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with the US and Europe.
108
Within the MFA there emerged a privileged group
around Gromyko in Moscow and Ambassador Anatolii Dobrynin in Washing-
ton closely associated with Europe and the US.
109
‘Only the US, big European
countries and the UN interested Gromyko . . . His heart did not lie in the Third
World. He did not consider them to be serious partners. “He considered the
Third World only to be a problem,” writes Dobrynin. “He himself told me
this”.’
110
At one of the meetings in the CC in late 1978 Rostislav Ul’ianovskii (Pono-
marev’s deputy) said:
‘We need to bring things to the point that the NLM of Arabs becomes a
socialist revolution. Agreements with American imperialism...will only . . .
distract the Arab working class from its main political task.’
Ponomarev nodded his head in agreement.
‘God!’, lamented Robert Turdiev, an MFA expert, on leaving the CC build-
ing. ‘Do these people understand what is happening on planet Earth? What
Arab working class? What socialist revolution in the Middle East? Where do
these senile old men live? On the moon, on Mars?’
‘In an office on Staraya Ploshchad’,’ answered Anatolii Filev.
But Gromyko responded completely differently.
‘Why have a conversation about a Middle East settlement in the CCID at
all? This is not their business. Let them deal with Communist parties and
NLMs.’
111
The CCID preserved the orthodox Soviet identity of vanguard for socialist
development in Central Asia. Ponomarev, who had been an aide to Georgii
Dimitrov, head of the Comintern in the 1940s, saw himself in that tradition.
Shakhnazarov relates details of a meeting of the CC commission on Poland
that took place in early 1981 under the chairmanship of Mikhail Suslov. The
Soviet ambassador to Poland at the time, Boris Aristov, reported that the Polish
peasantry, despite its traditional ideas, had turned out to be a far more reliable
support for the regime than the working class, which had fallen under the
influence of both Solidarity and the Catholic Church. This is heresy to the
orthodox Soviet model of a working-class vanguard, and Ponomarev inter-
rupted, saying that the Polish leadership needed to collectiviseits privatefarms.
Aristov demurred, repeating that Polish private farmers mostly supported the
government. Ponomarev then reminisced about the 1920s and the great feat
108 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,pp.181–9; and English, Russia and the Idea of the
We st ,pp.103–5 and 278,n.23.
109 Ibid., pp. 135–50 and 298,n.181.
110 Mlechin, MID,p.404. See also Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,p.12.
111 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,pp.162–3.
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Moscow’s foreign policy, 1945–2000: identities, institutions and interests
of collectivisation. Suslov, ‘a reservoir of quotations from Lenin’, cited an
appropriate one on collectivisation. Suslov and Ponomarev then opined about
Lenin and collectivisation. Finally, Ustinov said, ‘Mikhail Andreevich, Boris
Nikolaevich, why are we talking about communes when with each passing
day Solidarity is threatening to remove the party from power!?’
112
The institutionalisation of information, the authority of the General Secre-
tary and the Great Power and vanguardidentities of the MFA and CCID, respec-
tively,help account for the predominance of the orthodox official discourse; the
emergence of research institutions, expert advice and the creative associations
of the intelligentsia explain the development and deepening of its alternatives.
Shortly after the Twentieth Party Congress the Institute of World Eco-
nomics and International Relations (IMEMO) was restored from Stalinist
oblivion. Over the next ten years, regional institutes associated with the Soviet
Academy of Sciences would be established for Latin America (1961), Africa
(1962), Asia (1966) and the USA and Canada (ISKAN, 1967).
113
What these, and
other research institutions such as the Novosibirsk Institute of Economics and
Industrial Organisation and the Public Opinion Research Institute at Komso-
mol’skaia Pravda, had in common was access to information about the outside
world unavailable to average party or government officials, let alone the gen-
eral public.
114
Another important site was in Prague, the editorial headquar-
ters of Problems of Peace and Socialism, the journal of the world Communist
movement.
115
Not only was there access to foreign publications, but daily dis-
cussions with socialists from all over the world, most significantly, Western
Europe. The cadre of Soviets who worked in Prague in the 1950s and 1960s
became important carriers of a Soviet identification with Europe as a Social
Democratic alternative to the Soviet model.
116
These Soviet scholars and party workers formed a loose network of younger
researchers, all informed about the outside world, and all interested in a
reformed version of the Soviet model. While they never were a majority
in any of the institutions that employed them, they affected and effected both
local and national conversations about socialism through years of informal
meetings, seminars, conferences and joint work on memos and speeches for
political superiors.
117
112 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami,pp.249–51.
113 Jeffrey Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the
End of the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 32–3, 82–105.
114 English, Russia and the Idea of the West,pp.96–113, 131,and290 n. 78.
115 Primakov, Gody v bol’shoi politike,p.15. 116 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami,p.94.
117 English, Russia and the Idea of the West,p.101.
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Given how information was organised in these years, this reformist dis-
course rarely influenced decision-making at the top. But this too began to
change slowly over time. Andropov, as CC secretary of the department of
relations with socialist countries, recruited heavily from among the reformist
cadres who had been in Prague to form his own personal staff of consultants.
118
But this was uncommon. In the late 1970s, for example, it was forbidden to
send unsolicited memos directly to the Politburo or CC apparat. They had to
be vetted by Chernenko’s department, a death sentence for almost all of them.
But a revolution of sorts occurred when Andropov became General Secretary
in November 1982. He commissioned some 110 reports about Soviet domestic
affairs from these reformist experts, and Gorbachev was in charge of this task.
The last institutional carrier of reformist discourse was the intelligentsia.
They lived all across the Soviet Union and had their own institutions in creative
unions, editorial boards of journals and publishing houses, performance spaces
and, of course, their own works. They were the mass base for the reformist
cadres who were officially placed in research institutes and party and gov-
ernment positions. The intelligentsia was a vast and authoritative terrain on
which the discourse of difference was acted out on a daily basis, keeping con-
testation alive. I say authoritative because even Brezhnev failed to appoint his
own favourites to the Soviet Academy of Sciences. And not even Brezhnev
dared ask the academy to expel Sakharov from its ranks.
119
The Soviet identity of difference, unchallenged after Molotov’s removal,
contradicted the Chinese identity of Stalinist orthodoxy. The discourse
between China and the Soviet Union after 1957 is almost identical to that
between Molotov and Khrushchev the previous four years.
120
The Soviet iden-
tification of itself as the centre and apex of the world revolutionary movement
was in conflict with China’s growing understanding of the Soviet Union as a
revisionist, degenerate, bourgeois state. ‘Each country defined the image of
its partner according to whether or not it corresponded to its own ideas about
the criteria of socialism.’
121
The identity conflict with China affected Soviet
policy all over the world. Challenged by China for leadership of revolutions in
the decolonising world, the Soviet Union redoubled its efforts there to counter
these charges and establish its credentials as the true socialist vanguard. Criti-
cised for sacrificing the world revolutionary movement on the altar of d
´
etente
with the US, Khrushchev was increasingly constrained in making concessions
118 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami,pp.133–6; and Wishnick, Mending Fences,p.75.
119 Primakov, Gody v bol’shoi politike,pp.22–3. 120 Westad, Brothers in Arms,p.20.
121 Kulik, Sovetsko-kitaiskii raskol,p.49, 167–8, 300, 341–4. See also Zubok and Pleshakov,
Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War,p.215.
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Moscow’s foreign policy, 1945–2000: identities, institutions and interests
to the West. Moreover, d
´
etente with the West increased Soviet interests in
supporting NLMs in the developing world, to compensate for the softer line
with the imperialists on the issues of Germany and nuclear weapons. The
identity conflict with China also had domestic consequences for Soviet iden-
tity. If Hungary fixed the limits of difference in 1956, then China in the 1960s
empowered Soviet proponents of difference by giving them an example of
orthodox Stalinism against which the Soviet Union was officially struggling.
122
Identity politics helps explain why, as the split reached its climax in the 1960s,
it was China, not the Soviet Union, who pushed matters to a complete break.
Chinese identity was vulnerable to a reformist understanding of difference,
because it had embarked on a neo-Stalinist industrial and cultural revolution.
Soviet identity was not threatened, as China’s greater orthodoxy was explained
away by China’s subordinate position on the hierarchy of modernity and
revolutionary progress.
123
Soviet deviation could not so easily be explained
away by China.
The fact that the Soviet Union never denied China its socialist identity
reveals an important discursive bias in Moscow.
124
Difference in the direction
of reformism could result in the loss of a socialist identity, as in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia; difference in the direction of greater orthodoxy could not.
This privileging of orthodoxy helps explain the extraordinary leverage Soviet
allies in Eastern Europe and the decolonising world had on the Soviet leader-
ship whenever they invoked more orthodox or revolutionary commitments
than prevailed in Soviet discourse at home at the time.
In October 1957, the Sovietsagreed to give China a model of an atomic bomb.
But in January 1958 Mao announced the ‘great leap forward’, a neo-Stalinist
modernisation programme. In March, Mao told his colleagues that the Soviet
model was no longer appropriate.
125
In July 1959, Khrushchev declared the
great leap forward to be a Leftist error. In August, the Soviet Union remained
neutral on the border clashes between Indian and Chinese forces.
126
The same
month, the Soviet Union informed China that nuclear co-operation was over
because it was inconsistent with Soviet efforts to get a comprehensive ban on
testing nuclear weapons with the United States.
127
A month later, after his trip
to the United States, Khrushchev travelled to Beijing where Mao accused him
of ‘Right opportunism’, incidentally, the charge made by Stalin in his purges in
122 Shakhnazarov, S vozhdiami,pp.105–6; and Arbatov, The System,pp.97–101.
123 Hopf, Social Construction,pp.124–34; and Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold
War,p.230.
124 Kulik, Sovetsko-kitaiskii raskol,p.466. 125 Chen Jian, Mao’s China,pp.72–3.
126 Taubman, Khrushchev,p.392, and Chen Jian, Mao’s China,p.79.
127 Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev,p.271; and Chen Jian, Mao’s China,p.78.
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the 1930s against Bukharin, Tomskii and Rykov.
128
Suslov, in his report to the
December 1959 CC plenum, wrote that Mao had created a cult of personality,
parroting Twentieth Party Congress charges against Stalin.
129
In June 1960,
at the Romanian party congress, Khrushchev publicly declared Mao to be
an ‘ultra-leftist, ultra-dogmatist, indeed a Left revisionist’, echoing the 1957
charges against Molotov.
130
He announced, upon returning to Moscow, the
withdrawal of all Soviet advisers from China. Khrushchev reported to a 1960
CC plenum that ‘when he talks to Mao, he gets the impression he is listening
to Stalin’.
131
The change in identity relations with China implied Soviet interests in
proving its vanguard identity in the decolonising world.
132
At the December
1960 meeting of Communist and workers’ parties in Moscow, the Communist
parties from Latin America, south-east Asia, and India all sided with China
against the Soviet position of appreciating difference, of collaborating with
bourgeois nationalists in decolonising countries. The next month, Khrushchev
gave a speech at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in which he distinguished
between just wars of national liberation and local and colonial wars that were
both unjust and fraught with the risk of escalation to nuclear war. Soviet
reluctance to arm resistance fighters in Algeria and Laos was overcome by
the Chinese threat to supplant Moscow as the revolutionary vanguard.
133
In
August 1961, Khrushchev approved an unprecedented level of military aid to
NLMs in Latin America and Africa.
134
At a 1964 meeting of Latin American
Communist parties in Havana, Moscow agreed to more military aid for local
rebels on the condition that none of it ended up with factions enjoying Chinese
support.
135
An April 1970 KGB memo to the CCID advocating a more aggressive
128 William Taubman, ‘Khrushchev vs. Mao’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin
8–9 (1996/7): 245; Taubman, Khrushchev,p.394; Shu Guang Zhang, Economic Cold War:
America’s Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1 963 (Washington:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), p. 229; and Head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s
Far Eastern Department, Mikhail ‘Zimyanin on Sino-Soviet Relations, September 15,
1959’, in Westad, Brothers in Arms,pp.356–9.
129 ‘More New Evidence’, p. 103. For Suslov, see Kulik, Sovetsko-kitaiskii raskol, 336.
130 Westad, Brothers in Arms,p.25; and Taubman, Khrushchev,p.470.
131 M. Y. Prozumenshchikov, ‘The Sino-Indian Conflict, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the
Sino-Soviet Split’ Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8–9 (1996/7): 232.
132 Georgii Shakhnazarov, Tsena svobody: Reformatsiia Gorbacheva glazami ego pomoshchika
(Moscow: Rossika/Zevs,1993), p. 24; and Arbatov, The System,pp.101, 170; Kulik, Sovetsko-
Kitaiskii Raskol,pp.336–47, 375; and ‘Records of Meetings of CPSU and CCP Delegations,
Moscow, July 5–20, 1963’, in Westad, Brothers in Arms,p.386.
133 Richter, Khrushchev’s Double Bind,pp.137–8.
134 Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War,p.254.
135 Richard D. Anderson, Public Politics in an Authoritarian State (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1993), p. 164, and Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War,
pp. 268–9.
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Soviet policy in Africa justified doing so by citing competition with China
for leadership of revolutionary movements on that continent.
136
Together,
the CCID and identity relations with China kept Soviet vanguard identity
alive throughout the Cold War and pushed Moscow to a series of military
interventions there to vindicate that identity.
137
By 1962, economic activity between the two countries had been reduced
to 5 per cent of 1959’s level.
138
From September 1963 to July 1964, the CCP
published a nine-part open letter in which it developed its case against the
Soviet bourgeois deviant.
139
As Kulik put it, relations between the two were
now based ‘on generally accepted norms, [not] on the principles of socialist
internationalism’.
140
From 1965 to 1973, the Soviets engaged in a sustained and
massive military build-up in the Far East, punctuated by the armed clashes
on the Amur River in 1969. From 1969 to 1973, Soviet manpower tripled to
forty divisions, about 370,000 troops, most units of which were equipped with
tactical nuclear missiles.
141
Only in 1978, with the ascension of Deng Xiaoping, and his reformist domes-
tic policy, does the Stalinist Chinese Other disappear from Soviet identity pol-
itics. It is replaced within the CCID by a view of China as a revisionist socialist
power and within the MFA as a less hostile threat.
142
As Wishnick observes,
Suslov, CC secretary in charge of ideology until 1982 and Oleg Rakhmanin,
secretary in charge of relations with socialist countries until 1986, were the
‘headquarters in opposition to any change in relations with China’. They were
uniquely advantaged institutionally by their mandates and by the fact that
‘they enjoyed a near monopoly over information and analysis on China’.
143
The introduction of a ‘limited contingent’ of Soviet armed forces into
Afghanistan in 1979 was the final act of Soviet self-encirclement. Opposed
to the coup that toppled Mohammed Daud and brought the People’s Demo-
cratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to power in April 1978, opposed to the
PDPA’s radical domestic programme, opposed to deploying Soviet troops to
save an unpopular regime, Soviet leaders found themselves in a quagmire
136 Westad, ‘Moscow and the Angolan Crisis’, pp. 22, 30 n. 8.
137 On Cuba, see Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’:
Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy (New York: Norton, 1997), pp. 167–8; on Vietnam, see
Chen Jian, Mao’s China,pp.231–5, and Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam,pp.132–3; on Angola,
seeGeorgii Kornienko,Kholodnaiavoina(Moscow:Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1994),
pp. 166–8, and Westad, ‘Moscow and the Angolan Crisis’, pp. 21–7; and on Ethiopia, see
Ermias Abebe, ‘The Horn, the Cold War, and Documents from the Former East-Bloc’,
Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8–9 (1996/7): 40–2.
138 Kulik, Sovetsko-kitaiskii raskol,p.357. 139 Ibid., pp. 334–5.
140 Ibid., pp. 298–99. 141 Wishnick, Mending Fences,pp.29–30.
142 Ibid., pp. 73–86. 143 Ibid., pp. 9–10.
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made of their own identity relations, institutional biases, deterrence fears and
allied manipulation.
Andropov and Ponomarev told Taraki that a coup would not be welcome
in Moscow. On 17 April 1978, the evening of the coup, both the MFA and KGB
sent messages to the Soviet embassy in Kabul instructing them to stop it. But
Taraki and Amin ignored them. When Ponomarev arrived in Kabul after the
coup, Taraki boasted: ‘Tell Ul’ianovskii, who always told me that we are a
backward country not ready for revolution that I am now sitting in the presi-
dential palace!’
144
While opposing the government’s radicalism, the CCID saw
a new country of socialist orientation, and Moscow as its vanguard.
145
Mean-
while, Soviet intelligence agencies were, only a bit prematurely, it turns out,
reporting about US support for ‘reactionary forces’, the mujahedin based in
Pakistan.
146
Soviet leaders knew that the Afghan government, despite incessant plead-
ings from Moscow, was doing little to elicit popular support.
147
At a March
1979 Politburo meeting devoted to Afghanistan, there was unanimity on three
things: the People’s Republic of Afghanistan (PRA) had little popular support;
the Soviet Union would not intervene militarily to support the PRA; the
PRA government could not be allowed to fall. Kirilenko made the first point:
‘We gave them everything. And what has come of it? Nothing of any value.
They have executed innocent people for no reason and then told us that we
also executed people under Lenin. What kind of Marxists have we found?’
148
Gromyko declared, ‘I completely support Comrade Andropov’s proposal to
rule out deployment of our troops to Afghanistan.’ He went on to point out
that ‘Afghanistan has not been subjected to any aggression. This is its inter-
nal affair’, implying no Great Power conflict with the US yet.
149
But Kosygin
144 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,pp.204–6.
145 N. I. Marchuk, ‘Voina v Afganistane: “Internatsionalizm” v deistvii ili vooruzhennaia
agressiia?’, in Nezkinskii, Sovetskaia vneshniaia politika,p.454; Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi
diplomatii,pp.233–4; Kornienko, Kholodnaia voina,pp.189–90; and ‘The Soviet Union
and Afghanistan’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8–9 (1996/7): 135.
146 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,p.238. US covert aid to the mujahedin, funnelled
through Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, began in April 1979, eight months before
the Soviet intervention. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memories of a National
Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983); and Marchuk, ‘Voina
v Afganistane’, p. 460.
147 ‘The Soviet Union and Afghanistan’, pp. 146–51; and Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,
pp. 250–1.
148 Westad, ‘Concerning the Situation in “A”’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin
8–9 (1996–7): 129.
149 ‘The Soviet Union and Afghanistan’, p. 141. For the opposition of Ustinov, Andropov,
Kosygin and Kirilenko to Soviet troops, see pp. 141–4.
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made a commitment that went unchallenged: ‘Naturally, we must preserve
Afghanistan as an allied government.’
150
Kosygin, in a Moscow meeting with Taraki, with Gromyko, Ustinov and
Ponomarev present, told him that this was not Vietnam. ‘Our mutual enemies
are just waiting for Soviet forces to appear on Afghan territory. This would give
them an excuse to deploy’ their own forces there.
151
Taraki nonetheless begged
for Soviet troops to defend Afghanistan against the enemies it was creating,
even suggesting Uzbeks dress up like Afghans. In May 1979, the Soviet embassy
in Kabul denied an Afghan request for poison gas.
152
From March to Decem-
ber 1979, Kabul requested Soviet military intervention eighteen times.
153
The
professional military, represented by then Chief of the General Staff Nikolai
Ogarkov and his first deputy, Sergei Akhromeev, both opposed Soviet forces
entering Afghanistan.
154
The mood in Moscow began to turn in October 1979; the Great Power
deterrent discourse began to penetrate. After Hafizullah Amin had Taraki
murdered after the latter returned from a Moscow meeting with Brezhnev,
the KGB began to talk about Amin ‘doing a Sadat’, turning Afghanistan into a
base to replace what the US had lost in Iran.
155
In early December, Andropov
sent Brezhnev a memo arguing that Amin might turn to the West to secure
his power.
156
Meanwhile, typical of Soviet allied relationships, Moscow had
preferred candidates to Amin waiting in the wings, in this case Babrak Karmal,
a favourite of the CCID.
157
In this same memo, the consensus on no Soviet
troops is preserved, with one exception: the promise of a short successful
operation to install Karmal in power, if necessary.
158
At the 8 December 1979 Politburomeeting, all the discursive pieces added up.
Andropov and Ustinov argued that Afghanistan would fall to the US, where
they might deploy Pershing II intermediate-range nuclear missiles. A short
successful military engagement was the worst-case scenario. Karmal would
pursue a more moderate socialist programme where the Soviet vanguard
could guarantee success. On 12 December, the decision was taken.
159
Shortly
thereafter, Dobrynin asked Gromyko why, as the Americans were now so riled
150 Ibid., p. 144. 151 Ibid., pp. 146–7.
152 Ibid., p. 152. 153 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,p.275.
154 Kornienko, Kholodnaia voina,p.194; Westad, ‘Concerning the Situation in “A”’, p. 131;
and Bennett, Condemned to Repetition?,p.218.
155 Westad, ‘Concerning the Situation in “A”’, p. 130; and Kornienko, Kholodnaia voina,
p. 195.
156 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,pp.305–6. 157 Ibid., pp. 307–8.
158 ‘The Soviet Union and Afghanistan’, p. 159.
159 Grinevskii, Tainy sovetskoi diplomatii,pp.311–13.
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up. Gromyko answered: It’s only for a month; we will do it and then get out
quickly.’
160
A week after the Christmas Eve intervention, Andropov, Gromyko, Ustinov
and Ponomarev reported to the Politburo that the new Karmal government
intended to correct the revolutionary excesses of the previous regime.
161
But by
the first week of February, Ustinov speculated that Soviet troops would remain
at least eighteen months. By the first week of March, Gromyko, Andropov and
Ustinov reported to the Politburo that Karmal was not achieving the promised
reforms.
162
The war continued for nine years.
Social Democracy at home: normal Great Power
abroad, 1985–91
Gorbachev understood the Soviet Union as a failing, yet perfectible, socialist
project. If only it were to become more democratic, it could fulfil the Marxist-
Leninist promise of being a model of Social Democracy for the world. This
understanding had immediate foreign-policy implications. First, by admitting
that the Soviet model itself was fraught with problems, the idea of the NSM
as infallible was rejected. This rejection entailed the rejection of the Soviet
Union as the model for the world revolutionary movement, as the vanguard
or centre of Eastern European and Chinese socialism, and NLMs around the
world. Difference with the Soviet model was no longer just grudgingly toler-
ated, but demanded, as Soviet experience had shown it was grossly inadequate
even at home, let alone when emulated abroad in less hospitable contexts.
163
Under Gorbachev, European Social Democracy and Eurocommunism became
significant Others to imitate, not oppose.
164
The common roots of Soviet com-
munism and European Social Democracy in progressive thought were hailed
as promising the integration of the Soviet Union as a normal, civilised, socialist
Great Power in a family of Great Powers all committed to common human
values of prosperity at home and peaceful resolution of conflict abroad. It was
a liberal vision of both the Soviet Union and the world. As Gorbachev himself
put it, ‘We are merging into the common stream of world civilization.’
165
160 Quoted in Mlechin, MID,p.420.
161 ‘The Soviet Union and Afghanistan’, pp. 160–3. 162 Ibid., pp. 166–73.
163 Anatoly Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, trans. and ed. Robert English and
Elizabeth Tucker (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p.
61.
164 English, Russia and the Idea of the West,pp.72–91, 140–1, 183–228; Prizel, National Identity
and Foreign Policy,pp.191–205; Chernyaev, My Six Years,p.297; and Primakov, Gody v
bol’shoi politike,p.33.
165 Quoted in English, Russia and the Idea of the West,p.193.
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Moscow’s foreign policy, 1945–2000: identities, institutions and interests
This new Soviet identity implied a far higher level of security for the Soviet
Union. The zone of peace had been discursively expanded beyond Eastern
Europe, NLMs and the world proletariat, to include virtually all humankind.
What insecurity Soviets experienced was addressable through perestroika, glas-
nost’, and democratisation at home, making the country more prosperous
and democratic, and new thinking abroad, reassuring the world that the
Soviet Union had become a new country with which all could live in liberal
harmony.
166
As early as March 1986, Gorbachev told a meeting of foreign min-
istry officials that domestic Soviet identity was a foreign policy issue, namely,
the development of democracy and respect for human rights at home would
inspire trust for the Soviet Union abroad.
167
De-institutionalisation of the NSM began with glasnost’, or Gorbachev’s
demand that the media begin to report about problems confronting the Soviet
economy. At first limited to economic issues, ecology and corruption, it was
soon extended to political matters and history, and finally to foreign policy
and security. The discrediting of the previous Soviet model cleared the way for
Gorbachev to begin economic and political reforms. Reformist periodicals,
such as Ogonek and Argumenty i fakty found that revealing shortcomings in
the NSM paid: circulation for Ogonek went from 260,000 to 4 million, for Aif
from 10,000 to 32.5 million.
168
In the last years of his rule, Gorbachev was con-
strained by the discursive changes he authored. Irritated by reporting in Aif,
he demanded the editor be fired; instead, journalists formed an ad hoc defence
committee, and forced Gorbachev to back down from his old thinking.
169
Gorbachev used the institutions he inherited, empowered ones that were
emergent and created new ones. Gorbachev benefited from the inherited
institution of General Secretary. Beyond the power it gave him to make all
the other institutional and personnel changes noted above, it permitted the
consolidation of his vision of Soviet identity as the predominant discourse in
the Soviet Union. Within days of becoming General Secretary, he put Pono-
marev, with whom he shared virtually no common intellectual ground, in
charge of an array of foreign policy issues, in order to undermine Gromyko’s
MFA monopoly, and create an institutionalised challenge to those positions.
170
But within a year Ponomarev was replaced as CCID secretary by Dobrynin.
166 Chernyaev, My Six Years,pp.104 and 298, 356–7; English, Russia and the Idea of the West,
p. 219; Primakov, Gody v bol’shoi politike,p.47; and Ted Hopf, Peripheral Visions (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 90–100.
167 Quoted in English, Russia and the Idea of the West,p.220.
168 Sarah E. Mendelson, Changing Course: Ideas, Politics, and The Soviet Withdrawal from
Afghanistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)p.108.
169 Shakhnazarov, Tsena svobody,p.310. 170 Chernyaev, My Six Years,p.25.
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