The Wa****ngton Quarterly
1988 Spring
Soviet Foreign-Policy Think Tanks
SECTION: SOVIET REFORM; Vol. 11, No. 2; Pg. 145
HIGHLIGHT: For seven decades Westerners, particularly Americans, have
awaited eagerly radical change in the Soviet Union. Are glasnost and
perestroika truly the instruments of a more democratic, open system or,
rather, are they the harbingers of a more efficient communist state?
What are the limits of reform? Have there been fundamental changes in
the distribution of power among people and institutions?
THE FOREIGN POLICY initiatives of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
impress many observers with the degree to which they are based on a
sophisticated and sometimes nondogmatic understanding of the world.
Indeed, Gorbachev's "new political thinking" builds on a systematic
analysis of economic, political, military, social, and cultural
developments around the world and questions how to advance Soviet
national interests.
As in so many other capitals, leader****p thinking in Moscow is shaped
to a growing extent by specialized policy research institutes. The
growing differentiation and influence of Soviet think tanks are little
noticed in the West but are essential to understanding the evolution of
Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev.
This essay will describe and analyze those Soviet institutes that
generate expertise and policy recommendations in the area of East-West
relations. Three institutes stand out: the Institute of World Economics
and International Relations, the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada, and
the Institute of the International Workers' Movement. The Soviets
describe these institutes as research centers on modern monopolistic
capitalism. From a Western perspective, it is perhaps more useful to
think of these institutes as specialist research centers in Western
studies with interdisciplinary and comprehensive research agendas.
Historical Background
Soviet Western research began in April 1925, just one year after
Lenin's death, with the foundation of the Institute of World Economics
and World Politics. The new institute was meant to enhance the Soviet
leader****p's knowledge about the United States n1. Its first director
was F. A. Rothstein. Born in 1871 in Kaunas, he spent 30 years in exile
in Great Britain before returning to the USSR. It was quite in line
with the general practice that his career should lead him to the head
office of an institute of Western studies. The government favored
personal knowledge of the West for these posts to ensure the most
accurate possible analysis. However, Rothstein's expertise did not save
him from replacement two years later as the price for allowing
oppositional authors like Trotsky and Radek to write in the institute's
magazine.
Rothstein's successor was Eugene Varga, a Hungarian economist and
Comintern official who had been a member of the tem****ary Hungarian
Soviet government of Bela Kun in 1919. As director of the institute, he
was consulted regularly by Stalin. Very often, he wrote papers on
im****tant political questions. He gained Stalin's complete confidence.
But the institute ultimately fell afoul of the research and writing
activities of its director. In 1946 Varga authored an analysis of the
postwar capitalist economy, entitled Changes in the Capitalist Economy
in the Wake of Word War II. Varga voiced the opinion that the
capitalist countries would reach economic stability within 10 years at
most because they had gained much invaluable experience with state
intervention in the economy during the war. Furthermore, Varga argued,
capitalist democracies, especially the United States and Great Britain,
were capable of implementing social reforms without violence. Finally,
wars among capitalist countries and between capitalist and socialist
countries were not inevitable. Varga's these contradicted Stalin's
ideological dogma that stipulated the inevitable collapse of the
capitalist economy and an inevitable war among the capitalist
countries. Within a year of the publication of this book, the Institute
of World Economics and World Politics was closed by decree and without
further explanation.
A decade later, Soviet Western studies were revived. At the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Twentieth Party Congress in February
1956 (famous for Khrushchev's secret anti-Stalin speech), deputy prime
minister and Politburo member A. I. Mikoyan complained that the USSR
was not studying modern capitalism closely enough and criticized the
closure of the Institute of World Economics and World Politics. A few
months later, in April 1956, the government established a new institute
of Western studies under a name quite similar to that of its
predecessor: the Institute of World Economics and International
Relations (Institut mirovoy ekonomiki i mezhadunarodnykh otnoscheniy or
IMEMO). It is the oldest and most im****tant of the existing Soviet
institutes of Western studies.
IMEMO's first director was not Varga but Mikoyan's brother-in-law, A.
A. Arsumanyan, an Armenian. After a decade as director, Arsumanyan was
replaced in 1966 by N. N. Inosemtsev, a Russian, who served as director
through the Brezhnev years. Born in 1921 in Moscow, Inosemtsev was a
graduate of the Moscow Institute of International Relations, the
training institution for Soviet diplomats. His training and experience
in the propaganda area is shared by many other colleagues in the
director's offices of the institutes of Western studies, a signal to
Westerners of an im****tant feature of the function of the Soviet
institutes of Western studies. Inosemtsev had worked as an advisor with
the theoretical party magazine Kommunist and later as deputy
editor-in-chief of Pravda. In the following years Inosemtsev was named
a committee member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, member of the
Foreign Affairs Commission in the Soviet of the Union of the USSR
Supreme Soviet, and member of the CPSU Central Committee. He initiated
the foundation of the Scientific Council for Peace and Disarmament
Studies and belonged to the group of ghostwriters composing Brezhnev's
im****tant foreign-policy speeches.
After Inosemtsev's sudden death in 1982, A. N. Yakovlev succeeded him
as director of IMEMO. Born in 1923 in Yaroslav near Moscow and a
teacher by profession, Yakovlev had the op****tunity to get to know the
West as early as 1958. As a member of a group of Soviet students, he
studied history for one year at Columbia University in New York. In
Moscow, he became managing director of the propaganda department of the
CPSU Central Committee. In 1972, when he was replaced by M. A. Suslov
(ideologue-in-chief at the time, member of the Politburo and Central
Committee secretary), the government sent Yakovlev as ambassador to
Canada. He had written a full-page article in the Literature Gazette
critizing nationalist, especially Russian nationalist, tendencies in
the USSR.
Gorbachev and Yakovlev came to know each other personally during
Gorbachev's visit to Canada in 1983. Yuri Andropov, Gorbachev's mentor
and party chief at the time, recalled Yakovlev to Moscow and appointed
him new director of the Institute of World Economics and International
Relations. In the following two years Yakovlev became corresponding
member of the Academy of Sciences, member of the Foreign Affairs
Commission in the Soviet of the Nationalities of the USSR Supreme
Soviet, and Central Committee member.
Yakovlev relinquished the post of IMEMO director in 1985 when he was
assigned again to the Central Committee's Propaganda Department, this
time as director. In 1986 Yakovlev advanced to become Central Committee
Secretary for Ideology and Propaganda -- that is, ideologue-in-chief.
One year later he became Politburo candidate and finally Politburo
member. Yakovlev is the first official who, after the disrupture of his
party career through 10 years of exile abroad, managed to return to
Moscow and to advance to the party leader****p -- in the space of only
four years.
Yakovlev has emerged as one of Gorbachev's most im****tant advisors not
only with regard to ideological and home affairs but also foreign
policy. The government looks to Yakovlev not just for information but
for analysis. Apart from Gorbachev, he is believed to be the only
Politburo member who is not afraid of the Western
parliamentary-democratic system.
Y. M. Primakov succeeded Yakovlev as director of IMEMO in 1985. Born in
1929 in Kiev, Primakov is a specialist in oriental studies with
previous experience as a Pravda correspondent to the Middle East in the
late 1960s and as director of the Institute of Oriental Studies. In the
meantime, he became a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences,
candidate member of the CPSU Central Committee, and deputy chairman of
the Council for World Peace, a Communist front organization.
The second most im****tant Soviet institute of Western studies was
founded in December 1967 as the U.S.A. Institute and later renamed the
Institute of U.S.A. and Canada (Institut SShA i Kamady or ISShAK).
Originally organized under the auspices of the Central Committee of the
CPSU as an instrument for preparation for the Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT), ISShAK has been affiliated since 1969 with the Soviet
Academy of Sciences. This is an arrangement shared with the two other
institutes of Western studies.
G. A. Arbatov became the first ISShAK director, and he remains in
office to this day. Born in 1923 in Cherson, Ukraine, he is of Russian
nationality (although some people say he is Hungarian because his
father is said to have emigrated to the USSR during the 1920s after the
Hungarian Soviet Republic failed). Like Inosemtsev, Arbatov is a
graduate of the Moscow Institute of International Relations. In the
early 1960s Arbatov worked in Prague as a commentator with the
Soviet-controlled multilingual magazine of the Communist world
movement, Problems of Peace and Socialism.
In 1964 he became head of a group of advisors. Administratively
speaking, advisors as specialists do not belong to a Central Committee
department, therefore they can implement their political analyses more
freely. Later, under Central Committee secretary Andropov, Arbatov was
appointed section chief in the newly founded Central Committee
department dealing with the CPSU's relations with communist and
workers' parties of the socialist countries, i.e. Soviet East European
policy. As director of the institute, Arbatov became a member of the
Academy of Sciences, member of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the
USSR Supreme Soviet, as well as member of the CPSU Central Committee.
In the early 1980s Arbatov represented the Soviet Union on the Palme
Commission on disarmament and security.
The third institute of Western studies is the Institute of the
International Workers' Movement (Institut mezhdunarodnogo robotshego
dvizheniya or IMRD). It was founded in 1967, along with the U.S.
Institute, in order to faciliate preparations for the World Conference
of Communist and Workers' Parties two years later in Moscow.
T. T. Timofeyev became the first director, and he remains so to this
day. Born in 1928 in Ivanovo, he is supposedly the son of a Russian
woman and John Davis, a leader of the American Communist party who
emigrated to the USSR. Timofeyev pursued a scientific career and worked
in the State Committee for Radio and Television in the 1960s, advancing
to the level of corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.
This brief history of the genesis of the three central Soviet
institutes of Western studies suggests some general conclusions. Each
was founded in order to fill an actual need for analysis. The
institutes' directors hold offices of high rank as members or
corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences. (Interestingly, the
academy is probably the only Soviet institution that elects its members
according to democratic rules and refrains from expelling such members,
e.g., regime critic Andrei Sakharov.) The institutes' directors play an
im****tant role in the foreign-policy decision-making process as members
of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the USSR Supreme Soviet. The
directors rank highly within the party as candidates or even full
members of the CPSU Central Committee. Therefore, one can reasonably
conclude that Soviet Western studies and institutions are im****tant in
Soviet foreign policy.
Size, Structure, and Fields of Research
All three Soviet institutes of Western studies are, to Western eyes, of
quite considerable size. The Institute of World Economics and
International Relations comprises 900 employees of whom 600 are
research scholars. The Institute of U.S.A. and Canada has 300 employees
of whom 150 are scholars. The Institute of the International Workers'
Movement has 350 staff members of whom 200 are research scholars.
These research scholars are recruited mostly from the Foreign Ministry,
the mass media, and other scientific institutes. Even some former
high-ranking military personnel can be found among them. Moreover, it
is known that there exist some personal connections with the KGB. For
example, the deputy ISShAK director, Radomir Bogdanov, is said to be a
KGB colonel n2.
A strong competition exists among the graduates of Moscow University
for the coveted entry into an institute of Western studies. Only the
very best succeed n3. However, children of prominent persons apparently
enjoy easier access to these institutes. Sons of both Gromyko and
Andropov worked in the U.S.A. Institute during the 1970s. Inosemtsev
and Arbatov, former fellow students and later institute directors, made
arrangements for each other's sons. (Sergei Medvedkov, stepson of the
now deceased IMEMO director Inosemtsev, is working in ISShAK, and
Arbatov's son Alexei is head of the IMEMO department for disarmament
and international security n4.)
The institutes are organized structurally into departments, subdivided
into sections, in accordance with their research assignments. Although
departments are structured according to their research projects,
certain centers are established along geographical lines, such as
IMEMO's three centers dealing with Japan, North America, and Western
Europe. IMEMO's West European center, with its 60 analysts, is the
largest and is supposed to evolve into a new institute for Western
Europe. Sometimes when current questions need to be analyzed, ad hoc
working groups drawing across institutional divides are established.
In 1984 P. N. Fedoseyev, Central Committee member and vice president of
the Academy of Sciences, provided general guidance to the three
institutes. He tasked the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada to analyze in
detail questions related to "the United States' and some other
imperialist countries' sharp policy turns toward aggression, the
stirring up of international conflicts, confrontation with the USSR and
all socialist countries, all this with the aim of obtaining military
superiority over the world of socialism." The analysis should take
great care, so Fedoseyev said, to detect the political differentiations
within bourgeois circles as well as the intensifying contradictions and
the struggle between the "realistically minded representatives of the
ruling cl***** in the Western countries and uncontrolled militarists."
Fedoseyev directed the Institute of World Economics and International
Relations to look into the Peculiarities of capitalism's general crisis
at its present stage and the growing im****tance of the
military-industrial complex as well as the transnational cor****ations
in Western countries." The specialists in the Institute of the
International Workers' Movement should concentrate more on the
activities of the "partners of the working class" and of different
pacifist movements.
A very im****tant task of all institutes of Western studies is,
according to Fedoseyev, to analyze public opinion at different levels
of the population and to study possible methods of influencing the
consciousness of the m***** n5.
Books about the United States are published jointly by the Institute of
World Economics and International Relations and the Institute for
U.S.A. and Canada, since their work in this area often overlaps. There
are differences between the two institutions, however. Generally
speaking, ISShAK thinks of IMEMO as a rival, much more so than vice
versa. IMEMO scientists believe their ISShAK colleagues to be somewhat
Americanized because of their research projects and frequent U.S.
contracts. They consider ISShAK re****ts to be too politicized and
inadequate in their economic analysis, an area of particular IMEMO
focus. IMEMO asks more of its potential research scholars and requires
them to speak at least two foreign languages, not just English.
Therefore, IMEMO scholars are better qualified than their ISShAK
colleagues.
Work Methods, Guiding Functions, and International Contacts
All three institutes of Western studies publish research papers in
generally available periodicals. IMEMO issues a monthly magazine called
World Economics and International Relations. ISShAK also issues a
monthly magazine, called The U.S.A.: Economics, Politics, and Ideology.
The IMRD's magazine, The Working Class and the Modern World, appears
every two months. The educated, interested Soviet citizen finds few
other tools to keep informed regularly about developments in the
non-Communist world. The articles in these magazines are of a high
standard, even if based on Marxism-Leninism. Furthermore, the
institutes publish a variety of monographs and books on an irregular
basis and with varying print runs.
To be able to present a paper relevant to current affairs, one has to
have access to original sources. The Soviet specialist on Western
studies has free access to the "open department" of his institute's
library that includes Soviet and Western Communist literature. In
addition, special departments carry Western non-Communist literature.
Magazines arrive one month late; books twelve months. This delay
undercuts the ability of researchers to generate re****ts of
contem****ary relevance. Researchers who want access to the special
department need a special permit from the institute's security
department, which is issued only if requested by the researcher's
section head in connection with a specific assignment n6.
The institutes of Western studies are also degree-granting
institutions. They have a right to confer the degree of candidate or
doctor of sciences, the equivalent of the Western PhD. In this way, the
institutes serve as a place of training for top professionals engaging
for instance in a diplomatic career.
Propaganda tasks are also performed by the institutes. In the Soviet
Union, the institutes provide lectures to working people. Some work is
also targeted on the Western public. Top researchers who regularly
travel to the West are charged with the task of presenting the Soviet
Union's point of view on current foreign and security policy questions,
especially when speaking with im****tant persons and the media in the
United States and Western Europe. ISShAK director Arbatov is
particularly active in the United States in this respect.
But the most im****tant work of the institutes of Western studies is not
meant for the public. These are the papers written for policymakers.
Such papers are written for the Politburo, the Central Committee,
especially its International Department, the ministries of foreign
affairs, trade, and defense as well as the State Planning Committee.
Such papers are generated either at the instigation of the institutes
or in response to direction from the policymaker.
Analyses of current affairs in the West are based on primary Western
sources such as daily newspapers. These policy papers are said to be
free of ideological and propagandistic accessories. They vary in
length. Spravka (information) is three to five pages long and lists
only facts without analyzing them. Dokladnaya Zapiska (research re****t)
covers 10 to 15 pages and sometimes contains analysis. The
qualitatively best paper is Analititcheskaya Zapiska (analysis re****t)
of 15 to 75 pages. These papers leave the institute marked with the
date and references such as "for official use only" or "limited
circulation." A few months later, the insetitute receives feedback if
the paper is very good, together with extra pay. In irony befitting a
closed society, copies of the policy papers are retained by the
institutes under lock and key, out of reach even for the author (unless
he is section chief).
Research work sometimes may have tangible consequences within the
Soviet Union. For example, a critical re****t by the Institute of U.S.A.
and Canada on the management and organization of the West's industries
led to specific recommendations for the "perfection of the management
of the socialist production, the enhancement of scientific-technical
progress and an increased efficiency of the companies' productivity."
During the 1970s the uralelektrotyashmash in Sverdlovsk and a heavy
goods vehicle factory at the Kama successfully put into practice some
of these specific recommendations.
Research work is performed under the guidance of each institute's
scientific council, themselves linked to the Academy of Sciences.
Members of the council include an institute's section chiefs,
professors, and highest ranking party officials. The council's highest
authority is its presidium consisting of the institute's director, the
deputy director, and the party secretary. Therefore, in both the
council and the presidium, the pary is represented, thus is able to
exert some influence over research planning. Approximately 30 percent
of the staff of ISShAK are party members (roughly 80 to 100
individuals), though this percentage is certainly far higher among
senior researchers. A similar scale and distribution of party
member****p is likely to be found in the other two institutes.
Policy research, like all intellectual and scientific work in the
Soviet Union, comes under centralized control, in accordance with a
system in which the most im****tant institutes of a discipline lead and
control all the research done in the field through the issue-oriented
councils. It is therefore not surprising that some of these councils
also exist in the institutes of Western studies, permitting them to
lead and control all Western studies carried out in the Soviet Union.
Government organs sometimes take part in these councils, such as the
Foreign Ministry or the State Committee for Science and Technology. The
council on "Economic Competition between the Two Systems," founded in
1962, and the Council for Research on Problems of Peace and Disarmament
both have seats in the Institute of World Economics and International
Relations. The Institute of U.S.A. and Canada has a council for
"Economic, Political and Ideological Problems in the U.S.A." A council
on "The Working Class and the General Democratic Mass Movements in
Capitalist Countries and the Conditions of the Present
Scientific-Technological Revolution" has an office in the Institute of
the International Workers' Movement. In 1984 the Presidium of the
Academy of Sciences dissolved this council, explaining the IMRD must
take on the complex research into the present problems of the working
class and the fight of the m***** against war.
The Institute of World Economics and International Relations oversees
the commission of the East European countries on "Economic and
Political Problems of the Developing Countries," founded in 1974, and
three of the six standing working teams of the commission on "Research
into Today's Capitalism," set up in 1966. The multilateral commission
"The Working Class in the World Revolutionary Process" was established
in 1972 and works under the guidance of the Institute of the
International Workers' Movement.
Bilateral cooperation with institutes outside the Soviet Union is also
common, particularly in Eastern Europe and the German Democratic
Republic. Long-term agreements exist for the regular exchange of
research material and staff. Joint conferences or research projects are
conducted and sometimes lead to joint publications.
Contacts with institutes in non-Communist countries also exist. Some
links exist with Communist organizations in these states. These
include, for example, the Institute of Marxist Studies in Frankfurt,
the Maurice-Thorez Institute in Paris, and the Gramsci Institute in
Rome. A variant of this approach is the International Institute for
Peace, established by the USSR in Vienna in the mid-1950s, which serves
as a forum for Western contacts not strictly limited to Marxist Western
scientists and regularly organizes international conferences in East
and West European cities. The directors of IMEMO and ISShAK are members
of its board of advisors.
But the international activities and contacts of these institutes are
not limited to Communist organizations. Bilateral agreements concerning
the organization of regular joint symposia exist with a number of
institutions, such as the German Society for Foreign Policy in Bonn,
and the institutes actively cultivate various forms of contact with
non-Marxist institutes in Japan, the United States, and Western Europe.
IMEMO is booked so fully with contacts with foreign countries that it
will not accept new ones for years to come. Interestingly, IMEMO
maintains a permanent representative in Bonn -- officially as an
accredited correspondent of the institute's magazine -- despite the
fact that the Federal Republic of Germany is not allowed to send a
similar permanent representative to Moscow.
ISShAK has the most far-reaching international contacts in the West.
Not long after the foundation of the institute, Arbatov managed to
reach an agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Soviet
Foreign Ministry permitting ISShAK scholars to spend time at the Soviet
embassy in Wa****ngton and at the United Nations in New York. Its
scholars also work at the universities of California, Columbia,
Harvard, and Princeton; at the technological institutes of California
and Massachusetts; and at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Wa****ngton.
ISShAK scholars also visited the Council on Foreign Relations and The
Brookings Institution. They took part in the Dartmouth conferences and
participate regularly in the Pugwash meetings. In 1977 Harvard's Center
for International Affairs, ISShAK, and IMEMO reached an agreement for
the annual exchange of three scholars.
In the opposite direction, a not insignificant number of U.S.
Sovietologists make the trip to ISShAK in Moscow. However, the number,
extent, openness, and intensity of the discussions possible and the
information made available by ISShAK in Moscow do not compare with the
quality and amount of material Soviet experts can expect to find in
such an open society as the United States.
The Question of Political Influence
Clearly, these three Soviet institutes of Western studies are
substantial institutions with a clear and specific charge to generate
certain kinds of expertise. That they have influence is certain. But
how much, and whether it is on the wax or wane, is difficult to *****s.
Fundamentally, the degree of their political influence fluctuates with
the willingness of different Soviet leaders to draw on these resources
and to account for the analysis and recommendations of the institutes
in the formulation of policy.
The member****p of institute directors of the Central Committee is an
im****tant indicator of influence -- it enhances not only their
political im****tance but also their political influence. Inosemtsev and
Arbatov belonged to the group of ghostwriters responsible for
Brezhnev's im****tant foreign-policy speeches. Yakovlev's career from
IMEMO director to Central Committee secretary and Politburo member is
quite remarkable. Although his accomplishments may not stem directly
from his IMEMO director****p, institute leader****p proved no obstacle to
political success. Yakovlev's senior policy-making role provides a
special op****tunity for colleagues at his former institute, to whom he
will turn for expertise on the West, especially now that he enjoys the
op****tunity to test the accuracy of their analyses in real politics.
Another indication of the political im****tance of the institutes of
Western studies is the visibility of the directors in foreign state
visits and international negotiations. IMEMO director Primakov and
ISShAK director Arbatov both accompained Gorbachev to Reykjavik in
October 1986. Primakov accompanied Central Committee Secretary Anatoliy
Dobrynin, head of the Central Committee's International Department, to
the Federal Republic of Germany in 1987. IMEMO scholar Kostko
accompanied the Soviet delegation to the Mutual and Balanced Force
Reductions negotiations in Vienna and the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe's follow-up conference in Belgrade. A. D.
Nikonov, Molotov's son-in-law, was a member of the Soviet SALT II
delegation. Thomas W. Wolfe believes that both IMEMO and ISShAK took
part in drawing up the Soviet SALT I delegation papers because both
institutes have disarmament sections under the director****p of former
military personnel n7.
Errors of judgment and false prognoses on the part of the institutes of
Western studies must be assumed but one can only guess about them.
There are indications that ISShAK did not foresee the 1979 NATO
double-track decision or the subsequent successful deployment of
Per****ng IIs in the Federal Republic of Germany. IMRD seems to have
predicted that the peace movement in West Germany would be able to
prevent the stationing of these medium-range missiles. One can only
wonder whether these institutes, during the last moments of he Brezhnev
era, suc***bed to wishful thinking or just wrote what the leader****p
wanted to hear.
There can be little doubt that these think tanks are of special
im****tance as the new Soviet leader****p undertakes its re*****sment of
the political situation in practically all areas. For example,
Gorbachev's disarmament proposals re****tedly have their foundation in a
study by a research team of the Committee of Soviet Scientists for
Peace against the Nuclear Threat, entitled "Strategic Stability With
the Reduction of Nuclear Arms n8." Using computer models, the team
tested reductions of different percentages -- 50, 75, and 95 percent
respectively -- of the present nuclear arms balance. ISShAK's deputy
director, A. A. Koko****n, played a leading role in this project. The
research team concluded that strategic stability still could be
maintained even within the framework of a 95 percent reduction n9.
A team from the Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace against the
Nuclear Threat, headed by the two vice-chairmen of the committee, the
director of the Institute for Space Research of the Academy of
Sciences, R. S. Sagdeyev, and Koko****n, researched the Strategic
Defense Initiative. Their essay was entitled, "Space-Strike Arms and
International Security n10".
Experts on Western studies also took part in drawing up a new Soviet
military doctrine. Its principles were agreed and published n11 at a
Warsaw Pact summit in late May 1987 in East Berlin. Koko****n and IMEMO
scientist W. Larionov were among the participants n12.
But experts on Western studies sometimes are criticized openly for
their comments on military doctrine. In April 1987 in the weekly Moscow
News, IMEMO military specialist Daniil M. Proektor (a retired colonel
who served until the late 1970s as professor at the Frunze Military
Academy in Moscow) called absurd the familiar Clausewitzian formula
that war is the continuation of a policy by other means. Proektor
argued that in Europe neither a nuclear nor a conventional war would
make any political sense n13. His comments prompted a sharp retort in
the Soviet army's political-theoretical magazine, The Communist of the
Armed Forces, by Major General N. D. Tabunov, who criticized Proektor's
article as "extremely rash and ill-considered n14". But in a reflection
of the influence of IMEMO specialists, Gorbachev seems to have read, to
have reflected on, and now defends Proektor's position, "Clausewitz's
dictum calling war a policy carried out with other means is hoplessly
out of date today. It belongs to the libraries n15".
There are also indications that the institutes of Western studies have
played an im****tant role in the development of the new foreign-policy
thinking. An indication of this appears in IMEMO director Primakov's
article in Pravda entitled, "The foreign policy's new political
philosophy." "Until very recently," he wrote, peaceful coexistence was
nothing but a "breather" cut short by those who "once again were trying
to strangle the first country of the victorious socialism." He argues
further that the misconception resulted from looking at the two world
systems without taking into account their interdependency, a
misconception said to been have corrected at the party congress in
March 1986.
To conclude, the institutes of Western studies are playing an im****tant
role -- as far as Westerners can judge -- in conceptualizing Soviet
foreign and security policies and, more generally, in developing for
the Soviet leader****p an image of the West. But their political
influence depends as much on the receptivity of leader****p to the work
of the institutes as on the quality of that work.
Notes
1. For references see Eberhard Schneider, "Die wichtigsten zentralen
Westforschungsinstituter der UdSSR, Teil I: Entstehungsgeschichte,
Struktur und Arbeitsweise" (Koln: Berichte des Bundesinstituts fur
ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, 1987), no. 6-1987.
2. John Barron, The KGB Today: The Hidden Hand (New York, 1983), p. 43.
3. Dmitrii K. Simes, ed., House Committee on Foreign Affairs, The
Soviet Diplomacy and Negotiations Behavior: Emerging New Context for
U.S. Diplomacy (Wa****ngton D.C.: GPO, 1979), p. 412. Simes is a former
IMEMO employee who stayed in the West in the 1970s and work now as a
Soviet specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
4. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Soviet Active
Measures: Hearing, July 13-14, 1982 (Wa****ngton, D.C.: GPO, 1982), p.
73.
5. P. N. Fedoseyev, "Povyshat' uroven' i effektivnost' obshchestvennykh
nauk," Vestnik Akademii nauk SSSR (Moskau, 3, 1984), p. 49.
6. According to re****ts of Galina Orionova (former ISShAK employee who
stayed in the United States in the late 1970s) in Barbara L. Dash, "A
Defector Re****ts: The Institute of the USA and Canada" (Wa****ngton,
D.C.: Delphic Associates, May 1982, re****t for the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, May 1982), pp. 8-12.
7. Thomas W. Wolfe, "The Soviet Experience: Its Impact on U.S. and
Soviet Strategic Policy and Decisionmaking" (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND
re****t R-1686-PR, September 1975), p. 47.
8. Strategicheskaya stabil'nost v usloviyakh radikal'nykh sokrashcheniy
yadernykh vooruzhenniy. Komitet sovetskikh uchenykh v zashchitu mira,
protiv yadernoy ugrozy (Moscow, 1987). Compare Andrei Koko****n,
"Militarische Aspekte der Sicherheit in den Ost-West-Beziehungen," in
"Aus Politik und Zeitgeschehen," Beilage zu der Wochenzeitung Das
Parlament (Bonn, B 45/1987), pp. 45-53.
9. See Gorbachev's remarks quoting this paper in his Pravda article,
September 17, 1987. Gennadiy I. Gerasimov, head of the Main Information
Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, expressed himself similarly
on November 13, 1987, during a discussion in the research institute of
the German Society for Foreign Policy in Bonn.
10. IMEMO section chief A. A. Arbatov, ISShAK department head A. A.
Vasilyev, Lieutenant General M. A. Milshtein, and five other ISShAK and
IMEMO scientists worked on this re****t, finished in October 1985.
11. Pravda, May 30, 1987.
12. See the two scholars' article, "Kurskaya bitva v svete sovremennoy
oboronitel'noy doktriny" in the IMEMO magazine, Mirovaya ekonomika i
mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya 8, 1987, pp. 32-40, where they use the World
War II battle at Kursk to demonstrate militarily inferior troops can
defeat a stronger enemy. On the basis of this, they ask for
conventional arms reduction to a sensible minimum (rasumnaya
dostatochnost'). They argue, moreover, that the professional military
men must change their way of thinking because the traditional
conviction stipulating that a "determined attack leads to victory" is
not valid in a nuclear war.
13. Moscow News, 17 (26/4), 1987.
14. N. D. Tabunov, Voenno-teoreticheskoe nasledie V. I. Lenina i
sovremennost'," Kommunist Voorrushennych Sil 13, 1987, p. 88. Tabunov
is member of the board of editors of this magazine.
15. Mikhail Gorbachov, Perestrojka. Die zweite russische Revolution.
Eine neue Politik fur Europa und die Welt (Munchen, 1987), p. 179.
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