Interview with historian Archie Brown: Rethinking the Cold War

There's a widespread assumption that the Soviet Union had no

alternative to ending the Cold War in the way they did. But that's
wrong, says the Oxford historian
by Prospect Team / March 26, 2020

Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of

Oxford

Why did you decide to write this book?

I was dissatisfied with the widespread assumption that the Soviet
Union had no alternative to ending the Cold War in the way they did.
My aim was to write a book that rejected simplistic materialist and
triumphalist explanations of the Cold War’s ending; I wished to show
how both leadership and ideas mattered, and to study the domestic
context of foreign policy in each of the countries on which I focus.
While I did a lot of new research, I felt I had the relevant background
knowledge to tackle this subject. I’ve written entire books on the
transformation of the Soviet political system during perestroika. I
wanted to tackle with equal seriousness the profound change of
Soviet foreign policy and the transformation of an adversarial
relationship with the West to one of partnership. Moreover, while
others have written about Reagan and Gorbachev or about Thatcher
and Reagan, no other author has studied the triangular
interrelationship of these three very different but influential leaders.

Your book highlights ‘the human factor’; what do you mean by that
and what was its significance in the ending of the Cold War?
Often heads of government are not as important as they think they
are, but there are times when they play a decisive part in the
making of history. Gorbachev not only changed Soviet foreign and
domestic policy fundamentally, he spearheaded a conceptual
revolution. The idea of ‘all-human values’ and ‘universal interests’
taking precedence over those of any social class or nation was
especially significant. In a further break with Marxism-Leninist
interpretations of history, he referred frequently to the ‘human
factor’ (chelovecheskiy faktor) which, domestically, meant placing a
new emphasis on the autonomy of the individual and, internationally,
on the significance of establishing relations of trust and mutual
understanding with leaders of other countries.

For that, he needed interlocutors willing to engage with him,

especially the President of the United States. There were powerful
interests in both the USA and the USSR against any such rapport.
Reagan himself described the Soviet Union in 1983 as an ‘evil
empire’, so his turn to engagement, with the strong encouragement
of Margaret Thatcher (the foreign leader to whom he felt closest),
was no foregone conclusion. Thatcher, following her extended visit
to the Soviet Union in early 1987, was persuaded of the seriousness
of change in the Soviet system. Less ‘Iron Lady’ than Go-Between,
she became Gorbachev’s strongest supporter among conservative
politicians worldwide, so much so that her 10 Downing Street
Foreign Policy Adviser complained that she had become
‘dangerously attached’ to Gorbachev, who had become ‘something
of an icon’ for her.

What difference do you suppose it would have made had other

leaders been in power during the second half of the 1980s?
In Gorbachev’s case, the difference was fundamental. The Soviet
leader to succeed Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985 had to be
chosen from among the ten remaining full members of the Politburo.
From archival documents, interviews, diaries and memoirs, we know
the views and mindsets of all of them. Not one of the other nine
would have risked either political pluralism or freedom of speech
and publication at home, raising expectations in Eastern Europe.
None of them but Gorbachev would have declared in 1988 that the
people of every country had the right to decide for themselves what
kind of political or economic system they wished to live in. It was
change in Moscow that made the political transformation of the
eastern half of the European continent possible.

Gorbachev, however, needed Western interlocutors. Reagan was a

mixed blessing, but his hitherto hard-line credentials enabled him to
shrug off criticism that he had gone ‘soft on Communism’. Margaret
Thatcher was more influential than a ‘realist’ approach to
international relations would predict, given the huge disparity
between UK military power and that of the USA and USSR. But
alternative Western leaders would have had to be remarkably obtuse
not to notice the qualitative change of the Soviet system and to
respond to it. Reagan and Thatcher were nothing like as
indispensable for a negotiated end of the Cold War as Gorbachev
was.

In what ways are the themes of The Human Factor relevant today?
The lessons include: the potential of human agency to change the
course of history; interaction is more conducive than isolation to
liberalization of highly authoritarian regimes; politics matters at
least as much as economics and political skills should be prized;
proliferation of nuclear weapons was and remains a danger for all
humanity; a successful foreign policy is sensitive to the interests of
other nations, not hamstrung by domestic constituencies; there are
universal interests that transcend national interests; and mutual
trust in international relations, painstakingly gained and then lost, is
very difficult to re-establish.

Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of

Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, and an International
Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He is the author of numerous books on the former Soviet Union and
its demise, including The Gorbachev Factor (1996) and The Rise
and Fall of Communism (2009). His latest title, The Human Factor:
Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War
(2020) is published by Oxford University Press.