After having been submerged within the Soviet Union since 1940, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania suddenly reappeared in 1991 as internationally recognized states as through the intervening half century had never happened. Mälksoo (international and European law, U. of Tartu) examines the remarkable and astonishing event, asking such questions as what happened in reality, what role did international law play, what can international lawyers know or respectively predict, and was this the first time ever that states were in practice more progressive than legal scholars or were they cheating the scholars by adopting an ex post legal or political fiction. The study was his July 2002 doctoral dissertation in law for Humboldt University Berlin. Martinus-Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)