Conceived as a sequel to The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands, this book radically shifts the focus away from a comparison of the centuries-old competition among multicultural conquest empires for hegemony in Eurasia to the Soviet Union, the central player in the renewal of that contest in the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the issues remain the same, but the cast of characters has changed. The Soviet Union was heir to much of the territory of the Russian Empire and many of its problems, both foreign and domestic, flowed from that hard-won inheritance. But its response was radically different. Its new leaders were engaged in transforming its foreign policy as part of rebuilding a multinational state. From the outset they were obliged to enter into complex and often contradictory relations with a ring of smaller and weaker successor states, constituting the new borderlands, which had replaced the rival empires all along their frontiers. In many cases these borderland states were allies or clients of the major powers and perceived by the Soviet government as hostile or threatening.

In the first decade of Soviet rule, the leaders sought to fashion a foreign policy that privileged stability by establishing normal diplomatic relations within the postwar capitalist state system while nurturing the cause of socialist revolution. But darker clouds were already gathering. By the early 1930s, they were forced to confront a more direct and formidable challenge to their policy from the rising power of Nazi Germany and a militarist Japan. The imperialist designs of the two flank powers focused initially on exercising control over the successor states all along the Soviet frontiers, although their aspirations, at least in theory, like those of the Soviet Union, also extended beyond these territories. This book, then, is a study of how the Soviet leaders, primarily Stalin, who dominated policy-making during this period, sought to combine the twin processes of transforming the state and its relations with the external world within the context of a renewed struggle over the borderlands.

The Soviet state emerged from the wreckage of the Russian Empire much weakened and diminished. The war against the Central Powers, revolution and Civil War, and foreign intervention had stripped the old empire of its western borderlands.