The Imagery of Soviet Foreign Policy and the Collapse of the Russian Empire - by Christopher Smart (Hardcover)

About the Book

This study explores how Soviet leaders shaped the image their state cast since the death of Stalin. The fact that the leadership's legitimacy rested upon values and aims that were fundamentally at odds with the international system imposed a cumbersome task of image management. Each leader approached this task with a different strategy, and each strategy had direct consequences for Soviet behavior abroad and for the coherence of the Soviet state at home. The dynamics of foreign policy and image management, from Khrushchev and Brezhnev through Gorbachev and Yeltsin, are analyzed here in a revealing look at a superpower on the world stage.

Book Synopsis

This study explores how Soviet leaders shaped the image their state cast since the death of Stalin. The fact that the leadership's legitimacy rested upon values and aims that were fundamentally at odds with the international system imposed a cumbersome task of image management. Each leader approached this task with a different strategy, and each strategy had direct consequences for Soviet behavior abroad and for the coherence of the Soviet state at home. The dynamics of foreign policy and image management, from Khrushchev and Brezhnev through Gorbachev and Yeltsin, are analyzed here in a revealing look at a superpower on the world stage.

Review Quotes

.,."Smart has set out to identify and compare the image projection policies of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev (and in a few pages also post-Soviet Russia under Yeltsin)....The author has developed and presented a useful analysis that should stimulate further thought....he has perfomed a valuable service in highlighting the issue of perceptions and images with respect to our postmortems on Soviet policy, and to our understanding of international politics."-The Russian Review

?...Smart has set out to identify and compare the image projection policies of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev (and in a few pages also post-Soviet Russia under Yeltsin)....The author has developed and presented a useful analysis that should stimulate further thought....he has perfomed a valuable service in highlighting the issue of perceptions and images with respect to our postmortems on Soviet policy, and to our understanding of international politics.?-The Russian Review

..."Smart has set out to identify and compare the image projection policies of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev (and in a few pages also post-Soviet Russia under Yeltsin)....The author has developed and presented a useful analysis that should stimulate further thought....he has perfomed a valuable service in highlighting the issue of perceptions and images with respect to our postmortems on Soviet policy, and to our understanding of international politics."-The Russian Review

About the Author

CHRISTOPHER SMART holds degrees from Yale University and Columbia University./e He has worked as a newspaper reporter in Florida and France, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and an adviser to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. He is currently Senior Project Manager at the Russian Privatization Center in Moscow.