ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how Stalinist domestic institutions fostered Soviet expansionism, and traces the effects of Mikhail Gorbachev's domestic innovations on Soviet foreign policy. The Gorbachev revolution in Soviet domestic and foreign policy has raised the question of whether that time is close at hand. The chapter argues that Josef Stalin's system, with its hypercentralism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, and military orientation, was a kind of apotheosis of those earlier patterns. It also argues that Gorbachev appears to be aiming for a change in the Soviet Union's fundamental institutions. Nikita Khrushchev believed nuclear technology would change the correlation of forces and lead to detente with the West, a favorable political settlement in Europe, low cost security, and the freeing of resources for a rise in Soviet living standards. The US should also take up Soviet offers to discuss changes in conventional force postures from offense to defense.
