No Accident, Comrade: Chance and Design in Cold American Narratives Steven Belletto Oxford University Press, 2012. 206 pages Damjana Mraovie-O'Hare At recent Cold studies conference, it was postulated that the Cold might no longer be the crucial organizing event of the twentieth century Those who asserted this claimed that the Cold is losing its historiographic prominence to environmentalism and postcolonialism, two approaches that currently dominate the discussion of the last century. (1) Since its end was signaled the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold has existed as finished rather than an ongoing struggle. And while it is fair to doubt that many people long for the time of imminent nuclear threats, something interesting has happened with the Cold War: it has become an academic topic that it is possible to discuss without primary reference to the ideological or political positions that drove this struggle. In his wittily titled study, No Accident, Comrade, Steven Belletto dissects the rhetoric of the Cold in such manner. Belletto argues that the concept of chance politicized during the Cold War and therefore helped establish a new kind of relationship between aesthetics and politics (4). By analyzing literary fiction of the period, Belletto demonstrates that chance is commonly associated in American works with democratic freedom, while its preclusion--and even its manipulation--characterize the totalitarian system of the former USSR. Consequently, Belletto argues, chance became a complex, elastic concept whose self-reflexive use fiction writers and other cultural producers generated questions about freedom, control, and narrative's fundamental ability to represent or otherwise engage objective (5). Belletto opens his study with powerful example from The Future is Ours, Comrade (1960) Jerzy Kosinski. the Polish emigre who came to the US to study in the doctoral program in sociology at Columbia University, and who managed to secure book deal with Doubleday only eight months after he landed. A Russian speaker who drew on his notes from research trip to the former USSR, Kosinski wrote book that not only explained the Soviet Union to Americans but also became everything that an American propaganda agency, or the propaganda arm of the CIA, might have hoped for in its wildest dreams (4). In his book, Kosinski claims that in the Soviet Union objective reality is supervised so thoroughly that it seems as if the accidental has ceased to exist. He supports this claim with an anecdote about Aliosha, Soviet military officer whose private fails to show up for morning call after festive night. Facing dilemma between immediately reporting the soldier or covering for his absence in the name of human sympathy, the officer decides on the latter course and brings in another private to take the absentee's place. After the third day, the officer receives note saying that his platoon will be inspected, and is crestfallen at this cruel turn of fate. Still, he proceeds to cover for the missing soldier; during the inspection, by his substitute is questioned and Aliosha exposed. In the end, it turns out that the soldier was deliberately pulled out of Aliosha's platoon counterintelligence officers who wanted to test their subordinates' willingness to follow the protocol for missing personnel. Kosinski uses the story to illustrate that the Soviet system has infiltrated everyday life to such an extent that chance does not exist at all. Belletto argues that chance, in fact, becomes evidence of planning (5), and the entire Soviet reality fiction. In this version of things, Soviet reality is not only always open for interpretation but also, in the Cold context, directly opposes the rhetoric of American democracy, with its emphases on individualism, liberty, and freedom. This anecdote, included in the first, theoretical chapter of Belletto's book, Chance, Narrative, and the Logic of the Cold War, frames the entire study, functioning as background against which his case studies can be read. …