Gorbachev’s Gamble offers a new and more convincing answer to this question by providing the missing link between the internal and external aspects of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Andrei Grachev shows that the radical transformation of Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev years was an integral part of an ambitious project of internal democratic reform and of the historic opening of Soviet society to the outside world.
Grachev explains the motives and the intentions of the initiators of this project and describes their hopes and their illusions. He recounts the story of the internal debates and struggles in the Kremlin and behind-the-scene decisions that led to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and eventually the demise of the Soviet Union itself.
The book is based on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the Soviet Union including Gorbachev, personal notes and diaries of their assistants and advisers and transcripts of the discussions inside the Politburo and Secretariat of the Central Committee. Together they constitute a multi-voice political confession of a whole generation of decision-makers of the Soviet Union that enables us better to understand the origin and the breathtaking trajectory of the events that led to the end of the Cold War and the unprecedented transformation of world politics in the closing decades of the 20th century.
Table of Contents
The Gorbachev Years: A Chronology vii
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
1 Preparing the Change 9
Dual-Track Diplomacy 9
The Military-Diplomatic Complex 17
‘Moles’ in the Corridors of Power 24
Cracks in the Monolith 34
2 Ambitions and Illusions of the ‘New Political Thinking’ 43
Training for Leadership 43
First Exercises in Foreign Policy 52
Building the New Team 58
Summits in Paris and Geneva 62
A ‘Tail’ of Soviet Diplomacy? 66
‘New Thinking’ or Ideology Revisited? 70
From Philosophy to Politics 75
Reykjavik - ‘the Failed Summit’? 80
‘New Political Thinking’: Rules and Tools 86
3 Breaking the Ice 93
Untying the Reykjavik ‘Package’ 93
Withdrawing from Afghanistan and Retiring from the ‘Third World’ 100
‘Abandoning’ Eastern Europe 114
Destroying the Berlin Wall 131
4 Up to the Peak and Down the Slope 163
Gorbachev’s ‘Anti-Fulton’ Speech at the UN 163
1989 - the Year of ‘the Great Turn’ 169
Malta - a Belated Triumph 176
On the Other Bank of the Rubicon 184
The War in the Gulf and Shevardnadze’s
Resignation 191
The G7 in London: The Summit of a Last (Lost) Chance 200
5 The Winds of Change 214
Notes 234
Bibliography 257
Index 261
