Rethinking the Role of Ideology in International Politics During the Cold War

The partial opening of East-bloc archives has sparked renewed interest in the study of ideological influences in Soviet foreign policy. The task of weighing the relative importance of ideology is complicated, however, by the failure of most scholars to d evelop sound evaluative criteria. This article discusses the shortcomings of previous analyses of Soviet ideology and puts forth a more theoretically coherent approach, based on three explicit criteria for assessing ideological and security-seeking goals.