Author Description

The present collection, in two volumes, is a continuation of Mrs. Eudin's Soviet Russia and the East 1920-27 (with Robert C. North) and Soviet Russia and the West 1920-27 (with Harold H. Fisher). Since 1949 Western governments have published enormous quantities of source material from the interwar years, but recent material from Soviet archives can almost be printed on a postage stamp. Nevertheless, documentary sources are available. The Kremlin had to spell out the party line for communist officials at home and abroad, and some very revealing statements can be found in the minutes of congresses and plenums and in the pages of the various Comintern journals. But outside the Soviet Union, only the Hoover Institution has a really comprehensive collection of such materials. Working from this collection, Mrs. Eudin and Mr. Slusser have selected and translated the most important items and have provided a brief narrative summary of the main developments of the period: e.g., "Socialism in one country," the Soviet intervention in Manchuria, the growing threat from Japan and then Germany, the rapprochement with France and Britain, and finally Soviet entry into the League of Nations.