¹ See Gorbachev, M. S., Zhivoe Tvorchestvo Naroda (Moscow, 1984)Google Scholar; also Pravda, 12 March and 24 April 1985 and Pravda, 26 June 1987. See also Slyunko, Nikolai (Member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee), ‘Restructuring and Party Guidance of the Economy’, Kommunist, no. 5 (Moscow, 1988; English Edition, Novosty Press Agency).Google Scholar

² See article by Shevardnadze, Edward, Pravda, 26 07 1988Google Scholar, in which he defends the expediency of all branches of administration responsible for military activity and arms manufacture being subject ‘to the control of duly elected higher echelons’, i.e. inevitably the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which in the restructuring process will acquire greater diversity of both function and integration.

³ Brown, Archie, ‘The Soviet Leadership and the Struggle for Political Reform’, The Harriman Institute Forum, no. 4, vol. 3 (New York, 04 1988).Google Scholar

⁴ Gorbachev, M. S., Pravda, 2 08 1986.Google Scholar

⁵ Regarding the highly sensitive question of arms manufacture, Shervardnadze, stated that ‘since it concerns the country's future, the raising of differing and even diametrically opposite views is a legitimate phenomenon’, Pravda, 26 07 1988.Google Scholar

⁶ Duncan, W. Raymond, The Soviet Union and Cuba. Interests and Influence (New York, 1985), pp. 193 and 55.Google Scholar In addition, Edward Gonzalez writes: ‘For Castro, Gorbachev's new priorities will probably mean not only more limited largesse for the Cuban economy but also renewed Soviet pressure for Havana to put its own economic house in order…Castro may find Soviet support for an activist Cuban foreign policy in the Third World less forthcoming, not only because of Gorbachev's domestic priorities but also because of Soviet attempts to stabilise the more important strategic relationship with the United States. The major exceptions may be in Angola and Nicaragua, where Cuba's services are essential to the consolidation of Soviet client regimes…Castro appears to be confronting “objective” limitations to the pursuit of his maximalist ambitions’: in The Soviet Ünion and the Third World. The Last Three Decades Korbonski, Andrzej and Fukuyama, Francis (eds), (Ithaca and London, 1987), pp. 145–6.Google Scholar

⁷ It is appropriate here to recall the words of Andrzej Korbonski who, on the basis of statistical charts showing trade with less developed countries as a share in the foreign trade of COMECON for the years 1960 and 1970–83 (in percentages): ‘The topic of East European–Third World relations has attracted little scholarly attention so far, because the relationship between Eastern Europe and the Third World in the past thirty years has been mostly marginal, a phenomenon that was not likely to cause many ripples in international politics and economics… the East European engagement beyond the European continent should not be taken seriously… I am prepared to argue that were the East European countries to pull out of the Third World tomorrow, the overall situation there would not undergo a drastic change’; in Korbonski, and Fukuyama, , The Soviet Union and the Third World, pp. 118 ff.Google Scholar See also Kanet, Roger, ‘Patterns of Eastern European economic involvement in the Third World’, in Radu, Michael (ed.), Eastern Europe and the Third World: East versus South (New York, 1981).Google Scholar

⁸ Andropov had already begun to speak of the Third World countries as ‘objectively’ anti-imperialist, inclining more towards a Leninist stance (Pravda, 26 October 1985). For the previous period see: Ulianovskii, Rotislav, Ocherki natsionalso osvobodintelnoi borby: voprosy teorii i praktiki (Moscow, 1976)Google Scholar; Zagladin, V. V. and Ryzhenko, F. D., Sovremennoe revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie i natzionalizm (Moscow, 1973).Google Scholar See also ‘Discussion on the new stage in the National Liberation Movement: Problems of Anti-imperialist Unity’, World Marxist Review, no. ii (Prague, 1972).Google Scholar

⁹ Becker, Abraham S., in Korbonski, and Fukuyama, , The Soviet Union and the Third World, pp. 75, 78, 79.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For the relative importance of economic and commercial relations with the Third World, most convenient but not essential to the Soviet Union, see Boris Ponomariov, ‘Sotrudnichestvo vo imia mira, nezavisimosti i sotsial'nogo progressa’, Pravda, 30 November 1984.

¹¹ ‘International Theory Conference of representatives of Latin American revolutionary parties and organisations, held in Havana, 26–28 April 1982’, p. 137. The Latin American communist parties did not appear to take much account of the debate among Soviet academics about the prospects, nature and means of revolution in the Third World. Nor did the committed supporters and Soviet propaganda bodies in the region. For the debate, which would become increasingly influenced by its liberal participants with the arrival of Gorbachev, see Simoniia, N. A., Strany Vostoka: puti razvitiia (Moscow, 1975)Google Scholar; ‘Natsionalnoi gosudarstvennaia Konsolidatsiia–politicheskaia differentsiatsiatsiia razvivaiushchipia stran vostoka’, Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. i (Moscow, 1983)Google Scholar; Brutents, K. N., Sobremennye natsionalno osvoboditelnye revoliutsii, vol. 1, (Moscow, 1974)Google Scholar, and ‘Osvobadivshiesya strany v nachale 80 kh godov’, Kommunist, no. 3 (Moscow, 1984)Google Scholar; Butenko, Anatoly, Sotsializm kak mirovaya systema (Moscow, 1984).Google Scholar

¹² Gornov, M. and Koriolov, V., ‘El torbellino centroamericano’, América Latina, no. 6 (Moscow, 1978), p. 7.Google Scholar The views of Gornov and Koriolov seem particularly important, not only because of the impact that the article made on Central American communist and revolutionary parties, but on account of the former's identity. According to Jerry F. Hough, ‘M. F. Gornov’ is the pseudonym of M. F. Kudachin, Head of the Latin American Section of the Central Committee. See Hough, J. F., The Struggle for the Third World (Washington D.C., 1986), p. 173, note 90.Google Scholar

¹³ Gornov, and Koriolov, , ‘El torbellino centroamericano’, p. 19.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Mikoyan, S., ‘La creatividad revolucionaria abre el camino hacia la victoria’, America Latina, no. 2 (Moscow, 1980), p. 4.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Mikoyan, S., ‘Las particularidades de la revolución en Nicaragua y sus tareas desde el punto de vista de la teoría y la práctica del movimiento liberador’, América Latina, no. 3 (Moscow, 1980), p. 103.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Mikoyan, , ‘Las particularidades…’, p. 9.Google Scholar

¹⁷ As indicated by several writers, the Soviet debate on the Third World ranged widely over the nature of its revolution, regional and national differentiation, stages of development, the possibilities of non-capitalist means of development, etc. However, during the period from 1978 (shortly before the victorious Sandinista revolution) until 1985, which saw the infancy of perestroika, what came to Latin America was the more radical and unilateral vision already analysed. For a summary of those debates see Bullis, Paul, ‘Debates concerning the relationship between capitalism and development’, Détente, no. 9–10 (1987), pp. 42–3Google Scholar; also Hough, J., ‘The Struggle for the Third World’, p. 169 ff.Google Scholar; Whelan, Joseph G. and Dixon, Michael J., The Soviet Union in the Third World: Threat to World Peace? (Oxford, 1986), p. 33 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Gornov, and Koriolov, , ‘Metamorfosis de la interdependencia: aspecto regional’, América Latina, no. 4 (04 1988), p, 11.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 11.

²⁰ Medvedko, L., New Times, Moscow, 18 04 1988.Google Scholar

²¹ Bogdanov, R. ‘From the Balance of Forces to a Balance of Interests’, International Affairs, no. 4 (Moscow, 1988), p. 56.Google Scholar

²² Ibid., p. 86. Allen Lynch has demonstrated that specialists have decisively abandoned the tradition of analysing international relations as the external projection of class contradictions; the internal relations display, for the most authoritative Soviet specialists, a relative autonomy in relation both to economic and class processes and to domestic policies; Lynch, Allen, The Soviet Study of International Relations (Cambridge, 1987), p. 146 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ Pravda, 26 July, 1988.

²⁴ Aspaturian, V. V., Gorbachev's New Political Thinking and Foreign Policy, p. 13 ff.Google Scholar Paper submitted to Conference on Gorbachev's New Thinking and Regional Conflicts in the Third World: ‘Institute for Soviet and East European Studies. Graduate School of International Studies, University of Miami, Florida,’ Singapore, 4–7 08 1988.Google Scholar

²⁵ Merin, Boris, ‘Dinámica de los cambios sociales’, América Latina, no. 4 (Moscow, 1988), pp. 17 and 18.Google Scholar

²⁶ Pravda, 14 November 1986, cit. by Merin, ‘Dinámica de los cambios sociales’, p. 19; also Irina Zórina, of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations: ‘The Concept of World Security and the Developing Countries’, a paper presented at a round table in Aires, Buenos, América Latina, no. 3 (Moscow, 1988), pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

²⁷ It is useful here to recall what Yevgeni Primakov said in his article ‘USSR: Policy on Regional Conflicts’, in International Affairs, the official organ of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, no. 6, Moscow, 1988.Google Scholar The article attempts to address the following question: ‘how should one regard the problems of armed struggle, for independence or just and unjust wars?’ (p. 4). After attributing Trotskyist tendencies to anyone who aims to export revolution, Primakov specifies that ‘the denial of external assistance in creating a revolutionary situation has nothing in common with a refusal to assist revolutionary forces which rely on objective conditions in their struggle to end the national and social oppression of their peoples’ (p. 5). In this respect, he concludes, ‘the Soviet Union performs its class mission mostly by ruling out war from the life of modern society; but also the Soviet Union's class duty is fully realised in that it has in no way given up its sympathies or its actual support for the forces of progress and construction’ (p. 5). All the options would therefore seem to be left open for new ventures into opportunist target areas. Once again the class criterion in the analysis of international relations demonstrates its importance, the inescapable consequences of applying it, and the internal debate in the CPSU. (Primakov is Director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Alternate Member of the Central Committee of the CPSU and Deputy of the Supreme Soviet. The emphasis is my own.)

²⁸ Shestopal, Alexei, ‘Doctrinas sociales: evolución de los principios metodológicos’, América Latina, no. 12 (Moscow, 1986), p. 12Google Scholar and no. 1 (Moscow, 1987), p. 45; Merin, Boris, ‘Dinámica de los cambios sociales’, pp. 18–19Google Scholar; Vasetski, Nicolai, ‘Atolladeros del seudorevolucionarismo’, América Latina, no. 1 (Moscow, 1987), pp. 16 ff.Google Scholar

²⁹ The international press reported the meetings of Fidel Castro with Latin American leaders on the occasion of the installation of the new government in Ecuador. President Arias of Costa Rica showed interest in meeting him again with a view to reactivating the Peace Plan. Elsewhere, the ANSA news agency reported the visit of a Honduran parliamentary delegation to Cuba, headed by the Vice-President of the Honduran Congress, Guzmán;, José FernándezLa República, San José, Costa Rica, 15 09 1988.Google Scholar The same newspaper had carried a report on the re-opening of trade relations between Costa Rica and Cuba in its edition of 1 July 1988.

³⁰ Merin, , ‘Dinámica de los cambios sociales’, p. 18.Google Scholar It is interesting in this context to see the differences of opinion between the Soviet representative and the Latin American delegates to the Bogotá conference on the democratisation process in Latin America. While for Pavel Boiko, sector head at the Latin American Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the view ‘that was expressed at the Seminar that steps in democratisation are nothing but a way of easing the socio-political conflicts in order to avoid revolutionary situations’ is erroneous, the other delegates thought the opposite. ‘It was also suggested that the struggle for democracy is worth very little unless it is anti-capitalist, and unless it is aimed to win socialism. It goes without saying that we could only rejoice at the triumph of socialist revolution on our continent but, despite the heroic struggle of the revolutionary vanguard even in the most developed countries, they have yet to be carried out. Both victorious revolutions in the Western hemisphere – in Cuba and in Nicaragua – were carried out with the use of armed forces against moribund dictatorships, of Batista and Somoza, which did not use political methods, but repression and terror to stay in power’, which contrasts sharply with the Soviet opinion that ‘under liberalisation the revolutionary process tends rather to gather momentum, considering that it is easier to organise the popular masses for struggle with the political potentialities opened up by liberalisation.’ (Taking part in the meeting were Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Soviet Union.) World Marxist Review. Problems of Peace and Socialism, no. 7 (Prague, 1988), pp. 88 and 89.Google Scholar

³¹ This was clearly the opinion of S. Semionov in the 12th Symposium of the Scientific Council of the Academy of Social Sciences, on the theme ‘The revolutionary process: the objective conditions and the subjective factor’. According to the report, Semionov stated that ‘the solution to the crisis on the lines adopted by Cuba and Nicaragua lacks viability for the majority of the big countries on the continent. Cuba and Nicaragua are accepted in the social conscience, not as models for solving the crisis but as a kind of lightning conductor for deflecting US attempts to put pressure on the countries of the region’; América Latina, no. 2 (Moscow, 1988), p. 95.Google Scholar

³² Kalashnikov, Nikolai, ‘Recursos potenciales de Brasil’, América Latino, no. 8 (Moscow, 1988), p. 32 ff.Google Scholar, and Leiken, Robert S., Soviet Strategy in Latin America (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Leiken, , ‘Fantasies and Facts: The Soviet Union and Nicaragua’, Current History (10 1984), pp. 316 ffGoogle Scholar; Blasier, Cole, The Giant's Rival: the USSR in Latin America (Pittsburg, 1983), pp. 31 ff.Google Scholar

³³ Shani, Anatoli, ‘CAME–SELA. en busca de beneficios mutuos’, América Latina, no. 2 (Moscow, 1988), pp. 12–18.Google Scholar

³⁴ It should be remembered that as early as 1984 Brutents, Karen, in ‘Osvobadivshiesya strany v nachale 80kh godov’, Kommunist, no. 3 (Moscow, 1984),Google Scholar had postulated the thesis that the USSR must develop a solid basis for co-operation with liberated countries where capitalist relations are developing, but which are defending and strengthening their national sovereignty in the political and economic spheres. In her view, this reinforces an anti-imperialist stance, which is the most important consideration, as in India, Brazil and Mexico.

³⁵ See ‘The FMLN position on the forum set up by the Church’, signed by the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberatión Nacional (FMLN) Commanders on 26 August 1988 ratifying what the FMLN had already indicated in their 6- and 18-point statements on a possible political solution. For Guatemala, see ‘Proposal of the General Command of the URGN’; Guatemala, 8 May 1988Google Scholar, and ‘Open Letter to the Presidents’, Guatemala, 7 06 1988.Google Scholar Obviously the politico-military conditions of both rebel movements differ substantially. The Guatemalan position was published in América Latina, no. 1 (Moscow, 1988), p. 95Google Scholar, following an ambiguous commentary on the Esquipulas Peace Plan, ‘Central America: a difficult road to peace’, Ibid., pp. 93–4.

³⁶ Proselkova, Olga, ‘¿Quién necesita de Pinochet?’, América Latina, no. 1 (Moscow, 1988), pp. 11 ff.Google Scholar

³⁷ Zhdanov-Lutsenko, Nikolai, ‘América Latina, parte del Pacífico’, América Latina, no. 1 (Moscow, 1988), p. 4.Google Scholar See also the North American view in ‘Pacific Rim: America's New Frontier’, US News and World Report, 20 08 1984, pp. 45–51.Google Scholar President Reagan said: ‘You cannot help but feel that the great Pacific basin – with all its nations and all its potential for growth and development – is the future.’ Former Under-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger noted that the consequence for the United States is a ‘shift of the center of gravity of US foreign policy from the transatlantic relationship toward the Pacific basin and particularly Japan’, cited in Whelan, and Dixon, , The Soviet Union in the Third World… p. 269, note 47.Google Scholar

³⁸ Zhdanov-Lutsenko, Nikolai, ‘América Latina, parte del Pacífico’, part 2, América Latina, no. 2 (Moscow, 1988), p. 20.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid., p. 22.

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 24.

⁴¹ TASS, Communiqué of 23 July 1988, on the welcome extended by Gorbachev to the Japanese ex-Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, on 22 July.

⁴² ‘Soviets Warming Up to Japan in New Spirit of Conciliation’, in The International Herald Tribune, 18 July 1988.

⁴³ ‘US Role in the Pacific is Reaffirmed by Schultz’, The International Herald Tribune, 23–24 July 1988: ‘Secretary of State George Schultz has predicted that the United States will continue to be the fundamental guarantor of the balance of power in Asia and in the Pacific… Mr Schultz said the development of a powerful Japan, the rapid rise of important smaller economies such as those of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and the increasing involvement of China and the Soviet Union will cause US engagement with Asia to intensify rather than diminish in the next century’; see also the chapter by Donald E. Zagoria, ‘Soviet American Rivalry in Asia’, the section ‘Coping with Soviet Power in the Pacific’, in Whelan, and Dixon, The Soviet Union and the Third World…, pp. 267 ff.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ ‘In the South Pacific, a New Space Race’, The International Herald Tribune, 7 July 1988: ‘US–Soviet rivalry over the military use of outer space has turned remote parts of the Pacific Ocean into an area of critical strategic importance, Western space defence experts say… The importance of the South Pacific for control of space was one of the reasons why the Soviet Union had in recent years sought to penetrate the region and why the United States was determined to maintain a substantial presence there.’

⁴⁵ La Nación, Costa Rica, quoting The Miami Herald, 16 July 1988. However, the Soviet attitude seems to be more intent on finding port facilities for its naval, military and commercial activities than on seeking new military bases. See also ‘Soviet Navy: Wanderlust Lost’, in International Herald Tribune, 18 July 1988, which says: ‘The Soviet Union has cut back on overseas naval deployments and has stopped carrying out ambitious naval exercises far from Soviet territory, according to high US and Soviet military officials… Soviet naval operations grew considerably from 1965 to 1984, the peak year, according to US Navy figures…The latest US figures, however, show that there has been a significant decline in the deployment of Soviet naval forces since 1984… In an important change, the Soviet Union did not send a naval task force to the Caribbean last year, the first time in this decade.’