Recently, the book "Stupid Nuclear Bomb" was produced by the Guangdong People's Publishing House, and the gravitational book will be published in the form of a collection of works, including "Chernobyl: A Tragic History", "Atoms and Ashes: A History of Nuclear Disaster" and "Stupid Nuclear Bomb: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis" It can be seen as a trilogy of the nuclear issue by Prologi, in which Professor Prologi takes us back to the historical scene to re-examine the nuclear issue, understand the causes of crises and disasters, and find ways to solve them, hoping to gain strength in the face of the uncertainties of today's world.
In his latest book, The Stupid Nuclear Bomb: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Shaheli Ploki, an expert on international relations, a well-known authority on the history of the Cold War and Ukraine, and chair professor at Harvard University, uses newly declassified KGB archives and Soviet military memoirs, as well as newly declassified White House recordings and Cuban materials, to deeply examine the crisis that has brought human civilization to the brink of nuclear war.
In this book, the author breaks through the traditional U.S.-centered narrative and uses more comprehensive materials to narrate the crisis scene from the perspectives of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Cuba almost hour by hour, and deeply reconstruct the crisis scene from multiple perspectives. In the process of high-precision reconstruction of the crisis, the essence of the resolution of the crisis is revealed: it is not anyone's wise decision, but simply the fear of nuclear war.
The author skillfully presents the drama and fear of a crisis, clearly painting a picture of the crisis that includes intrigue, misunderstanding, games, panic and chaos.
About the author: Serhii Plokhy is the Smikhailo Khrushevsky Professor of Ukraine in the Department of History at Harvard University, and the director of the Center for Ukrainian Studies at Harvard University, specializing in the history of Eastern European thought, culture, and international relations. He is the only author to have won the Gelber Prize and the Bailey Gifford Prize, as well as the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, an authoritative award in the field of Russian studies.
Chapter Sample: Preface to the Chinese Edition: Five Journeys (excerpts).
Editor's note: This article is a preface written by the author at the request of the publisher of the Chinese version. In this short essay, he describes his own view of history, seeing his historical work as a trip to a "strange country", inviting readers to go to the historical scene and understand how and why historical figures respond to specific historical situations.
The five journeys correspond to the five forthcoming books, and the author details his motivations for creating these five books and the results he hopes to achieve.
These five books are a series that explores and explains the multiple transformations of the long 20th century. They reflect the decline of great power and the rise of new state ideologies, reveal the collision of different ideas and regimes, and discuss the challenges posed to the world by the Second World War, the Cold War, and the nuclear age. These five books do this by creating narratives, in other words, by telling stories. These stories contain implications for the present and the future, and have a broader meaning.
There is a Chinese proverb: "Don't forget the past, the future is the teacher." The closest Western proverb to it is the famous quote of the Roman statesman and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero: "History is the teacher of life." The edifying role of history has been questioned many times since the inception of this statement, and over the centuries there have been far more skeptics than believers. But I personally believe that history, as a discipline, can not only satisfy people's curiosity, but also serve as a reference, but it is important to note that we can only understand the past if we strive to place the people, places, events, and processes we study in their proper historical context.
British ** home lp.Hartley wrote in 1953: "The past was a strange country, where people did things differently. This is an insightful statement, and I treat each of my books as a trip to a "strange land", whether the subject is the history of a foreign country or the past of my own people. Although the themes or "destinations" of my "journeys" vary, their starting points, itineraries, and destinations are all inseparable from the concerns and perceptions of the moment. As a result, I prefer to think of my research as a round-trip journey – I always try to get back to where I started, to bring back something useful that the people around me don't know yet, to help the reader understand the present, and to look to the future with more confidence.
I am very interested in the thoughts, emotions and behaviors of individuals, but the most important thing is to discover and understand the political, social, cultural environments that shape these thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and the ways in which individuals cope with their circumstances. In my book, the people who make decisions, the people who "shape" history, are not necessarily in high positions, they may be, and often only happen to be in that time and place, reflecting the light and sorrow of the times. Finally, I believe in global history, which connects the present with the past, no matter what views we hold today, no matter what society we live in now. As a result, many of my writings and ** deal with the collision between different socio-political systems, cultures, and worldviews. I think one of my tasks is to uncover the multiple ties that bind us to each other and to our predecessors.
The Stupid Nuclear Bomb: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis focuses on the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962 and examines the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. The crisis is remembered as dramatic in the memory of the American public. They focused almost exclusively on the decisions and actions of Kennedy, who was not only the victor, but also the savior who saved the world from a global catastrophe. My writings, on the other hand, "internationalize" the history of the crisis. I expanded the narrative framework to include other key players, especially Khrushchev and Castro. In order to understand the causes, processes, and consequences of the crisis, and to learn lessons, I asked myself not only what "efforts" they had made to avoid nuclear war, but also what mistakes they had made in pushing the world to the brink of nuclear confrontation.
My answer to the latter question is that many of the mistakes made by Kennedy and Khrushchev were not only due to a lack of accurate intelligence, but also to the inability of the two leaders to understand each other's motives and capabilities. Khrushchev's decision to deploy Soviet missiles in Cuba was based on the fact that the Soviets felt threatened by the U.S. missiles deployed in Turkey, but Kennedy did not realize this and thought it would be fair to choose a new base near the U.S. mainland to balance the two sides. Khrushchev also never understood the American political system, in which the power of ** was limited by Congress - Kennedy did not have as much power as Khrushchev. The U.S. public**, represented by Congress, believes that Cuba has a much closer relationship with the United States geographically, historically, and culturally than Turkey has with Russia or the Soviet Union.
My research of Soviet sources, including reports of KGB officers found in Ukrainian archives, allowed me to look at the history of the crisis from below through the eyes of Soviet officers and soldiers. This perspective has proven critical to a comprehensive understanding of the true control of the military by the two leaders, as well as the decision-making autonomy of commanders on the ground on issues of war and peace. Soviet commanders defied Moscow's explicit orders to shoot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane over Cuba, nearly turning the crisis into a real war. This was because the Soviet commanders mistakenly believed that they were already in the middle of the war and had to defend themselves. After the incident, Kennedy and Khrushchev made great efforts to end the crisis before the situation got completely out of control. The fear of a nuclear confrontation provided a common ground for the two leaders to put aside their political and cultural differences and save the world from a nuclear catastrophe.