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The Cold War: A New History
Why did the Cold War erupt so soon after the Second World War? How did it escalate so rapidly, spanning five continents over six decades? And what led to the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union?
In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond.
With remarkable clarity and unique perspective, Zubok argues that the Cold War, often seen as an existential battle between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism, has long been misunderstood. He challenges the popular Western narrative that economic superiority and democratic values led the USA to victory. Instead, he looks beyond the familiar images of East-West rivalry, shining a light on the impact of non-Western actors and placing the war in the context of global decolonisation, Soviet weakness and the accidents of history. Here, he interrogates what happens when stability and peace are no longer the default, when treaties are broken and when diplomacy ceases to function.
Drawing on years of research and informed by Zubok’s three decades in the USSR followed by three decades in the West, The Cold War paints a striking portrait of a world on the brink.
In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond.
With remarkable clarity and unique perspective, Zubok argues that the Cold War, often seen as an existential battle between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism, has long been misunderstood. He challenges the popular Western narrative that economic superiority and democratic values led the USA to victory. Instead, he looks beyond the familiar images of East-West rivalry, shining a light on the impact of non-Western actors and placing the war in the context of global decolonisation, Soviet weakness and the accidents of history. Here, he interrogates what happens when stability and peace are no longer the default, when treaties are broken and when diplomacy ceases to function.
Drawing on years of research and informed by Zubok’s three decades in the USSR followed by three decades in the West, The Cold War paints a striking portrait of a world on the brink.
544 pages, Hardcover
First published December 5, 2024
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399 people want to read
About the author
Vladislav M. Zubok
22 books85 followersVladislav M. Zubok (see also: Владислав Зубок) is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of A Failed Empire, Zhivago’s Children, and The Idea of Russia.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 2, 2025
“At the end of his presidency, Eisenhower got his military bureaucracy to produce ‘the single integrated operational plan’ (STOP) for a nuclear war against the Soviet Union: 3,200 nuclear warheads would strike cities in the USSR and China in the first wave, killing up to 450 million people instantly. Even without Soviet retaliation, the radioactive fallout would circle the globe, making many Americans sick and leading to many more deaths.”
This is why I love and keep going back to Pelican editions, Zubok has written a reasoned, eloquent and highly accessible piece of work, he does a good job of broadening the scale, encompassing more of the actors and players in the scheme of things, which allows a broader and deeper context to emerge of the overall picture, which was never as straight forward as most politicians or leaders would have us believe.
“The average Polish worker got a free flat from the state for his family, with cheap electricity and gas, plumbing, and central heating.”
At the risk of stating the obvious what becomes apparent is that both sides of the Cold War were consumed by fear, paranoia and as both spent obscene amounts of money to ultimately fight against their own fears and ignorance. This toxic status quo which persisted for so long resulted in the needless impoverishment, suffering and/or deaths of hundreds of millions and in the end who did it really benefit?...
“It would take American leaders an entire decade to manage Russia’s downgrade from a nuclear superpower to a regional partner. We are still living with the consequences of the failure of this endeavour.”
July 14, 2025
Hopefully, someone from Pelican manages to update the title of this book, which is, in fact, The World of the Cold War, 1945-1991.
That title is meant to signal one of the distinctive "sells" of this book, which is its attention to global actors, in recognition of the major historiographic reorientation led by Odd Arne Westad, away from narrow US-Soviet accounts. The book is also sold for Zubok's unique perspective as a Russian professor of international history, who has spent equal amounts of time in Russia and the West, and has a strong appreciation of what the Cold War looked and felt like on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
These, and the excellent reviews for Zubok's last book, convinced me to buy this, and I'm happy I did so. The account is exceptionally readable. Despite its length (c. 470 pages - again, the Goodreads page is wrong on this at the time of writing), I read the book quickly. The story is compelling and pacily written. Zubok's command of a massive topic is excellent, and he's an intelligent and judicious commentator. He's unsurprisingly good at exploding the Western myth of the US having "won" the Cold War in any straightforward sense, articulating instead a version of the story that heavily foreground Gorbachev's peculiar and immensely significant role. Zubok is rather more admiring of Gorbachev than I find reasonable, but the narrative he gives of the end of the Cold War is generally solid and insightful.
The narrative through the rest of the book is similarly informed by a range of scholarship, including those revisionist and post-revisionist historians who have complicated our understanding of the key agents in the Cold War, its proper historical framing, and the respective motivations/responsibilities of the leading powers. While the inclusion of this scholarship is welcome, I did find it to be a source of some tension and frustration. Zubok's evident sympathies reside ultimately with liberal democratic capitalism, including in some of its most reactionary forms. So, while he frankly confronts the meaning of the 1973 Chile coup and the neoliberal reaction, he at other times treats the dynamism of market economics and capitalist economic supremacy as a naturalised given. Similarly, he tends to give credit to Western concerns for democracy even as he is also willing to accept some degree of hypocrisy in it and to name check specific events like the Indonesian massacre and Operation Condor.
So while Zubok permits some honest confrontation with the imperial realities of American action in the Cold War, he doesn't seem to have integrated this into a very thoroughgoing critique of capitalist power, and indeed he appears to be a champion the same system. (As an English Northerner and a Marxist, I especially hated the form of words he chose to describe Thatcher's war on the unions, eg, which he treats as sensible and necessary).
Finally and relatedly, Zubok's effort to tell a global history of the Cold War is a little half-hearted in my view. While it's nice that he gives some significant space to various European actors, to Mao, and to Third World figures like Nasser and Sadat, at the end of the day the book is mostly a history of US-Soviet policy. It doesn't capture "the view from the South" remotely adequately. To do so would have required a far greater shift out of Zubok's comfort zone, to be fair, but it would also have made the "world" referenced in the title more meaningful.
Having read it shortly after completing Katja Hoyer's Beyond the Wall, I'd especially recommend pairing these two radically different Cold War histories. Whereas Zubok is telling a massive, world-spanning story drawing almost exclusively on the archives of elite political actors, Hoyer gives a sense of social realities and lived experiences of the Cold War. I prefer Hoyer's book rather a lot, because it does a better job of accessing the contingency of Cold War history, as well as the ambivalence that many rightly feel about the collapse of Stalinist systems. Zubok's anti-Communism is, in short, rather limiting, even as the story he's telling is super interesting and he is often an effective guide to it.
For these reasons, I've rated it at 3/5, but this is an insufficient rating system that you shouldn't take too seriously. I would recommend this book, but with the caveats offered above about what it does really well, and what it ultimately doesn't offer. Above all, I'd suggest not making it the only book you read on the Cold War.
That title is meant to signal one of the distinctive "sells" of this book, which is its attention to global actors, in recognition of the major historiographic reorientation led by Odd Arne Westad, away from narrow US-Soviet accounts. The book is also sold for Zubok's unique perspective as a Russian professor of international history, who has spent equal amounts of time in Russia and the West, and has a strong appreciation of what the Cold War looked and felt like on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
These, and the excellent reviews for Zubok's last book, convinced me to buy this, and I'm happy I did so. The account is exceptionally readable. Despite its length (c. 470 pages - again, the Goodreads page is wrong on this at the time of writing), I read the book quickly. The story is compelling and pacily written. Zubok's command of a massive topic is excellent, and he's an intelligent and judicious commentator. He's unsurprisingly good at exploding the Western myth of the US having "won" the Cold War in any straightforward sense, articulating instead a version of the story that heavily foreground Gorbachev's peculiar and immensely significant role. Zubok is rather more admiring of Gorbachev than I find reasonable, but the narrative he gives of the end of the Cold War is generally solid and insightful.
The narrative through the rest of the book is similarly informed by a range of scholarship, including those revisionist and post-revisionist historians who have complicated our understanding of the key agents in the Cold War, its proper historical framing, and the respective motivations/responsibilities of the leading powers. While the inclusion of this scholarship is welcome, I did find it to be a source of some tension and frustration. Zubok's evident sympathies reside ultimately with liberal democratic capitalism, including in some of its most reactionary forms. So, while he frankly confronts the meaning of the 1973 Chile coup and the neoliberal reaction, he at other times treats the dynamism of market economics and capitalist economic supremacy as a naturalised given. Similarly, he tends to give credit to Western concerns for democracy even as he is also willing to accept some degree of hypocrisy in it and to name check specific events like the Indonesian massacre and Operation Condor.
So while Zubok permits some honest confrontation with the imperial realities of American action in the Cold War, he doesn't seem to have integrated this into a very thoroughgoing critique of capitalist power, and indeed he appears to be a champion the same system. (As an English Northerner and a Marxist, I especially hated the form of words he chose to describe Thatcher's war on the unions, eg, which he treats as sensible and necessary).
Finally and relatedly, Zubok's effort to tell a global history of the Cold War is a little half-hearted in my view. While it's nice that he gives some significant space to various European actors, to Mao, and to Third World figures like Nasser and Sadat, at the end of the day the book is mostly a history of US-Soviet policy. It doesn't capture "the view from the South" remotely adequately. To do so would have required a far greater shift out of Zubok's comfort zone, to be fair, but it would also have made the "world" referenced in the title more meaningful.
Having read it shortly after completing Katja Hoyer's Beyond the Wall, I'd especially recommend pairing these two radically different Cold War histories. Whereas Zubok is telling a massive, world-spanning story drawing almost exclusively on the archives of elite political actors, Hoyer gives a sense of social realities and lived experiences of the Cold War. I prefer Hoyer's book rather a lot, because it does a better job of accessing the contingency of Cold War history, as well as the ambivalence that many rightly feel about the collapse of Stalinist systems. Zubok's anti-Communism is, in short, rather limiting, even as the story he's telling is super interesting and he is often an effective guide to it.
For these reasons, I've rated it at 3/5, but this is an insufficient rating system that you shouldn't take too seriously. I would recommend this book, but with the caveats offered above about what it does really well, and what it ultimately doesn't offer. Above all, I'd suggest not making it the only book you read on the Cold War.
June 21, 2025
V. Zubok is, above all, a man of honesty.
This book is bound to make enemies. In some ways, it steps on the toes of red-blooded orthodox historians while concurrently doing the exact same towards even the most critical of revisionists. By no means is Zubok a man of the center — he has his own personal experiences that shaped him, as he jots down quite frequently (while disappointingly curtly) towards the end of nearly each chapter. Yet, his own beliefs of what the world SHOULD look like do not take away from how the world DID (and DOES) exist.
Where Zubok excels is his painting of a geopolitical standoff that was certainly influenced by strategy and ideology, but it was also riddled with complexity and confusion. Take the Cuban Missile Crisis for instance. Was this truly a masterful diplomatic showdown? Zubok says no: in many ways, this only showcased how utterly foolish and above all, dangerous, the Cold War had become.
While Zubok stays true to his perspective of remaining locked-in on Washington and Moscow, with an occasional glance at Beijing and Berlin, he does provide helpful, albeit brief, diversions in the Third World. This book is not meant for those who truly want a deep-dive into the Vietnam Wars or the senseless conflicts that plagued Angola and Ethiopia throughout the 20th century; instead, Zubok is making a case that Washington-Moscow relations SHAPED, or at least INFLUENCED, practically every spot on the globe.
Perhaps most controversial is his conclusion, where he crafts an uncomfortable point: can Russia’s aggression today in any way be connected to its exclusion from the liberal order of the West? This is food for thought for the reader though, as Zubok has presented them enough information to form their own conclusions on this matter.
This book is bound to make enemies. In some ways, it steps on the toes of red-blooded orthodox historians while concurrently doing the exact same towards even the most critical of revisionists. By no means is Zubok a man of the center — he has his own personal experiences that shaped him, as he jots down quite frequently (while disappointingly curtly) towards the end of nearly each chapter. Yet, his own beliefs of what the world SHOULD look like do not take away from how the world DID (and DOES) exist.
Where Zubok excels is his painting of a geopolitical standoff that was certainly influenced by strategy and ideology, but it was also riddled with complexity and confusion. Take the Cuban Missile Crisis for instance. Was this truly a masterful diplomatic showdown? Zubok says no: in many ways, this only showcased how utterly foolish and above all, dangerous, the Cold War had become.
While Zubok stays true to his perspective of remaining locked-in on Washington and Moscow, with an occasional glance at Beijing and Berlin, he does provide helpful, albeit brief, diversions in the Third World. This book is not meant for those who truly want a deep-dive into the Vietnam Wars or the senseless conflicts that plagued Angola and Ethiopia throughout the 20th century; instead, Zubok is making a case that Washington-Moscow relations SHAPED, or at least INFLUENCED, practically every spot on the globe.
Perhaps most controversial is his conclusion, where he crafts an uncomfortable point: can Russia’s aggression today in any way be connected to its exclusion from the liberal order of the West? This is food for thought for the reader though, as Zubok has presented them enough information to form their own conclusions on this matter.
June 15, 2025
One of the best books ever (I might be biased yet seldom I got that much enjoyment about the pace and riveting detail stored on the pages) providing a well-articulated background to the decisions operated on poor lopsided information in the deficit of time - those that craft policies and inform diplomacy - and populate the Cold War history archive.
Shall enter a list of the modern studies / international studies curriculum and complement numerous others on disparate periods of history - be that Kotkin’s Stalin vol 2, or Ellsberg’s books on Pentagon Papers - or that on 1983 or Radchenko’s “To Run the World” or Benn Steil’s “The Marshall Plan”.
Shall enter a list of the modern studies / international studies curriculum and complement numerous others on disparate periods of history - be that Kotkin’s Stalin vol 2, or Ellsberg’s books on Pentagon Papers - or that on 1983 or Radchenko’s “To Run the World” or Benn Steil’s “The Marshall Plan”.
December 3, 2025
Newly published work by V. Zubok, The World of the Cold War: 1945–1991, provides a refreshing account of several well-known Cold War issues. Its uniqueness does not lie in the topic itself, since there are other highly praised overviews of the Cold War, but in its focus on the Soviet perspective. The usual narrative explains the Cold War as an ideological conflict between capitalism and communism, or as a conflict between the two superpowers, the United States and the USSR.
Zubok’s coverage of the broader context emphasizes four Soviet leaders who shaped the character of the Cold War and were the most influential in the development of Soviet foreign policy: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev. The titles of the four main chapters, drawn from Roman mythology, serve as metaphors to illustrate the nature of particular Cold War episodes. As a reader, I found this analogy quite innovative. One of the book’s highlights is definitely its treatment of the Détente era.
Although I enjoyed reading this book, there are several issues that prevent me from giving it a five-star rating. First, I am not sure who the intended audience is. It requires an observant reader to fully appreciate all of the author’s conclusions on widely known topics. At times, the writing style felt like reading a historical essay. The author was not able to explore several themes or important events in depth, nor was that the book’s intention. In this sense, I would probably not recommend it as a first step toward learning about Cold War history. In my opinion, the book’s value lies in its new approach and interpretation of familiar facts.
Another issue is the reliance on secondary sources in most cases. I found this somewhat confusing, since I am aware of the author’s erudition and familiarity with Soviet archival materials, which he demonstrated greatly in his previous works. Nevertheless, the book is certainly well-researched. It was also distracting to read multiple references such as “one historian said…” or “according to one historian…” throughout the paragraphs. In my opinion, it would have been more helpful to cite the references directly. Or was this simply the publisher’s intention? Which brings me to my final point regarding the book’s format: the font size is far too large, resulting in 520 pages that could easily have been condensed to 300–350 pages.
Despite all the issues mentioned above, I would definitely recommend Zubok’s engaging book for its narrative strength and its ability to cast familiar Cold War facts in a new perspective.
Zubok’s coverage of the broader context emphasizes four Soviet leaders who shaped the character of the Cold War and were the most influential in the development of Soviet foreign policy: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev. The titles of the four main chapters, drawn from Roman mythology, serve as metaphors to illustrate the nature of particular Cold War episodes. As a reader, I found this analogy quite innovative. One of the book’s highlights is definitely its treatment of the Détente era.
Although I enjoyed reading this book, there are several issues that prevent me from giving it a five-star rating. First, I am not sure who the intended audience is. It requires an observant reader to fully appreciate all of the author’s conclusions on widely known topics. At times, the writing style felt like reading a historical essay. The author was not able to explore several themes or important events in depth, nor was that the book’s intention. In this sense, I would probably not recommend it as a first step toward learning about Cold War history. In my opinion, the book’s value lies in its new approach and interpretation of familiar facts.
Another issue is the reliance on secondary sources in most cases. I found this somewhat confusing, since I am aware of the author’s erudition and familiarity with Soviet archival materials, which he demonstrated greatly in his previous works. Nevertheless, the book is certainly well-researched. It was also distracting to read multiple references such as “one historian said…” or “according to one historian…” throughout the paragraphs. In my opinion, it would have been more helpful to cite the references directly. Or was this simply the publisher’s intention? Which brings me to my final point regarding the book’s format: the font size is far too large, resulting in 520 pages that could easily have been condensed to 300–350 pages.
Despite all the issues mentioned above, I would definitely recommend Zubok’s engaging book for its narrative strength and its ability to cast familiar Cold War facts in a new perspective.
July 8, 2025
The absolute necessary element of this book is the decentering of the Cold War from just NATO versus the USSR + China to the lesser covered political interventions throughout Africa and South America. A lot of the material was new to me and really did leave me better informed. That being said I wish it was longer. Zubok on this subject deserves 1000 pages, and without it the book does feel somewhat sparse. Great read if you want a less conventional telling of this history.
June 5, 2025
A fascinating history of the Cold War written from a Soviet / Russian perspective.
Obviously any historical book is written with a degree of author bias but you certainly come out of this one with a greater appreciation of both Nixon and Gorbachev, and a greater understanding that things could have been so very different (and much, much worse).
Obviously any historical book is written with a degree of author bias but you certainly come out of this one with a greater appreciation of both Nixon and Gorbachev, and a greater understanding that things could have been so very different (and much, much worse).
August 22, 2025
Best history book I've read the last couple of years, and probably the best on the Cold War. Gives an inside view on how the Cold War was perceived by the "Other" while still adhering to the basic rules of historiography.
July 6, 2025
Engaging and enjoyable analysis of the Cold War from sources on both sides, Zubok has access to Soviet Archives.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews