Neuerscheinung / Aufsatz

Susanne Schattenberg, Emotions and Play-acting in the Cold War: How Leonid Brezhnev Won and Lost the West’s Trust, in: The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 45 (2018), 3, S. 310-341.

This article seeks to prove that not only do emotions matter in foreign politics, but they are strong catalysts for political action. In Brezhnev’s case, it was fear of a third world war that made him strive for endurable peace. To gain the trust of the West, he tried to act like a Western statesman in order to be perceived as “familiar” and recognized as “one of us”. The article is structured along four key emotions: fear, trust, stress and mistrust, which are debated as concepts and as decisive states for Brezhnev’s foreign policy. I argue that Brezhnev won the trust of his supporters by showing he was different, but lost it when he became addicted to sleeping pills and had to retreat after 1974.