The Soviet Union And Its Southern Neighbours

Volodarsky (Russian and East European studies, Tel Aviv U.) argues that the new Soviet Union continued Imperial Russia's policy of controlling its southern neighbors through promises and threats.

Hasanli uses a range of newly available archival sources to unveil key aspects of the Soviet Union's relations with its southern neighbours in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Covering relations with Turkey, Iran and China, Hasanli examines how Stalin strategized Soviet influence over the Bosporus and Dardanelles, Iranian Azerbaijan and Xinjiang. At various times this involved degrees of coercion, diplomacy, espionage and mediation. While the Cold War has typically been associated with tensions in Europe, some of its earliest movements in fact occurred in Central and Western Asia. In particular, Hasanli argues, the period from 1945 to 1947 was an active phase of Soviet expansion to the south and a new Stalin-Molotov doctrine. These regions were used as a testing ground for Soviet expansionist policies, many of which were unsuccessful and thus important in the later shaping of Soviet policy towards the West. Valuable new insights from one of the foremost scholars of South Caucasia and Central Asia post-war history, for students and scholars of the Soviet Union.

Immediately after the Allied WW2 victory in Europe, claims were made by the Soviet Union over the eastern regions of Turkey, to secure direct control over the Bosporus, Dardanelles, and Turkish Straits. The detailed study of the international components of these events, featuring the veiled complexities of Stalin’s anti-Turkish diplomacy, provides a key to understanding crucial aspects of these Soviet territorial claims. Iranian Azerbaijan became another hotspot of post-war confrontation between the western Allies and the USSR: Soviet policy towards Iran manifested in the desire to access their oil resources. A further direction emerging within Soviet post-war strategy was the Kurdish issue in the Near and Middle East. At the conjunction of Turkish and Iranian events, Soviet secret service bodies and diplomatic institutions exploited their strengths and toyed with Kurdish minorities in the region. Their decisions placed the bordering regions of China, Turkey, and Iran squarely in the shadowy reaches of Moscow’s policy. This research uses newly discovered archive material to illustrate the underlying intrigue behind Soviet ambition and intimately tracks how the Soviet Union was defeated in the first Cold War confrontation over its southern borders. It also links events of this period with the critical issue of Uyghur assimilation, and further contemporary developments highlighting Putin’s policies, making it invaluable for both academic and general readers.

Recent events in Ukraine and Russia and the subsequent incorporation of Crimea into the Russian state, with the support of some circles of inhabitants of the peninsula, have shown that the desire of people to belong to the Western part of Europe should not automatically be assumed. Discussing different perceptions of the Ukrainian-Russian war in neighbouring countries, this book offers an analysis of the conflicts and issues connected with the shifting of the border regions of Russia and Ukraine to show how ’material’ and ’psychological’ borders are never completely stable ideas. The contributors – historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists from across Europe – use an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to explore the different national and transnational perceptions of a possible future role for Russia.

Leading scholars of Middle East politics and international relations present comprehensive coverage of the international politics of the Middle East, a region at the forefront of international attention.

In International relations of the Middle East a leading team of international experts provides an authoritative, student-friendly text that combines a history of the region with sophisticated analysis of current key themes, actors, and conflicts.