On For the Soul of Mankind

I don’t really know what to make of this text. In it, Melvyn Leffler tries to take a step back from the Cold War and asks “why were Reagan and Gorbachev successful in ending the Cold War when there were other opportunities to do so in the decades prior?” In trying to answer this question, Leffler looks at four historical “moments” between the United States and the Soviet Union: the outbreak of the Cold War between Stalin and Truman, the death of Stalin and the future of the USSR, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Carter-Brezhnev discussions over Helsinki in 1975 and the subsequent collapse of détente. In terms of historical narrative, those who are already familiar with the Cold War will find little that’s new here—the important part of Leffler’s study is his analysis.

Leffler’s ultimate argument is that both American and Soviet leaders truly believed in the causes that they supported, and they believed the opposing side represented an existential threat to their dreams of the future. Both Americans and Soviets were also strait-jacketed by historical memory and ideology and continued the Cold War, even though both sides recognized that it would be in their best material interests to end it. It was only with the emergence of Gorbachev and the re-election of Reagan that two leaders were able to move past the confines of their own future and envision something larger. To this end, Leffler praises Gorbachev and Reagan as being the individuals who virtually single-handedly brought and end to the Cold War, with George H. W. Bush receiving an honorable mention.

In making this argument, Leffler also makes a larger case about the actual practice of doing history: it’s critically important to pay close attention to choices and contingency made by historical actors. We need to think carefully about the choices that were available to given leaders in order to understand the choices they make. This makes a lot of sense, and I think it’s something that every good historian attempts to do, but his argument about the Cold War seems at odds with his historiographical argument. By arguing that American and Soviet leaders were bound by historical memory and ideology, he inadvertently suggests that there was a sort of determinism at play: other choices existed, and these leaders didn’t pursue them because they couldn’t for ideological reasons. Ideology is a bitch, and it destroys important choices, and I think Leffler under-plays that a bit here.