WITH GREAT pride and deep satisfaction the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in its twentieth anniversary year, has conducted the project that led to the publication of this remarkable volume. Throughout the years, CSIS has tried to emphasize anticipatory, integrated assessments of the major issues confronting America’s policy makers. To us at CSIS, this study vividly illustrates the benefits of such an approach.
The issue is critical and timely because of the Soviet Union’s status as one of the two global superpowers and because its combination of extraordinary military strength, external ambition, and severe internal weaknesses makes its behavior puzzling and unpredictable. Scholars disagree whether this confusing combination of qualities will make the USSR a greater or a lesser threat to Western interests over the next decade.
After Brezhnev examines the roots of Soviet conduct through a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach. Unlike the compartmentalized analyses too often done in the government and academia, this study addresses the Soviet Union as an organic system and emphasizes how internal and external factors influence one another in shaping Soviet behavior. By analyzing the sources of Soviet conduct in the 1980s in an effort to clarify the problems and opportunities that Moscow faces in the years ahead, this volume is aimed at helping American policy makers respond effectively.
After Brezhnev represents the initial CSIS contribution to the current revitalization of Soviet studies in the United States. We hope that the present project will help reverse the downward trend in Soviet studies in America, which for more than a decade have suffered from inadequate funding, declining opportunities for graduate study, and dim career prospects. Philip Mosely, who has deservedly been called the father of Russian studies in the United States, made an immense contribution to the scholarly development of CSIS by forming its International Research Council in 1968 and chairing it until his death. I am certain that he would have been proud of this contribution to his favorite held, particularly because several of his students have participated in this analysis of the Soviet Union as a society.
This project came about through an unusual combination of circumstances. Mr. William Wood Prince of Chicago had talked to the distinguished Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Charles Percy, about the policy makers’ need for studies that would provide comprehensive factual information and a conceptual context for understanding the Soviet Union. Senator Percy and I also discussed this problem, and it was through him that I met Mr. Wood Prince. I found him to be a man of great vision and unusual wisdom who appreciated the magnitude of the task inherent in an analysis of a country as large, complex, and secretive as the Soviet Union. The Frederick Henry Prince Trusts provided a generous grant to CSIS that made this study possible. Without the interest of Mr. Wood Prince and Senator Percy, our own desires to undertake such a project would never have been realized.
Dr. Robert F. Byrnes, Distinguished Professor of History at Indiana University, led the research activities as project director and served as editor of this volume and of the related publication series. He ensured that the manuscript was completed by a strict deadline without compromising scholarly standards. My words cannot adequately praise his extraordinary leadership, sense of scholarship, and organizational ability. The project’s staff in residence at CSIS played an invaluable role. Its coordinating and editorial activities and its substantive contributions have been essential in producing integrated and polished products. Special mention should be made of Aileen Masterson, coordinator of the Soviet project, whose administrative and editorial talents were crucial to the book’s completion. Her unusual abilities to deal with a wide range of scholars and difficult problems won her universal respect and admiration.
This analysis helps to set a standard of the highest scholarship for Soviet studies at CSIS. We hope it will lay the basis for the national debate on the challenges that lie ahead.
Spring 1983
David M. Abshire
President, CSIS