International Policy Formation in the U.S.S.R.: Factional Debates During the Zhdanovshchina

The Zhdanov-Malenkov rivalry in the late 1940s, the Varga controversy and the "Leningrad case" are revisited by an American Sovietologist pursuing every possible "footprint" in the published material. The burden of the argument is that these essentially domestic struggles had a major impact on Soviet foreign policy and are directly related to the break with Yugoslavia (Zhdanov and Tito being close allies). The case is overstated and overargued, but it is worth a close reading.