Document No. 93: Memorandum from Georgy Shakhnazarov to Mikhail Gorbachev regarding Military Detente in Europe, October 14, 1989

Abstract

This policy memorandum marks a kind of apogee for “new thinking” which combines a vision of a post-Cold War Europe with a concrete proposal for the unilateral withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The author, Georgy Shakhnazarov, is enough of a realist to argue that the Soviet Union needs to take the initiative before either its domestic political opponents—or, more likely, the new governments in Eastern Europe—demand such withdrawals, leaving Moscow on the defe..