The USSR's preeminent Americanist who built a think-tank on Arbat Street, not in Akademgorodok, and designed détente
"Our major secret weapon is to deprive you of an enemy" — Arbatov explaining the end of the Cold War to American scientists at UC Irvine, December 1988
The Americanist who shaped every Soviet leader's US policy from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. He founded the Institute of the USA and Canada (ISKAN) in 1967, directed it for 28 years, and laid the intellectual groundwork for SALT and détente.
Career Timeline
- 1941–1944Guards mortar unit: recon chief, battery commander, deputy regimental chief of staff — Kalinin, Voronezh, 1st & 2nd Ukrainian Fronts; Dnieper crossing
- 1949–1960Editor at Foreign Literature Publishers; dept. head at Voprosy Filosofii, Novoye Vremya; consultant at Kommunist
- 1960–1963Columnist, Problems of Peace and Socialism (Prague)
- 1962–1964Sector head, IMEMO; research on ideological struggle
- 1964–1967Head of consultants' group, CC CPSU International Dept.; Brezhnev's foreign-policy advisor
- 1967–1995Founding director, ISKAN; Academician (1974)
- 1971–1991Central Auditing Commission → candidate CC → full CC member; Supreme Soviet deputy
- 1995–2010Honorary director, ISKAN; RAS advisor; memoirs The System, My Era
Related historical events
Arms Control and the Critique of the Military-Industrial Complex
Arbatov was the most consistent voice within the Soviet establishment arguing that the arms race had become senseless. He openly criticized the military-industrial complex for draining the Soviet economy and maintained that further nuclear buildup offered no strategic advantage. He was among those who persuaded Brezhnev to accept the 1972 summit with Nixon and provided the intellectual groundwork for the SALT negotiations.
His positions drew fierce opposition from the military and the KGB. He opposed the Soviet Navy's aircraft carrier program, criticized the proposed nationwide computer-controlled economic management system (OGAS), and even supported returning the Southern Kuril Islands to Japan. KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov wrote in his memoirs that Arbatov "strengthened our relations with America not on a parity basis, but by giving away our positions." He also clashed sharply with Navy commander Sergei Gorshkov.
Yet Arbatov remained committed to reform from within. In his memoir The System, he wrote that he had sought to change the system "from the inside, and not from the outside." This dual position, loyal Soviet official and enemy of the military-industrial complex, is precisely what made him one of the most controversial figures in Cold War Soviet intellectual politics.