ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the changing nature of Soviet policy toward Western Europe. It identifies the general Soviet approach to the Western Alliance in the 1970s and 1980s and the respective roles of the West Germans, French and British in the Alliance from the Soviet point of view. The chapter explores the dynamics of change associated with the Mikhail Gorbachev administration, the revolution of 1989 and the evolution of Soviet domestic policy. Soviet strategy toward the Western Alliance has relied heavily on encouraging the development of serious tensions within the coalition of liberal democratic states. Soviet analysts perceive the evolution of French policy was seen especially salient to the Europeanization challenge. Gorbachev adopted the "common European home" theme to underscore the notion of a common European civilization cutting across the ideological divide of East and West. The chapter concludes with a judgment about the Soviet challenge for the 1990s.
