Another Book Review Excerpt

This is an excerpt from another review of my second book, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999). It was published in the Spring 2002 issue of European Studies Journal. It is written by Caroline Brooke, a lecturer of Modern European History at the University of London.

...Pohl presents a detailed account of the deportations, while at the same time trying to uncover the Stalin regime's motivations behind the deportations...a comprehensive account of Stalin's policy of deportation of ethnic minorities. Pohl paints a chilling picture of the resolve with which Soviet officials, above all Stalin and Beria, sought to remove any threat to Soviet security, either real or perceived, from the non-Russian population, and in some cases even to punish certain ethnic groups for alleged collaboration with enemies of the Soviet Union...Ethnic Cleansing will be invaluable to scholars of Soviet history, politics, and ethnography.