Burying Lenin: The Revolution In Soviet Ideology And Foreign Policy

Description

For decades U.S. foreign policy was focused on battling the menace of Soviet communism. Now, seemingly overnight, the implacable foe has collapsed. Its foremost symbol, the image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, has been publicly disgraced, and the slogan "Lenin lives!" has given way to calls for the removal and burial of the corpse that has lain on display in its Red Square mausoleum for more than half a century. How did these extraordinary events come about? Usually such swift and radical change is accompanied by violent upheaval. In this book, political psychologist Steven Kull argues that only a revolution in the thinking of the country's top leaders can explain the rapidity and relative peacefulness of the recent Soviet political transformation. Kull's analysis, based on probing interviews with members of the policymaking elites as well as on a careful reading of the public record, reveals the painful process by which these Soviets came to realize and accept the failure of Leninist ideology. More significantly, Kull shows how Soviet leaders have had a series of key insights in recent years that gradually have been forged into a new ideology. Dubbed "new thinking," this ideology offers a complex and coherent worldview that is still insufficiently understood in the West and yet holds great import for the world's future. Kull also traces other streams of post-Leninist thought in the minds of the Soviet elite--some of them still oriented toward competition with the West. He assesses the influence that these diverse, conflicting ideas are exerting on current post-Soviet foreign policy and behavior and describes the new challenges they present to Western nations.