The number of women pharmacists in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia was minuscule – well under 1,000 by the First World War in a pharmacist population of some 10,000 and a general population of over 125,000,000. Nevertheless, an examination of women pharmacists in pre-Soviet Russia provides interesting information on significant socio-economic and political trends and developments and, additionally, serves as an indicator of the strength and vitality of female emancipation in the Russia of that era. Women pharmacists reflected the socio-economic, national and political diversity of late imperial Russia. Some became successful entrepreneurs, members of the pharmaceutical aristocracy, and worked for pharmaceutical professionalization. Others identified with the proletariat, becoming labour organizers, participants in strikes and Marxists of Menshevik hue. Still others withdrew to the sanctuary of the research laboratory. To a greater degree than their male colleagues, women pharmacists represented non-Russian minorities – Jews, Poles and Germans – but they exhibited an ‘imperial’ outlook at least until mid-First World War. All women pharmacists strove for their own emancipation and some extended a helping hand to their sisters. But their commitment to feminism and equal rights for women in general was subordinate to securing their own personal advancement and to their various political ideologies.

Women had been allowed to practise as pharmacists (aptekari) in women's medical facilities from 1871. They had been able also to own pharmacies. In 1901, of 3,518 pharmacies in the Russian Empire, wives of pharmacists owned 110 in European Russia and 20 in Asiatic Russia.

All the contributions to this volume were written in 1990 and revised before the disappearance of the Soviet Union. One small consequence of the final collapse of the Soviet system has been to render obsolete many place names and names of institutions that only a few months ago were still current usage. We have made some minor modifications to the texts of a number of the essays, but have decided to leave those by Sue Bridger and Mary Buckley substantially as they were. It would have been possible, if cumbersome, to have reset every ‘is’ as ‘was’ but to do so would give the impression that the conditions and debates recorded in both these chapters have disappeared along with the USSR. The problems that both these authors discuss are as pertinent to the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1992 as they were to the Soviet Union in 1990. As no one can be sure what the ‘former Soviet Union’ will look like a year, or five years, from now, it seems better to let these chapters stand, in effect, as eye-witness reports on the ‘woman question’ in the era of perestroika, and to leave it to future reporters to discover what effects the far-reaching political, economic and social changes of the coming years will have on the daily lives and aspirations of women in those lands that once comprised the Soviet Union.

One of the most startling features of the 1905 Revolution in Russia was the sudden entrance into the political arena of groups in society which had previously remained well outside it. Whereas the adoption of politics by some groups was seen as a fairly logical, even obligatory, development in a time of national crisis (the ‘reluctant’ Academic Union is a case in point) the politicization of other groups was unexpected and disconcerting. Two prime examples of the latter are peasants and women, both of which categories were commonly regarded as either pre-political or apolitical. The entry of these groups into politics was not universally welcomed, even in opposition circles, and their claims for political rights met very similar objections concerning their supposed ‘immaturity’. The fact that the demand for women's rights (though articulated in the main by educated middle-class women) was made on behalf of working-class and peasant women as well, served only to strengthen the opposition to it. As peasant women were the least literate of all social groups except nomadic tribes, it was easy to point to their assumed ignorance and their notoriously oppressed status within peasant society as reasons for not enfranchising them.

In radical circles the principle of women's suffrage caused few problems. It was written into the programmes of both the social democrats and the socialist revolutionaries and each party prided itself on its commitment to complete equality of all citizens, including unconditional universal suffrage.

The ‘Golden Age’ is a literary historical term used to designate the Pushkin period and the writing of poetry by men. The term ‘Silver Age’ designates the period of modernism, but also refers to the achievement of male poets. However, the Silver Age period was more of a Golden Age for women writers, especially for female lyric poets. In any case, the Silver Age was definitely a period of transition during which women became professionals in all areas of literary activity – in poetry, prose, drama, literary criticism, as well as in the area of popular literature. If at the beginning of the period there were no major female poets, by 1910 there were several. In 1909 Annenskii noted this wealth of female poets as a unique contribution of the modernist movement: ‘Female lyric poetry is one of the achievements of that cultural effort which modernism will bequeath to history’. By the end of the period, there was firmly established a female poetic tradition that has remained a vital stream in modern Russian literature both in the Soviet Union and abroad.

To explain this transition, one must consider aesthetic, historical, philosophical and economic factors. Historically women's status was changing, as Russian society itself was being restructured by the forces of industrialization and urbanization. Economically, a new market for popular commercial fiction gave women writers the possibility of earning a living by writing ‘women's novels’.

We are all familiar with those entertainments which bring on a troupe of dancing women when the action begins to drag. All too often they are silent. And so it is in many of the accounts, on celluloid (and now magnetic tape) as well as in print, of the story of the Russian Provisional Government of 1917. We must all have seen those pictures of its female defenders giggling like oversized girl scouts on Palace Square on the morning of the Bolshevik triumph. For those of us with a Communist Party formation, the only permitted eye-witness account until the death of the ‘Great Helmsman’ was that of John Reed. Reed was, of course, a socialist. More to the point, he was accompanied on his travels through Russia by Louise Bryant, who may not be recognizable as a sister to all varieties of contemporary Anglo-Saxon feminism, but who had a strong sense of fellow-feeling for Russian women of widely differing political views.

Reed caught up with the women soldiers of the Provisional Government just as the Bolsheviks were about to storm the Winter Palace. A young officer described the disposition of forces to him:

During the six years of Mikhail Gorbachev's attempted perestroika, the official approach to issues of concern to women has been markedly different from that relating to many other areas of social, political and economic life. At a time of radical change and questioning of the legacy of the past, policy on women has been characterized by a renewed commitment to programmes instituted during the ‘period of stagnation’. Legislative change on benefits, leave and the provision of part-time work has been designed to assist women to spend more time with their children and to promote further the ‘strengthening of the family’ begun under Brezhnev. In the area of family policy and women's roles in society, glasnost has provided a ready platform for conservative as well as radical voices. As economic reform begins to affect Soviet workers, however, government policies on the family may not necessarily prove to be the boon to women that their promoters promise.

The policy of glasnost has, of course, not only encouraged debate but has turned the spotlight on to areas of women's experience previously untouched by the Soviet media. Difficult and dangerous working conditions, prostitution and the treatment of abortion and childbirth have all come under scrutiny. Sex has ceased to be a taboo subject as censorship has been relaxed and attitudes have liberalized. Many of the issues raised are inevitably of concern to women of all ages, yet others affect young women disproportionately.

Glasnost was initially conceived by Gorbachev as a necessary means to the end of perestroika, and as relative to it. His heightened conviction that glasnost was integral to the reform process was reflected in the Resolution on Glasnost adopted at the 19th Party Conference in 1988. Glasnost was praised as a ‘sharp weapon of perestroika’ which helped people ‘better to understand their past and present’ and objectively ‘to assess the situation in the country’. Glasnost was a vital part of ‘socialist self-government’ and its extension was essential for democratization and for the ‘renewal of socialism’. Moreover, every citizen enjoyed ‘the inalienable right to obtain complete and reliable information on any social question’ that was not a state or military secret and ‘the right to open and free discussion of any socially significant issue’. Although by 1990 the consequences of glasnost in the republics had outstripped perestroika, Gorbachev's commitment to glasnost endured, even if he was bewildered, exasperated and provoked by some of its results. Glasnost remained crucial to his vision of socioeconomic and political change, but after 1990 with growing and contradictory qualifications.

The application of glasnost, however, has not been homogeneous across issues in content or pace.

Political relations between Vietnam and the Soviet Union date back to 30 June 1923, when Ho Chi Minh made the first journey by a Vietnamese revolutionary to Bolshevik Russia. Shortly after his arrival, Ho joined the Communist International (Comintern) and actively worked to establish a firm institutional relationship between the Comintern and Vietnam. In February 1930, Ho, acting on behalf of the Comintern, presided over the founding of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP). Party-to-party ties were formally established in October 1930 when the VCP, now renamed the Indochinese Communist Party, joined the Comintern.

The Soviet Union granted diplomatic recognition to Ho Chi Minh's fledgling Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 31 January 1950, nearly five years after it was founded. However, it was only after the end of the First Indochina War (1946–54) that formal state-to-state relations were established, when a Soviet embassy was opened in Hanoi. In July 1955 Ho Chi Minh paid his first visit to Moscow as president of the DRV. During the course of this visit, the Soviet Union announced its first grant of large-scale economic assistance. The Soviet Union also contributed heavily to Vietnam's first three-year plan (1958–60) and first five-year plan (1961–65).

On the political front Soviet-Vietnamese relations were not particularly close during the Khrushchev period. This was reversed during the Brezhnev years, partly as a result of Moscow's military and economic aid to Vietnam during the Second Indochina War (1965–75).

The extraordinary changes in foreign and domestic policy initiated by the Soviet Union in the past six years under Mikhail Gorbachev have left all but a very few statesmen and scholars in the West perplexed and unsure of the foundation of their assumptions about policy toward that great half-Western/half-Eastern giant. The years since the death of Chernenko have been filled with contradictory trends, as the forces of conservatism and reform have engaged in a competition with one another. The events in the USSR have been both unprecedented and deeply rooted in the Russian and Soviet past – unprecedented because of the depth and abruptness of the turnaround in both domestic and international affairs, and deeply rooted in the recurrent problems with which the Russian and Soviet leaderships have been forced to deal since the advent of Imperial Russia under Peter the Great.

Because the dramatic shifts in the foreign policy of the USSR have had a direct and critical impact on the foreign policy of the United States, as did the hostility between the two countries which preceded these shifts, it has been the job of scholars since 1985 to probe carefully into the origins, goals, and future of the new political thinking about international relations in the Soviet Union and the foreign policy based on it. Three interrelated sets of questions cluster around these issues at this critical juncture in Soviet history, as Mikhail Gorbachev faces diminishing support for his reforms and appears to be moving toward the right in an effort to retain power.

Since Mikhail Gorbachev became Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1985 and the concepts of new thinking, openness, and restructuring were added to the Soviet lexicon on international relations, many interesting debates have arisen among Soviet academics and politicians about international politics in general and relations with the Third World in particular. The latter will be the main focus of this chapter.

Naturally, Gorbachev did not initiate this debate, and neither are debates about international relations anything new in the Soviet Union. What is new is the fact that Gorbachev's policies have lent a new dimension to these debates and have opened for discussion aspects previously considered outside the parameters of permissible academic debate. To the extent that Soviet social scientists responded to the new openness several key doctrinal concepts of the past, based on Marxist–Leninist philosophical assumptions, have been questioned. One of these was the concept of “non-capitalist development” (also referred to as “socialist orientation”) for Third World countries.

The amendments made to the latter will be examined, first, within the broader context of the recent Soviet reevaluation of international relations theory, whereafter the discussion will focus on the adaptations to and the eventual demise of the theory of socialist orientation in Soviet literature. In conclusion the African response to the reassessment in the Soviet Union will be briefly addressed.

At the beginning of 1990 Gorbachev and the Soviet leadership were confronted by the specter of Lithuania's becoming the first Soviet republic to declare its independence. In December 1989 the Lithuanian Communist Party, led by Algirdas Brazauskas, declared its independence of the Soviet Communist Party. Elections to the national assemblies of all republics were scheduled for March, and it was evident from the atmosphere in Lithuania that a newly elected parliament would declare the republic's independence. This is, in fact, what happened on 11 March 1990.

It was a matter of urgency for the Soviet leadership to prevent other states from recognizing such a declaration of independence. Making it clear to the world that Moscow would not accept an independent Lithuania thus became an important objective.

The aim of this study is to analyze Soviet signaling to the rest of the world in a bid to prevent recognition of Lithuanian independence. Although American reactions to events in Lithuania were undoubtedly of most interest to Moscow, the focus of this chapter will be on crisis communication between the Soviet Union and its small neighbors to the northwest. With their geographical proximity, historical ties, and groups of exiled Balts, the Nordic countries followed the course of events in the Baltic region with particular interest, and the stances they adopted were arguably not without political importance. Soviet policy toward the Nordic countries thus can be considered an important aspect of Soviet policy toward the West in general.

Western observers tend to give major credit for positive developments in Central America, such as the democratic transfer of power in Nicaragua in 1990, to regional factors – the role of the Contras, US aid, and various Central American peace plans. A factor seldom mentioned, but one whose importance scarcely can be over-emphasized, is the remarkable turnabout in Soviet foreign policy under the regime of Mikhail Gorbachev.

The initial source of change in Soviet policy – Gorbachev's new political thinking – contains three broad prescriptions for superpower behavior toward regional conflicts. First, this chapter identifies these guidelines, briefly surveys their restatement in operational terms by Soviet “scholar-explicators,” and uses Central America as a case study illustrating their impact on a specific region of the world. To present a balanced view of today's Soviet–Central American policy, the continuing effect of some enduring components of theory and practice also are explored – reflections of great power conflicts of interest and continuing echoes of Marxism–Leninism that run counter to the new directions.

Second, it analyzes how glasnost and perestroika continue to change the context of foreign policy making in the Soviet Union in ways that are affecting Soviet relations in Central America and elsewhere. Three major factors are examined: the greater freedom of “secular investigation” enjoyed by foreign-policy experts and other social scientists who now provide input to policy makers, the greater number and growing influence of scholars who have begun to occupy policy-making roles in the new government, and the reshaping of the policy-making machinery, which enables USSR legislative bodies to discuss foreign policy issues and influence decisions.

The rise of new political thinking in Soviet foreign policy has been both a blessing and a curse. While it has created warmer relations with many countries and has enhanced global security, the radical change in policy also has alienated some traditional Soviet allies and even has exacerbated domestic unrest in the Soviet Union. Not every region of the world has welcomed the changes in Soviet foreign policy during the first five years of Gorbachev's tenure. Many countries have benefited from the new, deideologized interstate relations based on mutual benefit, but others find those changes threatening. The revolutionary transformation in the East European countries reflects the most profound shifts in Soviet foreign policy. And the West European countries, and especially the Nordic states, have profited from the Soviet Union's desire to be an architect of the common European home. But for several traditional Soviet allies in the Third World, such as the Indochinese countries, new political thinking means a loss of financial and military support from the Soviet Union and a threat to their hard-line regimes.

The consequences of the changes in Soviet foreign policy, however, have not been limited to foreign relations. New political thinking has unleashed some forces, primarily in Eastern Europe, that have served as a catalyst to domestic discontent in the Soviet Union. The freedom given to the East European countries in particular has fueled the desire for independence in some of the Soviet republics, especially in the Baltic.

When Mikhail S. Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, the USSR was enmeshed deeply in Afghanistan, the Arab–Israeli dispute appeared both treacherous and stalemated, and the then five-year-old Gulf War presented increasingly serious problems to the Soviet Union. In 1985, the Soviet leadership was unwilling to consider withdrawing from Afghanistan, despite the war's rising costs. In the Arab–Israeli arena, the business-as-usual rhythm of siding with the Arabs against US-backed Israel was broken by the Camp David Accords and the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty. Although Arab enmity toward Egypt provided Moscow with the initially strong rallying point of “rejectionism,” in the long run this position left the Soviets with client states that were more or less peripheral to the central Middle East concerns. In the Gulf region, the Iran–Iraq War forced Moscow to play a careful balancing act between its military/political links with Baghdad and its hoped-for ties with anti-American Iran. Moreover, the war's divisive effects on the Middle East scuttled Soviet attempts at rallying Arab forces against the United States and Israel.

These events, in a nutshell, formed the Brezhnev (and Andropov and Chernenko) legacy to Mikhail Gorbachev. In contrast, the past five years have shown clearly that Gorbachev's priority, unlike that of his predecessors, is domestic reconstruction. This look inward required a different kind of foreign policy, one conducive to perestroika at home.

In the spring of 1985, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev assumed the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, relations with developing countries were still at the center of Soviet foreign policy. Despite growing evidence of a reconsideration of this emphasis among Soviet analysts, the USSR remained deeply involved in regional conflicts across the entire spectrum of the Third World – from Cambodia and Afghanistan in Asia to the Horn and Angola in Africa and Nicaragua and El Salvador in Central America. Western analysts asserted that the role of the Soviet Union as a global power was based almost exclusively on its military capabilities, including both command over ever more sophisticated nuclear and conventional armaments and expanding military involvement in Third World regional conflicts. Moreover, in their view, the military stalemate in US–Soviet relations had deflected Soviet superpower aspirations toward the Third World.

After 1985 the Soviet Union underwent revolutionary changes in both its domestic and its foreign policy. In the foreign policy area the initial focus of these changes emphasized the reduction of conflict with the West, especially the United States, as an essential element of the overall reform of Soviet society. The result was a series of agreements on arms limitations and a dramatic improvement in the international political atmosphere. In addition, developments in the Soviet–East European relationship throughout 1989 and 1990 were of historic importance and resulted in the collapse of Soviet-imposed Marxist–Leninist regimes in East-Central Europe and the emergence of independent states, as well as structural changes in the entire political-security balance in Europe.