THE WAR OF NERVES

An intriguing new history about how the Cold War was primarily a conflict of psychology.

Sixsmith, who reported on Russia for the BBC during the 1980s, delves into the psychological issues of the time, especially the thinking of the leaders and the reactions of ordinary people. He believes that the two sides continually failed to comprehend each other’s beliefs and motivations, seeing themselves as morally superior and the other as the font of all evil. The Americans never grasped the nexus between communist ideology and the Russian cultural tradition of centralized power, and Soviet leaders always believed that the U.S. was controlled by a secret cabal of billionaires and generals. This lack of understanding was crucial given the nuclear arsenals involved. “The inherent flaw of brinkmanship is to assume that each side agrees where the brink is,” writes the author. “But as Washington and Moscow pushed each other into increasingly aggressive stances, it was never completely clear that the Soviets and Americans truly knew where or when the tipping point might come.” To build popular support, the two superpowers churned out propaganda, particularly cinema. Sixsmith notes that Vladimir Putin decided to join the KGB after seeing a movie about secret agent Belov, a Soviet version of James Bond. However, the essential weakness of autocracy is that it cannot renew itself through self-criticism or elections. Eventually, in the long decay of the Brezhnev era, there was no way to match the Soviet regime’s message of prosperity and freedom with the lived reality. Russians simply ceased to believe in socialism, as the author’s chapter on the jokes of the period reveals. The U.S., for all its deficiencies, has retained many of its core beliefs. Sixsmith covers a great deal of territory, and the text is long and often dense. But there are useful lessons for the current geopolitical landscape, and the author’s essential point—know yourself in order to know the Other—is as valuable as ever.

An original analysis of a crucial period of history, providing important context for the present.