Zubok and Pleshakov wrote this book “in order [for westerners] to understand the Cold War from the Soviet perspective, one must understand the importance of that moment and the larger historic legacy of Russia and the Russian Revolution, vindicated by the victory of 1945” (2). These men wanted the western world to be able to read this book and understand the different personalities that made up the Kremlin, their personal experiences and how this affected their political leadership. To reveal the Kremlin, in a humanistic way, the authors used the newly declassified documents from the Russian side, to explore the background, psychology, motives, and behavior of Soviet rulers from Stalin to those who replaced him, and to better understand the world that they helped create (xii)The main thesis of the novel is “It was this group [the Kremlin] that had replaced the Communist politburo during the four years of the most devastating war in the world’s history. Leading the others, walking at some distance from them was Joseph Stalin, the head of the USSR” (1).Zubok and Pleshakov start out explaining the basic views of the Kremlin around 1945, before Stalin comes to power. They then move to the revolutionary world of Stalin and the expansions of the empire that were gained by Molotov. At this point in the book the emphasis shifts to war, nuclear bombs and geopolitics. Contained in these sections are chapters on Zhdanov; Beria and Malenkov; and Kennedy and Khrushchev. The formation of these chapters and subjects in this particular line-up progresses in the order that they historically happened. In order to understand why the USSR made some of the political choices, trying to remove some of the biases in place throughout the world, the authors give personal background information on the USSR’s major leaders of the Cold War time. At one extreme in the USSR government they experienced, Stalin, who lived ...
