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Preface
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P R E F A C E Recent research on the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War has focused, not on the U.S.-Soviet power relationship, but rather on the emergence of ideas that led to Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking.” Jeffrey Checkel has shown how international political change is driven by ideas.1 Thomas RisseKappen has described how arms controllers in the United States, and peace researchers and left-of-center political parties in Western Europe formed transnational networks with new thinkers in the Soviet Union.2 Matthew Evangelista has written a history of transnational activism and how it shaped the policies of both the Soviet Union and the United States.3 And Robert English has written about the westernization of Soviet political and academic elites.4 But the ideas behind Gorbachev’s new thinking, as well as the westernization of Soviet elites, did not emerge suddenly in the s. They had been gestating slowly in the minds of many members of the Soviet intelligentsia as a result of their contacts and exchanges with the West over the years following the death of Stalin in . “One of the most important reasons for the victory in Russia of Boris Yeltsin and the pro-Western reform movement,” maintains Russian political analyst Sergei Markov,“is that a Western-oriented reform movement developed here during the Soviet period.”5 As Markov explains, “The exchange of scholars and other exchanges played a very important role in Soviet politics because through these exchanges Russian intellectuals were westernized.”6 This book describes some of those Soviet contacts and exchanges with the West, and with the United States in particular, that influenced Soviet elites and the public at large and helped prepare the way for the ideas that formed the basis of Soviet new thinking. Many Western countries conducted exchanges with the Soviet Union, but the United States had the largest program, and it was specifically designed to bring about changes there. . Jeffrey T. Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, ). . Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures , and the End of the Cold War,” in Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, eds., International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ). . Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Sergei Markov, in Moscow Times, June , . . Sergei Markov, author’s interview, Washington, D.C., November , . I worked on U.S.-Soviet exchanges for many years—at the State Department, U.S. Information Agency, and American Embassy Moscow—and this book is a recounting of several of the major exchanges based on my own experience, readings of the scholarly literature, research in Russian archives, and interviews with many Americans and Russians who were also witnesses or warriors on the cultural front of the Cold War. Thanks are due all those who gave so generously of their time to contribute recollections of their experiences. Yale Richmond Washington, D.C. [18.208.203.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:17 GMT) A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Many people have contributed comments, counsel, and encouragement for this book. To all of them, my deep thanks and appreciation: Mikhail D. Afanasyev, Raymond Anderson, Leonard J. Baldyga, Jeffrey Barrie, Raymond E. Benson, Svetlana Boym, E. Willis Brooks, Hodding Carter III, Michael Cole, E. David Cronon, Nicholas Daniloff, Dan E. Davidson, James Dearlove, George J. Demko, Paul Doty, William Edgerton, Herbert J. Ellison, Terence Emmons, Alexander Etkind, Matthew Evangelista, Martin Feinstein, Murray Feshbach, Ralph T. Fisher, Wesley A. Fisher, Catherine Fitzpatrick, Max Frankel, Arnold Frutkin, Toby T. Gati, Thomas W. Gittins, Valery Golovskoy, Alexander R. Gorev, Loren R. Graham, Thomas Graham, Bernard Gwertzman, Mark Von Hagen, Jeffrey W. Hahn, Roald Hoffmann, Nick Holonyak Jr., William H. Hopkins, Oleg D. Kalugin, Edward Keenan, Oleg Kharkhordin, Aleksei R. Khokhlov, Mark Kramer, Marie Lavigne, Wallace W. Littell, Edward Luck, Glynn S. Lunney, Peter B. Maggs, Martin Manning , Everett Mendelsohn, Gerald E. Mikkelson, James R. Millar, George I. Mirsky, James E. Muller, Max Okenfuss, R. Spencer Oliver, Pavel Palazchenko, Arthur E. Pardee, James Pasquill, Mark N. Poole, Alexander Radovinsky, Donald J. Raleigh, George W...