This is a major new study of the successor states that emerged in the wake of the collapse of the great Russian, Habsburg, Iranian, Ottoman and Qing Empires and of the expansionist powers who renewed their struggle over the Eurasian borderlands through to the end of the Second World War. Surveying the great power rivalry between the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for control over the Western and Far Eastern boundaries of Eurasia, Alfred J. Rieber provides a new framework for understanding the evolution of Soviet policy from the Revolution through to the beginning of the Cold War. Paying particular attention to the Soviet Union, the book charts how these powers adopted similar methods to the old ruling elites to expand and consolidate their conquests, ranging from colonisation and deportation to forced assimilation, but applied them with a force that far surpassed the practices of their imperial predecessors.

Alfred J. Rieber has been teaching and writing Russian and Soviet history for the past fifty years. A member of the original group of American exchange students to the Soviet Union in 1958-59 he has returned many times with the support of the Guggenheim, ACLS, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Council for Research in Eastern Europe Foundations and IREX.He has written ten books and fifty articles in scholarly books and journals. He was the recipient of the E.Harris Harbison Award of the Danforth Foundation as one of the ten best teachers in America in 1966. A collection of his essays supplemented by chapters written from fresh archival sources entitled "The Russian Imperial Project. Politics, Economic Development and Social Fragmentation" will be published next year by the University of Toronto Press.He is currently University Professor Emeritus at the Central European University in Budapest.