Additional information
by Christo Smart (Author)
This study explores how Soviet leaders shaped the image their state cast since the death of Stalin. The fact that the leadership's legitimacy rested upon values and aims that were fundamentally at odds with the international system imposed a cumbersome task of image management. Each leader approached this task with a different strategy, and each strategy had direct consequences for Soviet behavior abroad and for the coherence of the Soviet state at home. The dynamics of foreign policy and image management, from Khrushchev and Brezhnev through Gorbachev and Yeltsin, are analyzed here in a revealing look at a superpower on the world stage.
Author Biography
CHRISTOPHER SMART holds degrees from Yale University and Columbia University./e He has worked as a newspaper reporter in Florida and France, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and an adviser to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. He is currently Senior Project Manager at the Russian Privatization Center in Moscow.
