The Cold War From Twilight To Dawn

By JAMES COLLINS

Maybe we do live in an age of miracles. Here's one: after a 40-year conflict that held the entire world in a state of terror about the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union reconciled peacefully. And here's another: a commercial American television network has produced a 24-part series about this epoch that is serious, thorough and absorbing. CNN's Cold War, which debuts Sept. 27, serves as an example of documentary television at its best. Watching it, one begins to understand how the stamina of the U.S., the self-deception of the Soviet Union and the ultimate prudence of both helped the world come through unscathed.

If you are going to propose that a commercial American TV network make a many-part series on the cold war, it helps to be the boss. In 1994, while CNN's founder, Ted Turner (vice chairman of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN and TIME), was in Russia attending the Goodwill Games, another of his enterprises, he had a revelation. "It just hit me," he says, "that the cold war really was over and the world needed a documentary record of this conflict." A great admirer of The World at War, the classic syndicated series about World War II, Turner sought out its producer, Jeremy Isaacs, a prominent figure in British television. Four years and $12 million after the two first met, the collaboration has resulted in a production that is almost unique in its intelligence and sweep.

Organized roughly chronologically, Cold War ranges over 45 years and all across the globe as it explains and makes vivid this sprawling, complicated conflict. It features interviews with ordinary people as well as leaders like George Bush and Fidel Castro. Equally important, the series lets us hear from the mid-level officials (the commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, for example) who have the grittiest knowledge of how policy was actually carried out. There is narration, tautly delivered by Kenneth Branagh, but the story is told primarily through film footage of events and the recollections of participants. The filmmakers have combined these materials so that each hourlong program is coherent and well-paced, and the entire series has a dramatic drive.

The success of the series is even more remarkable when you consider that in many ways, the cold war is not a subject well suited to TV. As Turner says, "With World War II, you've got panzers, but the cold war was half cerebral." Yet the episodes on nuclear strategy, arms control and diplomacy have moments of great intensity and even humor. Interlocking his fingers to illustrate the mutual grip of terror, Robert McNamara explains deterrence and seems amazed himself at the doctrine's horrifying logic. In the episode on detente, Winston Lord, an aide to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon Administration, describes a summit at which Soviet leaders spend hours hectoring the Americans over Vietnam but then, having created a record to send to Hanoi, turn jovial and break out the vodka.

The cold war also had plenty of action, and the series makes the most of this as well. The failed Hungarian revolution of 1956, for example, provides grim footage and heartbreaking reminiscences. Weeping, an agricultural technician recalls how often he was tempted to leave the barricades, but when he saw the 14- and 15-year-old boys fighting beside him, he could not. "The shame kept me there," he says. Of course, the hot wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and elsewhere offer plenty of drama, and it is exciting to hear a mercenary talk about fighting in Angola. But the real tribute to the filmmakers is that amid the thrills, they provide some good understanding of these conflicts and the superpowers' role in them.

Making Cold War was a formidable task, requiring a team of about 50 people who compiled 1,100 hours of archival film and conducted some 900 hours of interviews. The effort was rewarded in finds like footage of a rocket exploding on its launch site in Siberia. KGB film was obtained showing the arrest of CIA agents named by Aldrich Ames, and these are some of the most startling scenes in the series. Finding interview subjects was also arduous. Senior researcher Svetlana Palmer tracked down some people from old books that mentioned heroes of socialist labor. Then she had to get them to open up. "I spent many hours in various kitchens of people," she says, "just talking and explaining what the series was about, what it was for, and literally convincing them that there was no harm in talking."

None of this hard work, and none of the skill in putting these materials together, would have much value if Cold War were inaccurate in its facts or interpretation. Demonstrating a commitment to intellectual honesty, Isaacs and his team hired three scholars to serve as advisers to the production. One was John Lewis Gaddis of Yale, who is considered one of America's most eminent historians of the cold war. He was joined by Lawrence Freedman of the University of London and Vladislav Zubok, a Russian now at the National Security Archive in Washington. The three vetted each program at every stage.

"I'm very pleased," says Gaddis. "One can always find portions with something this big and this extensive that one might have done differently. But I think it's fair and accurately reflects current cold-war scholarship." A recent finding from Soviet archives, for example, is that the Soviet leaders held their ideological views far more strongly than Western analysts had thought. The result was that the Soviets often acted against their best interests, mystifying those in the West, who believed the Soviets had a rational and cunning master plan. Comments in the series by former Soviet officials illustrate this new thesis.

Conservatives have always charged Turner with being too sympathetic to the Soviets on account of his commercial ties with them, his sponsorship of the Goodwill Games and his other efforts to improve relations between the superpowers. Since one of his requirements for Cold War was that it show an understanding of the Soviets' position as well as the West's, the series will come under extra scrutiny. "The idea," says Isaacs, was "to tell the story of the cold war not wrapped in Old Glory but from the viewpoints of both protagonists." The neutral tone may perturb those who desire more explicit condemnation, but the facts about the Soviets are allowed to speak for themselves. "It comes loud and clear," says Gaddis, "that there were great moral deficiencies in the Soviet empire." As for the portrayal of the U.S., there may be some lapses in perspective--in the episode on the McCarthy era, for example, it is unfortunate that the filmmakers found no honorable anti-communist to balance the comments made by those who were sympathetic to the party.

Cold War will not win hearts or audiences the way Ken Burns' The Civil War did. It doesn't embrace the viewer in a weave of words, images and music. Nevertheless, the series will seize the interest of any intelligent person who watches it, and it will help explain to him or her how it is that we are all still around after the fate of the earth for so long seemed uncertain.

--With reporting by William Tynan/New York

With reporting by William Tynan/New York