Soviet Foreign Policy from the 1970s through the Gorbachev Era: The Role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Communist Party International Department

Abstract

From his accession to power as Communist Party leader in March 1985— and even more forcefully from the beginning of 1986—Mikhail Gorbachev advocated radical changes to the conduct of foreign affairs and domestic policy, the latter evident in the campaigns for glasnost and perestroika. Formulated officially in February 1986, the ‘New Thinking’ [Novoe myshlenie] offered a novel approach to international relations, which rested on several key concepts, among the most important of which were the nuclear threat, the common challenges facing humanity, the ‘deideologization’ of international relations,¹ and the abandonment of the principle of class strug-gle.² On this last point, of great symbolic importance for a socialist regime, Gorbachev’s adviser, Georgii Shakhnazarov, went as far as to declare that ‘the fight for survival is more important than the struggle for class interests, national interests, or any other interests.’³