Gorbachev's Vladivostok initiatives

Abstract

In July 1986, sixteen months after becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Mikhail sergeyevich Gorbachov made a three-week tour of the Soviet Far East. He visited main cities and town, industrial centers, agricultural communities, as well as military and naval installations. Most importantof all, Gorbachev delivered an important speech at Vladivostok on July 28. Apart from a lengthy consideration of domestic policy issues, Gorbachev defined in his speech Soviet interests, attitudes and aims in Asia and the Pacific in a fresh light, taking Asian convictions and views (as he saw them) into consideration. Gorbachev came to power at a time when the Soviet Union urgently needed economic reinvigoration at home, yet his predecessors, especialy Brezhnev, had given insufficient attention to developing a comprehensive strategy for the Asian-Pacific region. Soviet leaders, as Ross Babbage argued, had failed to appreciate the region's economic dynamism and had tended to be overly pre-occupied with security issues. Their drive to build up their military power in the region had created serious political obstacles in external relations with neighbouring countries as important as China, Japan and the Unites States. As a result, the Soviet Union was rather isolated in the region.