The author debunks some massive Cold War ideology here. It's very useful for those who were raised in a similar mindset to his:

"I was a product of a common type of political upbringing in America, influenced both inside and outside of the home to believe we were the undisputed greatest country in the world—in fact, in all of history. We had flaws, but they were minor compared to those of other countries. Combined with certain aspects of my own psychology and family environment, this turned me into a hard-boiled cold warrior, a black-and-white thinker who saw the Soviet Union as the dangerous, tyrannical enemy of freedom, and the United States as the virtuous guardian of democracy and goodness. They were the bad guys, we were the good guys."

Now, personally, I am not a Boomer. My parents were, and had some of these ideas too, but I meandered into an AOL chatroom in the mid-90s, made some friends from Australia and the Netherlands, and began learning about the world not according to the US. I then majored in Russian studies in college, so I am really not the audience for this book. But I appreciate that the author is doing the heavy lifting that I get tired of doing, challenging the Cold War rhetoric that justified funding the US military-industrial complex. Now, in the context of the Russian war in Ukraine, some of this book is already out of date, e.g.:

"I will challenge the notion of Putin as a ruthless dictator, and the idea that modern-day Russia is best seen as a highly repressive, deeply corrupt state. "

Erm, I guess you could still apologize for Putin and his regime in 2021. Anyway. if you're a US Boomer who doesn't own a passport because your annual vacation is Disneyland, read the first seven chapters of this book. Everyone else, maybe just follow some Ukrainian journalists on Twitter.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

In this book, "Americans" show creator Joe Weisberg re-evaluates the US-Russia relationship and provides recommendations as to how it can be repaired. I found this book to be somewhat of a mixed bag. In the first half of the book, he spends time unpacking the misconceptions that he (and presumably many other Americans) developed during the Cold War. I would assume that this section would have been more enlightening for someone who lived through the Cold War and has done little reexamination of their biases since then, but as someone not old enough to experience the Cold War, I thought all of his conclusions were fairly obvious. Perhaps the most obvious points in this section were that not all Soviet citizens wanted the USSR to collapse and that Soviet citizens still managed to live complex, relatively full lives despite political oppression. In my opinion, none of this was as revelatory as the author thought it was.

Throughout the book, Weisberg also attempts to compare the US to the USSR/Russia to demonstrate that we are more alike than different. Some of these comparisons work somewhat well.Many others are a stretch. He gets uncomfortably close to excusing anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union by arguing that the US was also anti-Semitic at the time. He also makes the point that we can't necessarily judge Russia for having anti-LGBT policies because America used to have anti-LGBT laws, that we can't judge the KGB for its repression and torture because the CIA has done similar things (shouldn't this mean we should judge the CIA as well?), and that we can't really judge Russia's annexation of Ukraine because of our long list of foreign interventions abroad. Perhaps less examples would have served his point better.

The final part of the book is Weisberg's suggestions for repairing the US-Russia relationship. I agree with the crux of his argument here and thought he argued it well: that the US should be less self-righteous in its dealings with Russia and that there are significant areas of common ground between the two countries that should be focused on. I did feel that some of his specific solutions were unrealistic, but Weisberg himself acknowledges this.

Overall, I thought this book was kind of frustrating. Too much of a focus on finding specific equivalences for US and Soviet/Russian behavior damaged his argument and caused the book to drag.

In <i>Russia Upside Down</i>, Joe Weisberg attempts to re-evaluate the US-Russia relationship (and US-Soviet relationship that preceded it), with mixed results. Weisberg is in his 50s, i.e. old enough to have come of age in the later years of the Cold War, and the first half of the book is dedicated to knocking down a lot of the misconceptions that he, personally, had about the Soviet Union growing up. These misconceptions were no doubt common among his peers, and this section is, I imagine, more useful for those who lived through the Cold War. But for those of us young enough not to remember the Soviet Union (or who were not even born before it fell) it's kind of hit-or-miss, since many people don't think or learn enough about the Soviet Union to develop those misconceptions in the first place. So, it makes some points (an exhaustive examination of the role of the KGB in Soviet society, or the history of anti-Semitism in the USSR) quite interesting, as it's information we don't often hear these days, but others (like the fact that not everybody in the USSR wanted it to collapse, or people who have a more or less positive opinion of Stalin weren't all brainwashed) kind of a waste of time. Of course not everybody wanted the union to collapse -- stability and national strength are important to people, and there was little reason to think the fall of the USSR would be smooth and productive; of course people can have a nuanced opinion of their significant historical leaders -- Weisberg makes the comparison to American opinions of George Washington, although owning slaves (while heinous) pales in comparison to Stalin's purges and pure death toll, so a better comparison probably falls closer to Andrew Jackson. The upshot is generally that the Soviet Union was not the evil empire it was often portrayed as being, and that black-and-white worldview was not productive at the time.

Weisberg then attempts to give the same treatment to the current US-Russia dynamic, which often boils down to "Russia isn't the literal devil, and Russians are people, too, and patriots, and think how America would react if another country was doing to it what America does to Russia." Which, yeah, is often valid, and the advice to tone things down a notch is never too bad an idea. But he does sometimes stray uncomfortably into moral equivalencing -- like, saying we can't really judge Russia for having repressive anti-LGBT laws when America also had discriminatory policies against gays decades ago, or we can't judge Russia's oligarchs and kleptocrats because too much money in politics is also a problem in the US, or we can't judge Russia's wars in Ukraine or Georgia because of Afghanistan and Iraq. The comparisons are good to point out, since it helps put things in perspective -- you can imagine a Russian patriot viewing American criticism as hypocritical or self-righteous -- but that doesn't mean they're entirely valid. Likewise, Weisberg's attempts to contextualize Putin as a smart, capable leader who actually cares about his country, not just a dictator out for his own power, are valid but stray uncomfortably close to whitewashing. Weisberg acknowledges that is a difficult tightrope to walk, and your mileage may vary on how well he manages that.

The final section of the book is Weisberg's advice for how to smooth out the US-Russia relationship, which tends to be a little kumbaya for my tastes. Some points are good -- adopt a less self-righteous and smug tone when conducting diplomacy with Russia, and focus on areas such as fighting terrorism, protecting the environment, and drawing down nuclear arsenals where we can plausibly find common ground with Russia -- but some just seem impractical, like his pat suggestion that both countries agree to stop spying on each other. Much is made of Weisberg's past as a CIA agent in the press for this book (despite him only ever being a trainee), but he has a particular bugbear about espionage being useless and seems to think that a) agreeing to stop spying is a simple thing to do and b) it's going to improve diplomatic relations a ton. I don't know if I buy any of those premises.

Joseph Weisberg takes readers through his deeply held notions of the Soviet Union from an early age and clinging to them into adulthood, even as his instincts caused him to doubt what he was hearing and sometimes seeing. What unfolds is a re-read of Russia and how we can reassess biases into a solid foundation of clarity moving forward. This book is as deeply personal an experience as watching his TV show, 'The Americans' over the course of its seasons.

Many of Weisberg's examples read like a punch list or a primer to Soviet/Russian history. As familiar as some of it might be for those of us of a certain age, the walkthrough is refreshing for today's 2021 audience. Some of these include: widely accepted at-the-time "facts", emotional components to US/Russian politics, how Russians really felt about the Soviet Union, a second look at Stalin's legacy, the leaders after Stalin, were the Soviets a meritocracy?, the post-Stalin KGB and espionage, the Regan-Gorbachev era, all things Putin, media or propaganda, and how his own years of misunderstanding and subsequent reframing had a hand in the creation of 'The Americans'.

Weisberg has given something fundamental back to his readers. Not just a journey through senses of self or our flaws or where our core ideals might come from. But a Russia that was always worth knowing, on their terms, not through a constructed lens of the West. The assessments, the search for personal conviction, and the way forward is close read, introspection we didn't realize we might have needed all along. A hearty 5 stars and a valuable resource for comparative study

Russia Upside Down by Joe Weisberg

I found this to be a very frustrating book. Mr. Weisberg is the creator of The Americans TV Program. In this book Mr. Weisberg who once worked for the CIA has re-examined his thinking about the USA and Soviet/Russia and how we should manage this relationship. Clearly the US/Russian relationship is not working to benefit either country.
He begins by suggesting the old paradigm that the US is everything good and Russia is evil is the problem. Yes, I can agree with this point. But in making his arguments he poses vary false equivalency between our two countries. An early example; Stalin killed many Soviet people but the US also killed many Native Americans.
More recent are his arguments that Putin is not a bad guy. He poses the question “Is Putin a killer? He then breaks this down to four groups:
• Domestic Terror meaning blowing up Soviet apartment buildings and blaming the Chechens. His response Putting not involved
• Putin order to kill journalists. 28 have been killed inside Russia. He doubts Putin was involved
• Putin ordered to kill spies and traitors – probably
• Putin ordered to murder political opponents – unclear
I think holding these opinions does nothing to find a better way to deal with Russia.
Lastly when it comes to Kleptocracy and Oligarchy in Russia maybe there is a little but even in America politicians make lots of money when they leave the government. Again, false equivalency.
Should we find ways to work with Russia where we can? Of course. But one has to base it on who we are dealing with.