Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty

Author Norman Naimark argues that Stalin's policies on the continent in the immediate postwar years, 1944-1948/49, were characterized by diversity and complexity versus a firm plan for the division of Europe. The book examines seven case studies that emphasize the state of flux in postwar Europe, where a variety of outcomes were possible. The assumption of the inevitability of the Cold War in Europe is less convincing when looked at from the perspective of the period itself. 

Norman Naimark is presently McDonnell Professor of East European Studies and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He received all his degrees from Stanford and was Professor of History at Boston University and Fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard from 1972-1987. He is author, among other books, of: The Russians in Germany (Harvard 1995), Fires of Hatred (Harvard 2001), Stalin's Genocides (Princeton 2011), and Stalin and the Fate of Europe (Harvard 2019).

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest and the George Washington University History Department for their support.