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Gorbachev was able to have a decisive impact on the development of ideas concerning the Soviet Union's relationship with the outside world and on the actual conduct of Soviet foreign policy by virtue of half a dozen key appointments. These were the elevation of Eduard Shevardnadze to the post of Foreign Minister, in succession to Andrey Gromyko, in the summer of 1985; the replacement of Boris Ponomarev as head of the International Department of the Central Committee by Anatoly Dobrynin in 1986; the promotion of Alexander Yakovlev to Politburo and Secretariat membership (with oversight of international affairs from the autumn of 1988); the replacement of Konstantin Rusakov by Vadim Medvedev as head of the Socialist Countries Department of the Central Committee in 1986; the appointment of Anatoly Chernyaev as Gorbachev's principal foreign policy aide in 1986; and the appointment of Georgy Shakhnazarov as another close aide two years later. These appointments both reflected and facilitated Gorbachev's adoption of new thinking in the foreign policy sphere with, for example, a concern for mutual security and an emphasis on interdependence taking the place of an antagonistic ‘class approach’ to international relations; a novel emphasis on universal interests and values that undercut the traditional ‘two camps’ approach; and ‘reasonable sufficiency’ becoming the criterion for justifying Soviet military expenditure. The sources of the new thinking are discussed, and in the conduct of state‐to‐state relations, particular attention is paid to the Soviet‐United States relationship and to relations with Europe, both West and East. The changes Gorbachev introduced in Soviet foreign policy made possible the transformation of the East European political landscape and it is especially notable that he refused to attempt to stem the democratic tide that flowed across the Eastern part of the continent even when it threatened to overwhelm him.

Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader to realize that nuclear bipolarity dictated permanent ’peaceful coexistence’ between two antagonistic social systems. Although he never abandoned the idea of the usability of nuclear weapons, he regarded them primarily as a positive force and was eager to use them in his gamble for peace – an attempt to negotiate a permanent truce with the US, which would have liberated Soviet resources for the construction of communism and the assistance of ’progressive’ movements and regimes around the world. Khrushchev had little doubt that behind the nuclear shield, the Soviet Union would win a peaceful economic competition with the capitalist camp.

This chapter assesses how much the societal discourse of Soviet identity informed Soviet foreign relations with China, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Eastern Europe, the developing world, and the West. There was a revolution in Soviet foreign policy after Stalin’s death. It was made possible by the empowerment of a new Soviet identity, the central feature of which was an understanding of socialism that permitted variety and did not demand the strictest adherence to the Soviet model. This alternative discourse of difference had been maintained in society during the postwar Stalin years, often in official Soviet institutions. This change in Soviet identity had profound effects in Eastern Europe, where Stalinist regimes had been in power for years and had adopted Stalinist policies and practices, most often at the behest of Moscow.

A bibliography of the complete works of Archie Brown is presented from the mid-1960s to the present. These provide valuable insights on the nature of the Soviet Union, its transition from Communism, and on post-Soviet Russia’s ambiguous process of democratisation. Annotations are divided into nine thematic categories: links between Scottish and Russian enlightenments; Czechoslovakia, 1963-1968, and Eastern Europe under Soviet power; Soviet politics pre-1985; the Gorbachev Era; Russian politics and transition, 1992-2004; works spanning the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, 1917-2004; British Politics; other writings; and examples of substantial reviews and review articles.

Stalin understood the military and political significance of atomic weapons and directed all available Soviet resources to obtaining this weapon. However, he remained largely a statesman operating on the premises and experience of the pre‐nuclear age. For him, the emergence of atomic weapons made the prospect of a future war more terrifying, but no less likely. America's atomic monopoly in the first phase of the Cold War did not play a substantial role in deterring Stalin. He was determined to defend his spheres of influence and to dispel any sign of possible Soviet weakness in the face of America's atomic saber rattling. Stalin, a genius of state terror, power broking, and war diplomacy, was different from statesmen in the democratic countries, but his outlook on world politics was consistent with the realpolitik of the pre‐nuclear age. He had as much inclination as some of his ’liberal’ Western counterparts to regard nuclear power as a means of augmenting military power and, in larger terms, the power of the state.

This chapter explains why reforms were possible during the 1970s in China under the Communist regime, but not in the Soviet Union. It argues that the reasons are a combination of a change in leadership and grassroots pressure. Different choices were made in China than in the Soviet Union because the countries had different initial conditions in the countryside, particularly in terms of technology, incomes and wealth, and the structure of the economy; all affected the choices of the Communist leadership and the actions of citizens.

This chapter examines the indicators used by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and two key decision makers in his administration, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union during the period 1977–1980. Using evidence from U.S. archives and interviews with former U.S. decision makers, it compares the predictions of the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. After discussing the U.S. decision makers’ stated beliefs about Soviet intentions, the chapter considers the reasoning they employed to justify their intentions assessments. It then describes the policies that individual decision makers advocated and those that the administration collectively adopted. It also explores whether decision makers advocated policies that were congruent with their stated beliefs about intentions and evaluate sthe impact of beliefs about intentions on U.S. foreign policy at the time.

Of the four transformations outlined in Ch. 6, two of the four had, by the end of the 1980s, been successful beyond the dreams of Soviet dissidents and of the most optimistic Western observers at the time Gorbachev came to power. That is to say, the political system had become substantially pluralist and partially democratized and international relations had been still more comprehensively transformed. Economic reform and nationalities policy – along with some bad (as well as good) appointments – were, in contrast, areas of relative failure for Gorbachev. A decisively important achievement, however, was the dismantling of Communism (defined in the chapter) that occurred remarkably peacefully in a country that had been under Communist rule for seven decades. There was nothing inevitable either about the timing of the end of the Soviet state or about the way in which, under Gorbachev's leadership, the system was transformed. Taking all his mistakes and some undoubted failures into account – along, however, with the almost insuperable obstacles he had to overcome – Gorbachev has strong claims to be regarded as one of the greatest reformers in Russian history and as the individual who made the most profound impact on world history in the second half of the 20th century.

For Eisenhower, it was nuclear weapons’ destructive potential, not the image of a protracted conventional war, that destroyed the ’logic’ of war. He believed that thermonuclear weapons made any notion of victory incoherent. Meaningful defence could then only be deterrence. Facing this new setting, Eisenhower reassessed the dynamics of international relations and altered his behaviour accordingly. During his first three years as president, he relied on the ’Detroit Deterrent’, the belief that the US industrial capacity would enable it to triumph in any such war of attrition. By 1956, however, the combination of thermonuclear weapons and growing Soviet intercontinental delivery capabilities made Detroit Deterrent obsolete in his mind. By the end of his presidency, therefore, superpower relations had begun to operate according to this new logic, the logic of ’thermonuclear revolution’.

Political leaders in post-Communist Eastern European states have rejected ethnic minority leaders’ calls for territorial autonomy (TA). Two reasons are given for this rejection: TA is viewed as a stepping stone to secession, and that the putative minority homeland is no more culturally homogeneous than is the state as a whole. The validity of these two objections to TA is discussed within the context of the history of TA in the Soviet Union, and actual experiences of TA in successor states.

This chapter examines the indicators used by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and two key decision makers in his administration, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union during the period 1977–1980. Using evidence from U.S. archives and interviews with former U.S. decision makers, it compares the predictions of the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. After discussing the U.S. decision makers' stated beliefs about Soviet intentions, the chapter considers the reasoning they employed to justify their intentions assessments. It then describes the policies that individual decision makers advocated and those that the administration collectively adopted. It also explores whether decision makers advocated policies that were congruent with their stated beliefs about intentions and evaluate sthe impact of beliefs about intentions on U.S. foreign policy at the time.

This chapter focuses on the Gulag during the Armageddon of the Great Patriotic War. It shows how the institutions, practices, and identities of the Gulag shifted in accord with the demands of total war. The war was an era of mass release on an unprecedented scale side by side with the highest mortality rates in the history of the Gulag system. After four years of brutal, exhausting warfare and a disastrous initial stage, the Soviet Union emerged from its Armageddon victorious. The early postwar period offered no indication that the Gulag would cease to be a mass social phenomenon within fifteen years. Rather, the Gulag remained a pillar in the reestablishment of the Soviet system, following the Red Army into liberated territories, so that every liberated district received its own corrective labor colony. By 1944, the camp and colony population began to grow again.

This chapter chronicles Prokofiev's relocation to Moscow in the spring of 1936, his reaction to the denunciation of Shostakovich in Pravda; the composition of the ballet Romeo and Juliet and the Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of October; the censorship of those two works, and Prokofiev's service as a cultural representative for the Soviet regime during his last two trips abroad. The chapter addresses his collaborations with the director Sergey Radlov (who conceived a happy ending for Romeo and Juliet) and Nataliya Sats (who commissioned Peter and the Wolf for the Moscow Children's Theater), his fraught relationship with the Chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs Platon Kerzhentsev, and his speeches at the Union of Soviet Composers. The description of his last trip to the United States corrects inaccuracies in the historical record concerning his interest in Hollywood film composition. Prokofiev was monitored throughout the trip by Soviet officials working for the VOKS organization and the Embassies in London and Washington.

This chapter explores Russia’s attempts to come to terms with its Stalinist past in an endeavour to build a civil society based on the rule of law. It begins by examining the nature of Stalinist repression and the legacy of Soviet terror. It goes on to focus on halted official efforts at truth telling, and persistent unofficial efforts, led by the organization Memorial, at remembering and commemorating; this provides insight into the issues that daunted the quest for moral recovery. The chapter then looks at post-Soviet efforts to come to terms with the Stalinist past, and finally it assesses the impact of the discussion of past injustices, or the politics of memory, on Russia’s subsequent process of democratization. The information presented and the conclusions drawn are necessarily based on a number of scattered sources, including memoirs, interviews and official archives; Russia’s experience is unique, and difficult to compare with other post-authoritarian political systems, especially as democracy has not taken substantial hold, and, since the transition is so new, questions of accountability are only beginning to be addressed.

Although most scholars were quick to puncture the Soviet Union's sham claims to democracy, too many accepted at face value its claim to be a federal state. The shifting debates about federalism in Bolshevik doctrine and communist theory are explored. The formation, systematization, and stagnation of the so‐called ‘Soviet federalism’ is examined and debunked through analysis of the constitutions and political realities that existed under Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev.

Charts the changes that occurred in American–Western European relations during the years of the Reagan and Bush administrations of 1984–1993, which marked a change in the Cold War (largely as a result of Gorbachev's policy changes in the Soviet Union), and its eventual end, which could be marked as the year 1989 (the year of the American–Soviet summit in Malta and of the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes). The first section of the chapter examines the Reagan and Gorbachev ‘Lovefest’: the change of Ronald Reagan's hardline anti‐Soviet policies to a policy of American–Soviet cooperation under the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev, and discusses Reagan's other foreign policies and Western European attitudes toward these. The second section, ‘The Liberation of Eastern Europe, the Unification of Germany, and the New World Order’, looks at the foreign policies of George Bush (who became President in January 1989) during this time of immense change in Europe, and at the increasing East–West cooperation that he presided over; the Gulf War strengthened American–European relations considerably during this period. The third section of the chapter shows that American–EU relations improved markedly under Bush, although the attitudes of the various European countries to a role for America in Europe varied, with the French being notably anti‐American. The last section of the chapter briefly considers the survival of the American–European relationship through this period and the changes that occurred in it.

This chapter begins with descriptions of the life and accomplishments of Archie Brown, Britain’s foremost expert on Russian politics. In the last 40 years, Brown has gained international recognition for his scholarly work on leadership and political change in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Brown’s insights into the sources of within-system reform, the role of Gorbachev in transforming Soviet Communism, and leadership and democratisation in post-Communist Russia are discussed.