Gorbachev and Europe: Reflections of the future world order

Abstract

Soviet foreign political thinking may be separated into two different elements, the ideological and the Utopian. Both elements have been apparent in Soviet policy towards Western Europe over the post‐war period. Gorbachev, especially in his book Perestroika (1987), has however begun to speak of a ‘common European home’ in a manner that suggests he has begun to question the bipolar international system established in 1945, and that he attaches greater importance to relations with other European states. Although there has always been a strong Utopian element in Marxist‐Leninist thought, this element does not appear to be as dominant in Soviet thinking as it was before Gorbachev's accession to the General Secretaryship.