You know you’ve read a good book when you continue to think about it for days. They teach things that can be applied to other books or current events because they raise big questions about the nature of human behavior and statecraft. Sergey Radchenko’s “To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid For Global Power” is this kind of book. I’ll probably think about it for years to come.
First off, this 760-page tome contains a lot of history. It will serve as a reference when I prepare for podcast episodes about major events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Yalta Conference – at least regarding the Soviet perspective. As I mentioned in my June 21 review published in The Washington Times, “To Run the World” is a “monumental achievement of archival research and original analysis.”
Another reason this book leaves a mark is that Radchenko upends long-held notions that the tenets of Marxism-Leninism drove Soviet leaders to export Communism to all corners of the globe to enslave mankind (dominating Eastern Europe was bad enough). In doing so, Radchenko compels us to think about big questions that burst from the news headlines every day. Why do leaders act? What are their aims? What is the role of ideology versus pragmatism or more “realist” interests such as security or economics? There are few easy answers for a reason obvious to anyone who grapples with decision-making – in other words, all of us! Day in and day out, even if we are not in charge of a global superpower, we grapple with competing motives and interests. Historians call this multicausality.
“What did the Soviet leaders want? I contend they wanted legitimacy. They wanted to be recognized in their greatness. They wanted to be recognized in their position in the world, and they wanted to be recognized by various audiences. Some of these could be ideologically defined. Other could be defined in terms of great power politics,” Radchenko says in Thursday’s episode of History As It Happens. We were joined by fellow historian Vladislav Zubok who, like Radchenko, is an expert on Soviet and Cold War history.
“For example, I argue the Soviets wanted to be recognized by the United States. Why? Because the United States is the main recognizer, the big power out there. If America recognizes you as great, you must be great… They also wanted China’s recognition for a different reason, because China represented authority in the Communist world,” Radchenko says.
What does he mean by recognition? Take Stalin at Yalta. Sure, Stalin was a Communist ideologue and an imperialist, but he could set aside ideology when common sense intervened. Thus, the Marxist-Leninist idea of inevitable war with the capitalist world was dropped so Stalin could pursue his quest for U.S. recognition of Soviet interests in Eastern Europe – to divide Europe into spheres of influence. Stalin, under U.S. pressure, withdrew the Red Army from northern Iran. He likewise gave up on obtaining an African colony. He sought to protect Soviet gains in China (won at the Yalta negotiating table) by urging Mao to negotiate with the Chinese Nationalists. Stalin did not support the Communist revolution in China!
However, Soviet leaders never reconciled the competing drives of, on one hand, seeking recognition from the U.S. for the legitimacy of their interests and, on the other, backing revolutionary movements to be seen as an “anti-imperialist” leader in the Third World.
“They never could figure out whether they wanted to be recognized as a partner of the United States or as their main adversary. Both of those things have a legitimizing aspect. Because if you’re recognized as a partner of the United States, you feel great. Here we are with the United States running the world! Brezhnev wanted to do that. But you also could be legitimated by being recognized as America’s adversary” in the eyes of national liberation movements in the decolonizing world, Radchenko says.
The quest for recognition – to be treated as a worthy superpower – betrayed deep insecurities on the part of leaders such as Khrushchev, who despite his bluster and brinksmanship knew quite well that the Soviet economy was hopelessly behind the United States. Were it not for the missiles, the USSR might have been considered a second-rate power – but the missiles were Khrushchev’s tool to pry open U.S. acceptance. He sent them to Cuba, nearly triggering the kind of war he desperately wanted to avoid. Did it work? Did the United States start taking the Soviets seriously?
Here is what Radchenko writes on p. 326-327: “Being seen as the ‘leader’ of the so-called revolutionary world was the central element of Khrushchev’s quest for political legitimacy, and a major part of his long-standing effort to win recognition from the United States. This is why Cuba was so important [to Khrushchev]... More than anything, the crisis was about the Soviet challenge to America’s right to play the ‘first fiddle.’ Kennedy understood the gravity of this challenge: allowing Khrushchev to have his way would undermine Washington’s credibility as much as it would strengthen Moscow’s… But Kennedy recognized that Khrushchev’s resentment was not without cause, which is why he secretly agreed to dismantle the Turkish ‘Jupiters.’” The U.S. had deployed in Turkey, a NATO ally, obsolete Jupiter missiles pointed at the Soviet Union.
In Radchenko’s rendering, the Cold War can seem like a conflict for reputation, like two men sticking out their chests and waving fists to see who might blink first. Other fuzzy ideas such as credibility, prestige, and national greatness inform Radchenko’s analysis, but he is too excellent a scholar to deny the critical role of ideology. After all, there is no Cold War without ideology. The challenge is identifying when and where ideology influenced or overlapped with pragmatism or “realist” interests. Multicausality!
Says Vladislav Zubok in our hour-long conversation: “We have an opportunity to argue again about the role of ideology as part of the more complex picture. Ideas can be everything. Ideas can make leaders. Leaders may believe these ideas, or they may not. Did Stalin believe in everything he said? That’s ridiculous. But if he hadn’t been the leader of the Communist movement, if millions of people had not recognized him as the leader of a Communist movement, he wouldn’t have been Stalin.” Zubok is the author of “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union,” which we delved into in a podcast episode in December.
What drives Putin? As I’ve said plenty of times over the past two years, there is no systematic ideological doctrine underpinning Putinism (Ian Kershaw, “The Global Age,” p 484). As we discussed in Thursday’s podcast, this absence of ideology does not mean Putin believes in nothing – or that his foreign policy is based on rational ideas or legitimate state interests.
Palestinians and the “rules-based order”
The fundamental tenets of international law – the rules-based order established after the Second World War – include universal recognition of national boundaries and human rights. Borders may not be revised through armed conflict. All nations (peoples united by a shared ethnicity, religion, language, etc., etc.) have a right to self-determination. Read the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Yet, more than 75 years after the United Nations began establishing the new rules, Palestinians remain stateless and at the mercy of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank and air, sea, and land blockade in Gaza, where Hamas has ruled with an iron fist for the better part of the past two decades. Other Arab states that once claimed to be interested in resolving the plight of Palestinians are now interested in normalizing relations with Israel.
In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly voted, under intense U.S. lobbying pressure, to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, one of the most consequential decisions the body ever made. The Arabs boycotted. Civil war ensued, followed by David Ben-Gurion’s declaration of Israeli independence in May 1948. The partition vote never went into effect. In Tuesday’s episode, international law expert Victor Kattan of the University of Nottingham delves into the origins of the Palestinians’ disastrous relationship with the U.N. and “rules-based order.”
What’s next?
Coming up on Tuesday, July 2, is my conversation with Ken Hughes, the master of the presidential audio tapes – Nixon, LBJ, and Kennedy. We will discuss a largely overlooked scandal that really should be turned into a movie: the Chennault Affair. Hughes is a researcher at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the author of “Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate.”
On Thursday, July 4, I will publish my conversation with Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy (who was not named after the seventh president) about the Revolutionary War. What if the British had won? Why didn’t Great Britain win? Our former masters seemed to have every major advantage over the provincial rebels. O’Shaughnessy is the author of “The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire.”
Last July, I produced a three-part series on the Declaration of Independence. Listen to Part 1 with Sean Wilentz and Jim Oakes; Part 2 with Jack Rakove, and Part 3 with Annette Gordon-Reed and Joseph Ellis. Only the best!
Jeremi Suri’s new Substack
The University of Texas at Austin historian Jeremi Suri, a regular guest on my podcast, has launched a daily Substack newsletter, Democracy of Hope. Suri and his son Zachary, a student at Yale, will offer commentary and poetry about the current crisis in our politics and society.
Speaking of which, my job at The Washington Times does not involve writing “hot takes” about national political matters. However, I did watch part of last night’s debate between President Biden and former President Trump. All I will say is it reminded me of the anecdotes Sergey Radchenko shared (in his aforementioned book) about the late Brezhnev period. An embarrassing gerontocracy.