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It was left to Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam, the official who often performed the job of putting forth Pyongyang's most intractable positions, to fiercely attack Moscow's shift on trade and economic relations with Seoul. According to Shevardnadze's internal report, his North Korean counterpart "rather sharply accused the socialist countries of not evaluating the situation in South Korea correctly, of deepening the division of the country and hindering inter-Korean dialogue and [charged that] some socialist countries are betraying socialism for the sake of money." Shevardnadze reported that "these fabricated accusations were firmly rejected by us." The Soviet foreign minister assured the North Koreans that Moscow's relations with Seoul would continue to be unofficial, and he included this commitment in the formal communique issued at the end of the talks.

Shevardnadze did not repeat in public or in his internal report his most emphatic statement in Pyongyang. At the height of the argument with his North Korean counterpart, he declared heatedly that "I am a communist, and I give you my word as a party member: the USSR leadership does not have any intention and will not establish diplomatic relations with South Korea." This would be thrown back in his face later by North Korea-and sooner than anyone guessed.

GORBACHEV MEETS ROH

In 1989, a year of dramatic change in the external relations of the Soviet Union, ideology gave way to pragmatism and internationally accepted standards. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February, ending an occupation that had severely damaged Moscow's standing abroad. In May, Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to Beijing to terminate once and for all the decades-long dispute between the two giants of communism. The live television coverage that had been authorized for the auspicious occasion turned out to be a disaster for Chinese leaders when American network cameras recorded the demonstrations of student protesters during Gorbachev's visit and their bloody suppression on June 4, shortly after he left.

In August, with Gorbachev's approval, the Polish Communist Party gave up power to a coalition headed by the noncommunist trade-union movement Solidarity. This spelled the end of the Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet military power enforced the loyalty of its peripheral satellite states. A series of spectacular events in Eastern Europe followed, in which the communist governments of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were ousted or their leaders forced to reverse their political direction. In November, the crossing points in the Berlin wall were flung open, bringing the symbolic end of the iron curtain that had divided Europe since World War II and leading in time to the absorption of communist East Germany by the West. At a windblown, sea-tossed summit meeting with President George Bush in Malta in December 1989, Gorbachev gratefully accepted American economic aid and declared that the United States and the Soviet Union were no longer enemies.

While his foreign policy was winning praise abroad, Gorbachev was coming under growing criticism at home. The Soviet Union was in the first stages of a painful economic transition, with consumergoods shortages causing longer and longer lines and the budgetary deficit soaring to 12 percent of GNP, roughly six times the equivalent figure for the United States. Public confidence in the Soviet leadership was sharply declining, at a time when loosening controls on expression made it possible for the first time for the public to declare its views.

In these circumstances, Gorbachev saw a profitable relationship with Seoul as a promising new source of economic help for the embattled Soviet leadership. Moreover, by forging a visibly close relationship with South Korea, Moscow was poking a finger in the eye of the standoffish Japanese, who were refusing to provide economic assistance because of the Northern Islands issue. Gorbachev