Another admirable feature of the book is
the consideration of the British angle so as to
shed additional light on the Cold War. There
is a good discussion of the role played by
Margaret Thatcher in developing a dialogue
with Gorbachev – so shaping the diplomatic
process that subdued Soviet-American ten-
sions in the 1980s. The view of the Foreign
Office is also often considered, to good effect,
at other junctures in Sixsmith’s narrative of
the Cold War.
In some sections, a fuller discussion of the
American angle would have helped, along
with more substantial portraits of leaders such
as Harry S Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and
John F Kennedy. In particular, the Iranian
crisis in the spring of 1946 should have been
discussed fully. A key question for Truman
and his advisers was whether Stalin had ex-pansionist aspirations beyond eastern Europe;
for them, Soviet efforts to maintain a postwar
presence and influence in Iran indicated that
that was the case. That conviction shaped Tru-
man’s policy of containing communism.
It would also have been good to engage
fully with the phenomenon of Eisenhower re-
visionism, the scholarly trend in which histo-
rians have come to rate Eisenhower as an out-
standing president, including his stewardship
of the Cold War. Would Sixsmith agree with
that analysis? And more detailed coverage of
the Cuban missile crisis – the most danger-
ous episode of the Cold War – would have
helped, particularly Kennedy’s handling of
the first week of the crisis and the importance
of his ExComm (Executive Committee of the
National Security Council) advisers.
In general, however, Martin Sixsmith’s
new book is an impressive achievement:
bold, ambitious and consistently insightful.
In the crowded field of Cold War studies, he
makes a notable contribution.Mark White is a professor of history at Queen
Mary University of London, specialising in
FIE 20th-century US history
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When Nikita Khrushchev
denounced Stalin in his
195 6 ‘secret speech’,
heart attacks and suicides
among those in attendance
were reported
in explaining Soviet and American fears of
losing control of their respective spheres of
influence. He offers a wonderfully compelling
summary of the psychological foundation of
the domino theory: “The cognitive distortion
that leads to the universalising of individual
threats convinced leaders east and west that
the slightest lack of resolve was an invitation
to the ‘other’ to trample on ‘our’ interests.”
All of this contributes to the strong central
theme of The War of Nerves.
The book is particularly powerful in its
assessment of the Soviet Union and its role in
the Cold War, reflecting not only the research
undertaken for this volume but also the time
the author spent as the BBC correspond-
ent in Moscow and elsewhere. Sixsmith met
Mikhail Gorbachev several times, so is able to
present his own first-hand impressions of the
Soviet leader as “open and sincere but dedi-
cated to the cause he believed to be right. He
had an avuncular charm – in manner and ap-
pearance he reminded me of my own father- but he could surprise... And he could swear
like a trooper.”
He was also with Lech Wałęsa (an activist
who led Solidarity, Poland’s first independent
trade union) in the shipyards of Gdańsk dur-
ing the strikes in the 1980s that culminated
in the toppling of the communist regime in
Poland. And he was in Gdańsk in 1987 when
Pope John Paul II spoke before huge crowds
to make clear his support for Solidarity’s ef-
forts in challenging the authority of the state.
Sixsmith’s political portraits of Soviet
leaders are particularly full, perceptive and
compelling, especially in the cases of Stalin
(the dominant figure in the early part of the
book), Khrushchev and Gorbachev.
These personalised stories enrich the ac-
count provided by The War of Nerves, as do
the fascinating anecdotes supplied by
Sixsmith. He writes insightfully on such
things as the Cold War motivation behind
the decision to feature the motto “In God
We Trust” on all US coins and paper money
in the fifties, and how the CIA’s psychologi-
cal-warfare officials influenced Ronald Rea-
gan’s use of jokes when visiting Gorbachev in
Moscow in 1988.
I enjoyed the breadth of theme of The
War of Ne r ve s. As well as his assessment of
policymaking in Moscow and Washington,
Sixsmith discusses the Cold War in a broader
context, including the ways in which music,
art and film were manipulated by Cold War-
riors and reflected the Cold War struggle. For
instance, he recalls the great Russian musi-
cian Mstislav Rostropovich playing Czech
composer Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto
in London in 1968, the day after the Soviet in-
vasion of Czechoslovakia, in protest at Mos-
cow’s crushing of the Prague Spring.
Islam Issa on Shakespeare’s
complex relationship with
the Confederacy“Shakespeare’s home
county of Warwick-
shire became a hub
for Confederates in
the immediate
aftermath of the
Civil War. And we
have this idea of
Shakespeare legitimising a cause, in
a similar way to how he was used by
the Nazis and others. For better or for
worse, there have been Confederates
associating themselves with Shake-
speare throughout history.”Ranulph Fiennes on
fellow polar explorer
Ernest Shackleton“Ultimately,
Shackleton became
famous not for
succeeding, but
because in facing
likely death in the
most horrible
circumstances, his
crew survived. In all my 5 0 years of
experience, I have never read or seen
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was. I think that this survival story
shows what a brilliant character he
had. Failure meant
nothing to him.”AUTHORS ON THE PODCAST
Kate Lister on the history
of sex work“Attitudes around sex
work can reveal so
much about a
culture’s values
and how they
viewed issues like
money, gender and
sexuality. In most
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the sex worker has been stigmatised- possibly because many of these
were deeply patriarchal societies, in
which sex work was one of the only
ways in which a woman could access
considerable power and money.”
ON THE