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ID:
106344
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In a chapter, in Myths of Empire (1991), I argued that Gorbachev was seeking to transform atavistic ideas and institutions that had been functional for the initial stage of building socialism, but had become fetters on production and a danger to Soviet security. New concepts of international relations were needed to reduce the dangers and costs of the old confrontational mindset, and also to justify a shift in domestic arrangements away from the military industrial complex, central planning and obsessive secrecy. Together with the international contextual factors that helped to set this process in motion, this domestic political dynamic explains both the peaceful end of the cold war and also the collapse of the Soviet system, which was an unintended byproduct of the democratizing tactics that Gorbachev used to overcome resistance from the old-school military-industrial and ideological elites. These arguments are generally supported by recent accounts of the Soviet collapse and the end of the cold war.
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| 2 |
ID:
106347
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| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
As the Cold War recedes, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine what might have been and to objectively assess the contribution of Gorbachev's leadership and his legacy. Quite apart from the loss of a historic opportunity to build a radically different post-Cold War international relations, it is that the West did so in large measure out of an inability to understand that this was what, at least by 1989-1990, was central to Gorbachev's diplomacy. By focusing on our victory of superior power, and ignoring the role of Gorbachev's ideas, we ensured that what followed would indeed continue to be dominated by power politics. Once again, realism helps create the world it purports only to describe. By spurning Gorbachev's potentially greatest legacy as a twentieth-century leader, we ensured that this legacy would indeed be considerably less that it might have been.
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