Liverpool University Press Soviet Union: A Documentary History Volume 2: 1939-1991 (Exeter Studies in History)

Volume Two of this new documentary history of the Soviet Union comprises over 270 documents and is organised into four chronologically distinct parts, subdivided thematically; it runs from the fraught diplomatic and military preamble of the Great Patriotic War to the final fracturing of the USSR along the national fault-lines of its 15 Union Republics. Slight overlap of chronological coverage with Volume One allows increased attention in Volume Two to foreign affairs. Areas in this volume that attract greatest student interest are the epic dramas at the beginning and end of the period the Great Patriotic War and Perestroika.The commentary is by Edward Acton, Professor of Modern European History at the University of East Anglia, who has published widely on the Russian revolution and the history of Russia and the USSR. The documents have been translated by Tom Stableford, Assistant Librarian, Slavonic and East European Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford Review As with the first volume the strengths of this book lie in two related things. The first is the width and variety of the sources... The second outstanding strength is the quality and insight of the commentary which weaves its way between the selected sourcesELas in Volume 1, this volume cannot be faulted in this respect. The informative yet nuanced interpretative views which help link the sources together, tied in with suggestions for what recent literature is worth a further read on that topic, helps bring the reader right up-to-date with present thinking. To help keep things clear, the last 80 pages are general and place indexes, a very good biographical index and a list of all the sources in the book. All in all then, a wide-ranging set of documents and a perspicacious commentary of the final 50 years of a super-power, that we thought was indestructible. Well worth the read.-- History Teaching Review Year Book Impresses due to both the sheer volume and variety of documentation-- all of which is interspersed with judicious historical commentary. Alternating well-chosen documents with balanced commentary and brief discussions (in footnotes) of relevant secondary sources. Finally, like Volume 1, Volume 2 also includes helpful sections, such as a glossary of Russian words and acronyms, a guide to further reading, a map section (including a map detailing the deportation of Soviet minorities under Stalin), and an excellent forty nine-page bibliographical index. To sum up, then, Volume 2 of The Soviet Union: A Documentary History is an excellent research or educational resource versatile enough to be used in-class either for supplementary primary source reading or as a textbook in its own right.-- The Russian Review About the Author Edward Acton is Professor of Modern European History at the University of East Anglia, who has published widely on the Russian revolution and the history of Russia and the USSR.|Tom Stableford is Assistant Librarian, Slavonic and East European Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford.