We Shall Be Masters: Russia’s Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin

Tufts University historian Miller (Putinomics) delivers a rich and well-informed chronicle of Russia’s engagement with Asia over the past three centuries. He details the establishment of Russian trading posts in Alaska and northern California in the early 1800s, and captures the immensity, complexity, and importance of Russia’s eastern borderlands through the eyes of its explorers, including Nikolai Przhevalsky, who mapped Central Asia in the mid-19th century. Arguing that Russia’s enduring fixation on Europe and “episodic and erratic” foreign policy in Asia have hampered its dream of becoming a major presence in the region, Miller discusses the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 1800s; Stalin’s purging of “spies, saboteurs, and hidden enemies” in the Russian Far East in the 1930s (according to Miller, 15,000 people died in the crackdown and several hundred thousand more were “deported, jailed, or sent to a gulag”); the militarization of the border with China under Brezhnev; Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw troops from Mongolia and end the nearly decade-long war with Afghanistan; and Putin’s prioritization of relations with Asia over the U.S. and Europe. The result is a comprehensive and fluidly written survey that will be welcomed by students of international history. (June)