“Berlin’s great powers of observation combine with his great knowledge and literary gifts to provide us with a fascinating series of insights.” —Geoffrey Riklin George Kennan, the architect of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union, called Isaiah Berlin “the patron saint among the commentators of the Russian scene.” In The Soviet Mind, Berlin proves himself worthy of that accolade. Although the essays in this book were originally written to explore tensions between Soviet communism and Russian culture, the thinking about the Russian mind that emerges is as relevant today under Putin’s post-communist Russia as it was when this book first appeared more than a decade ago. This Brookings Classic brings together Berlin's writings about the Soviet Union. Among the highlights are accounts of Berlin's meetings with Russian writers in the aftermath of the war; a celebrated memorandum written for the British Foreign Office in 1945 about the state of the arts under Stalin; Berlin's account of Stalin's manipulative "artificial dialectic"; portraits of Pasternak and poet Osip Mandel’shtam; Berlin's survey of Russian culture based on a visit in 1956; and a postscript reflecting on the fall of the Berlin Wall and other events in 1989. Henry Hardy prepared the essays for publication; his introduction describes their history. In his revised foreword, Brookings’ Strobe Talbott, a longtime expert on Russia and the Soviet Union, relates the essays to Berlin's other work. The essays and other pieces in The Soviet Mind—including a new essay, “Marxist versus Non-Marxist Ideas in Soviet Policy”—represent Berlin at his most brilliant and are invaluable for policymakers, students, and anyone interested in Russian politics and thought—past, present, and future.

Since Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov was appointed to the office of commander in chief of the Soviet Navy in 1956, the Soviet Union has made a massive investment in naval construction, training, and operations. As a result, the Soviet Navy has grown from a coastal defense force to one of the world's two strongest navies. This book offers a detailed assessment of every major aspect of the Soviet Navy, from fleet structure and training facilities to command and control procedures and warfare and intelligence collection capabilities.

The Soviet Union and Terrorism (1984) examines the extent of Soviet involvement in international terrorism, and the aims and objectives of Soviet foreign policy. It looks at the evidence of changing Soviet attitudes to terrorism from 1917 to the 1980s evidenced in official and semi-official pronouncements, and it brings together evidence from the field of terrorist operations which points to a high degree of Soviet involvement. The Soviet Union is shown to be playing a dangerous game, sponsoring activities which it cannot hope to control, and leading to effects which it cannot predict. Nevertheless, it continues to play because it gains from the political and military disruption to the countries affected by terrorist activities.

Current divergence from traditional Leninist orthodoxy is attributed to such phenomena as nuclear warfare, continued Western prosperity and the Sino-Soviet split, according to this systematic analysis of Soviet foreign policy.

Discusses the history of the Soviet Union, from the revolution of 1917, through the Lenin and Stalin eras and the rule of such leaders as Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev, up to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

This book examines the crucial role that Soviet policy toward the Third World played in Soviet efforts to influence the development of the international system in competition with the United States. It traces the evolution of Soviet policy toward the Third World.

Eighty years ago the largest genocide ever occurred in Nazi Europe. This began with the mass extermination of patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders that Hitler's regime considered "useless eaters". The neuropsychiatric profession was systematically "cleansed" beginning in 1933, but racism and eugenics had infiltrated the specialty long before that. With the installation of Nazi-principled neuroscientists, mass forced sterilization was enacted, which transitioned to patient murder by the start of World War II. But the murder of roughly 275,000 patients was not enough. The patients' brains were stored and used in scientific publications both during and long after the war. Also, patients themselves were used for unethical experiments. Relatively few neuroscientists resisted the Nazis, with some success in the occupied countries. Most neuroscientists involved in unethical actions continued their careers unscathed after the war. Few answered for their actions, and few repented. The legacy of such a depraved era in the history of neuroscience and medical ethics is that codes now exist to protect patients and research subjects. But this protection is possibly subject to political extremes and individual neuroscientists can only protect patients and colleagues if they understand the dangers of a utilitarian, unethical, and uncompassionate mindset. Brain Science under the Swastika is the only comprehensive and scholarly published work regarding the ethical and professional abuses of neuroscientists during the Nazi era. The author has crafted a scathing tour de force exploring the extremes of ethical abuse, but also ways that this can be resisted and hopefully prevented by future generations of neuroscientists and physicians