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ON THE ROCKS: GORBACHEV AND THE KURILE ISLANDS A thesis Presented to the Faculty of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy by Lisbeth Tarlow Bernstein In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 1997 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9726906 UMI Microform 9726906 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Between 1985 and 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev made dramatic shifts in Soviet foreign policy in regard to the United States, Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact states, China, and the communist states in the developing world. No comparable adjustment was made in Soviet-Japanese relations, especially with respect to the bilateral dispute over the Kurile Islands. This study seeks to explain why no substantial progress was made between Moscow and Tokyo. Was an opportunity missed? Were the barriers to progress ideological, political, economic, strategic or a combination? The study seeks to answer these questions through analysis of private notes and meeting summaries not previously shown to Western scholars and interviews with some of Gorbachev's top advisers, including Aleksandr Yakovlev, Georgii Shakhnazarov, and Roald Sagdeev. The analysis uses several methodological approaches: realism and ideological perspectives; organizational and bureaucratic explanations; and learning and related concepts from cybernetics. It also provides an account of the evolution of the Kurile Islands issue to highlight Gorbachev's geopolitical "inheritance." The study reveals that three conditions had to be satisfied for Gorbachev to embrace and implement successfully a new policy initiative on the Kuriles: (1) "learning," or the absorption of ideas that would produce a different conceptual paradigm about Japan; (2) a "propitious political environment" in which both domestic and international political spheres would be conductive to the adoption of a major policy shift; and (3) a sufficiently compelling "policy imperative." When these conditions converged in 1990, Gorbachev sanctioned a semi-official "back-channel" negotiation to produce a solution to the territorial issue. Although this solution revolved around a transfer to Moscow of more than $20 billion of Japanese aid, the negotiators were charged with framing the agreement to avoid any suggestion of what it really was—an "islands-for-cash" deal. When Gorbachev met with Kaifu in April 1991, the summit produced only modest results. The reason for this missed opportunity lay in the collapse of the "propitious political environment." The domestic economic conditions were such that a "policy imperative" had materialized. However, the overall domestic political support Gorbachev needed to sustain such an initiative had crumbled. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank, first and foremost, the members of my dissertation committee at Fletcher: Professors John C. Perry, Hannes Adomeit, and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr. My interest in Russian/Soviet-Japanese relations was first sparked in Professor Perry's Japanese diplomatic history course. Over the past years I have continued to be inspired by his vision of the North Pacific region, and to benefit from his tireless efforts to build a program that brings together people and ideas from all comers of that region. In Professor Adomeit, I have a friend and colleague with a profound interest in, knowledge about, and willingness to discuss, at all hours of the day, Russia and the former Soviet Union in general, and the Gorbachev phenomenon in particular. I thank him for all of his help in refining both the style and substance of this dissertation. Since 1992,1 have had the enormous good fortune to work as associate director at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, a haven for students and scholars of Russian and post-Soviet studies. I am especially grateful to its director, Timothy J. Colton, for his patience and flexibility in supporting my effort to complete this dissertation. I thank John Schoeberlein-Engel, executive director of the Central Asia Forum at the Davis Center, from whose intelligence, scholarship, kindness, and generosity of spirit I constantly benefit. I work with a wonderful staff, and I thank them for their support in so many ways. A special note of thanks goes to Sergei Grigoriev, who, as deputy spokesman for Gorbachev from 1990, was in a unique position to observe the events of the later Gorbachev period which play such a central role in this study. I thank Sergei for sharing his encyclopedic memory for names and facts, his insights into the workings of the Soviet Party and state structures under Gorbachev, and his time. My cup runneth over with remarkable friendships, too numerous to name, who have cheered me along this path. I will only mention one, Barbara Kates-Gamick, who has shared this experience with me from start to finish. A native of the Boston area, I am blessed to be surrounded by a large and loving extended family who nourish me literally and figuratively. In particular, my parents, Alma and Merton Tarlow, have empowered and encouraged me to pursue this goal. I owe a special debt of thanks to my husband, Stanley, who has tolerated my intense work habits with enormous patience, amusement, and love. I dedicate this dissertation to my sons, Michael Aaron and Geoffrey Tarlow Bernstein, who make my life so rich. Their support of my preoccupation with Russia augurs well for their own engagement in the world. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TRANSLITERATION OF RUSSIAN TERMS In the transliteration of Russian terms, the Library of Congress style has been followed here. To enhance readability, however, some modifications have been made. The italics have been dispensed with in political household words such as perestroika. In such words the soft sign~in standard style indicated by an apostrophe—has also been deleted. Hence, the "correct" glasnost' has been rendered simply as glasnost. The Library of Congress transliteration for Boris El'tsin, Evgenii Primakov, et al. was also abandoned for the commonly adopted spelling Boris Yeltsin and Yevgeni Primakov. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Introduction ........................................................................................................1 I. Methodological Approaches .............................................................................6 Families of Methodological Explanations .............................................. 7 Explaining Gorbachev's Foreign Policy: Using Concepts of Learning Theory and Bureaucratic Politics ..............................17 Gorbachev and the Kurile Islands ......................................................... 26 II. The Gorbachev Inheritance: Russia, Japan, and the Kuriles until the 1980s.................................................................................................27 Geographical Setting and Definition of Terms ......................................27 Historical Context ..................................................................................29 Post World War II Soviet-Japanese Relations .......................................68 The Gorbachev Inheritance ....................................................................80 III. Learning Without Action: March 1985-June 1988 ......................................