ABSTRACT
There is very little Soviet research that looks at the role of institutional, personal or group factors in the process of formulating Soviet foreign policy. Memoirs from the Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras are only now starting to appear but they are tinged by the emotions of everyday political struggle and very seldom have direct connection with our topic, merely fulfilling the routine tasks of all memoirists which is to show the author in the most advantageous light. The important foreign policy decisions are always made at the level of the state leadership. Everybody knew that the real power was concentrated in the hands of the party or, more accurately, of its Politbureau. The Number One person in the state was the party leader who could act as a dictator, limited in his actions only by tradition and by the balance of forces at the top level of the party hierarchy.
