ABSTRACT
The doughnut shape is the one being assumed by the Soviet bloc: it is falling in at the center, still fairly vigorous at the periphery in the Third World. As the Soviet Union became increasingly aware of Eastern Europe's limited usefulness for an activist foreign policy, the dismantling of Western empires offered growing temptations to increase Soviet global influence by an "indirect approach" through the Third World. Eastern Europe was the first part of the Soviet Empire to be shattered by the explosion Mikhail Gorbachev had ignited. During the early Gorbachev years Soviet officials wrestled with the issue of redefining their attitudes toward the Brezhnev Doctrine for a largely different audience. The cooperation of the New Jewel Movement with Cuba and the Soviet Union was extremely close across a great range of foreign policy issues, yet most interested international observers labeled Grenada as a Third World socialist country rather than communist.
