Russia and Germany Reborn
Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe
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- USD 35.99
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- USD 35.99
Descripción editorial
The relationship between Russia and Germany has been pivotal in some of the most fateful events of the twentieth century: the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the emergence of a new Europe from the ashes of communism. This is the first book to examine the recent evolution of that tense and often violent relationship from both the Russian and German perspectives. Angela Stent combines interviews with key international figures--including Mikhail Gorbachev--with insights gleaned from newly declassified archives in East Germany and her own profound understanding of Russian-German relations. She presents a remarkable review of the events and trends of the past three decades: the onset of d tente, the unification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of an uncertain new European order.
Stent reveals the chaos and ambivalence behind the Soviet negotiating strategy that led--against Gorbachev's wishes--to that old Soviet nightmare, a united Germany in NATO. She shows how German strength and Russian weakness have governed the delicate dance of power between recently unified Germany and newly democratized Russia. Finally, she lays out several scenarios for the future of Russian-German relations--some optimistic and others darkened by the threat of a new authoritarianism.
Russia and Germany Reborn is crucial reading for anyone interested in a relationship that changed the course of the twentieth century and that will have a powerful impact on the next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After two chapters that recapitulate WWI, WWII, the division of Germany, the Cold War and the era of detente, Stent (From Embargo to Ostpolitik), a professor of government at Georgetown, turns her attention to the course of Russian-German relations since Gorbachev ascended to power in Moscow. She emphasizes both the continuity and the unexpectedness in relations between Russia and Germany once Gorbachev's domestic program of perestroika began to bleed into the realm of foreign affairs. Gorbachev and the Communist Party, she writes, had no intention of facilitating the reunification of Germany, but history outran their capacity to manage events. Meanwhile, Germany, under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, was determined to see unification, whatever the economic cost. Because Russia was beset with conflicts between Gorbachev's redefined foreign policy and increasing domestic turmoil, Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, were forced to make uncomfortable geopolitical concessions in return for German aid. Following events up to the present, with particular focus on the expansion of NATO--over the strenuous but impotent objections of Boris Yeltsin--into the former Soviet bloc, Stent provides a concise history of Russian-German relations after the Cold War and persuasively argues that, whatever transpires, the relationship between the two countries will be as decisive in shaping the European futire as it was in shaping the past.