page_title: Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
section_title: Gorbachev and after
hierarchical_section_title: Foreign relations of the Soviet Union / Gorbachev and after
caption_attribution_description: C47345-10, President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev in Red Square during the Moscow Summit. 5/31/88.
context_page_description: After the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks took over the old Russian Empire in 1918, they faced enormous odds against the German Empire due to World War I, and then again against both domestic and international enemies in the bitter civil war. Czarist Russia was reorganized as the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, it was treated as an unrecognized Pariah state because of its repudiating the tsarist debts and threats to destroy capitalism at home and around the world. By 1922, Moscow had repudiated the goal of world revolution, and sought diplomatic recognition and friendly trade relations with the world, starting with Britain and Germany. Trade and technical help from Germany and the United States arrived in the late 1920s. Under dictator Joseph Stalin, the country was transformed in the 1930s into an industrial and military power. After the appeasement policy of Britain and France, the Soviet Union shifted from a strategy of antifascist collective security to one of national security. By signing a treaty with Germany in 1939 the Soviet Union hoped to create a buffer zone between them and Germany.
context_section_description: When Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, it signaled a dramatic change in Soviet foreign policy. Gorbachev put forth the doctrine of "new political thinking", which in part pursued conciliatory policies toward the West instead of maintaining the Cold War status quo. The USSR exited Afghanistan, signed strategic arms reduction treaties with the United States. It did not attempt to stop the successful effort of all the East European satellite nations to declare their independence and expel the Communist leadership, 
  issues about the status and borders of Germany were addressed in 1990, when the Soviet Union, along with the US, Britain and France, signed a treaty on German reunification with the two German governments. After extensive negotiations, West Germany absorbed East Germany, with large cash payments made to Moscow. After the final dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, Russia became the legal successor to the Soviet Union on the international stage, and in terms of treaties and agreements. Under Boris Yeltsin, Russian foreign policy repudiated Marxism–Leninism as a guide to action, soliciting Western support for capitalist reforms in post-Soviet Russia.
caption: Gorbachev and Reagan in Moscow during the Moscow Summit, 31 May 1988
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