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Battle of wills
MARK WHITE commends a wide-ranging investigation into the psychological dimensions
of the Cold War and the crucial role fear played in shaping American and Soviet strategies
The War of Nerves:
Inside the Cold
War Mind
by Martin Sixsmith
2 TQ
NGRCIGUWith this impres-
sively ambitious and
wide-ranging study,
Martin Sixsmith- former BBC cor-
respondent in Moscow and author of such
works as Philomena and Russia: A 1,000-Year
Chronicle of the Wild East – adds a fascinat-
ing chapter to Cold War scholarship.
Sixsmith does a good job of presenting the
essential narrative of the Cold War. He covers
its post-Second World War inception in the
Truman-Stalin years, as well as other key
events including the Cuban missile crisis –
the 1962 military standoff that brought the
US and the Soviet Union to the brink of
nuclear conflict – and the Vietnam War. The
improvement in relations between Ronald
Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s
is also explored, as well as the ending of the
Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet
empire in eastern Europe and the fall of the
Soviet Union itself in 1991.
Rather than provide a traditional
diplomatic history of the Cold War years,
though, Sixsmith develops a thematically
rich and diverse work that explores in
particular the psychological dimension of
the Soviet-American contest.
The author delves into many instances
of the psychological aspect of the conflict.
For example, he discusses the work of Freud
when considering how individuals replaced ALAMYCOLD WARSound and fury
Russian musician Mstislav
Rostropovich conducts in London,- Two decades earlier his
decision to play Czech composer
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at the Proms expressed his anger
at the Soviet invasion that
crushed the 1968 Prague Spring
a sense of self with loyalty to an authoritari-
an leader such as Stalin. And he examines in
detail the use of psychological warfare by the
CIA, established by Harry Truman in 1947.
The psychological impact of Nikita
Khrushchev’s 1956 “secret speech”, in which
he denounced Stalin, is gauged; heart attacks
and suicides among those in attendance were
reported. Sixsmith also discusses the views
of the great psychologist Erik Erikson on
mass hysteria to explain the phenomenon
of McCarthyism in postwar America.
In particular, Sixsmith produces an excel-
lent analysis of the domino theory – the belief
that the “loss” of one country in the Cold War
struggle would lead inevitably to the “loss”
of others – as a contributory factor in not
only US escalation in Vietnam but also the
Soviet decision to go to war in Afghanistan.
Sixsmith cites the concept of loss aversion