Stalin and the struggle for supremacy in Eurasia /

In this thorough study, Rieber (emer., Penn) analyzes the struggle for control of Eurasia's borderlands from the collapse of the Romanov, Habsburg, Ottoman, Qing, and Persian empires through the end of WW II. He focuses on Stalin, emphasizing the ways in which the Soviet leader's foreign policy echoed approaches of his imperial predecessors. Stalin was a "man of the borderlands," shaped by his experiences growing up in Transcaucasia and building a revolutionary state on the ruins of a multiethnic empire. In surveying major Soviet foreign relations developments of the period, Rieber argues that Stalin employed a "borderland thesis" that understood security in territorial terms; sought a strong centralized state (as opposed to a loose federation of national republics); fostered the political dominance of Russia within the Soviet Union; and pursued a "domestication" of foreign policy that, while maintaining Marxist rhetoric of world revolution, focused on strengthening the Soviet state by restricting the autonomy of its borderlands, controlling the activities of foreign communist parties, and favoring pragmatism over ideology in diplomacy. "Stalin's pragmatism," writes Rieber, "was the pragmatism of a Marxist-Leninist tempered by his grasp of the historical foundations of Russia's status as a great power." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Mark A. Soderstrom, Aurora University