ABSTRACT

The Soviet Union was immersed in a profound domestic crisis that threatened both the political stability and the territorial integrity of the state. As the decade of the 1980s closed, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared finally to have mastered their forty-year-old conflict. The Western world was lavish in its praise of his statesmanship and diplomacy and not at all inclined to gloat over the crumbling of the Soviet empire or to take satisfaction from the U.S.S.R.'s domestic crisis. Even Mikhail Gorbachev's most positive domestic achievement of the year, the election of a Congress of People's Deputies and the formation of a new Supreme Soviet, was a mixed blessing for him. It was not surprising that at Malta both George Bush and Gorbachev used almost identical language in proclaiming that their countries were "at the threshold of a new era.".