why was it called the cold war answers.com

This failure to incorporate the decisive importance of the contingency inherent in Marxist-Leninist systems provides a highly misleading picture. Khrushchev's defeat was much more dependent on highly contingent events than popular political science theories predict.

Why does the failure to account for the special characteristics of Marxist-Leninist regimes lead to flawed theories? First, Marxist-Leninist systems are not popularity contests rather, they provide leaders with powerful tools to control their potential competitors. Third, memoirs or diaries by individuals such as Petr Abrasimov, Nikolai Kamanin, and Yulii Kvitsinskii provide new information as well. Second, Russian scholars such as Yuliya Abramova, Oleg Khlevniuk, Nikita Petrov, Andrei Postnikov, and Andrei Sushkov have written books, articles, and dissertations with arguments and evidence that have yet to enter the Western historiography. The published materials cover Khrushchev's entire career (a two-volume set), his political situation in 1964, and contemporaneous civil–military relations, as well as, and perhaps most importantly, the time of Leonid Brezhnev's rule as recorded in his diaries and work notes.

Unlike in China, where such books are subject to redactions or even falsified content, the volumes put out by these highly reputable Russian academic publishers were compiled by highly motivated archivists and other scholars who strive to bring as complete a picture of history into public view as possible. First, publishing companies such as Rossiiskaya Politicheskaya Entsiklopediya (ROSSPEN), Mezhdunarodnyi Fond “Demokratiya” (MFD), and Istoricheskaya Literatura (IstLit) have released document collections with previously unavailable archival materials. These new sources can be usefully grouped into three categories.

Why was it called the cold war answers.com