ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses beliefs and the systems they form, and only in a secondary and subordinate fashion about learning. When learning occurs in a political or bureaucratic environment— because new and troublesome information arrives— it is, to use John Steinbruner's adjective, constrained. The merit of Steinbruner and others, who have carried the argument, is to demonstrate why politics makes complex learning so difficult. Complex learning was under way throughout much of the Leonid Brezhnev era in far greater measure than has generally been appreciated; it is hard to imagine someone like Brezhnev adjusting his outlook with the same speed or on the same scale. Whatever learning theory does for the Soviet example, the Soviet example more than repays learning theory. A way to begin is with Soviet perspectives on learning. A problem arises when intellectual constructs designed for one, like the psychologist's theory of learning, are applied to the other.
