Wolfgang Leonhard

Recounts the history of ideology in the USSR since 1918, claiming that "seventy years after the Bolshevik revolution, ideology in the USSR has reached its nadir". Marxism-Leninism has failed to describe either national or international reality. "The Soviet regime has lost its ideological legitimacy". Outlines three ideological alternatives for the future (1) success of Gorbachev's policies (2) Russian nationalism (3) neo-Stalinism.

There is hardly any doubt that the Soviet leadership has adopted a more flexible and more moderate foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis the Western powers. Some people already speak in terms of an "opening to the West." This change was apparently made in early 1969 and has been reflected, among other things, in the treaty between West Germany and the U.S.S.R. in August 1971; in the Berlin agreement of 1971; in President Nixon's trip to Moscow and the Soviet-American agreement signed there in May 1972; lastly and most clearly in the recent trips of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev to West Germany and to the United States. The agreements which have been concluded make it clear that this is not only a new, but a long-term policy. Moreover, the tone in which the Soviet press speaks about the West is much too moderate to be overlooked.