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Depoliticizing the study of he Cold War would only benefit the debate and though it is probably
not quite possible in current media debates, one would hope that historians would at least strive
for this goal. Something else would also help: we should bear in mind that the notion of the Cold
War is, after all, a metaphor, which captures the confrontational aspect of that period but is not,
and cannot be, its full and accurate description. It was not, after all, a war — and preventing war
was perhaps the essence of that period, and of greater importance and concern to its protagonists
than preparing for war or winning the various ―battles‖ or skirmishes, whether in propaganda or
geopolitics, that occupied so much space in the press of that time. It is only recently that war
prevention as a substantive aspect of the Cold War has begun to receive sufficient attention from
historians, with important factual support from participants in the events themselves, as
happened, for example at the recent conference on the Cuban missile crisis in Havana attended
by former U.S., Soviet and Cuban political and military officials.
Contributions of Soviet and U.S. officials who were active during the various phases of the Cold
War to its historical record are, indeed, invaluable. Much credit is due to the projects, such as
conferences, books and oral history interviews, which aim to develop the factual base for further
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study and debate. In fact, much of the inaccurate and unhelpful ―loose talk‖ about the Cold War
and its end is due either to taking the metaphor too literally or to unfamiliarity with the facts and
documentary record. We can be grateful for the efforts to make available, both on the U.S. and
documents will become accessible to historians soon. A more realistic possibility is that
participants in the making and implementation of policies on both sides will speak and write
about their recollections, as some of them do in the present book. As a Russian, I can only regret
that more such literature is being published in the United States than in my country, but in any
case the fact that a significant body of evidence is gradually emerging is positive and welcome.
Much of what follows in this preface is based on my recollections of the events that I witnessed
and participated in during 1985-1991 and then tried to record in My Years with Gorbachev and
Shevardnadze, published in the United States in 1997.
The phrase used in the title of this book — ―turning points‖ — is, again, a metaphor. Though it
has often served to describe the events comprising the end of the Cold War, perhaps an even
better metaphor could be ―going forward‖, for it is this relentless movement away from the past
that stands out as we recall that time; not so much turning in a particular direction — the