Россия и США: познавая друг друга. Сборник памяти академика Александра Александровича Фурсенко / Russia and the United States: perceiving each other. In Memory of the Academician Alexander A. Fursenko

In contrast to a commonly held view, for example, one of A. A.’s most interesting discoveries was that the status of Berlin actually had little to do with the Soviet move on Cuba. Far from being a carefully thought out part of a collective Soviet leadership’s great power strategy, as most American scholars assumed, the decision to send the missiles to Cuba was a rather impetuous one made essentially by Khrushchev alone, with only the full confidence and support of Rodion Malinovskii, his aggressive Minister of Defense. A. A. not only showed that Soviet intelligence on Cuba was rather dismal, especially that coming from the KGB, but that American intelligence was not much better. As a result, there was a real possibility that a tactical conflict might have rapidly escalated into something far worse than either the American or Soviet leaders initially imagined, especially since the Soviet commander in Cuba may well have had far greater authority of the use of his weapons than Kennedy and his advisors suspected. In other words, A. A.’s research showed that the Cuban Missile Crisis was “one hell of a gamble” not as Kennedy used the phrase in responding to his advisers’ calls to invade Cuba and remove both Soviet presence and Castro regime by the strongest possible use of force, but in terms of the way the crisis itself spun out of control, leaving the world a hairsbreadth away from thermonuclear catastrophe.

Alexander Alexandrovich Fursenko is thus remembered by his many American colleagues as a Soviet-trained scholar whose work managed to show that however structural the underpinnings of historical development, whether understood in Marxist or other forms, there are critical moments in history when historical outcomes are largely if not totally contingent of the character of the personalities involved and the ways their wield their power. This is a sobering lesson indeed in today’s highly unstable world. And as the contributions to this volume also testify, he is also remembered with fondness and appreciation for all of his efforts to bring two formerly different scholarly worlds together in a single, cooperative, and respectful community. Here, too, perhaps, his success is also a sobering reminder as we memorialize him here of how important such efforts continue to be for us all.

William G. Rosenberg

In memoriam

С. И. Потолов. Как молоды мы были

Время неумолимо. Незаметно уходят годы и даже век – XX, а с ними и дорогие сердцу и уму друзья и коллеги, с которыми прожил и проработал отнюдь не простые и легкие, но, в общем, плодотворные периоды жизни. Вот и наступающий 2015 г. для меня особый. В январе 1955 г., 60 лет тому назад, я впервые ступил на ленинградскую землю, приехав для работы в знаменитом Центральном государственном историческом архиве (ЦГИАЛ) по своей дипломной теме о формировании промышленного пролетариата в Донбассе второй половины XIX в. И так прикипел всей душой к этому великому городу с его славной и трагической судьбой, что поломал свои первоначальные планы, отказавшись от зарезервированной персонально для меня аспирантуры в киевском академическом Институте истории Украины в пользу ленинградской, успешно сдав в начале июля, сразу после окончания истфака Одесского университета, аспирантские экзамены в Ленинградском педагогическом институте. носившем прежде имя М. Н. Покровского. Через два года его неоправданно слили с ЛГПИ им. А. И. Герцена, и я, таким образом, уже там закончил аспирантуру.