The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

Thomas W. Schaaf Sr. Fairfax, VirginiaThough David Hoffman won a Pulitzer Prize for this very well written, in depth account, of the Cold War arms race and its dangerous legacy it has not been widely read, probably because, in part, of the lack of prominent enthusiastic reviews. And that group of establishment reviewers were in turn restrained because the Washington/New York establishment elite see this comprehensive account as too pro Reagan and too revealing of the neoconservative influence on arms control and foreign policy, particularly relations with Russia.Hoffman acknowledges that the twin pillars of this inside story of both the U.S. and USSR were the Reagan years in the White House when he was a correspondent there for the Washington Post and, secondly,when he was the bureau chief for the Washington Post in Moscow during the 1990s. During that period he had several interviews with Reagan and Gorbachev granted two interviews as this book was being written. Between those crucial assignments in Washington and Moscow Hoffman spent a year in graduate school focusing on Soviet/Russian affairs and became a Russian speaker.The period 1981-89 concerns nuclear arms and the anti-ballistic missile program (SDI) or Stars Wars as the press named it and gives the best explanation of why Gorbachev was so opposed, that I have read. The book title "Dead Hand" comes from the Soviet program designed to respond to a decapitating first strike by USA on Moscow which would let loose a barrage of ICBMs controlled by computer without any authorizing release from the Soviet leadership. But far more menacing, in the view of Hoffman, was the chemical and germ warfare which the Soviet and Russian governments were preparing, even in the face of the 1972 Treaty which more than 70 nations, including the Soviet Union and the United States, signed ( the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention) banning the development and production of biological weapons and the means of delivering them. The treaty became effective in 1975. But as Hoffman relates in his introduction chapter " the Soviet Union promptly betrayed its signature........Brezhnev approved a secret plan to covertly expand Soviet germ warfare efforts.......The Soviet program grew and grew into a dark underside of the arms race."Although Hoffman covers the nuclear weapons aspect of the arms control issues which were crucial during the Reagan/Gorbachev era with a skill and finesse that makes it read like a series of personal narratives the real impact and thrust of this book, in my view, are the potential consequences of the Russian germ warfare program. Not withstanding that the title refers to nuclear weapons which are indeed a horrific and major threat to civilization, the details and facts of the biological production and war plans which were extant in Russia even after the collapse of the Soviet Union are reported by Hoffman with clarity and stunning disclosures and details.The Prologue is an excellent example which begins, "Are any of your patients dying?" Hoffman then goes on to set the scene, April 4, 1979 in Sverdlovsk, a Soviet industrial metropolis in the Ural mountains where there is an outbreak of anthrax. The quote above was from one physician to another as they encountered two unusual deaths from what looked like severe pneumonia. What had happened, though covered up for decades, was that Compound 19, a laboratory for development and testing deadly pathogens, including anthrax, grown in fermentation vessels, had been dried and ground into a fine powder for use in aerosol form and had accidentally been released into the air. A north wind had carried the anthrax spores to rural areas to the south and sheep and cattle in villages began to die and people started to get sick. By April 20, 358 people were sick. 45 died.As the author recounts this was only one of many sites where many variations of deadly pathogens were cultivated and weaponized in huge quantities. Chapter 22, the final chapter of the book, "Face to Face with Evil" is a chilling conclusion from which I read a paragraph to my Naval Academy classmates and the wives when I reviewed this prize winning book. Hoffman describes the experience of Andy Weber, a State Department officer, posted to Kazakhstan in central Asia where a colossal anthrax-processing machine stood intact in the remote city of Stepnogorsk .To paraphrase: " On a brilliant summer day, June 2, 1995 a chartered Yak-40 jet landed on the bumpy airstrip of Stepnogorsk carrying Andy Weber and a team of biological weapons experts from the United States. About nine miles away stood the anthrax factory built in the 1980s. Never before had a Westerner set foot in the secret plant where anthrax bacteria was to be fermented, processed into a thick brown slurry, dried, milled and filled into bombs-by the ton.Weber climbed to the top of one of the twenty-thousand liter fermenters and looked down into it with a flashlight. The cylinder was made of specialty steel with a resin lining. He could see the impellers attached to a central rod that would stir the anthrax spores but could not see the bottom in the dark four floors below. Weber felt a chill run up and down his spine.Hoffman then quotes Weber. "....I had never bought into Reagan's 'Evil Empire' thing. I was a product of liberal eastern schools, I went to Cornell, but there it was. I was face to face with evil."This is a book every American who is concerned about reality and our future should read.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The author did a great job of reviewing a lot of sources, including interviews with key players on both the US and Soviet side, and wove many threads together into a thorough, and thoroughly enjoyable story. As noted in some of the editorial reviews, at times it feels like you're reading a spy novel. And at times some of the details - particularly about the Soviet's germ warfare program - sound almost too lurid to be true. Except that everything in this book is impeccably documented - the bibliography takes up about 15% of the book.Roughly the first two thirds of the book are concerned primarily with the 1980s, from the start of the Reagan presidency, through the rise of Gorbachev, and the beginning of co-operation between the two sides on arms reduction, through Gorbachev's decline and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. The final third deals with the post-Soviet era, through about 2000. I was born in 1975, so the earlier events described in the book were things that were going on as I was growing up. For example, I remember the news reports of the Korean airliner being shot down by the Russians. I remember the German kid who flew a single-engine plane to Red Square in Moscow. I remember that my parents didn't let me watch "The Day After". I remember prime-time news specials describing the "Star Wars" missile defense. But as a kid, I didn't know the real significance of any of this stuff, and of course many of the details were classified at the time. This book covers all that and more, and it's fascinating to go back and read what was going on behind the scenes during my childhood.The author is very balanced in his approach. Reagan comes off surprisingly well, given how he is often portrayed as an imbecile. In this book, he comes across as an idealist, striving for a world without nuclear weapons, yet rather naive about how his strident rhetoric and plans for missile defense were perceived by the paranoid leadership of the Soviet Union, and for a while accelerated the arms race instead of slowing it down. Gorbachev also comes across well, a reformer surrounded by aging dinosaurs in the Communist party and an entrenched military industrial complex. But the author is by no means an apologist for the Soviet Union. There's a section toward the end of the book that sums it up well - a US official is investigating a mothballed Soviet-era biological weapons plant. He had never bought into the whole "evil empire" rhetoric. But staring down into a giant fermenter capable of producing tons of anthrax, meant to be delivered by strategic missiles to wipe out the survivors of a nuclear strike, he realizes he is staring into the face of evil.Lots of fascinating and terrifying stuff. The descriptions of plutonium pits and highly enriched uranium spilling out the windows of poorly guarded warehouses, and being transported on creaky rail cars, or the test-tubes of weaponized plague being found in an empty tin of peas, are of course scary. And the decreased cooperation of Putin-era Russia leaves a lot of unanswered questions. There are still former bioweapons sites that Russia has never granted access to. The book paints a picture of some of these programs having lives of their own, in spite of the best intentions of the leadership. So who knows what might still be lurking in the shadows.Minor drawbacks were (1) the author has a tendency to jump back and forth between strands of the story, i.e. from nuclear arms reduction talks, to the bioweapons story, in a somewhat distracting way, and (2) the author feels the need to keep reminding us who certain characters are, I guess because an American reader will get confused by all the Russian names. But for example, he keeps reminding us that a certain Gorbachev aide was the one he had a stirring conversation with during a walk in the woods in Canada.But overall - very well written, impeccably researched and documented, and a great read.

Read during the confinement in the hope of something interesting to pass the time. But instead it turned out to be one of the most boring books I have ever read. This guy clearly won the Pulitzer for his extensive research, not for his literary flare. The first 100 pages or so were ok but then it became a monotonous litany of Russian scientists working on germ warfare in far flung Russian towns. By the mid way point I had completely lost interest but kept plodding on expecting something to happen. It didn't. Yes, the subject matter is important, and in the hands of someone like Ben macintyre it would have been accessible and readable, but Hoffman failed to inject any life into this. Unless you're a student writing a thesis on this, avoid it

Good read

Some deeply worrying accounts of cold War biological warfare. Contains perhaps 15 pages about the actual "Dead Hand", and 300 pages of dry political accounts. 20+% of the book is citations, references and acknowledgements.

Fantastic book. I'd expected most of it to be about the Dead Hand itself, but was pleasantly surprised when I discovered how much more it covered. An insightful read on a surrealistic part of humanity's recent history. I'll definitely use this book as a reference in future studies.

Good background detail on the events of the time. Interesting insight into murky world of bio-weapons.Portrayals of Reagan and Gorbachev very flat and Hollywood-ish - no real critique of their personalities - can they be both really that nice? Glosses over background to split up of Soviet Union, leaving out some interesting details of Gorbachev's final days. Overall - worth the read.