| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

British and American Anticommunism before the Cold War. By Markku Ruotsila. (London: Cass, 2001. xiv, 274 pp. Cloth, $57.50, ISBN 0-7146-5160-5. Paper, $26.50, ISBN 0-7146-8177-6.)

It is not often that contemporary historians focus on anticommunism as an ideology and a political force before the beginning of the Cold War in 1945–1946. But the Finnish historian Markku Ruotsila has now turned to that very topic. Originating as a doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge, the author's study focused on the period of the Russian Revolution, foreign intervention, and civil war from 1917 to 1921. He has since added another 48 pages and called his book a study of the 1917–1947 period. Ruotsila advises the reader at the outset that his book is "about ideas, not about policy." To this end the author categorizes various strains of anticommunism: conservatism, liberalism, and anticommunist socialism, among others. British and American Anticommunism before the Cold War is an encyclopedia of anticommunist thought from 1917 to 1921 with excursions into the later period. The research in British and American private papers is extensive, though there is no use of Russian sources. Ruotsila's main idea is "that the Cold War owed just as much to the seemingly endless competition between types of anticommunism as it did to the purported object of their policies, communism and the activities of the Soviet Union." . . .

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