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Cold War History

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Book Reviews
Michael E. Latham a a Fordham University, Online Publication Date: 01 May 2009

To cite this Article Latham, Michael E.(2009)'Book Reviews',Cold War History,9:2,287 300 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14682740902884664 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682740902884664

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Cold War History Vol. 9, No. 2, May 2009, 287300

Book reviews
Fatal misconception: the struggle to control world population, by Matthew Connelly, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2008, xiv 521 pp., ISBN: 978-0674024236.
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This brilliant, provocative, and well-written book analyses the rise of a powerful transnational movement to control human fertility. Starting in the 1920s, Matthew Connelly explains, a network of activists, scientists, demographers, and philanthropists launched an aggressive campaign to spread the knowledge and technology of population control. From the start, their liberal efforts to promote the rights and ability of individuals and families to regulate their own reproduction were also shaped by a much broader imperative of social planning. Even after the eld of eugenics was discredited by Nazi atrocities, concerns about the quantity of the worlds population remained inseparable from arguments about the need to ensure its quality, and ostensibly liberal policies aimed to alleviate poverty, raise productivity, and promote postcolonial development went hand in hand with increasingly coercive methods. The result, Connelly convincingly argues, was a system in which population controllers, answerable to nobody, claimed to know the interests of parents better than they themselves did. Connellys book is full of insights, and Cold War historians will be particularly interested in his examination of the relationship between social science, nongovernmental organizations, and foreign policymaking. Concerned that surging populations in the Global South would outstrip food supplies and deplete the capital needed to stimulate economic growth, demographers feared that plans for modernization would fail, deepening popular frustrations and creating the instability in which communism was likely to ourish. Desperate, destitute populations, they also worried, might use their control over natural resources to demand a global redistribution of wealth, or ood over international borders to alter the racial and cultural composition of the worlds afuent societies. In that context, the need to accelerate the post-colonial worlds transition toward a low mortality, low fertility equilibrium became an element of Western foreign policy, and the intrauterine device, birth control pill, and vasectomy took their place alongside the other, better known, Cold War weapons. By the late 1960s, the US Agency for International Development provided the funding for over half of all international family planning campaigns and became a major distributor of contraceptives. Lyndon Johnson also conditioned Indian economic aid and famine relief on the success of that countrys
ISSN 1468-2745 print/ISSN 1743-7962 online DOI: 10.1080/14682740902884664 http://www.informaworld.com

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family planning programme, fuelling the re that eventually led to massive repression and forced sterilization under the government of Indira Gandhi. As Connelly makes clear, however, it was the work of non-governmental organizations, including the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Population Council, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, that were most inuential in dening the threat and advocating solutions to it. They led the worlds most powerful governments into the fray, not the other way around. Connellys book also makes an immense contribution to the long-sought broadening of the eld. It is an outstanding work of multi-archival research, based on sources in France, Britain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States, and India. It is also an excellent example of how historians might do much more to explore the Cold Wars fascinating yet comparatively neglected intellectual and social history. Michael E. Latham Fordham University latham@fordham.edu q 2009, Michael E. Latham

Henry Kissinger and the American century, by Jeremi Suri, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2007, ix 358 pp., ISBN: 0674025792.

Prompted by the gradual release of masses of previously classied documents, the past few years have seen a revival of Kissingerology. Books by Robert Dallek, Jussi ki, Margaret MacMillan, and others have added to an already crowded eld Hanhima of scholarship, dominated for a decade by Walter Isaacsons 1990 Kissinger biography. Since the early 2000s almost every issue of such journals as Cold War History and Diplomatic History has included an article on the often controversial exploits of Dr. K. Dissertations are currently being written in numerous universities, ultimately leading to a reassessment of almost every aspect of American foreign policy in the early 1970s. Add to this the related assessments and reassessments of Richard Nixons equally controversial career, the always contentious ending of the Vietnam War, and the number of pages that touch upon the remarkable career of Henry Kissinger undoubtedly exceeds that of most, if not all, of Americas Cold Warriors. To nd a niche in such a crowded eld is not easy. This, alone, makes Jeremi Suris book an accomplishment. The author has produced an important contribution to the existing scholarship on Henry Kissinger. Most signicantly, Suris book places Henry Kissinger in the many different contexts in which he operated: the German Jewish milieu to which he was born and which was so dramatically destroyed in the 1930s; the immigrant community in New York in the late 1930s; the US Army during World War II; Harvard University (and American academia more broadly) in the post-war era.

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Although the book makes use of some interesting new evidence such as interviews with Kissinger and others it is important to stress that this is not a work based on archival revelations. Its appeal to potential readers will not be in laying out a series of smoking guns; in fact, given the amount of works that dwell on such real or imagined ndings, this is refreshing. Henry Kissinger and the American Century is a book that offers a broad synthesis of the intersection between Kissingers personal history and the wider historical forces that dened the American Century. Suri does an impressive job in weaving together the personal and the general. Naturally, the paucity of information on certain periods of Kissingers life particularly the early years in Germany means that some of the book is more a description of the milieu than the man. Particularly in the early chapters, a number of the judgements are based on general accounts about Jewish life in Weimar Germany, about the impact of Nazi rule in Bavaria, and about the experiences of Jewish immigrants in 1930s New York or enlisted orthodox Jews in the US army. A number of the books judgements do not reect any explicit knowledge of how Kissinger himself felt or experienced certain events but are grounded on works describing the collective experience of those who faced similar circumstances. The most signicant achievement is Suris relatively successful effort to bring out the Jewishness in Kissingers experience. As the author rightly points out, it is something that previous scholars (including the present reviewer) have rarely dared to explore because of the fear of being castigated as either overly simplistic or deeply anti-Semitic. It is also something Kissinger consistently refuses to discuss. Yet, as Suri points out in his introduction: The American century was not a democratic century, but it was a Jewish century (p. 10). This basic assumption that in the post-1945 era being Jewish was more an asset rather than a liability provides an opening to what is bound to be a controversial debate over the complex relationship between identity and power. It needs to be emphasized that Suris book is neither about Henry Kissingers life nor about his foreign policy. Indeed, the book ultimately says relatively little about Kissinger the man and even less about Kissinger the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. To be sure, Suri asserts that Kissinger was a good man; an assessment that is unlikely to endear him to most of Henry Kissingers many detractors. But that assessment is hardly at the heart of Suris narrative. Nor does Suri dwell on the intricate details of Vietnam negotiations, the opening to China, or the lengthy process that produced an era of Soviet American summitry and nuclear arms agreements. In the end, as the author puts it, the book is a narrative of global change, a study of how social and political transformations across multiple societies created our contemporary world (p. 4). Ultimately, Jeremi Suris Henry Kissinger manages the improbable feat of introducing readers to a new way of looking at Americas least loved but most respected Cold War statesman. It does so not by revealing something that would force us to re-examine certain policy decisions of that well-known and much discussed career. Rather, Suri has placed Kissinger the man within the context of his times and

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upbringing. Because he does not discuss policymaking in a deep way, however, it will be left for others to explore how much that context ultimately mattered. ki Jussi Hanhima Graduate Institute, Geneva Jussi.Hanhimaki@graduateinstitute.ch ki q 2009, Jussi Hanhima

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Documents on British policy overseas, series III, volume V: the southern ank in crisis, 1973 1976, edited by Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon, London, Routledge, 2006, 545 pp., ISBN: 9780714651149.

Reecting on his years as Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan noted that foreign policy was a mixture of the old and the new. We may initiate but we also inherit.1 This fascinating new compilation of recently declassied documents, edited by Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon, reveals the truth of Callaghans words. Soon after returning to power in March 1974, the Labour government of Harold Wilson faced a series of events which threatened to undermine the cohesion of the NATO alliance and portended a new round of Cold War tension. The renewal of Greco-Turkish conict in Cyprus, ignited by the overthrow of Archbishop Makarios and escalated by the Turkish invasion of the island, the sudden end of authoritarian rule in Portugal, and the death of Francisco Franco in Spain a year later created an uncertain political climate which policymakers feared would be exploited by Moscow. Drawing largely on Foreign and Commonwealth Ofce les, Hamilton and Salmon effectively portray a government coming to grips not only with the new challenges of the Southern Flank crises but also with their historical inheritances. In Cyprus, Britains post-colonial legacy compelled London to take an active role in efforts to broker a peaceful settlement, even as the complex dynamics of the crisis placed a solution out of reach. In the Iberian Peninsula, Labours policies were bolstered by longstanding antipathies towards the authoritarianism of the Portuguese and Spanish regimes, as well as public sentiment at home. As a result, many Labour ofcials greeted their fall as an opportunity for democratic revival, in contrast to the apocalyptic fears of communist penetration and Soviet domination held by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (p. 440). Indeed, an underlying theme throughout the compilation is the way in which the Wilson governments political and ideological inheritances placed it at odds with its American allies. Although relations at the top remained cordial, the British were frustrated with what they saw as a US preoccupation with the Cold War balance in the Mediterranean. Over Cyprus, London disagreed with the Americans perceived reluctance to pressure the anti-communist military regime in Athens to de-escalate the crisis or to seek Makarios restoration (p. 95). Similarly, the Wilson government did not share the Americans pessimistic appraisal of Portuguese and Spanish socialist

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moderates ability to promote democracy, preserve US base agreements or to protect the Wests strategic position from Soviet incursion. This attention to the Anglo American relationship could have been better balanced with documentation on UKUSSR relations during the crisis, especially on events in Cyprus. While the reader is given a glimpse of Anglo Soviet contacts on the Iberian situation, there is less to demonstrate the origins of British perceptions of Soviet intentions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Overall, however, the compilations strengths outweigh its shortcomings, providing valuable insight into what proved to be a crucial period for the course of East West relations. Moreover, it sketches an interesting portrait of British diplomacy in the mid-1970s, an era in which Britain may no longer have been a pre-eminent power, but nevertheless continued to believe it had important contributions to make. Disclaimer The views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reect the views or opinions of the United States government. Note
[1] Callaghan, Time and Chance, 331.

Reference
Callaghan, James. Time and Chance. London: Collins, 1987.

Alexander Wieland Ofce of the Historian, US Department of State wielandar@state.gov q 2009, Alexander Wieland
de ric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, Europe and the end of the Cold War: a reappraisal, edited by Fre N. Piers Ludlow, and Leopoldo Nuti, London, Routledge, 2008, xiv 288 pp., ISBN: 9780415449038.

More than 20 years ago a group of social scientists published an edited volume, Bringing the State Back In, that reminded scholars of the importance of traditional state structures in understanding social conict, economic development, and transnational activities. The volume was a call to arms and it had a lasting effect on social science research.1 The contributors to Europe and the End of the Cold War have a similar aim for the study of the Cold War. They could re-title this important volume: Bringing the European States Back In. Implicitly or explicitly, each of the authors criticizes

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American scholars for over-emphasizing US inuence in the post-1945 world and for neglecting the multifaceted ways in which states across Eastern and Western Europe left their imprint on seminal events, most notably the end of the Cold War. Michael Cox is most explicit on this point: what many American accounts tend to understate is the rather critical part played by Europeans themselves in the recreation of a new kind of Europe in the post-war years (p. 13). The essays in this volume vary in how they dene this new kind of Europe. Marie-Pierre Rey and Svetlana Savranskaya draw on new Russian materials, particularly from the Gorbachev Foundation Archives, to show how Soviet foreign policy embraced the concept of a common European home, which included political reform, economic liberalization, and military non-intervention. Helga de ric Bozo, N. Piers Ludlow, Andrei Grachev, Vojtech Mastny, and Haftendorn, Fre Hans Stark emphasize the inuence of Franc ois Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, and various advocates of European integration, who worked to coordinate the collapse of Soviet power, the reunication of Germany, and the emergence of a stronger European Union within a political structure that enhanced security and cooperation on the continent. fer, This was not an inevitable outcome, as the essays by Gregory Domber, Bernd Scha and Hannes Adomeit show. The rapid pace of events and the anxieties elicited by strategic transformation could have unleashed new conicts across Europe. For this reason, George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Giulio Andreotti, and Gianni De Michelis among others displayed noticeable caution, anxiety, and even opposition to any headlong rush into a new Europe. Leopoldo Nuti makes this point very well: the Italian government showed basically the same attitude as many of its European counterparts, namely a mixture of preoccupation, concern, but also willingness to fully explore the available set of national, multilateral and supranational tools to prevent the transformation of the international system from jeopardizing all the positive achievements of the previous 50 vesque, Robert years of European and Atlantic cooperation (p. 202). Jacques Le Hutchings, and Jolyon Howorth make similar points in their essays. The most original contribution to this volume comes from Kristina Spohr Readman. Drawing on newly available Estonian and British documents, she shows how Iceland and Denmark encouraged Western leaders and Gorbachev to recognize Baltic independence, particularly after the attempted Soviet crackdown in early 1991. These small countries kept the future status of the Baltic countries on the great power agenda, and they lobbied for action on behalf of citizens in the region. These efforts made it much harder for Gorbachev to claim the independence struggles in the region were an internal affair, and they boosted the condence of local activists in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. More than any other contributor, Spohr Readman analyses the specic leverage of small European states over issues like the break-up of the Soviet empire. As a whole, this volume succeeds admirably at bringing the European states back in. Scholars must now revise their standard narratives for the end of the Cold War to include a larger European perspective. At the same time, questions of causality and

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relative inuence remain unanswered. How does the impact of the European states compare to that of the United States, China, Afghanistan, Iran, and other non-European actors at the time? Which Europeans mattered most and when? The volume offers some cases to address this question, but it does not provide a systematic analytical answer. Most signicant, did European inuence hinge largely on a single man, Gorbachev? Almost all of the essays in the volume show that he either accepted or pursued West European partnership when he had alternatives, at least in the short run. Was European inuence, then, largely a manifestation of Gorbachevs transformative politics, not European initiative per se? These are large and difcult questions that will occupy historians for decades to come. The contributors to this volume deserve praise for deconstructing a simple bipolar narrative and opening important new research vistas. Scholars and students of the Cold War will be well served by reading each of the thoughtful chapters in Europe and the End of the Cold War.

Note
[1] See Evans et al. (eds.), Bringing the State Back In.

Reference
Evans, Peter B., Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds. Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Jeremi Suri University of Wisconsin-Madison suri@wisc.edu q 2009, Jeremi Suri

Hostile intent: U.S. covert operations in Chile, 19641974, by Kristian Gustafson, Washington, DC, Potomac Books, 2007, xiv 317 pp., ISBN: 9781597970976.

The story of US covert operations in Chile has captivated scholars for decades, but Hostile Intent ably demonstrates that there is still plenty to learn and argue about. Using thousands of declassied documents and his own impressive interviews, Gustafson challenges what he calls potboiler fables of covert operations in Chile between 1964 and 1974 (p. 244). Without questioning Washingtons hostility towards Allende, he concludes covert action was messy: spies cannot and did not go in and

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save the day (or destroy it) (p. 16). He details how the CIAs operations repeatedly fell victim to presidential intervention. He also categorically insists that the CIA did not orchestrate the Chilean coup of 11 September 1973. If the United States could not predict it, he asks, how could it have plotted it? (p. 224) As Gustafson notes, this is an emotional topic, and what he calls his middle ground conclusions (they are actually stronger than this) will be unpopular (pp. 13, 3). Popularity aside, Hostile Intent is a valuable read for those interested in the mechanics of CIA operations abroad, not least for sparking exciting discussion. Gustafson demonstrates the importance of cross-checking historians claims against newly declassied material and of deciphering between intent and action (pp. 75, 153). He argues that proof is missing to verify previous claims and makes the case for saying perhaps when evidence does not quite t more popular accounts. He presents a fascinating picture of the CIAs difculties when faced with Cuban intelligence operations in Chile (pp. 172 f.), and he deals interestingly with the impact that US party politics and bureaucratic battles within Washington had on American foreign policy. Finally, his timeframe, which includes an examination of covert operations during Chiles 1964 election, is a welcome contrast to the all too common focus on Allendes election and his overthrow. However, my worry about Hostile Intent is that it goes too far towards exonerating Washington and the CIA. After the dismal failure of Tracks I and II, the US was more cautious, but not, I would argue, to the extent of watching history unfold (chapter 5). Furthermore, I agree with Gustafson that the CIA was not responsible for masterminding the coup but, contrary to his claim that Washington had no contingency plans for dealing with a new military government, they did. Two inter-agency contingency papers were produced in August and early September 1973. These underline the desire of the White House, the State Department, and the CIA to help military leaders if they toppled Allendes beleaguered government, to facilitate repression of any resistance, and to encourage coordination between Chiles armed forces and right-wing dictatorships in the Southern Cone. Immediately after the coup, the US then enthusiastically embraced General Pinochet with words and deeds. (There is a difference between not an unwelcome event as Gustafson says on page 227 and Kissingers celebrations). This is important because it tells us something about the dimensions of hostile intentions, not only towards Allende, but also towards democracy. Perhaps it is time to move beyond the old battles over Chile that Gustafson has chosen to ght, and to contextualize covert operations in Chile within a broader understanding of US Latin American relations during the Nixon years and Latin Americas Cold War. But I say perhaps because I suspect that the historiographical battle over US covert operations in Chile is far from over. Tanya Harmer London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) T.Harmer@lse.ac.uk q 2009, Tanya Harmer

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Palgrave advances in Cold War history, edited by Saki R. Dockrill and Geraint Hughes, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, xvi 303 pp., ISBN: 9781403934475.

This edited volume by two well-established Cold War scholars at Kings College London is the perfect springboard for anyone seeking a broad overview of recent developments in the eld. Historians from all over Europe and the United States contribute chapters that can be roughly divided into three sections strategy, economics, and approaches. Richard Aldrich contributes an informative piece on the strategic uses of intelligence, complementing Lawrence Freedman and Hughess thorough overview of how superpower strategies adapted as new leaders emerged. (One of the books most insightful points is Freedman and Hughess observation that the problem of counterinsurgency rst addressed in earnest by the Kennedy administration remains unresolved to this day (pp. 151 3)). This ability to adjust is also addressed in Christopher Bluths discussion of nuclear strategy, a chapter inaptly named Science and Technology, and in Patrick Major and Rana Millers piece on the so-called cultural turn in Cold War history. (The latters distinction between the cultural Cold War and Cold War culture and its massive bibliography make it a must-read for scholars who are interested in jumping on the cultural bandwagon). Decolonization strategies are addressed by John Kent, who argues that Britain and France took divergent approaches to the post-colonial world order, and Lawrence Kaplan offers a convincing explanation for the persistence of the Atlantic alliance, comparing it to less successful endeavours in the East. Wolfgang Krieger and Ian Jackson separately address the role of economics in the Cold War, largely agreeing that the conict forced the West to abandon some liberal ideals and adopt state-led growth models, both in the metropolises and peripheries. In his excellent section on the changing political economy of the Cold War (pp. 40 45), Krieger argues that this abandonment was only partially reversed in the 1980s, intimating that the removal of the Soviet threat nally encouraged a more fully liberal West. Meanwhile, Jackson gives Western Europe credit for pressuring the US to adopt greater economic cooperation with the Eastern bloc, claiming that this East West integration not Washingtons containment policies eventually brought down the Iron Curtain. While most of the pieces in this volume are surveys of recent developments in a particular subeld, two pieces stand out for their spirited historiographical arguments kis defence of traditional diplomatic historys emphasis on the Jussi Hanhima national interest and Vladimir Zubok and Leopoldo Nutis survey of how ideology has become a central interpretive framework in Cold War history. While the latter largely neglects ideologys role in the Third World, where it was arguably most crucial, together the pieces provide a thorough overview of this crucial debate. Aside from a few faux pas, such as the editors reference to Walter Lafeber the quintessential Wisconsin school revisionist as a postrevisionist (p. 7), and despite being weighted heavily toward Western strategies, Saki Dockrill and Geraint Hughes

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volume is like a massive, annotated bibliography of the most important advances in Cold War history over the last few years. Graduate students will nd the volumes wide range and scholarly depth helpful as they look for ways to approach new research topics, and it can also serve established scholars who wish to keep abreast of new developments in the eld. Thomas C. Field London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) T.C.Field@lse.ac.uk q 2009, Thomas C. Field
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A failed empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev, by Vladislav M. Zubok, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2007, xvi 467 pp., ISBN: 9780807830987.

Zuboks book, gripping and insightful in equal parts, offers a remarkably rich and provocative treatment of the Soviet side of the Cold War. Stalin, the malicious manipulator, Khrushchev, the hair-brain schemer, Brezhnev, the corner-smoothing jolly peacemaker, Gorbachev, the inconsistent dreamer: the rulers of the Soviet Empire pass before the reader in quick succession, revealing their vices, vanity, paranoia, . These worthy statesmen developed and incompetence, and sometimes naivete pursued a foreign policy fraught with misguided initiatives, gross miscalculations, and unexpected consequences that, for all of its inherent inconsistencies, fell within the bounds of what Zubok calls the revolutionary-imperial paradigm. Of course, we have heard of the revolutionary-imperial paradigm before in Zuboks earlier co-authored book, Inside the Kremlins Cold War, which thundered like a hydrogen bomb upon the deeply-Americanized Cold War historiography. In comparison with that earlier feat, Zuboks later book shows signs of leaning to one side: the paradigm is still there, like the Jedi force, pulsing in the background, but it does not always connect with the narrative. Zuboks narrative in fact strongly favours the imperial part of the paradigm; many Soviet foreign policy schemes, until Gorbachev, link back, more or less blatantly, to a realist search for security, spilling over where circumstances permit to ruthless imperialist expansionism. Zubok argues that Marxism-Leninism served as a prism through which the Soviet leaders perceived the outside world. For example, Stalins view of the world was strongly coloured by an ideologically-driven conviction that the imperialist powers would be at each others throats in no time, giving him an opportunity to exploit their contradictions to augment power and secure the Soviet post-war gains. But then Stalins worldview, as Zubok points out, was an amalgam, inuenced not least by his pathological suspiciousness, experiences of the domestic power struggle, memories of the interwar diplomacy and economic upheavals, his reading of history and

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philosophy. How much of this salad was made up of revolutionary ingredients is very difcult to say, and it is even more difcult to say what difference they made for the power-driven, xenophobic, and increasingly cynical Soviet dictator (p. 18). The application of the revolutionary-imperial paradigm to Nikita Khrushchevs policies is a more straightforward business. Khrushchev stands out as a genuine and passionate believer in the global victory of Communism (p. 105). But, as Zubok points out, Khrushchev probably never read Lenins works on imperialism; his ideology lacked clear parameters, except perhaps for the genuine belief that the imperialists were out to get him. But that belief did not prevent Khrushchev from seeking accommodation with the class enemy, the United States, and quarrelling with the class brothers, the Chinese. One of the greatest strengths of the book is its coverage of the Brezhnev years. Brezhnev, the dull apparatchik, the colourless embodiment of stagnation, bureaucratic inertia, and creeping neo-Stalinism for all of his aws emerges from the shadows of tente. Brezhnev staked his reputation on policy-making as the real soul behind de tente in an unexpected performance of true statesmanship. He did so, Zubok says, de because he feared war. This is a convincing answer but does it represent the revolutionary or the imperial part of the paradigm, or does it belong to an entirely different paradigm? Zubok offers a balanced and nuanced treatment of the Gorbachev years. Gorbachev gradually moved to dismantle the revolutionary-imperial paradigm, replacing it with new thinking which, Zubok believes, was not so new to begin with, as it went back, at least in part, to the Brezhnev era and, beyond that, to the views of the men and women of the sixties. One possibility, which, in my view, Zubok does not address, is that new thinking imbued Soviet foreign policy with revolutionary dynamism unseen for many years. Gorbachev did not want to make the world red but his outlook was not without a messianic aspect. After all, new thinking, Gorbachev famously wrote, worked not only for our country but for the world. Alas, the aims of his revolution contradicted, rather than coincided with, the imperatives of maintaining an empire, hence Gorbachevs bafing inconsistencies (p. 301). Or does this turn the revolutionary-imperial paradigm upside down? I am not convinced that any paradigm can truly explain the innite complexity of the Soviet policy-making process, with its many players, passions, prot-making schemes, enlightened apparatchik-ism, and downright bureaucratic stupidity. That said, Zuboks book is an absolutely brilliant and compelling study, a Joe-2 of the Cold War historiography, likely to have lasting fallout for the scholarly debate and public perception of the Soviet Cold War. Sergey Radchenko London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) S.Radchenko@lse.ac.uk q 2009, Sergey Radchenko

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Hungary in the Cold War, 19451956: between the United States and the Soviet Union, by szlo Borhi, Budapest, Central European University Press, 2004, ix 352 pp., ISBN: 9639241806. La 1956: European and global perspectives, edited by Carole Fink, Frank Hadler, and Tomasz tsverlag, 2006, 354 pp., ISBN: 9783937209562. Schramm, Leipzig, Leipziger Universita

In or outside of Hungary, few historians know as much about the post-1945 foreign szlo Borhi, author of Hungary relations of this East-Central European country as La in the Cold War. Having done extensive research in Hungarian, Russian, and US archives, he is able to show the same events from the perspective of both competing superpowers, in a tone which is undoubtedly critical yet far from hawkish or accusatory. For instance, he found ample evidence that in Hungary the process of Sovietization began as early as 1945 1946, rather than after the announcement of the Marshall Plan (as Vladislav Zubok and others claimed). On the other hand, he also reveals that at rst the US government proved quite reluctant to stand up to the Kremlin for the cause of Hungarian democracy an attitude he convincingly explains partly with Budapests relatively low rank on Washingtons ofcial geopolitical priority list (on which Hungary came only after Greece, Turkey, Iran, Italy, Korea, and France) and partly with British foot-dragging and US dissatisfaction with the perceived timidity of the Hungarian non-Communist politicians. One of the greatest merits of the book is its comprehensive character. While the author publishes more new information about Hungarys external relations than about domestic politics, he makes a determined and successful effort to cover both spheres and to investigate how they were interrelated with each other. He has managed to write a monograph that depicts the entire spectrum of Hungarian political and economic life in the given period, rather than only one or another segment. Specically, he has unearthed a vast amount of hitherto unpublished data about Moscows economic exploitation of Hungary, Soviet interference with the work of the Anglo-American members of the Allied Control Commission, the anti-American sabotage trials fabricated by the Hungarian authorities, Washingtons psy-war operations against the Communist regime, and the US governments lukewarm response to the 1956 revolution. As indicated by its subtitle, Borhis analysis of Hungarian foreign policies is focused primarily on Budapests bilateral relations with the two superpowers, though it might also have been worth investigating Hungarys involvement in other regional crises, such as the Soviet Yugoslav conict (a topic extensively studied by another szlo Ritter), the Austrian question, and the Korean War. Hungarian historian, La In addition, the books emphasis on describing Hungarys Sovietization as a gradual but well-planned, uninterrupted, and unstoppable process largely overshadows another peculiarity of Stalins diplomatic methods, namely his penchant for abrupt tactical shifts from exibility to confrontation (or vice versa). Still, these potential deciencies are certainly of minor importance, particularly if one takes into

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consideration how few comprehensive monographs based on extensive archival documentation have been published in English about Hungary or any other Sovietcontrolled East European country. Borhis book ends with the same year around which 1956 European and Global Perspectives is centred. This excellent collection of essays on a key period of the Cold War is truly panoramic in its scope. Its 13 contributors, representing over half a dozen nations, pay due attention not only to political, diplomatic, and military matters, but also to economic issues, church activity, culture, and sports. Several of them, such as Volker Berghahn and Barbara Keys, reveal the complex and hitherto often neglected interplay between state organs and national or international NGOs, making it clear that the Cold War was not waged by governments alone. In a geographical sense, the books composition is somewhat disproportionate. While focused on Europe, it also covers the Middle East and Africa in a few separate essays, but Asian topics (e.g. the questions of Vietnamese unication and Chinas participation in the Olympics) are only briey mentioned in essays dealing with global issues. Still, it is highly commendable that numerous authors who are otherwise not specialized in the history of the developing world decided to extend their analysis to the non-European regions. For instance, Peter Kent provides fascinating information about the Vaticans views on colonialism and the desirability of Muslim Christian cooperation against Communism, while Raymond Stokes carefully investigates both the European and Middle Eastern aspects of the developed worlds oil policies. This approach is mirrored by that of Motti Golani, who boldly and convincingly demonstrates that Israels decision to trigger the Suez War should be seen in the larger context of Tel Avivs search for European allies, rather than analyzed solely as a manifestation of the Arab Israeli conict. I nd it a bit regrettable that a crucially important event of 1956 the 20th Soviet party congress at which Nikita Khrushchev made his famous secret speech is covered somewhat in passing and laconically rather than analytically. While the books authors clearly recognize the profound role it played in the Soviet Yugoslav rapprochement and the political upheavals in Eastern Europe, they do not seek to explain why Khrushchev decided to re-examine Soviet domestic and foreign policies to such a great extent. Of the contributors, Kent, Stokes, Norbert Wiggershaus, Andrey Edemskiy, and Mathieu Segers have backed up their observations and conclusions with particularly extensive archival documentation. Apart from offering new perspectives, Edemkiy, Segers, Kent, Berghahn, Golani, and Keys also deserve praise for having concentrated on the specic events and contexts of 1956. In contrast, a few other essays, such as Carole Finks, seem to be largely compilations of other scholars publications or describe a relatively long period in which the year of 1956 constitutes only one segment. All in all, this collection of essays gives the reader much insight into a highly eventful period of the post-1945 era. Justiably enough, its authors consider 1956

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a turning point in diplomatic, political, and economic relations, and they colourfully describe how the wind of change swept not only through Europe but through the entire world. zs Szalontai Bala Mongolia International University aoverl@yahoo.co.uk zs Szalontai q 2009, Bala

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