The International Department theorist who designed Soviet Third World policy under Brezhnev
Brutents and the International Department experts judged the 1979 Afghanistan invasion 'stupid.' Their boss Ponomarev, who might have conveyed that view, was excluded from the decisive December meetings.
A Soviet politician and theorist of Armenian background. He began as a psychiatrist in Baku before switching to history, earning his degree in 1958 with a critique of the ideology of 'new' colonialism. From 1961 he worked in the CC International Department, leading the special group that formulated the concept of 'national democracy,' and as First Deputy Head he became the operational architect of Soviet Third World policy under Brezhnev and early Gorbachev. He argued internally against the Afghanistan invasion and, after the Soviet collapse, served as vice-president of the Russian Foreign Policy Association and authored the memoir Thirty Years on Staraya Ploshchad.
Career Timeline
- 1946–1948Psychiatrist, Baku psychiatric hospital
- 1950–1954Lecturer, Baku City Committee of the CPSU
- 1954–1958Postgraduate, Academy of Social Sciences; defends candidate dissertation in 1958
- 1961–1969Head of national-liberation movement department, Problems of Peace and Socialism (Prague)
- 1961–1976Responsible posts in the CC International Department, planning Third World policy
- 1976–1986First Deputy Head, CC International Department
- 1986–1990Candidate member, CPSU Central Committee
- 1997–2017Vice-President, Russian Foreign Policy Association