Robert Legvold

Compassionate yet critical, this is the most comprehensive portrait of the morass Soviet leaders got themselves and their army into when they invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

With a measured mastery, Trenin probes the many aspects of this dilemma, from Russia’s changing relations with its neighbors and the great powers to the effect of the country’s identity crisis on its economy, demographics, and culture.

The Bosnian tragedy, like so many international conflicts, demonstrated the harm decision-makers can cause when they have no firsthand knowledge of conditions on the ground. Hunt spent much of her four years as U.S. President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Austria attempting to intercede in the conflict.

In special cases, one closes a book with the mind churning, stirred by the arguments within. In still rarer cases, one sets down the book and is moved by the spirit and character of its author. This is one such book.

As Clark demonstrates in this masterful tour of trends in Soviet culture and their echoes in Europe, the modified version of universalism tolerated by Stalin placed the Soviet Union at its center, and at the Soviet Union’s center stood Moscow -- the site and symbol of centralized Soviet power.

What gives perspective to the authors’ analysis is the long haul of history in which they situate it.

It is not structural socioeconomic conditions, as is often assumed, that fuel separatism, she finds, but the immediate fear of unemployment or lost opportunity, anxieties that nationalist leaders skillfully cast in a narrative favoring national independence.

This is by far the most thorough and systematic study of Russia’s so-called power ministries, charged with administering the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of force.

On December 1, 1934, a disaffected, psychotic party worker stalked Sergei Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Communist Party, as he walked the hall to his third-floor office and shot him in the back of the head. From this act flowed an ever-widening cascade of murderous events.

Studying how Russia has changed the way it does its national economic accounting may sound dry, but it is far from so. On the contrary, given the impact that GDP statistics have on politics and policy choices -- sometimes including international politics -- how these are measured and reported has immense practical consequences.

Mitchell argues that in its democracy-promotion efforts, the United States should be more critical of its perceived democratic allies, less focused on single benchmarks such as elections, and more attuned to the many elements needed to create an engaged citizenry.