SUMMARY:

This intellectual tribute by Ronald Grigor Suny to the historian Alfred Rieber (1931–2025) celebrates Rieber’s significant contributions to Russian and Soviet history. The text highlights Rieber’s evolution as a historian, initially focusing on the imperial period and the origins of Russian capitalism, before pivoting to work on Joseph Stalin and Soviet history. Rieber introduced some new concepts, such as the “borderland thesis,” arguing that Stalin’s policies, particularly regarding foreign affairs and nationality, were profoundly shaped by his early life in the South Caucasus. This approach offered a novel understanding of Stalin’s pragmatic and often brutal drive to secure Soviet borders and integrate internal borderlands, which Rieber also applied to moderately revisionist accounts of the Cold War’s origins.