{"product_id":"stalin-and-the-fate-of-europe-9780674292154","title":"Stalin and the Fate of Europe","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt can seem as though the Cold War division of Europe was inevitable. But Stalin was more open to a settlement on the continent than is  assumed. In this powerful reassessment of the postwar order, Norman Naimark returns to the four years after WWII to illuminate European leaders’ efforts to secure national sovereignty amid dominating powers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNaimark selects seven case studies to illustrate the complexity of Stalin’s aims in Europe, as he brings his superlative knowledge of the Soviet leader to bear on present-day realities…Naimark has few peers as a scholar of Stalinism, the Soviet Union and 20th-century Europe, and his latest work \u003ci\u003eStalin and the Fate of Europe\u003c\/i\u003e is one of his most original and interesting. * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eDetails the negotiations, the intrigues, and the showdowns that dominated the febrile politics of the postwar years…Those endeavoring to defend the independence of their territories and governments today would do well to look to the pragmatism, dexterity and resourcefulness of the politicians of the late 1940s. The book is a timely and instructive account not merely of our own history but also of our fractious, unsettling present. -- Daniel Beer * The Guardian *\u003cbr\u003e[Naimark’s] archival research and reading of the scholarly literature here adds shades of nuance and intricacy to ‘the well-honed dark images and paradigms of traditional Cold War history.’ -- Joshua Rubenstein * Wall Street Journal *\u003cbr\u003eThe narrative of the early years of the Cold War has long since grown stale through repeated retellings of US–Soviet confrontations. Naimark, citing sources in six different languages, Europeanizes the story…\u003ci\u003eStalin and the Fate of Europe\u003c\/i\u003e exemplifies the best qualities of Cold War history-writing. It is also, I think, a book for our time. -- Lewis H. Siegelbaum * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003eNorman Naimark adds an abundance of fresh knowledge to a time and place that we think we know, clarifying the contours of Soviet–American conflict by skillfully enriching the history of postwar Europe. -- Timothy Snyder, author of \u003ci\u003eOn Tyranny\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough case studies ranging from Denmark to Italy and Finland to Albania, Naimark shows us just how open and contested European politics was in the immediate postwar years—and how European leaders pushed back for sovereignty even against Stalin. An important contribution to both Cold War and European history. -- Timothy Garton Ash, author of \u003ci\u003eIn Europe’s Name\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis original, provocative, and revisionist work on the origins of the Cold War demonstrates the dynamic tension between Stalin’s surprisingly flexible view of Soviet aims and the complex internal politics of several European countries striving to maintain their sovereignty in an international context not yet divided into two camps. -- Alfred J. Rieber, author of \u003ci\u003eStalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAre the United States and China fated to clash? For an answer look to Norman Naimark’s wonderfully surprising \u003ci\u003eStalin and the Fate of Europe\u003c\/i\u003e, which reexamines the onset of the original Cold War. Naimark’s splendidly judicious book restores the partial open-endedness of 1945 to 1949, and demonstrates that statesmanship or the lack thereof was decisive in shaping the world that emerged. The achievement of a lifetime. -- Stephen Kotkin, author of \u003ci\u003eStalin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExcavates the hidden histories of Stalin’s shifting policies in postwar Europe, undermining conventional understandings of Soviet ambitions and showing Stalin to have been more cautious and pragmatic in his foreign policy than earlier accounts proposed. Naimark is a probing analyst, balanced in his judgments, as well as a masterful storyteller. -- Ronald Grigor Suny, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Soviet Experiment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA masterful account of Stalin’s European policies in the first postwar years; by far the best study of this central issue for understanding the Cold War in Europe. -- Odd Arne Westad, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Cold War\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNorman Naimark is one of the foremost authorities on Soviet history and the reign of Joseph Stalin…The book is the culmination of many years of research and is destined to become a point of reference for many years to come. -- Silvio Pons * Inference *","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403581530455,"sku":"9780674292154","price":16.1,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780674292154.jpg?v=1730483894","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/stalin-and-the-fate-of-europe-9780674292154","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}