R. Craig Nation is Professor of Strategy and Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA.
This articulate synthesis shows how the Soviet Union has historically dealt with internal and external pressures, both actual and imaginary. Because much of the official Soviet experience has been encumbered with suspicion and defensiveness, the book serves as a short, albeit thematic, history of the USSR. It delineates several distinct phases of the security policy, from revolutionary internationalism (1917-21) to mutual security (1985-91). Nation's analysis of the pivotal Stalin era is particularly interesting; for example, he convincingly documents the absolute avoidability of the Cold War. Although he makes no effort to trace the numerous historic roots of Soviet security policy, Black Earth, Red Star is one of those rare scholarly items that can ably serve an exceptionally wide audience.-- Mark R. Yerburgh, Fern Ridge Community Lib., Veneta, Ore.
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.)
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