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For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War, by Melvyn P. Leffler
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To the amazement of the public, pundits, and even the policymakers themselves, the ideological and political conflict that had endangered the world for half a century came to an end in 1990. How did that happen? What caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did?
The distinguished historian Melvyn P. Leffler homes in on four crucial episodes when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding, or ending hostilities and asks why they failed: Stalin and Truman devising new policies after 1945; Malenkov and Eisenhower exploring the chance for peace after Stalin's death in 1953; Kennedy, Khrushchev, and LBJ trying to reduce tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; and Brezhnev and Carter aiming to sustain d�tente after the Helsinki Conference of 1975. All these leaders glimpsed possibilities for peace, yet they allowed ideologies, political pressures, the expectations of allies and clients, the dynamics of the international system, and their own fearful memories to trap them in a cycle of hostility that seemed to have no end.
For the Soul of Mankind illuminates how Reagan, Bush, and, above all, Gorbachev finally extricated themselves from the policies and mind-sets that had imprisoned their predecessors, and were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.
- Sales Rank: #207374 in Books
- Published on: 2008-09-02
- Released on: 2008-09-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 1.35" w x 5.50" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 608 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Drawing on extensive research in American and Soviet archives, Bancroft Prize–winner Leffler (A Preponderance of Power) offers a scintillating account of the forces that constrained Soviet and American leaders in the second half of the 20th century. Leffler begins by admitting that he was shocked by the rapid demise of communism. If Reagan and Gorbachev could end the Cold War, why hadn't earlier leaders been able to do so? To answer that question, Leffler examines five crucial moments when Washington and Moscow thought about avoiding or modulating the extreme tension between them. At the end of WWII, Leffler says, Stalin thought that cooperation with the West might be preferable to entrenched hostility. Yet he and Truman were pressed by an international order that engendered... fear to make decisions that led to Cold War and shaped policy for decades. Leffler examines why Eisenhower and Malenkov couldn't wipe the slate clean after Stalin's death; how Khrushchev, Kennedy and Johnson reacted to the pressures of international allies and domestic political enemies; why d�tente foundered under Carter and Brezhnev, and what circumstances allowed leaders of the 1980s to focus on common interests rather than differences. Leffler has produced possibly the most readable and insightful study of the Cold War yet. 47 b&w illus., 6 maps. (Sept.)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
After five decades of constant tension, three "hot" wars, numerous surrogate wars, and a near Armageddon over Cuba, the cold war ended, not with a bang but a whimper. Faster than anyone could have expected (or hoped), the Soviet economy came close to implosion, while satellites in Eastern Europe broke free, with virtual Soviet acquiescence. So it is left to historians to consider why the cold war began, why it endured, and why it ended. Professor Leffler has the benefit of almost two decades of hindsight as well as access to recently declassified American and Soviet documents. The result is a series of fresh and often provocative perspectives on the struggle. But Leffler is no dogmatic revisionist with an ideological ax to grind. He lays the causes of the conflict on the totalitarian monstrosity created by Stalin in which a mixture of hostility and paranoia was hardwired into the system. However, he does not view the length of the struggle as inevitable. Critics will find much to dispute here, particularly Leffler's focus on the personal qualities of leaders. Freeman, Jay
Review
“A scintillating account of the forces that constrained Soviet and American leaders in the second half of the 20th century . . . Possibly the most readable and insightful study of the Cold War yet.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“With a keen eye for telling detail, a concern for the choices of individual leaders, and careful judgments, Leffler generates a narrative that carries the reader along as it develops important new ideas. This landmark study transcends many of our standard arguments about the Cold War to focus on what it was really about. Driving much of the maneuvering for security and advantage was the struggle over which political system could meet people's needs and produce a better society.” ―Robert Jervis, Columbia University
“This is a lively and very wise book on the Cold War from its beginning to its end. Concentrating on five critical intervals in the history of Soviet-American rivalry, Melvyn P. Leffler, one of the West's leading authorities on U.S. foreign policy, mines a wealth of new sources for this fresh and stimulating analysis of Cold War crises. The portraits of Cold War leaders, both Soviet and American, are convincingly and elegantly drawn. As illustrated by Leffler, their travails and successes demonstrate how important leadership is in maintaining peace in an unstable world.” ―Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University
“Melvyn Leffler does an excellent job of surveying key phases of the Cold War. His analytical perspective, emphasizing both structure and agency, is illuminating throughout. The book is sophisticated and erudite but also engagingly written and lively. For the Soul of Mankind will appeal to general readers as well as to experts and university students, and will be a standard text in classes dealing with the Cold War.” ―Mark Kramer, Harvard University
“There will never be a last word on why the Cold War began and why it ended, but Mel Leffler's book is certainly the latest word--based on accumulated American and now Soviet sources. Leffler avoids the pitfalls of the older revisionism, which blamed the U.S. for the conflict, and of Cold War triumphalism, which saw the Soviet Union's collapse as testimony to American steadfastness in the face of Soviet obduracy. His is a story of two nations whose leaders, haunted by very different fears of a recurrent past, at crucial junctures perpetuated the conflict and made it insoluble. The Cold War ended, finally, when two remarkable men, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, were able to recognize what was unfounded in their fears of each other.” ―John B. Judis, author of The Folly of Empire
“Indefatigably researched: there does not appear to be a relevant archival collection, official or unofficial, that Leffler has not seen. And, most important, it is an intellectually honest work . . . This is, in short, the best book anyone has yet written on the United States and the origins of the Cold War.” ―John Lewis Gaddis, The Atlantic Monthly on A Preponderance of Power
“Brilliant . . . The author appears to have read every national security document that was generated by the White House and the State and War departments . . . For sheer comprehensiveness and thorough investigation, this volume is unmatched. It is also miraculously literate, thought-provoking and quite surprising in its line of argument.” ―Carolyn Eisenberg, The Nation on A Preponderance of Power
“[A] sweeping work . . . Leffler is one of America's most distinguished cold war historians, and this enlightening, readable study is the product of years of research and reflection.” ―Jonathan Rosenberg, The Christian Science Monitor
“A masterful account of the Cold War by a distinguished historian in full stride . . . This important book will enlighten and sophisticate the debate on the Cold War, even if it will not end the discussion.” ―G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs
Most helpful customer reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Very Good
By R. Albin
This very good book is a largely successful effort to produce a portrait of the Cold War that is both accurate and accessible to a broad audience. Leffler accomplishes his objective by some smart decisions in limiting the content of the book. He focuses primarily on US-Soviet relations; he limits his discussion largely to the highest levels of diplomacy, particularly the decisions of our Presidents and the Soviet leadership at key moments; and he picks out five key sequences of the Cold War. The five key sequences are the initiation of the Cold War under Truman/Stalin, the end of the Cold War under Gorbachev/Reagan, and 3 periods when there were unsuccessful efforts to end/moderate the Cold War; Malenkov/Eisenhower after the death of Stalin, Kennedy-Johnson/Khruschev after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Brezhnev/Carter and the end of detente. The latter three are discussed as examples of how hard it was to escape the dynamic of the Cold War and explorations of the forces that sustained the Cold War.
The title of the book reflects Leffler's conclusion about perhaps the most important element of initiating and sustaining the Cold War - ideology. Leffler argues well that the competing ideologies of liberal capitalism and communism really drove the way the leaderships of the USA and the Soviet Union perceived each other and influenced decisions. Leffler also shows how important the experience of WWII was, particularly the trauma of invasion, for the Soviets. Well into the 1970s, the fear of being confronted by a hostile, aggressive, powerful German (and encircled by a powerful Japanese state) was a major concern of the Soviet leadership. In a good example of how Soviet concerns were often mirrored in the USA, worries about German democratization were a feature of American policy making into at least the 1960s. Leffler sees the Cold War as inevitable. Both the USA and the Soviets required a pacified Europe and Japan to attain security but their conflicting visions of what such security would require resulted in inevitable conflict. While Leffler uses relatively neutral language in describing this fact, it has to be said that the American vision of a democratic alliance was and is considerably more noble than what Stalin had in mind. Leffler is careful to point out that Stalin was initially pragmatic and interested in some form of accomodation.
Once initiated, the Cold War proved remarkably difficult to moderate or end. The next 3 episodes discussed by Leffler all show how ideology, the mutual fears inherent in this type of strategic rivalry, entrenched special interests such as interservice rivalries and a powerful defense establishment in the Soviet Union, and the powerful domestic political forces set in train by the Cold War all contributed to sustaining the Cold War. Leffler is generally even handed in dealing with the major actors. All the principal actors, American presidents and major Soviet leaders after Stalin, are shown to have been concerned with the dangers of the nuclear rivalry and concerned with reducing the risk of mutual annihiliation. Some of the portraits are a bit surprising. Leonid Brezhnev, usually presented only as the apostole of stagnation and a return to aspects of the Stalinist past, receives a relatively sympathetic analysis. Jimmy Carter is portrayed as a relatively resolute and unlucky individual who tried hard to make sensible decisions in the face of unfavorable public pressure.
Like a number of other historians, Leffler concludes that Gorbachev was really the key figure in the end of Cold War. While virtually all of the major Soviet leaders were concerned about the exhausting effect the Cold War was having on the Soviet Union, Gorbachev and his supporters were really the first to be willing to make radical departures in Soviet policy to break the deadlock. Its notable that while Gorbachev lived through WWII and the German occupation, he was a small child and his formative years coincided with the Khruschev era efforts to reform the Soviet state. Leffler's treatment of Reagan is particularly interesting. Leffler politely dismisses the conservative-Republican triumphalist version of Reagan bludgeoning the Soviet Union into submission. While he assigns Reagan a secondary role, he gives Reagan considerable credit for being able to recognize that real progress was possible and being able to overcome the barriers faced by prior Presidents.
While generally successful, Leffler's choices about the structure of the book have drawbacks. The concentration on the USA-Soviet relationship is probably unavoidable, but it obscures the important role of many others in important aspects of the Cold War. For example, the role of European statesmen in the formation of NATO or the role of Kim Il Sung in the genesis of the Korean war. A major feature of the Cold War was the remarkably destructive effects of US-Soviet rivalry in the developing world. There is little here about that feature. Leffler's concentration on the actions of the principal leaders of the USA and Soviet Union tend to obscure the role that domestic political factors, often with little relationship to international strategic realities, had in driving US and probably Soviet policy. Finally, a fair amount of Leffler's analysis emerges implicitly, rather than explicitly. That said, the summary section that concludes the book contains a well considered and concise assessment of American policy in the Cold War.
34 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
good reading, but didn't like the conclusions
By book fan
I enjoyed the book for its research, and it makes for interesting reading, so I give it 4 stars. I'd recommend that anyone with an interest in this area read it.
BUT!
Am I imagining things, or did the vast majority of the book blame the United States for the Cold War, and claim the Soviets were always trying to end it? The writer claims that even Stalin honestly wanted friendly relations with the West, and would have behaved peaceably, but Truman killed it. In light of what we know about Stalin, this is difficult to believe.
With the exception of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (the author clearly assigns the blame to Brezhnev here), each chapter has the same theme: the Soviets spoke peace, were being honest, and really meant it, while the Americans were always trying to play games,impose their will on the poor Soviets, and get better and better negotiating terms.
The conclusions are as one-sided as the old story of blaming "those Russkies" for everything. There is ample recent documentation that the Soviets were offensive-minded in their miltiary plans in Europe, and actually had plans to win a nuclear war. Such documentation is ignored in the book. Instead, Soviet leaders' quotes about desiring peace are taken at face value and quoted quite liberally. It was just too one-sided for me.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Cold War Survey
By Jacob Grandstaff
Excellent Cold War survey. This is perfect for anyone looking to broaden his or her knowledge on the politics of the Cold War. A couple of the chapters, particularly the one on detente can seem long-winded at times. But, through it all Leffler manages to capture the feelings of the individual leaders and how they viewed their rivals, themselves, and most importantly, their place and their nation's place in history. He shows how domestic political concerns played an essential role in prolonging the Cold War and that the decisions that were made by Soviet and American leaders leading up to the eighties were primarily a result of the circumstances of the times that each of those leaders were dealt. Overall, a excellent and informative read with plenty of behind-the-scenes insights that help the reader understand not only what happened at the negotiating table, but why it happened the way it did.
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