The Last Great Game USA Versus USSR Events, Conjunctures, Structures [Hardcover]

This book is a historical reinterpretation of the Cold War in the broadest sense from the viewpoint of the late 1980s. Dukes contends that the rivalry of the USA and Soviet Union, like the Great Game between Britain and Imperial Russia, can be understood only by analysing their relationship over centuries. He adopts the explanatory model of French historian Fernand Braudel - the concepts of event, conjuncture and structure  and examines the super-power relationship in an historical context stretching back to the medieval period. He argues that the political and cultural gaps between Western and Soviet approaches at key events have stemmed from widely different experiences of these events, as well as from long-embedded traditions.Paul Dukesis Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

Preface
1. Introduction
Part One: Events
2. Events of the Cold War: Approaches
3. Events of the Cold War: Reactions
Part Two: Conjunctures
4. The Great Conjuncture: Leninism versus Wilsonism
5. Conjunctures in Transitions to Modernity and Contemporaneity
Part Three: Structures
6. American-Russian Aspects of the Structure of the First Great Game
7. Towards the Structure of the Last Great Game: USA versus USSR
8. Conclusion
Notes
Further Reading
Index