1988 Reports

The Foreign Economic Factor in Perestroika

Hewett, Ed A.

Of the many ways in which Mikhail Gorbachev differs from his predecessors, surely one of the most striking is his instinct to think and act internationally. The sullen, uncompromising, and often unsavory USSR of Brezhnev has been quickly supplanted by a more flexible and reasonable Soviet Union, inclined to interact with the rest of the world in ways unthinkable a few years ago. This “new thinking” has already brought changes in the substance as well as the form of Soviet policy, the result being that the USSR’s role in global affairs has begun to change, as has its image.