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For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War | 
 enlarge | Author: Melvyn P. Leffler
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 21170
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 608
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0374531420
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780374531423
ASIN: 0374531420
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
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Product Description
“A highly relevant and much-needed historical study . . . One of the best books on the period to have been written.” —The Economist To the amazement of the public, pundits, and even the policymakers themselves, the ideological and political conflict that endangered the world for half a century came to an end in 1990. How did that happen? What had caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did? To answer these questions, 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. He then 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: August 26, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Professor Leffler explodes the myths of how America defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war. It is always good to be reminded of how political actors get pushed by the forces compelling them forward or are blinded by their own presuppositions. While Truman and Stalin, and Khrushchev and Kennedy were able to stumble through to a realpolitik their successors saw things less clearly, could less resist their own reactionaries or were overwhelmed by events they could not control. Leffler portrays the Cold War as a sequence of swings from a kind of tested balance following World War II to the nadir of American influence in the seventies as the third world liberated itself invoking socialist rhetoric and the Soviets profited from high oil prices to the '80s when entrepreneurship spread in Asia, third world countries floundered, and the Soviet Union's economy weakened. What is interesting in books about the cold war is that the American military juggernaut does not stop. The US constantly overrates Soviet ability because it suits so many interests to do so and thereby fails engage in the real kinds of disarmament the Soviets offer.
Leffler's book offers us heroes and villains. Among the latter Brzezinski stands out. Although Carter's could not see real national interest through the veil of his unrealistic commitment to human rights, nonetheless his secretary of state undermined what could have been an even greater additions to detente. Of course he was abetted by such Democratic hawks as the Senator from Boeing. The great hero is Gorbachev. Although Reagan because of his unquestioned conservative principles made a good co-conversant for Gorbachev, Leffler, as others, puts to bed the lie that Reagan's military spending brought the Soviet's to their knees and destroyed the "evil empire." Gorbachev knew that the Soviets didn't have to match the US in order to survive: their strike ability was just too great. They could not be bullied. Gorbachev, as almost all of the post Stalin leaders, knew that the Soviet union had to get its economic house in order and that the military drained that. He had the mistaken hope that this could be achieved retaining a socialist dream. Although not explored by Leffler, the Soviet command economy had too many flaws, so when loosed it produced mafia like mechanisms to keep production going. And worse, unlike China, the Soviet Union was rife with ethnic conflicts dating back way before the Revolution and exacerbated by Stalinist repression. These broke out in uncontrollable ways so that even if Gorby wanted to unleash, "it is good to be rich," while maintaining political control as in China, he couldn't. No question, Gorbachev is the greatest hero of the 20th century. Reagan was his accomplice but he could have pulled it off without Reagan. The sad part is that the transition might have been much earlier and maybe smoother if political and economic forces within the US hadn't profited from the Cold War. As Leffler pointed out in the Reagan/Gorbachev negotiations the US got their way 85% of the time. With Bush the lesser and Co. we are seeing the fruits of that imbalance in the harm the US has done in the Middle East and the erosion of US dominance which bodes so strongly in the future as it now appears.
Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World
Even handed treatment of the Cold War August 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Melvyn has written a completely readable history of the Cold War. Very even handed in his treatment of all presidents beginning with Truman and ending with George Bush Sr. It is easy today to look back on this era and think that it was a waste of a great amount of resources. In a way it was, however it's important to never forget the sole ambition of the USSR was world domination; Marx, Lenin and the dialectic predicted this, or so they thought. The Soviets worked very hard to bring it about. In the end, capitalism won, as it will always win.
Very Good March 9, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
Fair discussion of US-Soviet relations during the Cold War January 30, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
"For the Soul of Mankind", by Melvyn Leffler, is a major study of the Cold War's political diplomacy. As the name would lead one to think, the focus is strongly on the ideological aspects of the political decision-making, but Leffler is fairly pragmatic and pays plenty of attention to issues of military strength, strategic interventions, Third World movements, and so on. There is also a lot of concentration on the personal characteristics of the countries' respective leaders, which sometimes leads it deplorably into "Great Men" historiography.
A lot can be said against this book. Not just the above-mentioned excessively biographical approach, but for example it does not actually cover all of the Cold War; Leffler describes it as covering five pivotal "episodes" in it, but in practice this means it is an all-out political history of US-Soviet relations during the Cold War, but with the odd aspect of (relatively) excluding Nixon and Ford. It seems that if one is writing about every other postwar president and leader anyway, one could as well add those too. But that aside, there is the fact that Leffler talks a lot about the economies of the respective countries, but without ever describing these and their development in concrete details. He also pays no attention to cultural and social developments, giving the book a very narrow international relations focus. One would also have liked to read more about the role of European leaders, both East and West, in the diplomatic and ideological struggle, but perhaps that is too much to include in one book.
However, this book is nonetheless a clear advance over the Cold War and neo-Cold War style of history writing, as opposed to the likes of Gaddis. Although Leffler excessively demonizes and fulminates against Stalin in the beginning, he treats the Soviet leaders remarkably sanely and accurately for an American historian of the Cold War, at no point falling for "evil empire" style propaganda. He clearly and concisely discusses not just the restraints and problems the American Presidents were facing during negotiations, but also those of the Soviet leadership. Commendable is the way in which he acknowledges the role of important leaders that were not the head of government, like Molotov, Mikoyan, Gromyko, etc. His description of Khrushchov in particular is very good, and in my view quite correctly re-establishes his intelligence, competence, and advanced insight into the problems of the USSR. He has been much maligned because of Stalinists hating him and anti-Communists also hating him, but this is quite undeserved. Some might say that Leffler overestimates Brezhnev's competence perhaps, whom he seems to hold in relatively high regard, but he does not diminish his weaknesses.
Leffler is very well informed about the substance of the major negotiation rounds between the US and the USSR, as well as the main points of contention and the periods of major crisis in the Cold War. He dispells some still common myths yet again, such as the idea that Reagan and the SDI program 'defeated communism', that Stalin wanted to attack Western Europe, that the Soviet leadership had wanted to invade Afghanistan, and that the USSR at any time wanted nuclear war. Leffler is rightly critical of both sides, and brings important things to the fore that are often underestimated as aspects of the ideological struggle: the enormous impact of the WWII experience on the USSR, the role of religion in motivating US Presidents, the complicated relationships of Soviet leaders to Stalin even long after his death, and the way the reformist Soviet leaders like Khrushchov and Gorbachov often felt betrayed by American belligerence. That the US misunderstood the situation in the USSR as often as the USSR did in the US is clear from this work, as is the fact that both sides were equally willing to be aggressor and interventionist when they felt threatened. In the end, as Leffler points out, it was Gorbachov's visionary leadership that inadvertently ended the USSR, which is both a blessing and a curse for the future of socialism.
 Outstanding hstorical perspective November 8, 2007
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
This was one of those books that "pulled it all together." I lived thorough these times, this is my history. However, Leffler was able to tell the story so it had meaning and clarity. He did a great job of showing both sides of the story.
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