Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Black Earth, Red Star: A History of Soviet Security Policy, 1917–1991
ISBN: 9781501729102
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Cornell University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Soviet Union -- National security; Soviet Union -- Foreign relations -- 1917–;

In many Westerners' eyes, the Soviet Union maintained an inflexible desire to dominate the world, a policy presumably conditioned by traumatic invasions, messianic Marxism and Russian xenophobic nationalism. Far from being immutable, counters Nation, an associate professor of international studies at Johns Hopkins, Soviet security policy moved through several distinct phases, from Lenin's revolutionary internationalism to accommodation, retrenchment and the competitive coexistence maintained by Brezhnev and his successors. In a highly readable study that challenges conventional thinking, Nation credits Stalin with a post-WW II desire to avoid war with the U.S. at any price. He limns Khrushchev as ``a sincere advocate of peace'' and argues that Gorbachev sought to transform Soviet-U.S. relations by recognizing global interdependence and by winning the West's sympathy for Soviet reform. America's victory in the cold war, Nation predicts, will be short-lived, as he believes a reformed confederation of former Soviet republics will become a major player in international affairs. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

R. Craig Nation is Professor of Strategy and Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.