| After 1917, Soviet and British leaders resumed the old Anglo-Russian Great Game, which involved competition for influence and power in the buffer areas that separated British India and Britain's Mediterranean communications from the southern, ethnically non-Russian regions of the Russian Empire. This dissertation discusses the Great Game from 1939-1943. The writer has drawn on British and American archival materials, published American, German, and Soviet documents, and American, British, German, and Soviet secondary sources and memoirs.; The dissertation focuses on Anglo-Soviet relations in the Black Sea region, including the Balkans, Turkey, the Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula, the Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. The Arab lands and India also receive attention. The writer devotes particular attention to identifying Soviet defensive interests in the Caucasus, a strategically situated area containing many important Soviet economic assets, chief among which was oil. |
