Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia

Alfred J. Rieber spent thirty years as Professor of History and ten years as Chair at the University of Pennsylvania before moving to Budapest in 1995 to chair and reorganise the History Department at the Central European University. Since then he has taught hundreds of students from the Eurasian borderlands. His first visit to the Soviet Union came in January 1956 followed by his participation in the first year of the cultural exchange at Moscow State University (1958–59). Over the past fifty years, he has continued his scholarly visits and travels throughout Eurasia, going as far east as the Buryat Mongol Republic. His publications include works on Soviet foreign policy, Russian social history and the comparative history of frontiers. His American and European doctoral students have published widely in the history of the Eurasian borderlands. Professor Rieber's work on frontiers has been translated into Russian, Polish and Ukrainian and he has won two teaching awards in the USA and two in Hungary, as well as a Prize from the American Philosophical Society. His scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, St Antony's College, Oxford and the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants.

• Introduction; 1. Stalin: man of the borderlands; 2. Borderlands in Civil War and intervention; 3. The borderland thesis: the West; 4. The borderland thesis: the East; 5. Stalin in command; 6. Borderlands on the eve; 7. Civil wars in the borderlands; 8. War aims: the outer perimeter; 9. War aims: the inner perimeter; 10. Friendly governments in the outer perimeter; Conclusion: a transient hegemony; Index.

'In this thorough study, Rieber 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 WWII. 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 … '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.' M. A. Soderstrom, Choice