By Evan R. Goldstein

When, in 1946, Winston Churchill famously warned that an "iron curtain" of Soviet repression was descending over Europe, few people in the United States were equipped to analyze Moscow's intentions. Little was known about the Soviet Union. The U.S. government had a mere two dozen Soviet experts on staff; two years later, the Central Intelligence Agency boasted 38 Soviet analysts, but only 12 spoke any Russian, and only one had a Ph.D. The fields of Russian studies and Soviet studies had not yet been established. In his deeply researched new book, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (Oxford University Press), David C. Engerman traces the "unprecedented" intellectual mobilization of academics and policy makers during the cold war. In the years following World War II, Engerman writes, the study of the Soviet Union went from "laughingstock to juggernaut, from a dispersed group of isolated scholars to a vibrant enterprise making headlines, advising presidents, and shaping foreign policy, all the while fulfilling the traditional academic roles of research and teaching."

This burst of interest was generously supported by a burgeoning network of government agencies, private foundations, and area-studies programs, which "dramatically changed the relationship between government and university," writes Engerman, an associate professor of history at Brandeis University. Fields as disparate as literary studies, history, economics, sociology, and political science were transformed by a flood of cash and the intellectual demands of the cold war. An emphasis on Russian-language competence and cultural knowledge, for instance, nurtured a generation of experts on Bakhtin, Bulgakov, and Pushkin.

By the early 1970s, however, the flow of funds began to dry up and Russian and Soviet studies to stagnate. Also, the Vietnam War had diminished confidence in the ability of social scientists to solve global problems, and many scholars grew wary of cooperating with government. As Engerman wryly notes, the only area of growth in Russian studies was the increasingly bitter debate among those who disagreed about U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. From the left, figures like the historians Stephen F. Cohen, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Moshe Lewin launched a revisionist critique of the historiography of the cold war. In their view, the study of the Soviet Union had been tarnished by politics and ideology. On the right, scholars like Richard Pipes and Robert Conquest—the former having moved from Harvard University to a prominent position on the National Security Council in the Reagan administration—continued to perceive the Soviet Union as a totalitarian system incapable of reform. "The increasingly energetic debates produced useful contrasts and discussions at first," Engerman writes, "but ultimately ended up like trench warfare, generating heavy casualties but little progress."

The trench warfare over the interpretation of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia rages on. Cohen, a professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University, remains a strident critic of U.S. policy toward Moscow, known for sharply chastising his colleagues in academe. In Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (W.W. Norton, 2000), he accused Russia watchers of "malpractice" for their blinkered belief during the 1990s that Russia could quickly adapt to free-market reforms.

In his new book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (Columbia University Press), Cohen stands athwart what he calls the "school of inevitability," which holds that the development of the Soviet Union—and the circumstances of its demise, in 1991—was predetermined by a series of irresistible factors, most notably the ruling Communist Party's rigid organization and ideology. Cohen, on the other hand, emphasizes contingency. In his view, a Soviet Union that continued to gradually modernize and democratize under the responsible stewardship of Mikhail Gorbachev would have been preferable to the U.S.-supported "shock therapy" measures Boris Yeltsin enacted throughout the 1990s.

During that decade—a period marked by "political extremism and unfettered greed," writes Cohen—Russia squandered the benefits achieved during six years of Gorbachev's perestroika. Yeltsin's decision to liquidate the Soviet Union was not adequately thought through, and the consequences were grave. According to the author: "It is hard to imagine a political act more extreme than abolishing a state of 280 million citizens, one laden with countless nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction." When the Soviet economy dissolved, poverty increased, and corruption became the country's chief growth industry. By 1999, 53 percent of Russians wanted Yeltsin put on trial for his policies. When the president finally stepped down later that year, he handed power to his chosen successor, a 47-year-old career KGB officer named Vladimir Putin.

In light of the dismal record of the 1990s, Cohen asks, why do so many Russia watchers continue to hail the breakup of the Soviet Union as a victory for democracy and free-market capitalism? It was anything but, he argues in a number of essays in the book, emphasizing that perestroika offered a preferable economic and political alternative to Russia and the West. "Soviet democratization, however dictatorial the system's preceding history, was Russia's missed democratic opportunity, an evolutionary road not taken," Cohen writes.

Not only was the Soviet Union capable of reform, he still argues, but by 1991 it was already in the midst of a peaceful transition to free-market democracy. Private businesses, banks, and stock exchanges had sprouted up, along with a vibrant new entrepreneurial class.

So what happened? Is Putin's belligerence to blame for the deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations? Cohen fingers a culprit closer to home: Bill Clinton. The Clinton administration "failed disastrously" in its attempt to recast the U.S. relationship with post-Soviet Russia. Worse, the Clinton approach—"a relentless, winner-take-all exploitation of Russia's post-1991 weakness"—continues to be Washington's policy. NATO's provocative expansion into former Soviet-bloc states and the United States' constant meddling in Moscow's internal affairs have placed the Kremlin on the defensive. And, Cohen urges, don't lose sight of the historical background: "When in the 1990s the U.S.-supported Yeltsin overthrew Russia's elected parliament and constitutional order by force, gave its national wealth and television networks to Kremlin insiders, imposed a constitution without real constraints on executive power, and began to rig elections, it was 'democratic reform,'" Cohen writes. "When Putin continued that process, it was 'authoritarianism.'"

In his new book, Russia and the Arabs: Behind the Scenes in the Middle East From the Cold War to the Present (Basic Books), Yevgeny Primakov offers an insider's account of Moscow's relationship with the Middle East. Primakov is a former director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as a former foreign minister and prime minister of the country. In the 1960s, Primakov was a Middle East correspondent for the Soviet newspaper Pravda, and later he became one of the leading authorities on the Middle East in the Soviet foreign-policy establishment.

Mining his personal notebooks, as well as recently declassified documents, Primakov provides an intimate glimpse of the key figures in the region over the last half-century. He sketches a flattering portrait of the late Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, whose "hatred for Israel," Primakov insists, never turned into a "hatred for Jews." Saddam Hussein, whom Primakov first met in the early 1970s, is remembered as a "genuinely promising leader" who, over time, developed a reckless belief in his own good fortune. Benjamin Netanyahu, past and current prime minister of Israel, earned Primakov's respect as a frank and open interlocutor—unlike his tight-lipped predecessors in Jerusalem.

Primakov also believes that the American decision to invade Iraq in 2003 "ran counter to all common sense." On the eve of the war, Putin dispatched Primakov to Baghdad in a desperate attempt to convince Hussein to voluntarily step down as president. Confident and seemingly at ease, the Iraqi leader rebuked Primakov, who now laments that Iraq has been turned from a "secular state" into a volatile, sectarian, "faith-based state."

On Iran, Primakov opposes—along with the current government in Moscow—imposing international economic sanctions on Tehran, even if it continues to press ahead with the production of nuclear weapons: "If the hope is to motivate more realistically minded figures to seize the upper hand in the Iranian leadership, then it's hard to see how sanctions—which would hit ordinary people hardest—would help tip the balance of power toward them." On the contrary, Primakov argues, harsh sanctions would further radicalize Iranian politics.

Looking ahead, Primakov envisions a more robust role for Russia in the Middle East. Such a development, he claims, would be welcomed by all nations in the region, even Israel, "where the public increasingly sees how detrimental it is to have a one-sided policy of alignment with a single global power—the United States—in a world that is ever more complex and polarized."