Abstract
Kremlinologists must retool. With the onset of glasnost, the information drought as to Soviet concerns and intentions has given way to uncontrolled floods of information about deliberations and debates at all levels of Soviet society. No longer is an interview with a “well placed Soviet source” or with a Soviet political dissident the primary objective of Western journalists and diplomats. So many sources and dissidents are speaking out on all fronts that Western observers now have the luxury of emphasizing those Soviet statements which best support their personal perceptions of trends in Moscow and throughout the country.
Mikhail Gorbachev is my friend.
Ronald Reagan
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Notes
A particularly powerful film depicting the activities of Soviet gangsters is “Outside the Law,” which was showing in Moscow in November 1988. The film concludes with the removal of a huge photograph of Brezhnev from a building in Moscow, apparently symbolizing the end of corruption within the police force, which had been ignoring criminal activities in exchange for regular payments to senior police officials. Also during the fall of 1988, the Moscow weekly Ogonyok carried a number of articles about unpunished crime and corruption in the USSR.
See, for example, Patrick Cockburn, “RIP Kremlinology. With Glasnost Who Needs to Read Tea Leaves?” The Washington Post, February 14, 1988, p. C1.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Perestroika, New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Harper and Row, 1987. Two other publications also present his views, namely, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Mandate for Peace, Paperjacks Ltd., New York, 1987, and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, A Time for Peace, Richardson and Steinman, New York, 1985.
Abel Aganbegyan, The Economic Challenge of Perestroika, Indiana University Press, 1988.
“Glasnost in the Soviet Union, An Update,” Soviet and East European Report, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 10, 1988.
Interesting commentaries on the development of the Soviet economy under Gorbachev, including management and international economic concerns, are included in Marshall Goldman, “Gorbachev, Turnaround CEO,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1988, pp. 107–113; Jerry F. Hough, “Opening Up the Soviet Economy,” The Brookings Institution, 1988; “The Soviet Economy,” The Economist, April 9, 1988, pp. 3–18; Ed A. Hewett, “The Foreign Economic Factor in Perestroika,” The Harriman Institute Forum, August 1988; and Vladislav L. Malkevich, “The Importance of Trade in East-West Relations,” Journal of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council, vol. 13, no. 5, 1988.
In addition to the writings of Gorbachev, interesting perspectives on changes in Soviet strategies are included in Robert Levgold et al., “Gorbachev’s Foreign Policy; How Should the United States Respond?” Foreign Policy Association, April 1988; and Rozanne Ridgway, “Perspectives on Change in the Soviet Union,” Department of State, Current Policy No. 1090, July 1988.
See, for example, John Hardt, “Perestroika and Interdependence: Toward Modernization and Competitiveness,” Presented in Seoul, Korea, on July 26, 1988, at a seminar sponsored by the George Washington University and the Korean Association of Communist Studies.
The rapid spread of technologies is discussed in Globalization of Technology, International Perspectives, Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Societies, National Academy Press, 1988.
George Shultz, “National Success and International Stability in a Time of Change,” Department of State, Current Policy No. 1029, December 1987.
George Shultz, “Managing the US-Soviet Relationship,” Department of State, Current Policy No. 1129, November 1988.
A reasonably complete list of intergovernmental agreements in place in mid1988 is set forth in Newsletter, The Soviet-East European Program of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, Summer 1988, p. 17.
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© 1989 Glenn E. Schweitzer
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Schweitzer, G.E. (1989). Perestroika, Technology, and the Uncertain Soviet-American Relationship. In: Techno-Diplomacy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6046-7_1
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