Gorbachev factor in world affairs

This volume offers the first study by an Indian--or for that matter, a Third World scholar of the substantial multi-faceted impact made by Mikhail S. Gorbachev on the entire spectrum of international relations, strategic, political, economic, cultural and humanistic. In accomp lishing this study, Indian scholarship earns its place in the mainstream of international relations studies of the late 1980s, which devotes a central place on objective and not so-objective explorations of the changing nature of change in Soviet internal and external policies under the leader ship of Mikhail Gorbachev.

It begins with the author's penetrating perceptions of the process of change initiated by Gorbachev in the course of a visit to the Soviet Union in October 1986. Many of the changes that took shape in later years germinated in that crucial year and were accurately antici pated by the author, unlike many a Sovietologist in the West. In subsequent chapters, this volume deals in depth. with the short and long-term significance of Gorbachev's visit to India in November 1986; the impact of his bold, innovative and often surprising initiatives on the super power relationship, on relations between and amongst socialist states and communist parties, on internal political, economic and social reconstruction of the USSR; on international security and regional conflicts.

The internal and external faces of glasnost and perestroika are inseparable, a reality that is forcefully brought out in this volume. Shown with equal clarity are the ideological underpinnings of the Gorbachev revolu tion, its basically humanistic character, its deep concern with the fate of the universe and with the general human condition, its imaginative efforts to redefine the methodo logy as well as the objectives of Leninist socialism for the 21st century, above all, the challenge that Gorbachev's concept of one, integrated world in which nations must compete with one another through dialogue, communi cation, cooperation and common endeavour to resolve common problems, without losing their distinctive ideological and national identities, throws at the entrenched theories and practices of world politics based on cold war, interventions, accummulation of nuclear arms, global militarisation and different kinds of arms races.

It gives you a clear view of Gorbachev and what he has been trying to do at home and in the world. More than 200 pages of vital documents added to the text lend this volume a durable research importance.