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Soviet Foreign Policy, the League of Nations and Europe, 1917-1939. By R.H. Haigh, D.S. Morris, and A. R. Peters. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1986. x, 138 pp. $28.50, cloth.

Although the authors do not indicate their intended audience, it seems to be undergraduates and the general public. Their book is brief (only 110 pages of text); it moves very rapidly from one major topic to the next, and it is based mainly on secondary sources, supplemented by Jane Degras's collection of Soviet documents. The bibliography contains only works in English; its section on documentary collections does not even list Dokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR. The bibliography also seems rather dated, lacking many relevant works from the 1970s and 1980s by such scholars as Richard Debo, Alfred Senn, and Gabriel Gorodetsky. In spite of its title, this book is not really a study of Soviet policy toward the League of Nations. While there is some discussion of evolving Soviet attitudes toward, and use of, the league, the real focus is on the broader topic of the Kremlin's changing view of its relationship with the western powers. This book is part of a wider study, still in progress, on the origins of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Two other volumes in the series have also been published: German-Soviet Relations in the Weimar Era (1985) and The Years of Triumph? German Diplomatic and Military Policy, 1933-41 (1986). Readers seeking a more detailed treatment of the role of the league in Soviet diplomacy should consult Donald I. Buzinkai's 1961 University of Chicago dissertation, "Soviet-League Relations, 1919-1939." The authors believe that there never was much chance of cooperation between the USSR and the western democracies. The Soviets, they contend, had an "isolationist mentality" that "effectively precluded any real understanding between the Soviet Union and the outside world" (p. 66). The authors doubt the sincerity of Moscow's belated participation in the league because it was "merely" a response to the threat of German and Japanese aggression. They conclude that Stalin abandoned the collective security strategy, not after the debacle of Munich or the breakdown of military talks between the Soviet Union and western powers in August 1939, but rather after Britain's unilateral guarantee of Poland. This event, they contend, made Soviet neutrality in a war pitting Germany against Britain and France the preferred alternative. The authors do not explain why Stalin could be so sure that the western powers that failed to support Czechoslovakia would not do the same to Poland. Scholars as well as students will find Jonathan Haslam's The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe (1984) or Geoffrey Roberts's The Unholy Alliance (forthcoming) surer guides to the intricacies of Soviet foreign policy in the 1930s than this slim volume.