The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
For those of you who so kindly asked that I keep you apprised of my writings elsewhere, here's a piece that I hope you might find interesting--a review for Tablet magazine of Pavel Stroilov's new book about his collection of stolen Soviet documents and the light they shed on the Soviet Union's responsibility for the current state of the Middle East.
I've written quite a bit for City Journal about these archives--here, here and here. These pieces prompted lively debate and comment, particularly from Ron Radosh--to whom Stroilov and Vladimir Bukovsky responded, here.
I found Stroilov's book fascinating--and mordantly funny, by the way. Here's a sample:
An odd anecdote appears in Stroilov’s account of the final days of the Iran-Iraq war. Khomenei had learned from the Western press that Gorbachev was a man with whom one could do business—a great reformer. Obviously confused, he dispatched an Ayatollah to deliver a handwritten letter to Gorbachev. “The text, alas, is still unknown to historians,” writes Stroilov, “but the whole Politburo is on record laughing their heads off when reading it.” The contents may be deduced, he says, from the transcripts of the subsequent Politburo. Khomenei had proposed that Gorbachev should abandon Marxism and convert to Islam.
This, Stroilov remarks, “was hardly much sillier than the attitude of most Western opinion-makers, who hoped that Gorbachev would miraculously transform from a communist to a democrat.”
For those of you wondering how, precisely, we've arrived at such a mess, I think this book offers an important and neglected perspective.
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Dec '10
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
Great article!
I seem to recall reading something similar to this last year. In any rate, I wish I could read/speak Russian, I can only imagine what it would be like to read these primary sources.
May '10
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
Thank you for "banging on" about this, Claire. Too many would just like to ignore the whole mess, and learn nothing from it. The Stroilov book itself is an absolute bargain at the UK Kindle Store at the moment at £5.05, so why hesitate?
Aug '10
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
It's a stale image and I should go hunt another one, but after all these years it still sticks: a 1992 Turkish newspaper story about a 1965 trip to the U.S.S.R. made by Aziz Nesin, an article with lots of pictures of things he got while there. One of the items was a 45-RPM record. I want to believe this was a roguish purchase, a joke of Nesin's, but maybe he was given the thing by his hosts and maybe he liked it. I submit that we in the West cannot begin to understand intra-Eastern relationships until we grasp how a Russian 45-RPM record can be considered a blandishment by one side and a prize by the other.
Apr '11
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
I have always been convinced that the Russians are either the direct cause of or are some how actively involved in perpetuating trouble and misery across the world. It is nice to know just how much proof there actually is of this.
Dec '10
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
Am I wrong to think that Russia--the geographical landmass--must have one of the longest track records of sustained, unmitigated and enduring tyranny in the world?
The only other examples that come to my head are some places in Africa, but even then I'd hardly consider a tribal existence to be tyrannical in the sense that the Soviet Union, Tzarist Russia, or Putin's Russia are/were.
Have the Russian people ever truly tasted liberty?
Admittedly, I am not well read on Russian history, but from what I've seen, it can be summed as a history of tragedy, totalitarianism, and the bleak cold of winter.
Edited on June 21, 2012 at 8:26pmNov '11
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
Thanks for this, Claire, and let us hope that your review and the book receive the attention they deserve.
Re: The Russians Did It: The Arab Spring as the Final Act of the Cold War
Thanks, Sandy, and yes, let's hope people finally get curious about these documents--and Bukowsky's, too. They're just jaw-dropping, and it amazes me that people don't want to know what they say.