convincing case that Khrushchev's major, post-Stalin reorientation of Soviet foreign policy was rooted in competition on the global playing field (and a policy of social regeneration at home), along with a need to cloak the U.S.S.R.'s weaknesses in arms and resources vis-à-vis the U.S. This volatile combination reinforces a strategy of bluffs and brinkmanship in several Cold War crises between 1956 and 1962—in the Middle East, Central Europe and the Caribbean. Yet perhaps most surprisingly, Khrushchev's foreign policy—despite an energy that, when unchecked, "tended toward recklessness"—came with a genuine desire for peaceful coexistence between the superpowers not seen again until Gorbachev. (Oct.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0393058093
• ISBN 13: 9780393058093
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 672