SOVIET-MIDDLE EAST RELATIONS (SOVIET-THIRD WORLD RELATIONS. Vol. I — A SURVEY IN THREE VOLUMES).

By Charles B. McLane '41.London: Central Asian Research Centre.1973. Distributed by Columbia UniversityPress. 126 pp. $15.

Charles McLane has now completed three regional surveys of Soviet relations with the underdeveloped world. The present volume, focusing on Soviet involvements in the Middle Has. is the first of the series to be published. Its excellence warrants the prediction that the full series (including Africa and east and south Asian) will represent a major contribution to scholarly research.

The scope and importance of that contribution is already evident in the book under review The core of the book is a record and chronology of bilateral relationships between the Soviet Union and most of the countries of the region considered. In most cases, the events recorded extend from the mid-1950s through 1970. the period in which Moscow first established itself as a serious political and economic presence in the underdeveloped world. Hence the very useful chronologies set out here offer, in most cases, the added value of providing information about beginnings.

The summary tables at the end of the booK are also important sources of information. They provide quantitative data about such matters as Soviet trade, economic and military aid, and politico-diplomatic activity in the Middle East- North Africa area. Since the data are arranged in tabular form, the reader is able to make comparisons among the various countries of the area and to draw some instructive conclusions about Soviet activities in the area as a whole.

McLane's summary narratives accompanying country chronologies are essential explanatory supplements. These narratives provide extraordinary amounts of factual material in condensed but readily comprehensive form. As with other parts of the book, the sources from which the data have been assembled are scrupulously and clearly set out.

The book is avowedly not a work of analysis and interpretation. While more analyzing and interpreting is in evidence than the author perhaps credits himself with in the foreword, it is true that there is here no explicit weighing of evidence and counter-evidence in the evaluation of policies or events. There is no exploration of motivations for observed behavior. And there is no attempt to assess the Soviet performance in the Middle East in terms of long run strengths or weaknesses - or in terms of the creativity or destructiveness of Soviet policies.

Professor McLane is now developing these kinds of analyses and interpretations in what he calls his parent study, Russia and the ThirdWorld. This final and fourth volume in the series will be the interpretive key to the three regional . flumes. Discussion of analysis and interpretation must therefore be deferred until the parent study is published.

Since the present volume is an intellectual achievement in its own right, however, there is no need to defer other matters. Hence it is appropriate now to say thanks to Charles McLane lor making accessible to us vital information about a vital area of international and comparative politics and to offer congratulations for undertaking and completing a difficult and significant scholarly task.

Mr. Sterling, Dartmouth Professor of Government, is a specialist in international political and economic relations and comparative foreignpolicy.