A Cardboard Castle?
An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact
The editors:
Vojtech Mastny is a Senior Fellow at the National
Security Archive, where he coordinates the Parallel
History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP). He
has been a professor at Columbia University, the Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Boston
University, and US Naval War College. His latest book,
The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, won the American
Historical Association's George L. Beer Prize.
Malcolm Byrne is Director of Research at the
National Security Archive. Serves as Editor of CEU Press
National Security Archive Cold War Reader series, of
which this volume is a part.
"By far the most ambitious and integral project
in the burgeoning field of Cold War history has been
the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw
Pact, directed by Mastny. This is its early culmination,
a massive volume... Mastny's extended introductory essay
does more than survey the history." - Foreign
Affairs
"Did the Soviets expect a war? They were
not planning to overrun western Europe so it could fall
under Communist domination, but their plans to initiate
a nuclear strike were pre-emptive. In that hair-trigger
environment, if your information isn't perfect, you
may push the button before it is really justified. It
was surprising to see that the potential for miscalculation
and nuclear disaster was so high". - USNews.com
(extract from the interview
with editor Malcolm Byrne)
"An impressively extensive collection of original
documents and transcripts of the Warsaw Pact from its
beginning in 1955 to its dissolution in 1991. The two
main themes in the documents is that the Pact seemed
to have no intention of a preemptive attack on Western
Europe. The other is that the Pact was not all as united
as outside observers believed. This is a great book
for historians and for anyone else who is interested
in this subject." - Amazon (extract from
a reader's online review)
This is the first book to document, analyze, and interpret
the history of the Warsaw Pact based on the archives
of the alliance itself. As suggested by the title, the
Soviet bloc military machine that held the West in awe
for most of the Cold War does not appear from the inside
as formidable as outsiders often believed, nor were
its strengths and weaknesses the same at different times
in its surprisingly long history, extending for almost
half a century.
The introductory study by Mastny assesses the controversial
origins of the "superfluous" alliance, its
subsequent search for a purpose, its crisis and consolidation
despite congenital weaknesses, as well as its unexpected
demise.
Most of the 193 documents included in the book were
top secret and have only recently been obtained from
Eastern European archives by the PHP project. The majority
of the documents were translated specifically for this
volume and have never appeared in English before.
The introductory remarks to individual documents by
co-editor Byrne explain the particular significance
of each item. A chronology of the main events in the
history of the Warsaw Pact, a list of its leading officials,
a selective multilingual bibliography, and an analytical
index add to the importance of a publication that sets
the new standard as a reference work on the subject
and facilitate its use by both students and general
readers.
Contents
Editors' Preface; Acronyms and Abbreviations;
Chronology of Events; Introductory Essay
by Vojtech Mastny; Documents I. The Formative
Years (Docs. 1-28) II. The Crisis (Docs. 29-61) III.
The Alliance at Its Peak (Docs. 62-85) IV. The Incipient
Decline (Docs. 86-121) V. Disintegration (Docs. 122-155)
Main Actors; Bibliography; Index
This is the fourth volume in the series National
Security Archive Cold War Readers, editor: Malcolm Byrne
ISSN 1587-2416
2005
792 pages
978-963-7326-07-3 paperback $35.00 / €25.95 / £18.95
978-963-7326-08-0 cloth $75.00 / €63.95 / £45.95
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