Odessa, 1941–1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory Under Foreign Rule
Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1957. Item #1572
Quarto, 465pp. Original three-hole-punched and stapled memorandum wraps, as issued. A scarce Cold War “R-Series” working paper prepared under U.S. Air Force Project RAND and designated ASTIA Document No. AD 123552. Never intended for public sale, this restricted-distribution study examines Romanian occupation administration in Odessa (today’s Odesa) during World War II and represents one of the earliest systematic Western analyses of Soviet territory under Axis rule. It precedes and directly informs Dallin’s later landmark scholarship on German and Axis occupation policy.
Produced from a typed master and mass-duplicated via offset lithography/mimeograph, the report reflects the characteristic documentary aesthetic of mid-century government research. Distribution was limited to the U.S. Air Force, select Department of Defense agencies, and a small number of university research libraries operating under government contract. Initial press runs were typically small (estimated 100–500 copies), and most copies were routinely destroyed upon declassification or supersession. As a result, surviving examples are exceptionally scarce outside major institutional repositories such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, or RAND’s own archives.
Alexander Dallin (1924–2000) was a leading scholar of Soviet and East European studies and a foundational figure in American Kremlinology. A longtime professor at Stanford University and former director of Columbia University’s Russian Institute, Dallin’s rigorous archival scholarship profoundly shaped Cold War academic and policy understanding of Soviet governance and wartime occupation systems.
Sold