The reason why Khrushchev rejected Malenkov’s position – apart from political opportunism – was not that he had an alternative analysis of nuclear war. He refused to acknowledge it because to do so would have damaging political and ideological consequences. That was the burden of the criticisms leveled against Malenkov. There appears now to have been a dual – even a schizophrenic – attitude to nuclear war in the Soviet leadership: a recognition of its destructive consequences for the Soviet Union as well as the West, and an official position that nuclear war would mean the end of capitalism.
