ABSTRACT
Mikhail Gorbachev advocates three themes which are particularly controversial: the subordination of class interests to human interests, the rejection of peaceful coexistence as a form of class struggle, and a revised appraisal of capitalist society and the prospects for socialist revolutions there. The fact that the party's new program deliberately removed a reference to peaceful coexistence "as a specific form of class struggle" does not mean the Soviets have given up class analysis. The role of ideology in Soviet foreign policy has certainly declined; however, justifying a secular foreign policy is itself an ideological problem. Peaceful coexistence affords more favorable opportunities for the struggle of the working class in the capitalist countries and facilitates the struggle of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries for their liberation. Gorbachev acknowledges that perestroika is a "complex and contradictory process," a "revolutionary" and "difficult" time.
