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Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the World, 1917-1991. London and New York: Arnold/ Oxford University Press, 1998, ix + 229 pp., 13.99.
Geoffrey Roberts, The Soviet Union in World Politics. Coexistence, Revolution and Cold War, 1945-1991. London & New York: Routledge, 1999, xiv + 125 pp., 9.99.
AFTER MANY YEARS when there were no general overviews of Soviet foreign policy suitable to recommend to students, there are now two. They are not identical but much of the ground they cover is similar. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe's volume is the more comprehensive. She begins her study with a chapter covering the years 1917-32, giving a brief account of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, the civil war, the Treaty of Rapallo and Soviet Russia's first hesitant steps in the realms of world diplomacy. Chapters then follow on the struggle for collective security in the 1930s and the wartime alliance of the great powers, before she enters the territory shared with Geoffrey Roberts. The two books cover the years 1945 to 1964 more or less in parallel, but the approach of the two authors diverges when discussion moves on to the Brezhnev era. Kennedy-Pipe allows herself the luxury of dividing those years into three separate chapters, while Roberts covers the years 1964 to 1985 in just one. Both authors have already written more specialist works on Soviet foreign policy and many readers of this journal will recognise echoes of those earlier works.
Kennedy-Pipe is at her best when discussing three areas of Soviet foreign policy. Her coverage of the German question in the years 1945-56 allows her to draw on previous work and she can give a convincing account of what lay behind the Soviet offers to support a united but neutral Germany in the early 1950s; it was to counter the mirage of a European Defence Community. Her account of Khrushchev's bluffing over Soviet nuclear achievements is equally convincing, and skilfully related to the worsening relationship with Mao's China; the Chinese, unaware of the missile gap with the Americans, could not understand why Khrushchev failed to press home his apparent military advantage. Finally, by devoting three chapters to foreign policy under Brezhnev, she can fully explore the Soviet Union's growing confidence in the Third World...