Characteristics of the Perestroika era

In order to overcome the crise which had emersed due to high levels of social tension, economic stagnation, corrupt practices and a sharp change in the leadership of the Communist Party caused, in particular, by the death of Yuriy Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, and ensure the viability of the country, Mikhail Gorbachev, developed a new political direction, which would later get the name Perestroika.

The group of the mentioned politicians, also known as architects of perestroika, developed a strategy to ease tensions with the United States of America, the main rival of the Soviet Union within the bipolar system.

As a result, the corresponding philosophical and political concept called New Political Thinking which consisted in ideological, military, political and legal detente was put forward.

However, the foreign policy of the USSR, and early Russian Federation, eventually turned out to be servile and West-oriented.

As the communist ideology could no longer meet the needs of society, significant changes in ideological concept of the foreign policy goal setting of the Soviet State.

Whereas the main goal of the Soviet Union used to be the total elimination of capitalism in all existing countries, the Policy of New Thinking consisted in peaceful coexistence of two political systems – communist and capitalist systems.

In terms of ideological detente, the Soviet Union also abandoned the principle of proletarian internationalism and officially established the supremacy of human values over the working-class values.

In order to support the policy of peaceful coexistence, the USSR took a number of actions aimed at strategic and nuclear disarmament, which eventually led to the loss of the strategic parity.

The first meeting of the new Soviet government represented by Mikhail Gorbachev and the American side represented by President Ronald Reagan was the 1985 Geneva Summit.

The parties of the summit reached an agreement and stated that countries wouldn’t let a nuclear war unleash.

The next step of the Soviet Union in terms of the New Political Thinking was the signing of the of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).

The parties to the treaty, pledged to stop the production, testing, deployment and use of medium-range (1000-5500 km) and shorter-range (500-1000 km) ballistic missiles.

Finally, the end of the confrontation between the USSR and the USA and the Cold War was finally put by the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) in 1991.

Since that time, the Soviet Union had also put forward a number of disarmament propositions, including the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by 2000.
In addition, member countries of the Warsaw Pact, led by the Soviet Union, have proposed simultaneous disbandment of both the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

As a result, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded in 1991, whereas NATO still exists and continues its territorial expansion up to the borders of the Russian Federation.

To sum up, all the agreements were carried out solely by the Soviet Union, which would eventually lose its strategic parity, whereas the United States of America did not fulfill its part of the agreements and is currently continuing to build up military potential.

After the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stopped its existence in 1991 and the Warsaw Pact was officially disbanded, the group of politicians led by Boris Yeltsin continued Mikhail Gorbachev’s international policy.

However, the incompetence of the policy demonstrated itself more and more every year, and even former supporters of the New Political Thinking, such as Boris Yeltsin, disagreed to adapt Russian foreign policy to the political course of Western countries.

The most significant event that put an end to Russia's servility towards the West was the refusal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Yevgeny Primakov to attend the meeting in Washington D. C. After receiving a message about the beginning of the US military operation against Yugoslavia, Yevgeny Primakov ordered to turn his aircraft back which was on its way to Washington D. C. This foreign policy action served as a manifestation of a strong protest against the campaign of the United States and marked the return of the Russian federation to the international arena as an independent political actor.