Nobody Said No

Russia’s Road to the Cold War By Vojtech Mastny Columbia, 409 pp., $16.95 Professor Mastny’s book is a fresh analysis of the origins and early stages of the cold war. Drawn from a wealth of sources, including East European, and relentlessly documented—almost 1,300 footnotes—the story begins with Bolshevik machinations in Europe between the World Wars, and continues on through the outbreak of World War II, the collapse of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the formation of the great alliance to defeat Hitler, and the sundering of that alliance through a combination of Russian opportunism and British and American passivity as the total defeat of Nazi Germany drew near.

The author sees June 1941 as one of the great turning points in history. Not only did Hitler’s gratuitous aggression open the door through which the Soviet Union eventually stepped out to become the world’s mightiest and perhaps last imperial power, it also provided the dubious justification for Stalin’s imperialism. The humiliation of his life, the Nazi treachery imbued Stalin with an extraordinary drive to justify in retrospect the wisdom of the expansionistic policies he had initiated during his abortive association with the German dictator.

JA

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Joseph A. Rehyansky

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Russia’s Road to the Cold War By Vojtech Mastny Columbia, 409 pp., $16.95 Professor Mastny’s book is a fresh analysis of the origins and early stages of the cold war. Drawn from a wealth of sources, including East European, and relentlessly documented—almost 1,300 footnotes—the story begins with Bolshevik machinations in Europe between the World Wars, and continues on through the outbreak of World War II, the collapse of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the formation of the great alliance to defeat Hitler, and the sundering of that alliance through a combination of Russian opportunism and British and American passivity as the total defeat of Nazi Germany drew near.

The author sees June 1941 as one of the great turning points in history. Not only did Hitler’s gratuitous aggression open the door through which the Soviet Union eventually stepped out to become the world’s mightiest and perhaps last imperial power, it also provided the dubious justification for Stalin’s imperialism. The humiliation of his life, the Nazi treachery imbued Stalin with an extraordinary drive to justify in retrospect the wisdom of the expansionistic policies he had initiated during his abortive association with the German dictator.