Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) - Softcover

Mitrovich, Gregory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801475775 ISBN 13: 9780801475771

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Following the Allied victory in World War II, the United States turned its efforts to preventing the spread of Communism beyond Eastern Europe. Gregory Mitrovich argues, however, that the policy of containment was only the first step in a clandestine campaign to destroy Soviet power.

Drawing on recently declassified U.S. documents, Mitrovich reveals a range of previously unknown covert actions launched during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Through the aggressive use of psychological warfare, officials sought to provoke political crisis among key Soviet leaders, to incite nationalist tensions within the USSR, and to foment unrest across Eastern Europe. Mitrovich demonstrates that inspiration for these efforts did not originate within the intelligence community, but with individuals at the highest levels of policymaking in the U.S. government.

National security advisors, Mitrovich asserts, were adamant that the Soviet threat must be eliminated so the United States could create a stable, prosperous international system. Only the shifting balance of power caused by the development of Soviet nuclear weapons forced U.S. leaders to abandon their goal of subverting the Soviet system and accept a world order with two rival superpowers.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Mitrovich is a Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.

From the Back Cover

Winner of the 2001 Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize given by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations

"Gregory Mitrovich makes a good case that aggressive covert attempts to weaken the Soviet system were a more significant and integrated part of high-level U.S. thinking than has generally been recognized. In the process he has produced a wealth of new research on key individuals, important policy debates, and incessant bureaucratic battles, which will be useful for anyone studying this critical period of the Cold War."--Journal of Cold War Studies

"This is a very important book on the early Cold War and Western strategy, which challenges some of the standard assumptions and provokes many more interpretative questions. . . . The fact that the book reveals so much about American offensive strategy makes it extremely important for those interested in reinterpreting the Cold War. We now know that it was the basic objective of U.S. policy makers from as early as 1948 to destroy Soviet power, not merely to contain it."--Millennium: Journal of International Studies

"While the official U.S. position was, from early in the Cold War, the `containment' of Soviet ambitions, Mitrovich argues that this was generally a public mask for plans that countenanced offensive as well as defensive action. . . . Undermining the Kremlin is a very fine book. Historians of Cold War diplomacy, policy analysts, political scientists, and others interested in institutional politics and bureaucratic infighting will find much to digest here."--Journal of Conflict Studies

"Undermining the Kremlin is a stimulating and eye-opening account of American grand strategy--especially `psychological warfare'--during the Truman and early Eisenhower years."--Marc Trachtenberg, University of Pennsylvani

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801475775
• ISBN 13: 9780801475771
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256