ABSTRACT
Undoubtedly the most radical shifts in Soviet foreign policy have occurred in relations with fellow communist states. Particularly in Eastern Europe, where Moscow’s Communist Party ties have been closest and the strategic stakes have been highest, the changes taking place at the end of the 1980s, with Gorbachev’s apparent acquiescence, have gone beyond the wildest Western speculation of just a few years ago. Indeed, the Orwellian prediction of the late Soviet dissident exile Andrei Amalrik that the Soviet Union itself would not survive until 1984 may have been wrong only in its timing.1 The ‘communist world’ has shrunk and is still shrinking, and its remnants are perhaps more fragmented ideologically than at any time since the early days of the Comintern.
