Description
Book SynopsisDuring the 1970s and 1980s, the author was one of the Soviet Union's leading diplomats, specializing in disarmament negotiations. In this volume, he describes the situation in Moscow and the Kremlin during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war which brought the world to the brink of confrontation.
Trade Review“Not since Leon Trotsky’s writings in the 1930s has a witness to the foreign policy-making decision process of the Communist Party’s top leadership provided us with so substantive a work.”
—Alvin Z. Rubinstein,from the Foreword
“For more than 20 years, scholars and pundits have been writing about the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war with one enormous handicap: the missing piece of the puzzle was what was going on in Moscow during a crisis that brought the world to the brink of confrontation and set the stage for the unraveling of détente. Now a Kremlin insider has written the book that shines light on precisely this hitherto mysterious topic-and what a story it is! Almost all the assumptions about Soviet policy made by leading diplomats and scholars—American, Israeli, and Arab—seem to have been wrong. . . . One wishes other Soviet diplomats of Israelyan's caliber would write honest memoirs of this sort on the other great crises of the Cold War. But for now, his stands alone as a model to be emulated.”
—Foreign Affairs
“. . . [A]n extraordinary and unprecedented memoir from a Soviet observer, Ambassador Victor Israelyan . . . . Writing from his notes, recollections, and interviews with other diplomats and policy makers, Israelyan has provided the first authoritative account of policy deliberations among Politburo members on any issue and, until Kremlin archives are opened, the most complete description of Politburo politics during a crisis.”
—Middle East Journal
“A fascinating eye-witness account . . . . Israelyan captures the atmosphere and mood of the Kremlin particularly well. From the hushed corridors and rooms, where officials lowered their voices to whispers, the figure of the General Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, emerges as the clearly dominant and powerful personality who, at this time, still possessed considerable charisma, dynamism and quickness of mind. . . . [P]robably the most interesting, detailed and informative account of Soviet foreign policy decision-making to have emerged since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.”
—Roland Dannreuther
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
1. Training for the Cold War
2. The First Collisions of the Cold War
3. Stalin Is Dead. What Next?
4. Sowing the Seeds of Hatred in Hungary
5. The Khrushchev Style of Diplomacy
6. Thaws and Frosts
7. On the Diplomatic Sidelines
8. The Battlefield, UN
9. The Soviet Union’s 105th Veto
10. The Cold War on the Middle East Front
11. China—A New Front in the Cold War
12. Time to Go Home
13. The Soviet Diplomatic Headquarters at Smolenskaya Square
14. An Uneasy Truce in the Cold War
15. The Apotheosis of the Cold War
16. Marking Time
17. The Beginning of the End of the Cold War
18. Feigned Friendship
19. Farewell to the Cold War
Conclusion
Index
