The Study of International Relations in the Soviet Union

For accounts of the debate and its results see Ronald J. Hill , Soviet Politics, Political Science and Reform (Oxford: Martin Robertson; and New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1980), pp. 1-19. Neil Malcolm , Soviet Political Scientists and American Politics (London: Macmillan in association with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1984 ), pp. 5-12. While the nearest to an institute of political science, the Institute of Soviet Political Science Association has existed since the 1960s. Nonetheless, there is still no easily identifiable field of political science. There is no Soviet International Studies Association.

See, for example, Lenoid Brezhnev. Otchetnyi doklad Tsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS XXIV S"ezdu Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza ( Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), pp. 106-7; Brezhnev , Otchemyi doklad Tsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS XXV S"ezdu Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza (Moscow, Politizdat, 1976), p. 88; Brezhnev. Otchetnyi doklad Tsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS XXVI S"ezdu Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza (Moscow, Politizdat, 1981), pp. 105-6.

The movement between academia and responsible political positions is not always from the former to the latter. Arbatov, for example, the influential director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, was head of the USA section of the International Department of the Central Committee for three years before assuming the directorship. And Yakovlev was deputy chief of the Central Committee Propaganda Department from 1965 to 1975.

See Oded Eran , The Mezhdunarodniki (Ramat Gan: Turtledove, 1979), pp. 9-29 (quote on p. 13) on the founding and early role of the Academy and the harnessing of academic work to state purposes.

Oded Eran , op. cit, p. 41, calls Varga 'the emperor of Soviet foreign policy studies until World War Two'. But he was also a sound and respected academic.

Evgeny S. Varga , Izmeneniya v ekanomike kapitaloizma v itoge Vtoroi mirovoi voiny ( Moscow, Gospolitizdat 1946). For an account of the Varga dispute, see Jerry Hough , The Struggle for the Third World: Soviet Debates and American Options ( Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1986), pp. 106-14.

See Neil Malcolm , op. cit pp. 4-5, for the background to the revival. The quote, from Mikoyan's speech at the Congress, is on p. 4.

The Institute of the International Workers' Movement shared the second of these features, although it was not geographically based.

F.M. Burlatskii , 'Politika i nauka', Pravda, 10 January 1965, cited in Neil Malcolm , op. cit, p. 7.

The two departments are the International Department and the Department for Liaison with Communist and Workers' Parties of Socialist Countries. Perhaps the best known of Gromyko's edited works is the standard History of the Foreign Policy of rhe USSR, which has appeared in regular new editions, A.A. Gromyko and B.N. Ponomarcv (eds.), Istoriya vneshnei politiki SSSR ( Moscow: Nauka, 1971, 1976, 1981). Examples of works by high ranking officials of the Central Committee Secretariat are K.N. Brutents , National Liberation Movements Today (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977): B.N. Ponomarev , 'Sovmestnaya bor'ba rabochego i natsional'no-osvoboditel'nogo dvizhenii protiv imperializma. za sostal'ny progress', Kommunist (No. 16, 1980), pp. 30-44; G. Shakhnazarov , The Coming World Order ( Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984 ). Neil Malcolm , op. cit p. 13, suggests that all the foreign policy institutes are primarily responsible to the International Department of the Central Committee.

There are individual undergraduate courses in international relations in other institutions, but not an entire degree programme.

There are, of course, diplomats who have not graduated from this Institute, just as there are graduates of the Institute who have not become diplomats. I am deeply indebted to two graduates from the Institute currently working in the Embassy of the Soviet Union in London for information about the structure and the work of the Institute. They cannot, of course, be held responsible for the way in which I have interpreted their information.

According to informal information from a Soviet teacher colleague, it seems that Minvuz has ultimate control over all tertiary education after the education reform which came into practice during the past academic year. Minpros and the educational endeavours of other ministries are now apparentoly subordinated to it, although no one seems sure yet what form the subordination will take.

For example, V.I. Gantman (ed.), Sovremennye burzhuaznye teorii mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii ( Moscow: Nauka, 1976). The description of the Institute comes from an unpublished paper, Michael Banks and Margot Light , 'Behaviouralist and Bikhaiveristski: A Report on a British-Soviet Dialogue on the Theory of International Relations', 1974. A description of the way the Institute of the USA and Canada is organised is given Neil Malcolm , op. cit, pp. 15-16.

William Zimmerman , Soviet Perspectives on International Relations 1956-1967 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). p. 94, It should be noted, however, that this assertion is vehemently rejected by Soviet scholars.

See. for example, the various editions of A.A. Gromyko and B.4. Ponomarev (eds.), op. cit.

The repetition of the word 'published' here is intended to suggest that Soviet decision-makers must have less selective and tendentious work available on which to base their decisions. The use of the past tense reflects a belief that Gorbachev's policy of glasnost aims to change the situation. There have been indications recently that the 'blank spots' in Soviet history are to be filled in. See, for example, Gorbachev's speech to senior media personnel in Kommunist (No. 4, 1987), pp. 20-27.

William Welch and Jan F. Triska. 'Soviet Foreign Policy Studies and Foreign Policy Models', World Politic.s, (Vol. 23, No. 4, 1971), pp. 704-33.

D.V. Ermolenko , Sotsiologiya i problemy mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii (Moscow , IMO, 1977). p. 12.

See, for example, S.A. Petrovskii and L.A. Petrovskaya , 'Modernizm' protiv 'traditsionalizma' v hurzhuaznykh issledovaniyakh mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii ', Voprosy filosofii (No. 2, 1974), pp. 39-54 and V.I. Gantman, op. cit.

See, for example, F.M. Burlatskii and A.M. Galkin , Sotsiologiya: Politika: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya (Moscow: IMO, 1974); E.A. Pozdnyakov , Sisternyi podkhodi mezhdunarodnye otnsheniya (Moscow: Nauka, 1976). There is a very good analysis of the Soviet 'behaviouralists' in A. Lynch. The Soviet Study of Internation Relations, 1968-1982, unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University , 1984.

D.E. Powell and P. Shoup , 'The Emergence of Political Science in Communist Countries'. American Political Science Review (Vol. 64, No. 2, 1970), p. 194.

These principles were included in Gorbachev's Congress report, M.S. Gorbachev , -Politicheskii doklad Tsentral'nogo Komiteta KPSS S"ezdu Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza', Pravda, 26 February 1986. See also A.F. Dobrynin , 'Za bes" yadernyi mir, navstrechu XXI veku'. Kommunist, (No. 8, 1986), pp. 18-31 and E. Primakov 'XXVII s"ezd KPSS i issledovanie problem mirovoi ekonomiki i mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii', Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya (No. 5, 1986), pp. 3-14.

For a more detailed analysis of the personnel changes, see M. Light , 'Soviet foreign policy since the XXVII Congress', Coexistence, (Vol. 24, No. 3), forthcoming.

E. Primakov. op. cit.

Ibid. p. 14.