there was no soviet monetary thinking to speak of. but you might wonder why to this day it's a european who runs the imf and not an american, whereas the imf was much more important to the united states. the reason is this, president truman had intended to nominate white to be the first managing director of the imf in january of 1946. but right before he did so, he received a long memorandum from fbi director j edgar hoover saying don't even think about it. i got credible witnesses and information that will corroborate my allegations that this man is a soviet spy. now, truman didn't trust hoover but he knew he had a big political problem on his hands. they said we decide add r after all we really want the world bank to quote-unquote secure the confidence of the american investment community, and it would be rude of us to take both institutions. now, both institutions, mind you, were in washington, despite the fact that the british objected violently to this for years, but suddenly they decided they wouldn't touch the imf because they

cubans became heroes in the soviet union.like the day david challenged goliath. >> in the years since he took power, fidel castro has become an enemy of the united states. >> in cuba, you have fidel castro who's tying himself to the soviet bloc. which seems to be threatening the united states by the possibility that they're going to export communism to other south american countries which are in many instances anti-american. khrushchev is saying that you have to understand that cuba matters a lot to us. don't mess with cuba. khrushchev not using rhetoric. the eastern bloc was supporting castro with military assistance. >> many latin americans were shocked to find out how much communist equipment castro actually has. >> the sense was that kennedy had to do something about castro. >> when kennedy comes to the presidency he's briefed on the fact there was a plan in place to topple castro. >> but the plan that's presented to him is not what he wants. it's a huge invasion on a noisy beach. it is going to look like a u.s. invasion

what they say they say about the soviet soldiers while. many say that it's better to have a close neighbor than a faraway friend if it means they regarded us as their neighbors. they say that russians help them invested in afghanistan now they say their countries heading towards disaster. they know the soviet war in afghanistan officially ended twenty five years ago and for you at that point. no. today together with the special committee we're still searching for prisoners and remains of former soviet soldiers. when i regularly travel to afghanistan to carry out searches there. and we've been able to return about thirty soldiers both alive and dead you mean soviet prisoners of war yes yes. some of them died there and some were captured there are many more people left their job is to bring them home the war is not over while our soldiers are still on afghan soil. i would use that that was what do you have a feeling that the so it's soldiers who are better able to understand the afghans than the americans today i think. yes you know i met wi

but the soviet troops came to afghanistan with weapons right. yes and the afghans for to get the soviet union but you regularly visit afghanistan and you probably know the attitudes of the afghans to this so it troops and to the americans troops is there a difference or are they perceived as occupation forces well there is a big difference in true both armies were occupiers but i must say the afghans really hate the americans they would tell me that the soviet union invested in afghanistan and help to build schools factories roads and bridges with that's what the people of afghanistan i met told me they said the russians help to improve life in afghanistan they now say that the americans keep the situation under control but it's only getting worse. just to do that but why in your opinion i mean the americans have been in afghanistan for twelve years trying to bring some order. have they managed to do that which was i mean i think the afghans are invincible they're too independent minded they love freedom they don't want to see foreigners in thei

long enough and you know that the soviet times the soviet union was not only a political and to teach what was also stay the united many people and mr putin time and time again sad that he was talking about personal connections and people suddenly finding themselves living in a different country overnight he was talking about be human dimension of the soviet breakdown rather than you know a trying to reason rack of these big you know soviet political system it was russia after all the rich decided the russian people rich decided to ditch communism it wasn't the united states who made us the no absolutely it was a combination it was mr yeltsin who decided and mr yeltsin was fighting against mr gorbachev at the time and this was a good means of eliminating gorbachev as a political rival the problem with mr yeltsin as you well know his rule led to ten years of chaos and the one positive thing that mr putin has done in my view is he's ended more or less the chaos the question is having gone into crimea i mean now threatened elsewhere building up the size of the military is he in fact taki

the soviets like the reason for the architecture to be founded on gold because the soviets had a lot of it and looked to be on the verge of getting more of it. so the soviets were thrilled for any monetary system that would make their gold more valuable. they really viewed bretton woods as they did the marshal plan initially as just an opportunity to get short-term credits from the yit united states. white fought fiercely within the f.d.r. administration for $10 billion low interest loan to the soviet union. f.d.r. refused to go forward with it. as the main reason that we find why the soviets would not ratify bretton woods because no u.s. financial aid was forthcoming. they said we're not going to get anything out of this financially so it was not worth going forward. white was extremely disappointed. yeah, in the back. >> he was a fellow traveler, that is very clear. it is clearer from your book. it is clear that he passed information that he sowmed p have passed to soviet agents. usually spy or mole means someone is under the direction of the foreign agency. is there any evidence t

soviet union -gorbachev game.re is a lot of pressure coming from poland, czechoslovakia, and other places. things are happening. the pope is giving permission for it to happen. me, the best way to understand it with these crosscurrents is i think what gorbachev launched more than anything else was an intellectual revolution in his country. the moment you say we are going to allow not only reform and change but rather reform and change not centralized to moscow and on the factory floor, that allows people to question. tot is where things begin catalyze and others begin to take this and run with it as well. i think at the heart, it is the explanation you are describing, a recognition of soviet decline and the decision to make structural and intellectual changes. none of which has anything to do with the united states. i think if there is one pernicious, evil lie in history driving u.s. foreign policy and terrible directions in the 21st century, it is the notion that we spent the soviets into the ground. anybody watc

the soviet union. and i think gorbachev recognized they were lacking and he needed to make changes so he helped to identify the seeds that should be planted and where they should be planted. we had to make sure did not -- that somebody did not round up the seeds. i think that is what president bush did very well and he did it by having the benefit of counsel from lots of different people who did not all share the same view, except the same commitment. i think that was of great benefit to the president and i think that is reflected in the early stages of the book. the challenge that i have reading this book as it is maturing, i do feel as if i am anxious to turn on the radio -- and this dates me -- but i used up love listening to paul harvey, "the rest of the story." i want to know what the rest of the story is. i think there is something still missing in the book. i would suggest the relationship that margaret thatcher was going through in her own caucus, in her own country. also had an impact on the d

>> talk to the soviets. >> talk to the soviets. see if they can't get soviet medication. the japanese do not understand the agreements that have been made between the american, british, and soviet leaders. the soviets are going to enter the pacific war. the japanese under estimate stalin's interest in regaining territory that the japanese took from russia in the war of 1904-1905. their thinking is maybe we can come to a balance of power arrangement. if they prop us up now they can help negotiate our way out of the war with the mrns, we'll help them out later on, that is what we're going to tell them. they get the soviets to mediate an end to the war. so why doesn't this work out? ok the soviets see they have more to gain in terms of territory and political position from entering the war than helping the japanese get out of it. >> obviously we had pearl harbor occur and the death toll through the war thus far was four times what it was in europe from what the book said. so at this point, even if the soviets got involved the american people would not be satisfied with anyth

it was developed in the former soviet union. in the late 1940s it was the weapon of choice for soviet forces and while it is a design more than six decades old, the ak-47 in its many, many, many models are still being used by armed forces in more than 80 countries around the world. it's the world's most popular assault rifle by a mile. part of that has to do with how durable it is, how easy it is to use and how inexpensive it is both to make it and to buy it. the ak-47 is the most ubiquitous gun in the world. now, the "k" in ak-47 stands for this guy, mr. kalashnikov. he invented the ak. he passed away this past december. and now as of yesterday, the company that produces the ak-47, concern, the largest firearms producer in russia, they are among the companies that the united states has sanctioned with an aim toward making their practice of business a very difficult thing to accomplish. this is part of the newest round of unilateral sanctions that president obama announced yesterday against russia, toughest sanctions to date. th

this soviet face who run the soviet foreign policy for decades. he was this diplomat which was shocking news for the soviet system. of course for several years in this post of the foreign minister in the soviet union, he started to smile to western partners. he coined the phrase partner. before that soviet union considered west to be the open end. he was the first that started to trade western diplomats as partners. >> then he was elected president of georgia, the country's second president. started off with high approval rating, 70% of the vote. allegations of corruption soon started to dog him and then he was toppled by a bloodless revolution. >> well it was interesting. as a foreign minister of soviet union, he could enjoy peaceful life in the world. in switzerland and moscow he was famous. he returned to return to georgia, run for president twice and fortunately for him ended up toppled by protestors. he spent his last days very quiet and probably he felt sorry for his former colleagues. he felt sorry for his relations. that's what happened to

called criminologist you studied the soviet union later russia for several decades and i'm sure you would agree with me that. there has always been a considerable level of mistrust between in our two nations but i wonder if the rhetoric used by both sides has ever been asked colorful and asked passive aggressive as it is nowadays well i think we're almost back to the worst of the cold war underbridge now and the early reagan days in the early one nine hundred eighty s. after the soviet invasion of afghanistan that's when relations really hit their bottom we're not there yet but if we continue in this direction will be there well i just use this word passive aggressive and i think you know both sides seem to believe that they're defending their national interest or that national values and see the other side as an aggressor but it seems to me that this aggression is a very different caliber because the united states has the whole list of countries that it essentially ruins through intervention whereas russia is charged with one count of quote unquote bloodless an exception is that really f

and the conventional wisdom is the old system of the soviet union, the economic bankruptcy of the soviet union, the fact the was a secession of dying leaders brought down the soviet union and nothing from the outside mattered. >> host: were there other books or historians or participants in reykjavik? is there much bodies of literature on this? >> guest: no one really did a deep dive into what happened and the best thing is no one had the notes but the american notes and the russian notes. what does that enable you to do? that enabled you to see them raw and to peak through the keyhole of the little conference room in the lofty house and put your ear to the door and listen to what they said for ten and a half hours. i don't know about you, but i have never talked to anyone for ten and a half hours. if i talked to my wife that long i think she would walk out screaming. but they talked about the most important issues of the world for ten and a half hours. without notes, without talking points, without staff involvement and without memos. they must have felt this is more like me than any ti

he was most decorated man in soviet history. one of the few to be a hero of the soviet union.d, all of us have heard about in the none of us had met him. and he controlled his delegation in such a way that was brilliant to we have been dealing with all these guys who are basically, you, we take a nose about of time giving propaganda speeches, okay? that night by the o'clock, sergei akhromeyev said i want to do business. and sitting next to them, they started haranguing. it was amazing. he put his hand on the guys arm, looked at him, gave him a five star stay or. looked at him, simmer down, akhromeyev said okay, as we were saying. two or three times a minute when one of these guys would fire up, normal propaganda ploy, he would stare them down and said no, we are not doing that. and he made the greatest concessions on strategic arms to what i consider a very reasonable point of view. and so that was from 8:00 at night on saturday night and tell 620 time in the next month or then he appears in geneva the next year, 1987, and we've been negotiating all day with the soviets, forei

what ultimately flips things as the soviet bomb. -- is the soviet bomb. it has a negative and positive affect. the negative is because of the soviet bomb, the demand for manpower and resources for weapons productions increases but it has a positive influence too. why do you need secrets anymore? ,f the soviets have the bomb why you classifying so much stuff? why are you classifying reactor technology? why you keeping the most sick -- basic secrets of vision under lock and key? that is what they were doing. shortly after this, the soviet bomb is revealed to the american september ofe 1949. fuchs comes along in january of 1950. in days past, a scandal would have led to a clampdown on secrecy. but the soviet bomb basically liberated the atomic energy commission. the fuchs scandal had very little impact. the united states, england, and canada jointly adopt a policy to declassify information relating to reactors and nuclear physics. up until this point, all the information regarding fish and on, of uranium, plutonium, it was classified. some the stuff they kep

it was developed in the former soviet union. in the late 1940s it was the weapon of choice for soviet forces and while it is a design more than six decades old, the ak-47 in its many, many, many models are still being used by armed forces in more than 80 countries around the world. it's the world's most popular assault rifle by a mile. part of that has to do with how durable it is, how easy it is to use and how inexpensive it is both to make it and to buy it. the ak-47 is the most ubiquitous gun in the world. now, the "k" in ak-47 stands for this guy, mr. kalashnikov. he invented the ak. he passed away this past december. and now as of yesterday, the company that produces the ak-47, concern, the largest firearms producer in russia, they are among the companies that the united states has sanctioned with an aim toward making their practice of business a very difficult thing to accomplish. this is part of the newest round of unilateral sanctions that president obama announced yesterday against russia, toughest sanctions to date. th

it was a spy plane violating airspace to provoke the soviets or steal soviet secrets or both.ine days after that plane was shot down, nbc nightly news ran a remarkable lead story about those soviet claims that it was a spy plane including footage of the soviet pilot who actually shot down the korean passenger plane explaining why he did it. >> soviet television news showed scenes from an airplane cockpit over the peninsula. the radar screen clearly shows where land and sea are located, the commentator said, therefore it's difficult for the korean airliner pilot not to know where he was. a soviet reporter interviewed the first pilot who intercepted the airliner. the intruding plane did not have any lights on, he said. there's an alert, the commentator says. united states planes are again trying to violate soviet airspace. they tried ten times this day. a soviet television reporter interviewed the pilot who downed the korean airliner. he fired four warning bursts of tracer bullets across the nose of the plane, he said. flashed his lights, waggled his wings. the intruder did not

the soviets got to a point where they could not imitate this.even if they could steal it, they could not reproduce it very -- it. last, but not least, these regimes in their initial forms demoralized their people. they were, contrary to human nature, in the most important aspects, based on an important assumption or believe that people would work hard for an anonymous collective rather than favoring their own families based on the assertion that people did not need belief in higher power in order to live their lives. they were contrary to deeply rooted human characteristics. also, over time, the ideologies sought to promulgate lost a good deal of their external appeal. last, but not least, the reason why it was possible for others to oppose these regimes successfully was that they scared people. as a result, they were relatively easy to mobilize resources against. i don't want to overstate how easy that was to do, but when faced with the soviet union, ultimately united states and other western powers got their acts together and did what they nee

-soviet union, former soviet union and china, these three countries, they are afraid of each other. china is afraid of russia and the u.s., u.s. is afraid of russia and china, and russia is afraid of u.s. and china. what is origin of this paranoid among the three countries? >> well, that's a very good question. and, in fact, no matter, in thiu read the book, it's like no matter what the u.s. or the soviet union or china do, it makes everyone else more hysterical, you know? the cuban missile crisis makes america military hysterical that they were able to stick missiles in right under our noses. so that means we need even more nuclear weapons. and it made the soviets hysterical that the americans were able to force them to remove those missiles, some they needed more nuclear weapons. it's like every single thing triggers more. there's a great churchill quote that after a certain amount of nuclear material and all you're doing is making the rubble bounce. and i say that, you, apparently no matter what happened, both sides, all they wanted was more bouncing. they didn't care it was rubb

it was tolerated by the soviet authorities. this physicist was one of the founders of the popular front of latvia. lithuania and estonia had similar organizations. >> all three of the major opposition movements in lithuania, estonia, and latvia included people from a broad spectrum. they range from communists to absolutely radical anti-communists, but they all stood together. >> the leader served as independent latvia's first prime minister. he knew the struggle for independence could not be won by force. >> when you've got so many people together, just try to stop them from doing anything. they were very peaceful. they came with nothing in their hands but flowers. just try to do something against them -- it's not that easy. you can answer force with force, but what happens when they are peaceful? that was our policy from the start, the parliamentary pass, a peaceful revolution -- the parliamentary path. >> songs, candles, and prayers took the place of shouted slogans. many of the former dissidents are now serving in government

familiar policy towards russia it's called containment it worked during the cold war against the soviet union will work against today's russia and does this mean washington has declared a new cold war. to cross-talk washington spinning of containment i'm joined by my guest stephen cohen in new york he is a professor emeritus of russian studies and politics at new york university and princeton university and author of the recent book soviet fates in last alternatives and in chicago we cross to john mearsheimer he is a professor in the political science department at the university of chicago who has written extensively on international security his latest book is the tragedy of great power politics all right gentlemen cross talk rules and that means you can jump in anytime on steven cohen if i go to you first i read your article in the nation the cold war again whose responsibility subtitle in the name of democracy the west has unrelentingly moved its military political in the economic power ever closer to a post soviet russia i'll not ask a very broad ended question here what a future h

the soviet government read this and got upset.so they came up with the same where his missiles attack the soviet union and no word came from moscow, missiles or dogmatically fly back out and attack the united states. so the doomsday machine here and dr. strangelove would actually come to pass 30 years later. if talk or strangelove visits to significant movie in atomic history, the most significant in atomic history as china century. i like to say american first learned about nuclear science and seen movies and pictures of the victims if you're wishing me a nagasaki and they learned about atomic power plants were at three-mile island meltdown at the same time as the china syndrome was in the. you have walter cronkite announcing the could be the end of the world is happening in pennsylvania while jane fonda is giving a powerpoint presentation that have nuclear power plants work and descended that happens it could destroy the area the size of pennsylvania. because of this, disco with immense launched the biggest series of protests in

269 people had strayed into soviet territory and the soviets, of course, shot that plane down. it was korean airlines flight 007. it was only seconds away from international airspace. when a soviet fighter jet hit that passenger plane with two missiles, killed everybody onboard. president reagan was on vacation when the shoot-down happened. he initially wanted to stay on vacation, and the white house officially said he would stay on vacation, but four days after it happened, president reagan was back in washington and delivering this sternly worded address to the nation. he said what the soviets had done was monstrous. but honestly, looking back at that time, i have to tell you that sternly worded address was basically it in terms of the u.s. response. the presidential response to that tragedy. korean airlines flight 007 had departed from the united states. it had departed from new york city. it had stopped to refuel in anchorage. it was carrying dozens of americans including a serving u.s. congressman named larry mcdonald. president reagan addressed the nation after that fligh

it's going to negate soviet power and it's going to try to compete and ruined the soviet union.o reagan had this mystical deal of what sdi could become. gorbachev had a frightful view of what sdi would become and all of us knew that it was a small and at that time relatively insignificant research program at the pentagon that these two guys just elevated it and i think gorbachev's view of it that it was going to bring down the soviet union broke down the soviet union. >> host: reagan didn't necessarily conceive it is such or did he? i guess this is a big source of contention. what did reagan really and tend to achieve with this pursuit of sdi? >> guest: he intended to protect the united states against the incoming missile. >> host: it becomes this really big source of discussion during these two days. i was very interested to learn some of the details and you really get a sense in your book up a granular back and forth between these two leaders. >> guest: without touting the book too much although we are here to tout the book, chapters three, four and five back-and-forth of what

in relation to the soviet union and it's true that the soviet government had a monopoly on what the production but i would really taken issue with the claim that it. intentionally encouraged dependency as a means of cashing in on the misery of its people because i was born in the soviet union and i do remember clearly that the this stigma associated with compulsive drinking was very very high and the penalties were strong too i mean you could lose job because of excessive drinking you could easily be jailed because of being caught drunk on the street so what is your avodah for claiming that the russian state the soviet state at least intentionally encourage its people to. drinking into oblivion well there's a lot of this is not necessarily always you know sort of an active push into the vodka bottle as it were but certainly stymieing any efforts to oppose alcohol or to encourage temperance were essentially part of the political whims of the government so if you go back to the beginning of the soviet experience lenin was and ardent prohibitionist and russia sort of adapted to a prohibition of d

the soviet union is gone now. but for at least the last 20 years of its life and it worked very much in this field of trying to transform world sentiment against israel. that was because as one effect of the 1967 war that i left out of my presentations, in order to keep it short, although it was from lead to long anyway, to keep from getting longer, the israel's lightning victory in 1967 was a tremendous relation to the soviet union. the soviets have really pushed that war. they had agitated the egyptians and the syrians. the arab armies were armed with soviet weapons. and it was seen as to some degree the cold war proxy war. and therefore it was a tremendous humiliation to the soviets. it showed that their side was losing, the weapons are not as good as up to five western weapons. it had a very powerful effect inside the soviet empire to be for one thing, it ignited the consciences of jews with then the soviet union itself though numbers several million who had not had any kind of free of religious or other cultu

the soviets got to the point where they couldn't imitate this. even when they could steal it, they couldn't reproduce it. last but not least, of course, these regimes in the initial forms demoralized their people. they were contrary to human nature in their most important aspects. based on the assumption or the belief or the assertion that people would work hard for annan mus collective rather than favoring their own families based on the assertion that people didn't need belief in higher power in order to live their lives. so they were contrary to deeply rooted human characteristics. also, over time, the ideologies that they sought to promulgate lost a good deal of think external appeal. and last but not least, i think the reason why it was possible for others to oppose thee regimes successfully was that they scared people. and as a result, they were relatively easy to mobilize resources against. i don't want to overstate how easy that was to do but when faced with the soviet union, ultimately, the united states and other western powers got thei

their primary goal was to get this into the hands of soviet citizens and hope that each soviet citizenho got the book would pass it to a friend and that person would pass it to another so that the book would circulate widely. and it did ultimately circulate quite widely among the intelligencia at least. and the larger context here was that over the course of the cold war, the cia published a translated, printed and sent in millions of books and journals across a whole range of subjects, not just literature, but also art history, psychology, biography, economics. >> brown: again, a struggle of ideas. >> it was a struggle of ideas. brown: yeah. and it was a huge, huge multi-decade effort that cost tens of millions of dollars. >> brown: the cia i gather from your writing was seen earl yes and written about a little bit. >> yes, because the first printing and the cia did two printings, one a hard back, one a miniature paperback. the first printing, the operation did not go smoothly, and that immediately led to rumors and speculation about who was behind this. and there was suggestions from

an instance of how americans really view russia through the prism of the soviet union you know seeing russia as these ghost or the bogeyman are all of the soviet union where is the american aggression the american policy is a very much current well i'm not sure i'd agree with you on that i mean there was an effort for cooperation between the u.s. and russia but in two thousand and six if you remember after hamas won the elections in the.