Overposted...Justin, never heard of Mastny. C'mon, look at Diplomatic History?
Clare Spark, who was a "marxist-feminist" programmer at Pacifica Radio station KPFK in the 80's, said to me a while back, that when she went to grad school at UCLA in the 90's and actually started reading Cold War history, including Mastny, she changed her mind from the pwoggie bromides. Russia's Road to the Cold War by Vojtech Mastny The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity The Stalin Years Vojtech Mastny Oxford U.Press. [This book offers] a peerless account of [Stalin's] blunders in foreign affairs....Mastny presents the most informative and richly documented account we have of Stalin's dealings with Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, Josip Broz (Tito), and lesser Communist leaders, based on communications drawn from previously inaccessible archives."--American Historical Review The New History of Cold War Alliances The New History of Cold War Alliances Vojtech Mastny In Journal of Cold War Studies Volume 4, Issue 2 / Spring 2002
One of your faves on this vol. "[T]his invaluable volume illuminates not only the 'inside history' of the Warsaw Pact, but, as reflected in that story, the history of Soviet-East European relations." William Taubman, Amherst College, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
By Byrne>... The Chronology : The Documented Day-By-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras by Malcolm Byrne (Editor) Paperback - June 1987
On 5/17/05, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I used to know a _lot_ about this and I am very
> skeptical. I never heard of these guys. The source
> they cite has TWO documents, or four if you count them
> that way.
>
> "Plans to initiate the use of nuclear weapons,
> ostensibly to preempt Western first-use. (Documents
> Nos. 81, 83)
> Soviet expectations that conventional conflicts would
> go nuclear, and plans to fight and win such conflicts.
> (Documents Nos. 81, 83)"
>
> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB154/index.htm
>
> I used to have probably _ a thousand_ detailed
> documents declassified from Pentagon sources on US
> first use plans. I still have probable the crucial
> coiuple of dozen.
>
> In the world of nuclear theology and strategic
> planning, two documents is toilet paper. Nothing.
> Worthless. You want the operation plans, the position
> papers, the strategic analyses, the whole bureaucratic
> paraphrenalia of modern war. If I had tried to make a
> case abouyt use first use plans with two or for
> documents I would have been regarded as a crank,a
> fraud, and an incompetent.
>
> And on the contrary, I used to have quite of lot of
> Soviet docs, and by quite a lot I mean, e.g., a dozen
> basic military textbooks, a couple score trandlated
> desclassified documents, and a ton of nonideological
> western analyses that said that the USSR had a
> no-first use polict.
>
> So, that might be a lie, but it will take more than
> four documents to convince me. And thsi was something
> I used to do. I mean, I can still tell you what CEP is
> and I can probably remember the CEP of the SS20. (500
> yards =/-, I think).
>
>
> --- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> > > http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
> > >
> >
> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_17-5-2005_pg7_41
> > > Soviet Union had plans for first use of N-weapons
> > in Europe
> > >
> > > By Khalid Hasan
> > >
> > > WASHINGTON: The Soviet Union had plans to attack
> > Western Europe that
> > > included being the first to use nuclear weapons,
> > according to a new
> > > book of previously secret Warsaw Pact documents
> > published at the
> > > weekend.
> >
> > Two observations:
> >
> > 1. It is very interesting that such "findings"
> > start to emerge out of
> > Washington just when the US unilateralism and
> > militarism make it more likely
> > for the EU and Russia to cooperate to thwart the US
> > aggression. Coincidence?
> > I do not think so.
> >
> > 2. In organizational behavior, plans doe not mean
> > intention - contrary to
> > what various propaganda mouthpieces want us to
> > believe. Making various
> > contingency plans is the raison d'etre of
> > organizations - but it does not
> > mean that those plans are meant to be actively
> > pursued. It means that
> > organizations have an action plan for every possible
> > contingency, so they
> > are not caught off guard. For the same reason, the
> > USPS developed a
> > contingency plan for mail delivery after a 'nucular'
> > attack on the US.
> >
> > Wojtek
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
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