Prominent Russian political scientist Georgy Arbatov, founder and first director of the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, passed away on October 1, 2010. He was 87. The Carnegie Moscow Center expresses its condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
Georgy Arbatov (1923-2010)
Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center
Georgy Arbatov embodied a whole era. His name was linked to an important period in forming perceptions of the outside world and shaping internal political consciousness in the Soviet Union. Study of the United States, U.S. policies, and Soviet-American relations encouraged Soviet international affairs specialists of 1960-80s to open their minds to broader perspectives on global reality. They gradually began to lay aside party propaganda stereotypes and Marxist-Leninist dogma and to start thinking in more complex terms. This process led them to create not only a new body of literature but also to develop a modern new language that they tried to teach to the country’s political and military leadership.
As an advisor and in some ways mentor to several Soviet Communist Party general secretaries, Arbatov, together with other open-minded people, attempted to give Soviet-American relations a more civilized and predictable nature and to exclude the disastrous possibility of head-on confrontation between the USSR and United States. Détente and arms control were in many ways the result of their efforts. The world owes a debt of gratitude to these people – many of whom, including Arbatov, fought on the frontlines in World War II – for ensuring that the Cold War remained “cold.”
During the perestroika years, Arbatov was one of the authors and conduits of the new political thinking that sought to renounce confrontation, demilitarize international relations, and build a common security system. He had the courage and energy to defend new approaches, in particular demilitarizing the country’s foreign policy, in fierce debates with influential opponents who were used to relying primarily on military force. This approach made him some enemies, but he can take credit for being one of the people who helped find a way to end the Cold War.
Arbatov’s main material legacy is the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, which he founded in 1967. He brought some of the finest and most talented scholars to work at the Institute. Although they studied the United States, these scholars constantly had their own country in mind. The Institute produced a whole constellation of prominent political and public figures, diplomats, and publicists. Those who have stayed on in “Arbatov’s institute,” as it was called both at home and abroad during the Soviet period, continue their founder’s work, studying a foreign country to the benefit of their own.
Arbatov’s era has passed into history now. Neither the Communist Party of the Soviet Union nor the USSR exist now, and Russian-American relations have a different character and weight in international relations today. The current Russian and U.S. presidents belong to a generation that played no part in the Cold War. Much of what Arbatov stood up for in such intense polemics is now universally accepted and no longer the subject of debate. But his mark on Soviet history remains, as does his contribution to modern Russia, and he lives on in the memories of colleagues, students, and all of those for whom he will always be a figure of great significance.
In Memory of Georgy Arbatov
Natalia Bubnova, deputy director for communications at the Carnegie Moscow Center
The death of Georgy Arbatov, one of the twentieth century’s great public figures and a man who had a direct influence on shaping modern Russian-American relations, is a great personal loss for all of the current and former staff at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies.
Arbatov established the Institute and headed it for 30 years. The Institute was founded at the end of the 1960s, during the first years of détente. Under Arbatov’s guidance, it blazed a trail toward normal life at a time when even dreaming of it seemed dangerous and impossible. In the Soviet Union, the Institute played a role comparable to that of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the United States, the latter acting as counterweight to the Pentagon and CIA.
The Institute proposed and promoted an alternative to international relations based on force and pressure. It consistently supported the ideal of a “nuclear-free world and survival of mankind,” which was the name of the mid-1980s Congress initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and organized by the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies and the Moscow-based Space Research Institute.
The Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies was one of those Soviet research centers where, despite overall stagnation in the Soviet Union, ideas flourished and open exchanges were a way of life. It was, in the words of the poet Byron, the “eternal spirit of the chainless Mind, brightest in dungeons.” Along with the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies was the main foreign policy think tank in the Soviet Union.
Arbatov built the Institute’s staff, supported them, and fueled them with his energy. We all felt ourselves to be among equals, and we owed this to Arbatov. The Institute was free of formalism and bureaucratic emptiness. At a time when everyone was always holding endless meetings, we managed to avoid interminable, senseless gatherings. I recall how on the eve of the November 7 Anniversary of the Revolution holiday, Arbatov in his customary manner opened the meeting. Instead of making a long speech, he said: “You young people will dance now, and I will listen from my office and enjoy the show. Happy holiday!”
We were like one big family. The Institute took those who could not fit into official organizations such as the Foreign Ministry, those at a crossroads in their lives in what was a difficult time for the entire country. No matter what the problems we faced outside, everything seemed to fall into place when we entered the Institute. It offered uniquely warm and friendly contact with interesting and intelligent people in an atmosphere of mutual help and support. Those who worked there ten, twenty, or more years ago still meet today, keep up with each other’s lives and stay in contact.
Difficult though it is, with the loss of an exceptional man, we should try to remember his long and good life and all he did for his country and for international relations, for the people around him, and for his colleagues. The years spent working under his leadership were, for many people, the best years of their lives. We are eternally grateful to him for this.
About Georgy Arbatov
Robert Legvold, Marshall Shulman professor emeritus of political science at Columbia University, member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, director of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (EASI), launched by the Endowment
With Georgy Arbatov's passing we, but not history, have lost one of the handful of senior figures on both sides who brought sanity and restraint to the Cold War confrontation. He did this through the power of his intellect, the keen, creative, and cautionary sophistication he brought to his analysis of the problems of the day, and the wise advice – not always heeded – that he provided leaders in his country and mine over more than two decades. He also did it, still more uniquely, by the generations of analysts that he assembled, inspired, and protected at the institute he founded, a young phalanx who introduced to the Soviet side a United States that was complex, often conflicted, and, for all the difficulties between the two nations, a country worth cooperating with in a world that defied simple-minded beliefs.