| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines the most powerful constructions of Soviet nuclear identity at
three stages of nuclear decision-making (acquisition, the arms race, disarmament)
throughout the course of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United
States from 1941 until 1991. Most importantly, it elaborates on the significance of this
identity to the enactment and justification of Soviet nuclear policy from Joseph Stalin
to Mikhail Gorbachev. Soviet nuclear policy during the Cold War was broadly
attributed in the International Relations (IR) literature to security/deterrence concerns,
the Soviet desire for ideological and military superiority over the US, and the
psychology of the Soviet leaders. By adopting a poststructuralist gender-mindful
identity-focused approach, this thesis explores not why these nuclear policies were
enacted, but how they were made possible seeing nuclear identity as both constitutive
of and a product of policy. This direction of inquiry has been traditionally overlooked
within the literature on nuclear proliferation but can be utilised to answer important
unanswered questions.
Through analysis of the official speeches, notes, private conversations, press releases,
and autobiographical reflections of Soviet leaders, this thesis demonstrates that
representations of identity mattered when it came to nuclear policy in the Soviet
Union. First, it argues that the articulation of an aggressive, competitive, and hypermasculine superpower identity grounded in the strength of the military-industrial
complex was interlinked with nuclear weapons acquisition and with the politics of a
rapid nuclear build-up. However, the evolution of Soviet nuclear identity enabled a
different course of policy, moving from the rapid arms race to the most significant
arms reduction in history under the leadership of Gorbachev in the late-1980s.
Consequently, the second argument is that the continuous construction and
reinforcement of a cooperative, ethical, and paternalistic nuclear identity grounded in
human security and total nuclear abolition eventually made disarmament possible. In
exploring various nuclear identity constructions in the Soviet Union over time, this
thesis makes a significant contribution to ideational IR scholarship on nuclear
proliferation as well as to the poststructuralist identity/policy literature and feminist IR
studies. It deepens our comprehension of the Soviet case, with implications for understanding nuclear states’ behaviour and the possible directions for achieving
disarmament. | en |
