Overview

This is a comprehensive study of the US government's knowledge and perceptions of the Soviet Union before the Cold War. It is also an in-depth investigation into how US intelligence operations were carried out in the decades before World War II. The book examines in detail US intelligence-gathering and analysis on the Soviet Union in the period 1921-46. Presenting a wealth of documentary evidence, Leonard Leshuk challenges some of the generally held assumptions about US-Soviet relations and associated events in the period. The book begins by tracing the question of how a state perceived to be hopelessly weak and backward before World War II could emerge from that terrible and resource-consuming conflict strong enough to challenge the United States on a global basis in the Cold War. Presenting extensive documentary evidence, principally from previously classified US intelligence files, the author shows how pre-Cold War perceptions of Soviet power were both wrong and in conflict with actual intelligence data. The author explains this anomaly as being due to the prejudice, ignorance and gross incompetence within US intelligence during this period, which led to dangerous mistakes being made by US policy-makers. The author concludes that, despite the massive expansion of intelligence operations since 1946, many of the same serious problems continue to beset US policy-making, as evidenced by the lack of preparedness for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. There are also worryingly close parallels with recent US intelligence and policy failures concerning China.

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9780714653068

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Leonard Leshuk is an independent intelligence analyst based in Washington DC, USA.

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