Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall

In his latest book entitled Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall, Jonathan Haslam makes the case that the Cold War was not stable, but was characterized by constant wars, near-wars, and political upheavals on both sides.

Drawing on a vast range of recently released archives in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and Eastern Europe, Haslam offers a thorough analysis of East-West relations from 1917 to 1989.

Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall presents an excellent account of politics and decision making at the highest levels of Soviet power: how Soviet leaders saw political and military events, what they were trying to accomplish and their miscalculations. Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall attempts to fill a significant gap in our understanding of the most important geopolitical rivalry of the twentieth century.

Joining Haslam on the panel as a commentator is Wilson Center Fellow Melissa K. Stockdale.

Jonathan Haslam is professor of the history of international relations at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a fellow of the British Academy. Haslam is the author of numerous books, including The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile: A Case of Assisted Suicide, The Vices of Integrity: E H Carr, 1892-1982, and No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations Since Machiavelli.

Melissa K. Stockdale is a Wilson Center fellow and associate professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Stockdale is a specialist in modern Russian history, whose publications include Paul Miliukov and the Quest for Liberal Russia, 1880-1918 and My Death for the Motherland Is Happiness: Women, Patriotism, and Soldiering in Russia's Great War, 1914-1917 which was awarded the AWSS Heldt Prize for Best Article in 2004. Stockdale is currently finishing her second book entitled A Hard Country to Love: Patriotism and National Identity in Russia's Great War, 1914-1918, and is co-editing a volume of essays entitled Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russian History. Support for Stockdale's research has come from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, IREX, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, the John M. Olin Foundation. Stockdale holds a BA in history from the University of Tulsa, a MA in Soviet area studies from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.