#The cold war cnn series#
Both sides, I believe, build a straw man from the series and use it to advocate their agendas.ĬNN’s Cold War tries to convey the moral ambiguity so often found in history and the complexity of human personalities. I disagree equally with those Left-radical historians who claim that Cold War blames Stalin exclusively for the origins of the cold war and defends most U.S. The series recapitulates the horrors of the Stalinist regime, and with footage of the concentration camps at Kolyma it shows graphically the evil of the Communist system. Schoenfeld’s claim that the series drew a “moral equivalence” between Stalin’s empire and the United States. was compromised by defections and quickly melted away.Īs one responsible for facts (if not all the judgments) in CNN’s Cold War, I categorically reject Mr. But, as Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev reveal in their new book, The Haunted Wood, as of November 1945-i.e., before the cold war began-the Soviet “fifth column” in the U.S. Schoenfeld that Cold War should have highlighted more the massive Soviet penetration of the U.S. But he castigates the series for demonstrating that an exaggerated American perception of the Communist threat contributed to a dangerous nuclear-arms race, as well as insecurity and some anti-democratic practices at home. He ignores Cold War‘s praise for Western policies of opposition to Stalinism in Europe (see the programs “Berlin Blockade” and “Marshall Plan”) and in Asia. Instead, he “unmasks” a hostile pattern using selective quotations and his own flawed judgment of history. Schoenfeld is not satisfied with damning the series with faint praise. This ideological bent may explain why he approaches the cold war not as a complex historical drama with multiple meanings, but simply as a crusade against the “evil empire.”
Schoenfeld has many axes to grind: against the Communist sympathizers and fellow-travelers of the 1930’s, “revisionist” historians of the 1960’s, pro-detente liberals of the 1970’s, and Ted Turner and “peaceniks” of the 1980’s. But as a historian and one of the principal consultants for the series, I simply do not see anti-American “conspiracy” or falsification in the film. As a Russian who very much longed for freedom and democracy, I am with Mr. Gabriel Schoenfeld claims that CNN’s Cold War is an anti-American concoction that excuses “the most egregious Soviet conduct” and ignores a battle “between good and evil, between freedom and slavery, between democracy and totalitarianism.” He also claims that some episodes contain “deliberate historical falsification.” I am proud to have my name associated with it-as a consultant. Finally, I remain convinced that this series presents the cold war more effectively than has been done or ever will be done again on television. Second, I had assumed-naively, it now seems-that critics would understand the distinction between authorship and consultancy.
First, the ground rules were clear from the outset: the producers, not the consultants, were to have the last word. But should I have withdrawn from the series because I did not get my way at all times? It never occurred to me to do so, for several reasons. There are, of course, some things I would have done differently had I had such authority. I did not, in any part of the CNN project, have editorial control. I consulted on the television series and, to a lesser extent, the printed materials associated with it. In his long, occasionally thoughtful, but ultimately harsh essay on CNN’s Cold War, Gabriel Schoenfeld wonders why the series does not in all respects reflect the perspective of my recent book, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, which he has generously reviewed.
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