To understand Khrushchev's foreign policy, it is important to understand the man and his career, during both his time in power and the years before that. For a full biography, see William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003). Khrushchev's memoirs have been published in three English-language volumes: Nikita S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, trans. and ed. by Strobe Talbott (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1970), Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, trans. and ed. by Jerrold L. Schecter (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1974); and Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes, trans. and ed. by Jerrold Schecter and Vyacheslav Luchkov (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1990). The full Russian version of the memoirs is N. S. Khrushchev, Vospominaniia: vremia, liudi, vlast [Memoirs: Time, People, Power], 4 vols. (Moscow: Moskovskie novosti, 1999). A collection of articles including several on foreign and military policy is William Taubman, Sergei Khrushchev, and Abbott Gleason (eds.), Nikita Khrushchev (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2000). For an additional list of sources concerning Khrushchev's foreign policy both before and after 1962, see the entries in section 15 of this bibliography.
Khrushchev's son has written two memoirs that devote extensive attention to his last years in power: Sergei N. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), and Khrushchev on Khrushchev (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1990). Khrushchev's chief foreign-policy assistant's memoir is Oleg Troianovskii, Cherez gody i rasstoianiia [Over Years, Over Distances] (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997).
The best history of Khrushchev's foreign policy, based on sources from Russian archives, is Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: Norton, 2006). See also the entries on the Cuban missile crisis in section 4 of this bibliography.
The vast literature on Soviet foreign policy during the Brezhnev years could be divided into memoir publications, some of which provide a great deal of analysis, and scholarly studies and interpretations of the period. The memoir literature was mainly written by Russian authors and published in Russia, and serious analytical studies done mainly in the United States and Britain. Two significant exceptions to this are the monograph by Vladislav M. Zubok, The Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), and by Rudolf G. Pikhoia, who had full access to Soviet documents as head of the Russian Archival Administration, Sovetskii soiuz: istoriia vlasti, 1945-1991 [The Soviet Union: A History of Power, 1945-1991] (Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograf, 2000).
Among the most valuable memoirs of the period are the books written by former members of the Central Committee who were intimately involved in foreign-policymaking. Two most interesting sources, one looking from the inside and one from outside at the formulation of Soviet foreign policy, are by a member of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, Anatolii Cherniaev, Moia zhizn i moe vremia [My Life and My Times] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1995), and by veteran Ambassador Anatolii Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1995).
Other memoirs of Soviet decisionmakers include the director of the Institute of USA and Canada, Georgii A. Arbatov's The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics (New York: Times Books, 1992), deputy head of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee Karen N. Brutents's Tridtsat let na staroi ploshchadi [Thirty Years at the Old Square] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1998), Deputy Foreign Minister Georgii
M. Kornienko's Kholodnaia voina: svidetelstvo ee uchastnika [Testimony of a Participant] (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniyia, 1994), and a volume of recollections of members of Brezhnev's inner circle edited by Iurii Aksiutin, L. I. Brezhnev: materialy k biografii [L. I. Brezhnev: Materials for a Biography] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991).
Two outstanding eyewitness accounts combining recollection and analysis are by veteran human rights activist Ludmila Alexeeva, Soviet Dissent: Contemporary Movements for National, Religious, and Human Rights (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1985), and by chief Soviet arms-control negotiator Nikolai Detinov, and Alexander Saveliev, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision Making in the Soviet Union (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), providing a detailed account of Soviet decisionmaking on military-industrial and arms-control issues.
Anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy during the Brezhnev years should consult the magisterial study of US-Soviet relations during detente based on extensive interviews and documents in both countries by Raymond Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution,
1994). Another classic study that has not lost its relevance is Adam Ulam, Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-1982 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).
Among the books that focus on Brezhnev as a leader and foreign policymaker more narrowly are the comparative analysis of Khrushchev and Brezhnev by George Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Detente (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), and a collection of essays on Soviet decisionmaking, The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981), ed. Seweryn Bialer.
Among the recent books published after the end of the Cold War that are based on new sources from both sides of the Iron Curtain are publications by Richard Andersen, Public Politics in an Authoritarian State: Making Foreign Policy during the Brezhnev Years (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle (eds.), Brezhnev Reconsidered (London: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2002), and by Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996).
World History
