Introduction

The year 1987 in Soviet affairs was tumultuous and exciting in a way few could have anticipated. In politics and culture, reform has not yet been institutionalized, remaining, in the opinion of some, "atmospheric, cosmetic, and reversible." Columnist Joseph Harsch writes that Mikhail S. Gorbachev has "reformed, even revolutionized, Soviet foreign policy." Novoe myshlenie involves assertions of global interdependence over the class perspective and, despite Gorbachev's emphasis on US-Soviet relations, a simultaneous focus upon "multipolarity" in international relations and a willingness to deal with regional issues on their own merits. Proponents of New Thinking also eschew attempts to export violent revolution and "advocate that local and regional conflicts be more effectively insulated from the East-West rivalry." The most powerful message of Hedrick Smith's The Russians, published in the early 1970s and selling more copies than all academic works on the Soviet Union since World War II combined, was that Soviet society and polity are but variants of the prerevolutionary political culture.