ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand that President Gorbachev ideas on how the Soviet foreign policy should be organized along the lines of de-ideologization, demilitarization, democratization and other »de's« are well-known everywhere. The only new element which appeared was the growing interest of the Supreme Soviet towards the foreign policy issues and the Supreme Soviet wants to have a say in foreign policy decision-making, which essentially is a normal thing. The positive is that reasonable thinking people both in the government and outside understand that there are republics in the Soviet Union which are devoted to the idea of independence. The party apparatchiks are unhappy with the process of separating the role of the party and that of the state by the process of diminishing the role of ideology. The Russian government since the tsarist times, and the Soviet government since Stalin's times traditionally never paid sufficient attention to the national problem in Russia.
