ABSTRACT
The term “totalitarian” has had a very checkered career. It has been used polemically and with great lack of precision and applied to political and historical situations as well as political systems. It has become clear over the past few years that Brezhnev has been assuming a dominant role in the design and conduct of Soviet foreign policy and has completely eclipsed his most important partner in government, Alexei Kosygin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers, in whose province foreign policy strictly falls. Many of the rumors of alleged dissent on policy in the Soviet Union are plainly put out to deceive a credulous Western public. The character of total militarization in Soviet foreign policy is thus in turn dependent on the totalitarian nature of Soviet power internally. Romania has tried at every opportunity to demonstrate that its foreign policy is not always a carbon copy of the Soviet Union’s.
