Institutions of Isolation: Border Controls in the Soviet Union and Its Successor States, 1917-1993

Rolf Hellebust is a professor of Russian language and literature at the
University of Calgary.

This short book is offered as a case study of the Soviet system as an
example of one of the most obvious manifestations of totalitarian
repression. As Andrea Chandler points out, border controls were “one
of the visible images that propagated the myth that the USSR was a
strong state.” This despite the fact that the very idea of rigid
national boundaries defies the basic precepts of Marxism. An extension
of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation (with material added to include the
early post-Soviet period), Institutions of Isolation is based on a wide
variety of published and unpublished sources. It investigates questions
about the creation and maintenance of Soviet border controls, and their
involvement in the collapse of the USSR. Chandler incorporates
comparative analysis and social science theory of the state, arguing
that the Soviet phenomenon should be viewed not in isolation but in the
context of contemporary international power relations. As for the
USSR’s successor states, she notes that some of the most pressing
issues in post-Soviet society have involved border controls. This work
will be of use to specialists, but suffers from a plodding style,
especially in its presentation of certain obvious conclusions using
terms that tend to inflate their significance.