Peter Ruggenthaler is senior research fellow at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War´s Consequences and lecturer at the University of Graz.

Ruggenthaler has produced what is nothing less than one of the most important studies to date of Stalin’s post-war foreign policy. There is little doubt that it brings us several leaps forward in our understanding of this troubled period. It should be essential reading for historians and area specialists, as well as students of foreign policy analysis.

• Introduction: Soviet European Policy in World War IIChapter 1: Soviet Central and Northern European policy: 1945 to the Foundation of NATO in 1949The Soviet Union and the German Question 1945 to 1949Austria in the Context of Soviet European Policy (1945 to 1949)The Soviet Union and Scandinavia 1945-1949Chapter 2: Neutrality and the Consolidation of the Eastern Bloc—The Perpetuation of a Divided Europe: Stalin’s European Policy 1949 to 1952-1953The Foundation of COMECON: Soviet Aims and StrategiesSoviet Reactions to the Foundation of NATO Soviet German Policy 1949 to 1951Neutrality for a Unified Germany?The Soviet Union’s Austrian Policy Between 1949 and 1952-1953—Austria as a Factor in the Consolidation of the Eastern BlocThe USSR and ScandinaviaChapter 3: Neutrality and Soviet Foreign Policy