LAUSR

was negotiation with powerful states, especially Germany and Japan, which culminated in the Nazi–Soviet Pact and the partition of Baltic Europe and Poland and the Soviet–Japanese Non-Aggression Pact, which held until the last days of World War II. In signing the pact with the Nazis, Stalin made a historic miscalculation that would cost the Soviet Union tens of millions of lives. However, realistically, Stalin was far from alone in expecting a repeat of World War I on the Western front and was desperate to buy time to digest the conquests of 1939. After the war, Stalin pursued the same policies and succeeded in carving out a sphere of satellite states on the extended periphery of the Soviet Union, particularly in the East and in Europe. The hardening of the borders between the Sovietand American-dominated parts of Europe became necessary to prevent flight to the West and prop up faltering Communist regimes. Rieber’s historical analysis is timely and relevant given that another gathering of Russia is underway under the nationalist–authoritarian regime of Putin and the state security establishment. What emerges clearly from Rieber’s account is that the Soviet attempt to pursue a forward policy in the borderlands while engaging in authoritarian state-building at home ultimately failed in their goal of securing the Soviet Union. Instead, the Soviet Union was crippled by massive defense expenditures needed to sustain Stalin’s policy, while its society and economy, after a brief period of growth, collapsed into stagnation and relative backwardness. Putin is following in Stalin’s footsteps in Ukraine and in the Caucuses, and might be tempted to do so in the Baltic region. Perhaps Russia’s very immensity and physicality impose upon its leaders, whether czarist, Communist, or nationalists, a mentality that seeks safety in control of the borderlands, an exercise that ends with their own exhaustion and collapse followed by a return to empire. Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia is a fine contribution to twentieth-century history and essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the factors that continue to shape Russian foreign policy and internal politics.