ABSTRACT
Analysts of the "power politics" school of thought hold that the Kremlin leaders are concerned solely with Soviet national interest. Undoubtedly the Soviet ideology is intended to strengthen the party and reinforce its claim to rule. The differences of opinion expressed by the participants in the symposium on the roles of ideology and of power politics in Soviet policy decisions bring to mind the story about a product labeled "rabbit pie". On the surface, the declaration, published in the name of twelve ruling Communist parties, seems to reimpose a pattern of ideological uniformity as well as to recognize the special leadership position of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union appeared on the international scene as a power of the first order, led by a group consistently claiming its adherence to a body of doctrine as a guide to action, legions of experts began to dissect that body in a search for a key to Soviet behavior.
