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Gorbachev's Revolution
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# : |
19069 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1991 |
1,942 Words |
| Author
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Herbert J. Ellison
Herbert J. Ellison is chairman of Russian and east
European studies at the University of Washington. He was
formerly secretary of the Kennan Institute for Advanced
Russian Studies in Washington, D.C. |
In a mere half decade, Mikhail Gorbachev and his colleagues have wrought the most radical and comprehensive transformation of Russian foreign policy since Lenin. Observing the changes, Americans have concentrated on the reduction of Soviet Third World revolutionism and on the new Soviet relationship with the West, especially the steps toward arms control and reduction, from the nuclear arms agreement of November 1987 to the comprehensive arms reduction agreement of November 1990. At first they attributed Soviet policy changes to the economic pressure created by the problems of a weak economy, but soon they realized that the roots of reform ran deeper.
In fact, the most radical and influential change in Soviet foreign policy began with the restructuring of Soviet relations with other communist parties and states. For the new Soviet leaders were reformers, ideologically akin to the Italian communist leaders, or to the reform communists in Hungary. They rejected the Stalinist ideological traditions that guided Soviet foreign policy, and they were heavily influenced by the reformist ferment within East European communism, their own expanding group of cosmopolitan and easternized foreign affairs specialists, and, in some cases, extensive diplomatic service or study in the West. The most visible example was that of Alexander Yakovlev, Gorbachev's most influential reform adviser, a student at Columbia University in 1959 and a long-term ambassador to Canada.
For such people it was vital to challenge the stronghold of traditional foreign policy thinking in the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee, particularly its International Department, and the parallel Department for Liaison with Governing Communist Parties. The International Department was given in 1986 to the reforming leadership of Anatoly Dobrynin, the former U.S. ambassador with nearly 30 years' residence in that country. Then in October 1988 the International Department was deprived entirely of its pivotal role in foreign policy and subordinated to a special Foreign Affairs Commission headed by Politburo member Yakovlev. Thereafter, the department's decline in influence in foreign policy and the simultaneous growth in influence of Yakovlev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze were quickly apparent.
The reduction of the role and importance of the International Department symbolized the "de-ideologization" of Soviet foreign policy, a major objective of Yakovlev and other apostles of foreign policy "new thinking". The organizational heir of the International, the International Department handled liaison with foreign communist parties and played a key role in the
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