Oxford University Press has published “Against the Liberal Order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and Statist Internationalism, 1919–1939,” a monograph by Asst. Prof. Sam Hirst of the Department of International Relations.
Drawing on extensive archival research conducted in multiple countries, the book presents a novel interpretation of international relations in the interwar period. Whilst the Kemalists’ cooperation with the Bolsheviks has often been described as pragmatic, Hirst demonstrates that Moscow and Ankara came together in an ideological convergence rooted in anxiety about underdevelopment relative to the West. Together, the Soviet Union and Turkey gradually arrived at a statist alternative to liberal internationalism. The book demonstrates that, as Soviet engineers arrived to help construct textile factories in Kayseri and Nazilli, the two revolutionary governments on Europe’s eastern periphery pioneered new forms of bilateral diplomacy and state-led economic exchange that would carry over into the Cold War and beyond.
