Caroline Kennedy-Pipe. Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943 to 1956. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. 218 pp.
In Stalin's Cold War, Kennedy-Pipe discusses many issues and events reaching across the world in the period between 1943 and 1956. She, however, always places them within the context of the central preoccupation of Soviet policy—to defang the German threat.
She began her study, she writes, "to fill a gap in the Western Cold War literature," and she asserts "that the Kremlin saw some good arising from a US troop presence in Europe after 1943" (p. 192). Stressing the ultimately moderate nature of Soviet policy, Kennedy-Pipes adds that the Soviets, reacting to events and forces around them, over time supported a number of different ways to contain Germany. Eventually, Moscow had to settle for a divided Germany, half dominated by the Russians and half by the Americans. While perhaps not Stalin's preferred solution, even West Germany's inclusion into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had its beneficial side—Germany could not develop an independent, revanchist military organization or policy. As long as the United States had significant troop presence in Germany, the Kremlin understood, the Americans held a veto over any future German adventurism toward the East. Simultaneously, Moscow tried to leverage its influence by fanning differences among the western allies. With a significant buffer zone in East Europe, even in the nuclear age the leaders of Soviet Russia could feel relatively safe. While Kennedy-Pipes fairly adequately supports her thesis, unfortunately, it is hardly the challenge to the "prevailing orthodoxy" that her publisher promises.
Others have already begun to plow these fields. Through the extensive use of Eastern European archival sources, Vojtech Mastny some years ago suggested the richness with which post-revisionist history of the Cold War can be written. More recently, Geoffrey Roberts has pointed the way to using Soviet secondary sources to write fertile and credible histories of Soviet foreign policy. Just this year, Norman M. Naimark and Gerhard Wettig have used Soviet and East German archival sources to explore Russian policy toward Germany. All of these authors have stressed the complexities and even subtleties of Soviet foreign policy as a myriad of forces pushed and pulled the Kremlin's decision-makers.
Although Kennedy-Pipes offers the reader the complexities and subtleties, she has fallen short in other regards. In truth, her bibliography misses much, and the bulk of the book's citations are to relatively old, English-language secondary sources and American published documents, thereby belying the publisher's back cover promise of "insights" from "previously hidden Russian sources." Despite the publisher's assurance of a history from the "Soviet viewpoint," the author has interpreted the Soviet perspective as seen from these primarily American sources. This is a shame, because over the last few years East German and Soviet archival sources have become increasingly available.
Finally, haphazard chapter subheadings bespeak of some organizational confusion, and extensive use of the passive voice leadens the narrative. With no loss of scholarly precision, the editor could have consolidated about one-quarter of the footnotes for the sake of greater readability.
J. Calvitt Clarke III
Jacksonville University