A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End (review)

Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 283 pages. ISBN 052-13-1198-5 paperback. £11.95. Reviewed by Charles G. Stefan.

Peter Kenez has written an excellent survey of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. It is marred by only two errors, which the author and his editors should have caught. These errors, however, should not detract from the general usefulness of this book, especially its treatment of the rise of Joseph Stalin and his long reign as head of the USSR.

The errors may be found on pages 204-5, in the book's discussion of the relatively short-lived occupation of Austria (1945-55), and on page 236, in reference to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

Both errors are somewhat puzzling. Kenez asserts on page 204 that "Austria . . . unlike Germany, had not been divided into zones." Yet Austria had indeed been divided into zones administered by France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. Perhaps Kenez made this error because the capital of Austria, Vienna, was administered by an Austrian government installed by the USSR in early 1945 before the four-power zonal administration was finalized in July 1945.

In any case, the four-power occupation of Austria was relatively short lived. As a U.S. Foreign Service officer assigned to the American embassy in Moscow, I was assigned by Ambassador Charles Bohlen the task of translating into English the German text of the Austrian-Soviet agreement, which had been slipped to Bohlen by a member of the Austrian delegation at the airport. The translated text was immediately forwarded to the State Department by telegram.

As for the CSCE, Kenez asserts that "in 1975, European and American diplomats gathered in Helsinki for a European security conference. On this occasion, the contracting parties signed three sets of treaties." I was privileged to serve as a senior U.S. Foreign Service officer on the small delegation to the Geneva phase of the CSCE, which drafted the Helsinki Final Act. The large Soviet delegation was so incensed by the tactics of the small delegations, especially Malta's, that it ensured that the signing ceremony in Helsinki would not be disturbed by any attempt to change the agreed-upon text. The Final Act was signed in Helsinki on 1 August 1975 by heads of state (the USSR's Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. president Gerald Ford, among others) and various heads of government (including the Canadian prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and Harold Wilson, the prime minister of the United Kingdom).

It was the top leaders of the countries involved--not the diplomats--who signed the Helsinki Final Act, which incidentally was not "three sets of treaties" but one document. In addition, the Finnish hosts to the signing ceremony, which included speeches by the visiting dignitaries, informed the secretary-general of the United Nations that "this Final Act is not eligible, in whole or in part, for registration with the Secretariat . . . as would be the case were it a matter of a treaty or international agreement."

Despite these mistakes, Kenez has written an excellent book, and it is deserving of special attention by all who are interested in the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

Charles G. Stefan

Charles G. Stefan, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, spent most of his career involved with Soviet and Eastern European affairs.

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