Tit for Tat: The 1986 U.S.-Soviet Diplomatic Expulsions.

摘要

In the fall of 1988, a sequence of events occurred in the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the United States which were both unusual and unprecedented. A series of diplomatic expulsions and staff reductions took place which were notable in that in their wake they left both of the countries diplomatic representations permanently and fundamentally changed. Although analyzing Soviet decision-making has its perils, an attempt will be made to evaluate the decision-making of both countries as a result of these events. In March, 1986, the Soviet Union was on its fourth General Secretary in the last Six years. Mikhai Sergeyevich Gorbachev had been in office a year. The youngest person to have held that position, his place within the Politburo was still not completely settled, despite the introduction or elevation of such supporters as Ryzhkov, Chebrikov Shevardnazdze and Yeltsin. He had already made some shifts in jobs, most notably moving Andrey Gromyko, the long-serving Foreign Minister who had nominated him to be General Secretary upon Chernenko's death, to the Presidium and filling behind him with Eduard Shevardzadze, an unknown and internationally-inexperienced technocrat from Soviet Georgia; and in bringing Anatoly Dobrinin, the almost equally long- serving ambassador to Washington, back to Moscow as head of the Communist Party's International Section. Gorbachev had seemed sufficiently in control during the twenty-seventh Party Congress in early 1986 to have taken a hard line publicly on cleaning up corruption and economic inefficiencies. On the other hand, the Chernobyl disaster in late April had indicated that the government was still not operating as effectively as the image that they were trying to project.