Soviet judgment at Nuremberg: a new history of the international military tribunal after World War II

Russian émigré community and among officials in the US CIA and State Department. Together with a multitude of other factors, such stratagems proved a success, with Russian exiles more or less abandoning their project to overthrow the regime in Moscow by the start of the 1960s. What the reader is left with is a story of futility. But unlike for the actors in Tromly’s narrative, questions of success and failure are beside the point for the author. As he himself writes, ‘although the exiles had little direct impact on recent Russian history, their politics are nevertheless useful for understanding it’ (p. 298). While tracking the various misperceptions, misapprehensions, and missteps that together resulted in futility may not be satisfying in a triumphant sort of way, such histories can still be exceedingly revealing, often as much, if not even more, than those focused on perceived successes. Tromly’s quote is in direct reference to Russia in the three decades since the collapse of state socialism, but it could just as easily apply to any number of histories touched by the Russian political emigration. These include but are by no means limited to histories of the US intelligence community, post-war Germany, media and propaganda, diaspora politics, transnational Russian identity politics, and, of course, the early Cold War. Cold War Exiles and the CIA can help us understand them all, even when the impact of Russian exiles was ultimately limited, making the book a valuable resource beyond its narrow empirical focus. Arguably, this would be even more the case if Tromly contended more analytically with some of the most basic but also conceptually most interesting categorisations found in his book. The author’s use of certain terms – such as ‘diaspora’, ‘exile’ or ‘transnationalism’ – is less precise than the recent academic debates suggest they warrant. On balance, engagement with the conceptual implications of the book’s terminology is not entirely absent from the text, just less than perhaps this reader would have preferred. In any case, most academic readers will come to Cold War Exiles and the CIA already equipped with their own understandings of such concepts. Ultimately, for those interested in topics both directly and tangentially related to the focus of the book, Cold War Exiles and the CIA unquestionably provides interesting lessons and insights and is a welcome addition to the literature.