Behind the Doors of the Cold War: Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat Who Served in the Middle East and Washington

The memoirs of former Soviet diplomat Vyacheslav Matuzov, entitled “Behind the Doors of the Cold War: Memoirs of a Soviet Diplomat Who Served in the Middle East and Washington” (Sair Al-Mashreq Publishing House, Beirut, 2026), are somewhat disappointing. Not because the book is devoid of remarkable details and narratives, but rather because what is expected is a much greater amount of secrets and new documented information about Soviet policy-making towards the Arab world, given the positions its author occupied and the personalities he knew.The man knew Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Yasser Arafat, and dealt with most of the Lebanese political leaders and Gulf figures. He worked in his country’s embassies in Lebanon and the United States and worked in the international department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. However, Matuzov's ideological convictions and interpretations of events are often present in the memoirs more than the secrets to which a man of this biography is supposed to have witnessed.What makes it even more surprising is that some information and names are included in the book in a flawed manner, including his account that a professor at the American University of Beirut named John Patato introduced him to a student in his department, Walid Jumblatt, while what is meant is the Palestinian historian Hanna Batatu.