Lenins Foreign Policy, 1921-28

Lenin, between 1902 and 1917, transformed Marxist ideology into a fighting faith for ardent
revolutionaries, superimposing Marxism on the underground terrorist tradition of nineteenth
century Russia. In addition, Lenin, in his tract entitled Imperialism (1916), arrived at a
rationalization for Marxist revolutions in industrially backward countries with little or no
proletariat, a thesis that would have amazed Marx and Engels. This brilliant reinterpretation of
Marxism not only had a profound influence on Russian foreign policy, but also influenced the
thinking of Mao Tsetung and even Castro in later times. It got the revolution out of the
industrially developed countries of Europe and into the rice paddies and jungles of Asia, Africa,
and Latin America.
When the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, they had rather rudimentary notions of
how to carryon the foreign relations of a large country. Upon assuming the position of foreign
minister, Trotsky declared that he would "issue a few proclamations and close up shop". One
reason for this cavalier attitude was the intial Bolshevik conviction that the revolution in Russia
would trigger similar explosions in Germany, France, and England, thus bringing into being an
international socialist world with no need for the traditional diplomacy of the rotten capitalist
past. The attempt to get out of the war with Germany that began in December 1917 and
culminated in the ratification of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in March 1918 taught the Bolsheviks
some hard lessons in diplomacy. It marked the end of the age of innocence as far as the
Bolsheviks were concerned. They went into the negotiations as world revolutionaries; they
emerged as men solicitous mainly about their own state and power.
During the three-year period from the spring of 1918 to the spring of 1921, the new regime had
its back to the wall in a vicious struggle to stay alive: the Civil War, with few rivals in history for
sheer ferocity; the foreign intervention, notable for its inefficiency; and war with the newly
liberated Poland. It was also during this period that Lenin created the Comintern (the Third
International), which was hailed as the headquarters for the world revolution. The new
government in Russia was a pariah in the comity of nations, and the Commissar for Foreign
Affairs, Georgy Chicherin, an aristocrat in the service of the proletariat, showed extraordinary
skill in coping with the seemingly impossible task of making Moscow's voice heard in the
chancelleries of the world. He followed Lenin's policy to the letter: wait out the period of the
greatest weakness and capitalize on any and all conflicts within the bourgeois world.
By March 1921, the Bolsheviks had won the Civil War, made peace with Poland, and were in
control of an economically ruined and starving Russia. Even those stalwart revolutionists of the
October Days, the Baltic sailors, "rebelled" in their Kronshtadt fortress in early 1921. As a result
of all these factors, Lenin promulgated a series of drastic changes in March: the economy was
transformed from complete state control into a mixed system in which private enterprise played a
major role, and the foreign policy of the nation was directed toward the normalization of

relations with the bourgeois states. The New Economic Policy (NEP), the all-embracing name
for the changes in policy, lasted until 1928. It was in the NEP period that Chicherin persuaded
most of the great powers and a good many small ones to recognize the Soviet Union.* His major
diplomatic triumph was probably the engineering of the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany on 16
April 1922, a feat accomplished in the teeth of British and French opposition.
By the early 1920s it was obvious that Western Europe was not about to erupt in revolution, and
the Bolsheviks turned to the colonial and semicolonial areas as more suitable for Bolshevikinspired revolution-making. The main thesis of Lenin's Imperialism was that the survival of the
great capitalist powers was dependent upon their ability to extract enormous profits from the
exploitation of the colonial and semicolonial areas. Therefore, if these areas could be organized
to throw out their exploiters, the collapse of capitalism as predicted by Marx would be hastened.
Lenin, however, visualized Communist parties as the vanguard of the proletariat, and these areas
had little industry and therefore only tiny proletariats.
Thus the initial "wars of liberation" would have to be won by the national bourgeoisie, and the
embryonic Communist parties should ally with them. Only later, when the industrialization
process was proceeding apace, would a Communist take-over be possible. Between 1923 and
1927, the Comintern under Stalin's direction tried to implement this strategy in China. The tiny
Communist Party of China (CPC) was forced into an alliance with the Kuomintang in an effort to
unify China and oust the imperialists. But Chiang Kaishek, well aware of the long-range goals of
his Communist allies, turned on them in 1927 and nearly obliterated the CPC.
In the 1920s, as the new Soviet state temporarily retreated from the revolutionary path to
socialism, the party also adopted a less ideological approach in its relations with the rest of the
world. Lenin, ever the practical leader, having become convinced that socialist revolution would
not break out in other countries in the near future, realized that his government required normal
relations with the Western world for it to survive. Not only were good relations important for
national security, but the economy also required trade with the industrial countries. Blocking
Soviet attainment of these desires were lingering suspicions of communism on the part of the
Western powers and concern over the foreign debts incurred by the tsarist government that the
Soviet government had unilaterally canceled.
In April 1922, the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs, Georgii Chicherin, circumvented these
difficulties by achieving an understanding with Germany, the other pariah state of Europe, at
Rapallo, Italy. In the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany and Russia agreed on mutual recognition,
cancellation of debt claims, normalization of trade relations, and secret cooperation in military
development. After concluding the treaty, the Soviet Union soon obtained diplomatic recognition
from other major powers, beginning with Britain in February 1924. Although the United States
withheld recognition until 1933, private American firms began to extend technological assistance
and develop commercial links beginning in the 1920s.

Toward the non-Western world, the Soviet leadership limited its policy to promoting opposition
among the indigenous populations against imperialist exploitation. Moscow did pursue an active
policy in China, aiding the rise of the Nationalist Party, a non-Marxist organization committed to
reform and national sovereignty. After the triumph of the Nationalists, a debate developed
among Soviet leaders concerning the future status of relations with China. Stalin wanted the
Chinese Communist Party to join the Nationalists and infiltrate the government from within,
while Trotsky proposed an armed communist uprising and forcible imposition of socialism in
that country. Although Stalin's plan was finally accepted, it came to nought when in 1926 the
Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Chinese communists massacred and Soviet
advisers expelled.
Stalin's Foreign Policy, 1928-39
Soviet foreign policy underwent a series of changes during the first decade of Stalin's rule. Soon
after assuming control of the party, Stalin oversaw a radicalization of Soviet foreign policy that
complemented his strenuous domestic policies. To heighten the urgency of his demands for
modernization, Stalin portrayed the Western powers, particularly France, as warmongers eager to
attack the Soviet Union.
UIam entitled one of his books "Expansion and Coexistence", and there is no better period than
that of the NEP to explain the significance of the title. Soviet policy in this era was conducted on
two levels: While Chicherin was seeking de jure recognition of the Soviet Union as a state of the
traditional type, the Comintern, financed by, dominated by, and housed in Moscow, was striving
to subvert the very governments that the Soviet Union was "coexisting" with. "Expansion" in the
1920s and the 1930s meant the promulgating of the Communist doctrine throughout the world. It
was not until the period of World War II that it came to mean the physical expansion of the
Soviet Union. Although not spelled out by Ulam, the Soviets over the last half-century have
reverted to "coexistence" whenever conditions were not propitious for territorial expansion.
In the 1930s, Stalin, pessimistic about the prospects for revolution in Europe and having burnt
his fingers in China when he tried an alliance with the national bourgeoisie, went for "socialism
in one country." The 1930s saw the industrialization of Russia at a forced tempo and the
concomitant collectivization of agriculture, with all the horrors engendered by that policy.
During the early 1930s, Stalin for all intents and purposes followed an "isolationist" policy in
foreign affairs.
The diplomatic isolation practiced by the Soviet Union in the early 1930s seemed ideologically
justified by the Great Depression; world capitalism appeared destined for destruction. To aid the
triumph of communism, Stalin resolved to weaken the moderate social democrats of Europe, the
communists' rivals for working-class support. Conversely, the Comintern ordered the
Communist Party of Germany to aid the anti-Soviet National Socialist German Workers' Party

(the Nazi Party) in its bid for power in the hopes that a Nazi regime would exacerbate social
tensions and produce conditions that would lead to a communist revolution in Germany. Stalin
thus shares responsibility for Hitler's rise to power in 1933 and its tragic consequences for the
Soviet Union and the rest of the world.
Events outside the Soviet Union, however, would not permit such a policy for long. The
Japanese had moved into Manchuria in 1931 and were pushing hard against the borders of the
U.S.S.R. and its satellite, Outer Mongolia. Hitler came to power in Germany, and even a cursory
perusal of Mein Kampf was enough to show his ambitions vis--vis the Ukraine. To any Russian
leader, Tsar or Commissar, the worst of all possible worlds is one in which both ends of the
empire are under hostile pressure. Sheer logistics makes a two-front war a Russian nightmare.
Under these conditions Stalin opted for "collective security" with Britain and France and went so
far as to join the League of Nations, hitherto referred to in Moscow as the nest of capitalist
bandits. The Comintern now directed the various Communist parties to ally with any group that
was "antifascist," be it the Kuomintang, the British Tories, or the French bourgeoisie.
The dynamics of Soviet foreign relations changed drastically after Stalin recognized the danger
posed by Nazi Germany. From 1934 through 1937, the Soviet Union tried to restrain German
militarism by building coalitions hostile to fascism. In the international communist movement,
the Comintern adopted the popular front policy of cooperation with socialists and liberals against
fascism, thus reversing its line of the early 1930s. In 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League of
Nations, where Maksim M. Litvinov, the commissar of foreign affairs, advocated disarmament
and collective security against fascist aggression. In 1935 the Soviet Union concluded defensive
military alliances with France and Czechoslovakia, and from 1936 to 1939 it gave assistance to
antifascists in the Spanish Civil War. The menace of fascist militarism to the Soviet Union
increased when Germany and Japan (itself a threat to Soviet Far Eastern territory in the 1930s)
signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. But the West proved unwilling to counter German
provocative behavior, and after France and Britain acquiesced to Hitler's demands for
Czechoslovak territory at Munich in 1938, Stalin abandoned his efforts to forge a collective
security agreement with the West.
Convinced now that the West would not fight Hitler, Stalin decided to come to an understanding
with Germany. Signaling a shift in foreign policy, Viacheslav Molotov, Stalin's loyal assistant,
replaced Litvinov (who was Jewish) as commissar of foreign affairs in May 1939. Hitler, who
had decided to attack Poland despite the guarantees of Britain and France to defend that country,
soon responded to the changed Soviet stance. While Britain and France dilatorily attempted to
induce the Soviet Union to join them in pledging to protect Poland, the Soviet Union and
Germany engaged in intensive negotiations. The product of the talks between the former
ideological foes--the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939--shocked the world.
The open provisions of the agreement pledged absolute neutrality in the event one of the parties
should become involved in war, while a secret protocol partitioned Poland between the parties

and assigned Romanian territory as well as Estonia and Latvia (and later Lithuania) to the Soviet
sphere of influence. With his eastern flank thus secured, Hitler began the German invasion of
Poland on September 1, 1939; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.
World War II had begun.
The moral of Ulam's tale from Brest Litovsk to the present would seem to be that when the
security of the Soviet regime is in danger, ideological enemies are welcome as allies. Nowhere
was this better demonstrated than during the 1939-41 period. By early 1939, Stalin lost
confidence in his British and French allies and in rapid order signed the notorious Soviet-Nazi
Pact (August 1939) and an agreement with Japan (spring of 1940). He then sat back to watch the
slaughter as the fascist and the democratic capitalists made mincemeat of each other. In June
1941, however, his Nazi "friends" proved to be even more Machiavellian than he, and Stalin had
no other recourse than to seek help from the democracies.
Ulam points out that a Communist regime had more to worry about than just the security of the
nation. It also had the problem of maintaining the leader's personal regime within the nation.
Thus Stalin in the first eighteen months of the war with the Germans could not afford to trade
space for time recklessly-he had to sacrifice millions of soldiers in an effort to minimize the
German penetration as much as possible. German errors, Allied aid, and, to give the devil his
due, Stalin's fortitude enabled the regime to survive the Great Fatherland War and emerge
victorious.
Foreign Policy under Khrushchev
Almost immediately after Stalin died, the collective leadership began altering the conduct of
Soviet foreign policy to permit better relations with the West and new approaches to the
nonaligned countries. Malenkov introduced a change in tone by speaking out against nuclear war
as a threat to civilization. Khrushchev initially contradicted this position, saying capitalism alone
would be destroyed in a nuclear war, but he adopted Malenkov's view after securing his
preeminent position.
In 1955, to ease tensions between East and West, Khrushchev recognized permanent neutrality
for Austria. Meeting President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Geneva, Switzerland, later that year,
Khrushchev confirmed Soviet commitment to "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism. Regarding
the developing nations, Khrushchev tried to win the goodwill of their national leaders, instead of
following the established Soviet policy of shunning the governments while supporting local
communist parties. Soviet influence in the international alignments of India and Egypt, as well as
of other Third World countries, began in the middle of the 1950s. Cuba's entry into the socialist
camp in 1961 was a coup for the Soviet Union.

With the gains of the new diplomacy came reversals as well. By conceding the independence of
Yugoslavia in 1955 as well as by his de-Stalinization campaign, Khrushchev provoked unrest in
Eastern Europe, where the policies of the Stalin era weighed heavily. In Poland, riots brought
about a change in communist party leadership, which the Soviet Union reluctantly recognized in
October 1956. A popular uprising against Soviet control then broke out in Hungary, where the
local communist leaders, headed by Imre Nagy, called for a multiparty political system and
withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the defensive alliance founded by the Soviet Union and its
East European satellites in 1955. The Soviet army crushed the revolt early in November 1956,
causing numerous casualities. Although the Hungarian Revolution hurt Soviet standing in world
opinion, it demonstrated that the Soviet Union would use force if necessary to maintain control
over its satellite states in Eastern Europe.
Outside the Soviet sphere of control, China grew increasingly restive under Chinese Communist
Party chairman Mao Zedong. Chinese discontent with the new Soviet leadership stemmed from
low levels of Soviet aid, feeble Soviet support for China in its disputes with Taiwan and India,
and the new Soviet doctrine of peaceful coexistence with the West (which Mao viewed as a
betrayal of Marxism-Leninism). Against Khrushchev's wishes, China embarked on a nuclear
arms program, declaring in 1960 that nuclear war could defeat imperialism. The dispute between
militant China and the more moderate Soviet Union escalated into a schism in the world
communist movement after 1960. Albania left the Soviet camp and became an ally of China,
Romania distanced itself from the Soviet Union in international affairs, and communist parties
around the world split over orientation to Moscow or Beijing. The monolithic bloc of world
communism had shattered.
Soviet relations with the West, especially the United States, seesawed between moments of
relative relaxation and periods of tension and crisis. For his part, Khrushchev wanted peaceful
coexistence with the West, not only to avoid nuclear war but also to permit the Soviet Union to
develop its economy. Khrushchev's meetings with President Eisenhower in 1955 and President
John F. Kennedy in 1961 and his tour of the United States in 1959 demonstrated the Soviet
leader's desire for fundamentally smooth relations between the West and the Soviet Union and its
allies. Yet Khrushchev also needed to demonstrate to Soviet conservatives and militant Chinese
that the Soviet Union was a firm defender of the socialist camp. Thus in 1958 Khrushchev
challenged the status of Berlin; when the West would not yield to his demands that the western
sectors be incorporated into East Germany, he approved the erection of the Berlin Wall around
those sectors in 1961.
To maintain national prestige, Khrushchev canceled a summit meeting with Eisenhower in 1960
after Soviet air defense troops shot down a United States U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet
territory. Finally, mistrust over military intentions hobbled East-West relations during this time.
The West feared the Soviet lead in space technology and saw in the buildup of the Soviet
military an emerging "missile gap" in the Soviet Union's favor. By contrast, the Soviet Union felt

threatened by a rearmed Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), by the United States
alliance system encircling the Soviet Union, and by the West's superior strategic and economic
strength.
To offset the United States military advantage and thereby improve the Soviet negotiating
position, Khrushchev in 1962 tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, but he agreed to withdraw
them after Kennedy ordered a blockade around the island nation. After coming close to war in
the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States took steps to reduce the nuclear
threat. In 1963 the two countries established the "hot line" between Washington and Moscow to
reduce the likelihood of accidental nuclear war. In the same year, the United States, Britain, and
the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which forbade testing nuclear weapons in
the atmosphere.
In foreign affairs, Khrushchev enthusiastically set lofty but often-unattainable goals, and enjoyed
dramatically snubbing the West. He flew to a summit in London in a half-completed prototype of
a passenger jet to demonstrate the advanced state of Soviet aviation (duly impressing his hosts,
who did not have a comparable plane yet at the time). Communism's appeal spread rapidly
throughout the decolonizing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as the Soviet Union
lavished aid for splashy projects such as dams and stadiums. The stunning propaganda coup
scored by the Soviet Union in launching the first satellite, Sputnik, was followed by greater and
greater achievements, such as the first dog, the first man, and the first woman in space. Many in
the West began to fear that the Soviets really were catching up and soon would overtake them.
Khrushchev was certainly the most colourful Soviet leader and is best remembered for his
dramatic, often times boorish gestures designed to attain maximum propaganda effect, and his
enthusiastic belief that Communism would triumph over capitalism. In November 1956 he
boasted "About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If you
don't like us. don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you
like it or not. history is on our side. We will bury you!"
Khrushchev's enthusiasm for flashy gestures had not been liked by more conservative elements
from the very start; many Soviets were greatly embarrassed by his antics, such as banging his
shoe on the podium during a speech to the UN General Assembly in September 1960.
1964-1982 - Brezhnev Foreign Relations
A major concern of Khrushchev's successors was to reestablish Soviet primacy in the community
of communist states by undermining the influence of China. Although the new leaders originally
approached China without hostility, Mao's condemnation of Soviet foreign policy as "revisionist"
and his competition for influence in the Third World soon led to a worsening of relations
between the two countries. Sino-Soviet relations reached a low point in 1969 when clashes broke

out along the disputed Ussuri River in the Far East. Later the Chinese, intimidated by Soviet
military strength, agreed not to patrol the border area claimed by the Soviet Union; but strained
relations between the two countries continued into the early 1980s.
Under the collective leadership, the Soviet Union again used force in Eastern Europe, this time in
Czechoslovakia. In 1968 reform-minded elements of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
rapidly began to liberalize their rule, loosen censorship, and strengthen Western ties. In response,
Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops entered Czechoslovakia and installed a new regime. Out of
these events arose the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, which warned that the Soviet Union would
act to maintain its hegemony in Eastern Europe. Soviet suppression of the reform movement
reduced blatant gestures of defiance on the part of Romania and served as a threatening example
to the Polish Solidarity trade union movement in 1980. But it also helped disillusion communist
parties in Western Europe to the extent that by 1977 most of the leading parties embraced
Eurocommunism, which freed them to pursue political programs independent of Moscow's
dictates.
Soviet influence in the developing world expanded somewhat during this period. New
communist or Marxist governments having close relations with the Soviet Union rose to power
in several countries, including Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. In the Middle East, the Soviet
Union vied for influence by backing the Arabs in their dispute with Israel. After the June 1967
War, the Soviet Union rebuilt the defeated Syrian and Egyptian armies, but it suffered a setback
when Egypt expelled Soviet advisers from the country in 1972 and subsequently entered a closer
relationship with the United States. The Soviet Union retained ties with Syria and supported
Palestinian claims for their right to an independent state. But Soviet prestige among moderate
Muslim states suffered in the 1980s as a result of Soviet military activities in Afghanistan.
Attempting to shore up a communist government in that country, Brezhnev sent in Soviet armed
forces in December 1979, but a large part of the Afghan population resisted both the occupiers
and the Marxist Afghan regime. The resulting war in Afghanistan continued to be an unresolved
problem for the Soviet Union at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982.
Soviet relations with the West first improved, then deteriorated in the years after Khrushchev.
The gradual winding down of the United States commitment to the war in Vietnam after 1968
opened the way for negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union on the subject
of nuclear arms. After the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed in July
1968, the two countries began the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in 1969. At the
Moscow Summit of May 1972, Brezhnev and President Richard M. Nixon signed Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement on the limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Both
agreements essentially froze the deployment of strategic defensive andd offensive weapons. A
period of dtente, or relaxation of tensions, between the two superpowers emerged, with a further
agreement concluded to establish ceilings on the number of offensive weapons on both sides in
1974. The crowning achievement of the era of dtente was the signing in 1975 of the Helsinki

Accords, which ratified the postwar status quo in Europe and bound the signatories to respect
basic principles of human rights.
But even during the period of dtente, the Soviet Union increased weapons deployments, with
the result that by the end of the 1970s it achieved parity or even superiority in strength compared
with the United States. The Soviet Union also heightened its condemnation of the NATO
alliance in an attempt to weaken Western unity. Although SALT a second agreement was signed
by Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter in Vienna in 1979, after the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan the Carter administration withdrew the agreement from consideration by the United
States Senate, and dtente effectively came to an end. In reaction to the Soviet involvement in
Afghanistan, the United States imposed a grain embargo on the Soviet Union and boycotted the
Summer Olympics in Moscow in 1980. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet
Union continued up to Brezhnev's death.
New Thinking: Foreign Policy under Gorbachev
"New Thinking" was Gorbachev's slogan for a foreign policy based on shared moral and ethical
principles to solve global problems rather than on Marxist-Leninist concepts of irreconcilable
conflict between capitalism and communism. Rather than flaunt Soviet military power,
Gorbachev chose to exercise political influence, ranging from the enhancement of diplomatic
relations and economic cooperation to personally greeting the public in spur-of-the-moment
encounters at home and abroad. Gorbachev used the world media skillfully and made previously
unimaginable concessions in the resolution of regional conflicts and arms negotiations. In
addition to helping the Soviet Union gain wider acceptance among the family of nations, the
New Thinking's conciliatory policies toward the West and the loosening of Soviet control over
Eastern Europe ultimately led to the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War.
United States-Soviet relations began to improve soon after Gorbachev became general secretary.
The first summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev took place in Geneva in November
1985. The following October, the two presidents discussed strategic arms reduction in
Reykjavik, without making significant progress. In the late summer of 1987, the Soviet Union
yielded on the long-standing issue of intermediate-range nuclear arms in Europe; at the
Washington summit that December, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), eliminating all intermediate- and shorter-range missiles
from Europe. In April 1988, Afghanistan and Pakistan signed an accord, with the United States
and Soviet Union as guarantors, calling for withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan by
February 1989. The Soviet Union subsequently met the accord's deadline for withdrawal.
Gorbachev also assiduously pursued closer relations with China. Improved Sino-Soviet relations
had long depended on the resolution of several issues, including Soviet support for the
Vietnamese military presence in Cambodia, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the large

numbers of Soviet troops and weapons deployed along China's northern border. Soviet moves to
resolve these issues led the Chinese government to agree to a summit meeting with Gorbachev in
Beijing in May 1989, the first since the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s.
Soviet relations with Europe improved markedly during the Gorbachev period, mainly because
of the INF Treaty and Soviet acquiescence to the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe
during 1989-90. Since the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet Union had
adhered to the Brezhnev Doctrine upholding the existing order in socialist states. Throughout the
first half of Gorbachev's rule, the Soviet Union continued this policy, but in July 1989, in a
speech to the Council of Europe (see Glossary), Gorbachev insisted on "the sovereign right of
each people to choose their own social system," a formulation that fell just short of repudiating
the Brezhnev Doctrine. By then, however, the Soviet Union's control over its outer empire
already was showing signs of disintegration.
That June the communist regime in Poland had held relatively free parliamentary elections, and
the communists had lost every contested seat. In Hungary the communist regime had steadily
accelerated its reforms, rehabilitating Imre Nagy, the reform communist leader of the 1956
uprising, and dismantling fortifications along Hungary's border with Austria. At the end of the
summer, East German vacationers began escaping to the West through this hole in the Iron
Curtain. They also poured into the West German embassy in Prague. The East German state
began to hemorrhage as thousands of its citizens sought a better and freer life in the West.
With the East German government under increasing pressure to stem the outflow, East Germans
who stayed behind demonstrated on the streets for reform. When the ouster of East German
communist party leader Honecker failed to restore order, the authorities haphazardly opened the
Berlin Wall in November 1989. The same night the Berlin Wall fell, the Bulgarian Communist
Party deposed its longtime leader, Todor Zhivkov. Two weeks later, Czechoslovakia embarked
on its "Velvet Revolution," quietly deposing the country's communist leaders. At an impromptu
summit meeting in Malta in December 1989, Gorbachev and United States president George
H.W. Bush declared an end to the Cold War.
Throughout 1990 and 1991, Soviet-controlled institutions in Eastern Europe were dismantled. At
the January 1990 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) summit, several East
European states called for disbanding that fundamental economic organization of the Soviet
empire, and the summit participants agreed to recast their multilateral ties. At the next summit, in
January 1991, Comecon dissolved itself. In March 1990, Gorbachev called for converting the
Warsaw Pact to a political organization, but instead the body officially disbanded in July 1991.
Soviet troops were withdrawn from Central Europe over the next four years--from
Czechoslovakia and Hungary by mid-1991 and from Poland in 1993. By midsummer 1990,
Gorbachev and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl had worked out an agreement by which
the Soviet Union acceded to a unified Germany within NATO.

By the June 1990 Washington summit, the United States-Soviet relationship had improved to
such an extent that Gorbachev characterized it as almost a "partnership" between the two
countries, and President Bush noted that the relationship had "moved a long, long way from the
depths of the Cold War." In August 1990, the Soviet Union joined the United States in
condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and supported United Nations resolutions to restore
Kuwait's sovereignty. In November 1990, the United States, the Soviet Union, and most of the
European states signed the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE Treaty), making
reductions in battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, and fighter aircraft "from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains."
During the Gorbachev years, improvements in United States-Soviet relations were not without
complications. For example, in 1991 Soviet envoy Yevgeniy Primakov's attempted mediation of
the Kuwait conflict threatened to undercut the allied coalition's demand that Iraq withdraw
unconditionally from Kuwait. After the signing of the CFE Treaty, disputes arose over Soviet
compliance with the treaty and the Soviet military's efforts to redesignate weapons or move them
so that they would not be subject to the treaty's terms. United States pressure led to the resolution
of these issues, and the CFE Treaty entered into force in 1992. The Soviet crackdown on Baltic
independence movements in January 1991 also slowed the improvement of relations with the
United States.
By the summer of 1991, the United States-Soviet relationship showed renewed signs of
momentum, when Bush and Gorbachev met in Moscow to sign the Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty (START I). Under START, for the first time large numbers of intercontinental ballistic
missiles were slated for elimination. The treaty foresaw a reduction of approximately 35 percent
in United States ballistic missile warheads and about 50 percent in Soviet ballistic missile
warheads within seven years of treaty ratification. Gorbachev recently had attended the Group of
Seven (G-7) summit to discuss his proposals for Western aid. Gorbachev also established
diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and, in the waning days of the Soviet
Union's existence, Israel.
Gorbachev's foreign policy won him much praise and admiration. For his efforts to reduce
superpower tensions around the world, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1990.
Ironically, as a result of frequent rumors of a conservative coup, the leader of the Soviet empire,
whose previous rulers had kept opposition figures Lech Walesa and Andrey Sakharov from
collecting their Nobel prizes, was unable to collect his own until June 1991.