On the Battlefields of the Cold War (review)

Victor Israelyan describes himself as a soldier in the Cold War. His memoir demonstrates that although he was not a policymaker, he was indeed a loyal soldier in the conduct of Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War. His memoir is honest, if a bit dry, and generally devoid of self-aggrandizement. If anything, the very blandness of his account confirms what was generally believed all along in the West about the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and its diplomats: namely, that they had little to do with, and often no knowledge of, actual Soviet foreign policy–making. Decisions on all consequential matters were made by the leading organs of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU)—the Politburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee. In the early 1960s, according to Israelyan, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko proposed that the MFA draft national foreign policy objectives on a continuing basis, but the leaders of the CPSU promptly and "firmly rejected" the idea. Israelyan adds, "The idea of planning and projecting Soviet foreign policy outside the CPSU Central Committee [was seen] as blasphemous" (p. 87).

Israelyan's account makes clear that the input of the MFA trailed far behind that of the CPSU, the State Security Committee (KGB), and the military, although he gives few if any insights into the contributions of these last two bodies. Particularly revealing, though not surprising, are the numerous examples of decisions or policies about which even the most senior diplomats remained ignorant. They received no concrete information or instructions from Moscow about such crucial matters as the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the expulsion of the Soviet military contingent from Egypt in July 1972. The Soviet delegation to the United Nations (UN) remained uninformed about what its own foreign minister was about to present as Moscow's "Key Issue" for the year in his speech before the UN General Assembly (p. 199). Even relatively high-level MFA officials could do no more than guess at the motives behind Soviet decisions concerning the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the 1956 invasion of Hungary. With regard to the latter, Israelyan does at least provide an interesting anecdote based on his experience at the time as a loyal but uninformed diplomat. Having been asked to write an explanation of the Hungarian events, he produced a pamphlet that echoed the official line attributing the revolution to the efforts of "American imperialism." But the Soviet ambassador to Budapest, Yurii Andropov, off-handedly told him that this was "'nonsense. The events in Hungary took the Americans by surprise'" (p. 59). Israelyan also notes (as others have) that MFA specialists on the United States were not consulted by the leaders of the CPSU prior to such steps as the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba or the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Even within the MFA Collegium (the ministry's highest collective body), we are told, people were "afraid of saying anything 'out of line' . . . [or at] variance with the party line" (p. 272).

In all fairness, as Israelyan points out, Gromyko himself did urge ministry officials to voice new ideas. The book includes some interesting and often colorful accounts of various personalities, although the description of Arkadii Shevchenko, the Soviet diplomat who defected to the West, as "a drunkard" known for "his exaggerated opinion of himself, his over-ambitiousness and his know-it-all attitude" sounds a lot like the standard Soviet propaganda regarding defectors. What is more disappointing in the book is the dearth of revelations—new information about Soviet behavior or decision-making or internal discussions during the Cold War. The most that Israelyan provides are some interesting accounts of the difficulties facing Soviet diplomats at the UN, including the problems of handling the Sino-Soviet dispute after China finally received a seat on the UN Security Council, the dilemma posed by Moscow's orders to accommodate India during the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 by vetoing ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council (an action that ran contrary...