"We're doing the worst thing to you: We're depriving you of an enemy."
So spoke Georgi Arbatov to American journalists in the 1980s, when his country, the Soviet Union, was going through the throes of perestroika (restructuring and reforming). Arbatov, founder of the USA and Canadian Institute in Moscow, adviser to Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev, and confidant, throughout his long career, to a gamut of figures from German Chancellor Willi Brandt and Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme to Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush, has dedicated his life to domestic reform at home and positive diplomacy with the outside world.
Last year, he published his autobiography, "Detstvo Otrochestvo Voina (Childhood, Adolescence, War)," which I have just finished reading. As far as I am aware, the book has yet to be translated into any foreign language; and, publishers take note: This book affords stunning insights into the development of policy and thought in Russia in the 20th century.