Alastair Kocho-Williams. Russian and Soviet Diplomacy, 1900-39

Considering the importance of the subject, it is surprising that there have not been more studies of Russian diplomacy in the twentieth century. World War I cannot be understood without reference to late tsarist foreign policy, although one would never guess this from books that treat Russian diplomats as bit players in the drama of 1914. Soviet communism was conceived as a fundamental challenge to the world order, and yet most books on the revolution treat diplomacy as an afterthought. Alastair Kocho-Williams's new monograph is a welcome addition to this oddly neglected genre, not least because, in covering both the late tsarist and early Soviet years, it bridges the gap between two fields usually treated separately by specialists. Readers should be forewarned, however, that Kocho-Williams has little to say about the dramatic events of the early twentieth century, or Russia's place in them. “The course of Russian foreign policy,” he writes in the introduction, “is not the concern of this book” (p. 3).

Art · Communism · Diplomacy · Drama · Economic history · Economics · Foreign policy · Literature · Order (exchange) · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Subject (documents) · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law