The USSR in Third World Conflicts was written principally under the auspices of the Center for International Affairs (CFIA) at Harvard University during the academic year of 1979-80. I was serving at the time as a postdoctoral fellow in the newly formed program in national security studies at CFIA. As with most books, however, the genealogy of this work is rather more complicated than that. It originally was a doctoral dissertation, written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University. The dissertation was completed in the autumn of 1979, a few months after my fellowship at CFIA had actually begun. When I left CFIA roughly one year later, the work of transforming the dissertation into a book had been largely completed, but some additional research and a thoroughgoing revision were still called for. This final reworking took place at an unconscionably slow pace from 1981 to 1983, while I was employed full-time as a research analyst of Soviet foreign policy at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc., in Munich, West Germany.

The long gestation period of this book (alas, typical of doctoral dissertations that see print) necessitates numerous acknowledgments. I am particularly indebted to three persons: Professors Adam Ulam and Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, and Keith Bush, Director of Research at Radio Liberty.