Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Having not read any modern Russian history so far this year, this seemed like a reasonable monograph to try. To begin at the end, Hasegawa ends with a plea for a better theory of state failure, as the Great War broke the state and society of Czarist Russia, to the degree that the provisional republic could not put the pieces back together again, with the lawlessness and criminality of Petrograd being both symptom and reinforcing process. The problem is that the Bolsheviks' organicist show more theories of classes knowing their own interests were also shown up, as all there was were fragmentary communities trying to secure their own security to the best of their ability, until Lenin unleashed the Cheka on general society. The author doesn't pretend to have any good answers to his question of how does one thread a path between chaos and coercion; consent and legitimacy are mostly the residue of past promises kept, and that is a question of time. show less

This is an important but flawed book. Important because it concentrates on the termination of the Pacific War from the Soviet perspective, and thus the roots of the Cold War. Particular emphasis is given to how Stalin manipulated both the Japanese desperation to find an alternative to unconditional surrender and the American demand for such. One also is given a strong sense of the roles of the secondary personnel of the three main governments involved, and how they swayed the decision show more process.

The main problem here is the Hasegawa's moralizing over the use of nuclear weapons. Though he claims to repudiate the revisionists who formulated the initial arguments against the American first use of nuclear weapons, it does seem clear that Hasegawa has a certain sympathy with their position. It would be better to accept the atomic bomb as not so much an innovation, but as the final culmination of total war. To me it always seemed academic to make a distinction between dying as a result of an air raid by several hundred bombers as opposed to an attack by a single machine, at least in the context of World War II.

I also find the depiction of Pres. Truman offered to be something of a caricature. Hasegawa sees a man motivated by a sense of honor seeking satisfaction for the attack on Pearl Harbor, while at the same time being a victim of the governing machine, and unable to stop the momentum for use of atomic weapons. This portrait seems anachronistic to me, as if Hasegawa is disappointed that Truman could not rise about the tenor of his time.

One also gets the sense that the depiction Hasegawa provides of the Japanese and Soviet leadership somehow comes off as being more rational, as though there was something evil about an American government following the dictates of realpolitik. That there was still a war going on sometimes get lost in Hasegawa's apparent moral revulsion. It's hard to imagine any American president recoiling from first use of atomic weapons when they appeared to offer a solution to multiple problems. This does raise the question of why the American leadership would consider the new weapon that stunning of an advance, when already waging aerial warfare in an indiscriminate manner; one supposes that hope springs eternal. This being the case I'm perfectly willing to take seriously Hasegawa's argument that the Soviet intervention is more important than American analysts are usually willing to credit.

Finally, the real question to be dealt with here is the inadequacy of the American diplomacy of the time towards the issue of war termination. At a certain point it becomes obvious that the lack of a clear channel to the Japanese government was a real hindrance in terms of bringing the slaughter to an end, a point that Hasegawa fails to treat in as analytic a fashion as needed and where a legitimate critique can be made of the Truman Administration; military victory is not enough. This also then becomes an indictment of FDR's style of governance, and his failure to prepare Truman to take on the role of commander in chief; though you can argue that would be an anachronistic position to take. As has been said, the graveyards are filled with indispensable men. show less

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs (Hachette) is essentially a forensic study of the last week of Tsar Nicholas II’s reign and the shenanigans of grand dukes, generals, parliamentarians and officials by which his train, and his reign, were brought to a halt.

Read History Today’s Books of the Year 2024 at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/books-year-2024-part-1

Donald Rayfield is author of ‘A Seditious and Sinister show more Tribe’: The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate (Reaktion) show less