Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was

Joe Weisenthal (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:25)

Tracy, you know we did that episode with Arthur Kroeper recently, and one of the questions that came up is whether you could characterize the US and China as being in a new Cold War. Right. But of course, that raises the question of, what was the Cold War in the first place? It's sort of hard to answer, are we in a new Cold War if you actually don't know what the original one was?

Tracy Alloway (0:45)

Joe, I can see through this intro already. You're trying to link it to a previous podcast, but I know you've been reading the history books. That's what this is. You read another history book, you want to talk about the Cold War.

Joe Weisenthal (0:55)

This is 100 percent correct. But it's timely for multiple reasons, obviously, because there's the US-China tension, there is the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Generally, if you want to understand the present, you want to understand how we got here. You know, it's interesting to me, so I first sort of, quote, learned about the Cold War, I think, in middle school, no, in high school, and it was like maybe 93 or 94 And that was only a few years after, I guess, it, quote, formally ended.

Tracy Alloway (1:27)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (1:27)

And yet by the time I was learning about it in high school, it was being taught, it might as well have been like Civil War history.

Tracy Alloway (1:33)

Yeah, capital H history.

Joe Weisenthal (1:35)

Yeah, capital H history, just old history. And I'm trying to learn a little bit more about it these days when I read some books, but there's still a lot of questions about, in my mind, what it was really all about.

Tracy Alloway (1:44)

Well, so I also first learned about the Cold War in high school. And I had a realization when I moved from high school to college. So I was doing a sort of American curriculum in Tokyo, AP history, AP US history, and then went to London, went to the LSE and did international relations, a big portion of which is history. And it kind of blew my mind how different the interpretations of history actually were. So, for instance, I had learned about the American Revolution, right? As a lot of Americans did. But in the UK, it is, of course, the American War of Independence. And so it was just a massive culture shock for me to go from that sort of US oriented curriculum to something more British centric or more international. So one thing I am very curious about is how the Cold War sort of played out from the non-U.S. perspective.

Joe Weisenthal (2:35)

Yeah, and right, like we called it the Cold War, I guess. And so the question is, what was it called elsewhere? Well, I'm really excited. We really do have the perfect guest today. He has a new book out on the question of what was the Cold War. We're going to be speaking with Vladislav Zubok. He is the Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. So doubly perfect. He's the author of the new book, The World of the Cold War, 1945-1991.

He's also written several other books sort of in the same general history. A lot of Soviet history. His prior book that I also highly recommend came out in 2021, Collapse, The Fall of the Soviet Union. What really happened there. So Professor Zubok, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Vladislav Zubok (3:21)

Thank you for inviting me. That's a great moment to talk about great changes in history as we're experiencing now.

Joe Weisenthal (3:27)

We are definitely experiencing them now. So I guess if someone had asked me like a year ago or a few years ago when I wasn't really thinking about these things, what was the Cold War? I might have said, well, there's global battle between capitalist vision and communism or democracy versus authoritarianism or maybe something else. But what was the Cold War? Because your book actually does offer a different claim and it seems to be more about something basic and land and territory and mostly centered on Europe.

Vladislav Zubok (3:59)

No, not at all. Well, let me start by getting you started.

Joe Weisenthal (4:02)

I completely misunderstood the book, but go on.

Vladislav Zubok (4:05)

Well, you completely misinterpreted my book.

Joe Weisenthal (4:08)

Okay.

Vladislav Zubok (4:09)

That's fine.

Tracy Alloway (4:10)

I like this episode already.