MixedThe GuardianTaubman\'s book is by far the best and most thorough contribution to understanding Khrushchev\'s personality and politics ever written, but he is not always as sure-footed in discussing more recent political phenomena ... More fundamentally, Taubman is misleading when, citing as his source an interview he conducted with a leading Russian pollster, he says that \'the only two periods of the 20th century that Russians evaluate positively are those associated with the last tsar, Nicholas II, and Nikita Khrushchev\'. The point about such surveys is that they reflect changing views of the present ...
Michael McFaul
PositiveThe Washington Post\"For Michael McFaul, in his vigorously argued political memoir, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, there is a \'new ideological struggle .?.?. between Russia and the West, not between communism and capitalism but between democracy and autocracy.\' As a generalization, that is unconvincing ... McFaul is on surer ground when he describes the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and a coalition of the gullible as a \'devastating blow\' to U.S.-Russia relations ... McFaul’s list of real and perceived Russian grievances adds up to a great deal. He underplays their collective significance ... On occasion only the prudence and sober judgment of a few individuals saved the world from that catastrophe. This remains reason enough for prioritizing the U.S.-Russian relationship, for paying attention to perceptions on both sides as well as to their concrete behavior, and for not stumbling, blindly or fatalistically, into a second cold war — or worse.\
