Air University Review, November-December 1983
Dr. Gary L. Guertner
The death of Leonid Brezhnev completed an ongoing process of internal maneuvering and patronage that has evidently produced a successor with a strong political base. The elevation of Yuri Andropov to General-Secretary only two days after Brezhnev’s death suggests early and skillful maneuvering in what appears to be as close to an "orderly" succession as any in Soviet history. In the West, the new leadership has sent Soviet specialists scurrying to read Andropov’s speeches for clues about the future of Soviet-American relations.
Assessing Soviet behavior can be tedious, and, at best, only tentative conclusions can be reached. There are the predictable problems of holding a closed society up to the light of academic scrutiny. Facts are withheld or incomplete, misleading, and even false information is published in Soviet source materials. Compounding these difficulties are the complex biases and preconceived ideas about Soviet intentions held by many Americans toward our long-term rival. Analysis often begins from these two levels of darkness.
Kremlinologist Marshall Shulman recently made an important distinction on this problem. Kremlinology, he argued, is the effort to gain informed intuitions about the Kremlin’s inner politics. It is useful but amounts to little more than guesswork. Soviet studies, on the other hand, seek to understand what has happened in the past and why. This, according to Professor Shulman, is the more reliable approach since it reveals a great deal about "patterns of conduct." In other words, leadership transitions are important but only to the extent that they tell us something about policy transitions, which is the subject of this essay.
Before looking into the future of Soviet-American relations, it is important to take a backward glance and reflect on patterns of conduct during and after the previous three succession periods. Specifically, this will include the evolving Soviet concept of peaceful coexistence and its probable evolution in the post-Brezhnev era.
The Soviet perception of peaceful coexistence with the West changed dramatically from the periods of Lenin to Stalin, from Stalin to Khrushchev, and from Khrushchev to Brezhnev. Without these changes, Soviet-American relations would be even more tense than they are today. If the past is a faithful indicator, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Brezhnev’s successors will move rapidly to improve relations with the West. Western leaders should be cautious, perhaps even skeptical, toward future Soviet initiatives. They should not, however, reject Soviet initiatives out of hand or miss opportunities that might have a positive effect on turning Soviet priorities and resources inward toward their considerable social and economic problems. Looking at the past may offer insights and suggest strategies for future Soviet-American relations.
Lenin and his published legacy play an important role in legitimizing contemporary policymaking. Soviet leaders must find him to be an uncertain compass, since he was both dogmatic and flexible. This apparent contradiction can be partially resolved if one distinguishes between propaganda and doctrine and between the rhetoric of a leader out of power and that of a leader in power. His collective literature, which forms a great deal of Communist doctrine and ideology in foreign affairs, consists of published articles, speeches, and testimony made in defense of or opposition to specific policies of a particular period. It is not surprising that political assumptions changed from one period to another and from one generation of leaders to another after Lenin in response to new challenges. Soviet ideology did not fall from on high into the hands of its architects; rather, as a recent text observes, "it evolved out of the crucible of the political struggles in which its proponents were engaged."1
For this reason, Soviet propaganda has historically fluctuated widely over short periods of time. Basic doctrines and concepts such as economic laws of capitalism, capitalist hostility, or peaceful coexistence, however, change less frequently and usually over longer periods. When changes in Soviet doctrine do occur, they are significant. The doctrinal modifications in Soviet concepts of peaceful coexistence have played a central role in their approach to East-West relations. This role from Lenin through Brezhnev may provide insights to the problems and direction of the new leadership.
Lenin was the first but not the last Soviet leader to modify the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. Lenin’s doctrine was the inevitable outgrowth of his adaptations of Marxism to Russia and the world as he saw it.
Marxist theories explained the internal affairs of capitalist states. These theories predicted that capitalism would fall through its own internal contradictions and that communism would ultimately pervade the world as its successor. Capitalism’s fall was not only desirable but demonstrably inevitable, according to Marx’s "scientific laws." Through his angry genius, Lenin and other Marxists saw a powerful economic base capable of high-mass production but with its entire superstructure resting on the backs of an impoverished working class. High- mass production combined with poverty and low consumption contributed to social chaos, depression, and monopoly capitalism. Inevitably capitalism would breed its successor as the masses would rise up and through proletarian revolution combine industrial production with equitable distribution through a socialist society.2 Lenin’s most significant contribution to Marxism was the extension of his theories to explain international relations. In effect, Lenin turned Marxism into a major theory of foreign policy. In his essay, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," Lenin explained that not only was capitalism exploitive to its own working class, but it also required international expansion. It is important to remember that Lenin expressed these views in 1916, before any Communist states were in existence.
Imperialism, he argued, produced an international system in which capitalist states shared a common socioeconomic structure that fed on competition and conflict for overseas markets, colonies, and raw materials. Wars were inevitable as long as capitalist states existed. Lenin saw World War I in precisely these terms. Only socialist revolutions throughout the capitalist-state system could rid the world of its major source of conflict. That struggle could begin in the exploited nations on which capitalist societies depended for their stability. Break the system’s weakest chain through revolution and wars of liberation and the entire structure of capitalism would fall. One spark would precipitate continuous revolution. For Lenin, the first spark was Russia.
Lenin’s success in leading the first socialist revolution produced substantial modifications in his theories. At the time, Lenin and his followers gave revolution in Russia great importance because they saw it as the beginning of revolution everywhere. Victory through the revolutionary efforts of respective Communist parties would occur country by country.
The role of the first socialist state was not made explicit in Lenin’s prescription. His doctrine held that revolution as such was not exportable. It must be generated initially from within when "objective conditions" were present. At minimum, these conditions included a system of socioeconomic exploitation and widespread class consciousness and opposition. The first socialist state could aid and abet revolutions elsewhere but nothing in Marxist-Leninist theory required that it initiate war. As both world wars have demonstrated, successful Communist revolution has grown out of "other peoples" wars.
It is true that during the Russian Revolution and civil war Lenin saw armed conflict between communism and capitalism as inevitable. He saw a role for Soviet arms in that struggle, but it is necessary to place those declarations in their historical context. Lenin made his most bellicose statements during the revolution, at a time when forces from Western nations, including U.S. forces, were occupying parts of Russia, and when Lenin naïvely believed that the fall of capitalism generally was right around the corner.
By 1921, Lenin saw that the stability of capitalism was a long-run phenomenon. The precarious situation inside the new Soviet state required and gave rise to the notion of peaceful coexistence with capitalism. Peaceful coexistence was never explicitly developed in detail by either Lenin or Stalin. In fact, both Soviet leaders used the term only rarely. Rather, the policy was implicit in Soviet priorities and in their skillful application of realpolitik. Coexistence was essential not only for building the political and economic power of the state but also to keep the flame of revolution alive lest capitalist hostility be provoked to crush the revolution during its most formative and vulnerable stage. Coexistence with the West was a short-term tactic required by internal weakness. In the long term the Soviet view of the world continued to be based on the concept of capitalist hostility and the inevitability of war so long as capitalism existed. This concept was to remain a pivotal part of Soviet foreign policy.3
Lenin had begun the turn toward consolidating internal power. That, in turn, required placing Soviet national interests above proletarian internationalism. The doctrine of peaceful coexistence could never have survived its many internal critics if national priorities did not continue to be preeminent in Soviet thinking. Stalin was even more insistent on these priorities. He looked inward with such vengeance that all efforts to build communism with a "human face" were swept aside. It is the Stalin legacy that dominates American perceptions of communism and remains the predominant backdrop to contemporary Soviet-American relations.
Lenin’s death in January 1924 accelerated a succession struggle that had begun in earnest more than a year earlier following Lenin’s first stroke, which had effectively removed him from public life. Lenin’s policies after the bloody three-year civil war in the Soviet Union were models of compromise and moderation compared with what was to follow. It was this contrast in policies that prompted Winston Churchill to observe that two great tragedies had befallen Russia: "The first was Lenin’s birth; the second, his death."
Lenin, aged 52 when he suffered his first stroke, was referred to as the "old man" by the 26-member Central Committee whose average age was only 38. The "old Bolsheviks" were youthful revolutionaries in comparison with the mean age of 69 years for members of the "contemporary" Politburo.
Few in the West would have predicted Stalin’s rise to power. He maintained a low profile while Lenin was alive. The tyrant that emerged with such force lay dormant in the master bureaucrat and organizer who built a party apparat with loyalties to himself. Opposition was overwhelmed and eventually, destroyed.4
Issues as well as organizational skill played a critical role in the struggle for party leadership. None was more important than the concept of peaceful coexistence implicit in the debate between Stalin and Leon Trotsky over the proper relationship of the new Soviet state and the non-Communist world. Trotsky argued that Russia could not on its own build a complete socialist state. That would have to await the spread of revolution to industrialized states in Europe. Moreover, the proper role of the Soviet state was to aid and abet such revolutions.
Stalin countered Trotsky’s theory of "permanent revolution" with his idea of "socialism is one country." Stalin insisted that not only was it possible to build socialism in the Soviet Union, but it was also a necessity if the proletariat were to survive in a world of hostile and temporarily stabilized capitalist states.5
Stalin’s argument for domestic priorities was far more attractive than the dimly held light at the end of Trotsky’s very long path to socialism. Trotsky argued for more and more revolutions before socialism could be secure. Stalin offered respite to an exhausted people after a long war and revolution. Trotsky’s enemies openly worried that Lenin’s former Commissar of War with his forceful personality and ties to the generals would become a Bolshevik Napoleon.6 Stalin’s formula implicitly rejected the idea that revolutionary war would be initiated by Russia’s proletariat to assist Europeans in overthrowing capitalism. His ruthless policies to develop "socialism in one country" were legitimized by a world view based on a series of mutually reinforcing propositions that all led to the same gloomy conclusion: the Soviet Union was surrounded by capitalist enemies with whom no real cooperation was possible since they were dedicated to the destruction of the world’s first socialist state.7
Stalin divided the world into two camps, socialist and capitalist. The logic of "socialism in one country" was to buy time and build the strength of the Soviet camp. "Capitalist encirclement" and "capitalist hostility" made war inevitable although not necessarily imminent. In the meantime, peaceful coexistence and cautious diplomacy were required to avoid provoking conflict with capitalist powers.
The final victory of socialism in the Soviet Union was defined by Stalin as the achievement of sufficient security to prevent the restoration of capitalism. To accomplish this, Stalin argued, "it is necessary for the present capitalist encirclement to be replaced by a socialist encirclement."
It is important to recognize the thrust of Stalinist strategic thought. Its preoccupation with conflict, danger, and external aggression aimed at the Soviet state made the development of a general and active strategy of peaceful coexistence impossible. Peaceful coexistence was simply the prerequisite for economic reconstruction and the development of Soviet power. Stalin’s world view legitimized repression at home and diplomatic flexibility abroad.
Stalin’s pragmatic diplomacy rested on his thesis of capitalist encirclement and hostility toward the Soviet state. But it was also true, according to orthodox Leninism, that conflict still existed among capitalist states. These schisms could be skillfully exploited to prevent a united capitalist front against the Soviet state. Realpolitik more than coexistence with or revolution within individual capitalist states became the most salient feature of Stalin’s diplomacy. Stalin’s peaceful coexistence was based on short term, tactical alliances, not on optimistic hope that peace would prevail in the long run.
The pattern was very clear. Stalin continued the diplomatic pattern established in 1922 with the signing of a diplomatic and commercial treaty with the Germans at Rapallo.8 The two pariahs of Europe emerged from isolation with a diplomatic partner to play off against the French and Great Britain. The Treaty of Rapallo resulted in more than a decade of Soviet-German cooperation that included secret military collaboration. Ironically, the German army, with the aid of the Soviet army, bypassed the provisions of Versailles and experimented with new weapons on Soviet territory. Strengthening the German army was hardly a wise strategy for any Soviet leader who placed a high priority on the future prospects of the German Communists’ seizing power.
Stalin’s use of foreign Communist parties is worth noting. Many Westerners feared them for their revolutionary potential. Stalin was often believed to be pursuing a dual-track foreign policy: Proper official diplomacy through the foreign office and subversion through his control of Communist "fifth columns." In fact, both structures tended to support the same track. Stalin turned the Comintern (Communist International) into little more than an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. The role of foreign Communists in a particular country was largely conditioned by the degree of friendliness or hostility of that country toward the Soviet state. This was hardly the role of "general staff for revolution" originally conceived by Lenin and Trotsky.
Stalin’s political agility was especially dramatic following Western appeasement of Hitler at Munich. From Moscow, appeasement appeared to come at the expense of Soviet security since it brought the German army closer to the Soviet border. Stalin countered the following year with the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact which, in effect, turned back the Nazis onto the West at a time when Stalin’s diplomatic initiatives toward Great Britain and France were stalled.9
Soviet historians argue that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was a skillful move on Stalin’s part that bought time to prepare for the anticipated Nazi onslaught. The timing of the Nazi attack in June 1941 was apparently a tactical surprise. The offensive itself was not a strategic surprise. The elaborate military buildup and the defensive barriers constructed in the western military districts prior to the attack lend credence to the Soviet version of events.10 For those who doubt the strategic potency of diplomacy, it is also worth noting that during the final months of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Stalin also signed a non-aggression pact with Japan. The significance of a one-front war for the Soviets should not be lost on U.S. policymakers observing the current pattern of initiatives toward normalizing relations with China.
The Grand Alliance with Western democracies forged military victory, but this coalition formed of military necessity failed to become a permanent structure for building or consolidating peaceful coexistence. The Cold War years of Stalin’s reign saw him revive the old "two camps" thesis with its message about the danger of a capitalist attack against the Soviet Union.
A year before his death, Stalin presented a somber reiteration of war’s inevitability so long as capitalism and imperialism existed. In a more optimistic vein, however, he modified the traditional "two camps" model of international conflict and set the stage for his successors to play a more assertive role in foreign affairs.11 At the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party, Stalin announced an end to the long period of building socialism in one country. The "ebb tide of revolution" had been replaced by a "flow tide." As a result, he urged an abandonment of the essentially defensive policy that had been followed since 1921 and the beginning of a more assertive foreign policy.
The more aggressive posture was made possible, according to Stalin (in his speech at the Nineteenth Party Congress), by the economic and military recovery of the Soviet Union, the consolidation of communism in Eastern Europe and China, and, perhaps most important of all, by the growth of revolutionary movements in the Third World. The Soviets could exploit this by "picking up the banner of nationalism where it had been dropped by the bourgeoisie." This would promote Soviet security by breaking up or preventing the consolidation of anti-Soviet alliances and hasten the collapse of capitalism in general. But even these improved geopolitical developments did not alter Stalin’s perceived threat and permanent enmity of the remaining members of the capitalist world.
Stalin conceived this new offensive in nonmilitary terms. The party line he laid down was carried out almost immediately by his successors. One of them, however, was to carry out major revisions to the theoretical assumptions laid down by both Lenin and Stalin.
Georgi Malenkov seemed the likely successor to Stalin, since he assumed the posts of both Chairman of the Council of Ministers in the government and Secretary of the Party’s Central Committee. Within two weeks, however, Malenkov was "released" from his duties on the Central Committee, leaving Nikita Khrushchev as de facto First Secretary of the Party.12 In retrospect, the removal of Malenkov was the key event in the post-Stalin succession, for Khrushchev was able to strengthen his power base and outmaneuver his rivals. Before the year’s end, Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s head of the feared secret police, was arrested and shot. By 1955, Malenkov resigned from his remaining post. Khrushchev had chosen his issues carefully to build a winning coalition within the party. He had asserted strong support for heavy industry and (like Andropov) support for the military. On other issues he played the role of "centrist" or innovator.13
As we watch the current succession to Brezhnev unfold, it is important to remember that no one in the West, based on Khrushchev’s rise to power, could have predicted the doctrinal revisions he would develop. These were first elaborated in his report to the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956.
Khrushchev’s first revision was based on the growing nuclear arms race and the danger of nuclear war with the United States. He needed to establish an ideological basis for the existence of a long-term relationship between communism and capitalism that would not lead to war. Khrushchev, like the deposed Malenkov, believed that nuclear weapons had fundamentally altered the nature of international conflict. Nuclear war would result in the "mutual destruction" of both Communist and capitalist societies.
Once the new Soviet leader had taken the position that nuclear war would destroy Communist society, it became imperative to revise the Leninist theory of the inevitability of war lest he end up with a theory of inevitable doom. This Khrushchev skillfully did by asserting:
As long as capitalism survives in the world, the reactionary forces representing the interests of the capitalist monopolies will continue their drive towards military gambles and aggression, and may try to unleash war. But war is not fatalistically inevitable.14
Khrushchev had reversed both Lenin and Stalin by declaring that capitalism no longer meant the inevitability of war. Peaceful coexistence among states with different social systems could become a permanent feature of international politics rather than a short-term tactic.
The basic aggressive nature of capitalism had not changed. What had changed was the fundamental nature of war that allowed the Soviet Union to deter or perhaps even defeat aggression. In Khrushchev’s words, "Today there are mighty social and political forces possessing formidable means to prevent the imperialists from unleashing war." Khrushchev later added that "capitalist encirclement" no longer existed and, furthermore, the "final" victory of socialism had been achieved. "The danger of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union is ruled out. This means that the triumph of socialism is not only complete, but final.’’15
Khrushchev’s theory of peaceful coexistence was the beginning of an active, optimistic, and purposeful strategy. It was no longer the tactical necessity of Stalin’s "socialism in one country." Peaceful coexistence rested on the growing nuclear capabilities of the Soviet state. It did not, however, mean reconciliation of the two hostile systems. The class struggle would continue but at a more regulated and less dangerous level of confrontation.
Support for the class struggle through wars of national liberation but rejection of wars between states was a clear theoretical distinction made in Khrushchev’s theory. The former would continue, as would the obligation of the Soviet Union to support them. It was never made clear precisely how the Soviets would support wars of national liberation.
A corollary to the theory of peaceful coexistence was Khrushchev’s optimistic assertion that Communist revolution could be brought about by peaceful means. "Our enemies," he argued, "like to depict us Leninists as advocates of violence always and everywhere. . . . It is not true that we regard violence and civil war as the only way to remake society." He went on to describe how the working classes might transform "bourgeois democracy" into the instrument of the "people’s will."
The right-wing bourgeois parties and their governments are suffering bankruptcy with increasing frequency. In these circumstances the working class, by rallying around itself the working peasantry, the intelligentsia, all patriotic forces, and resolutely repulsing the opportunist elements who are incapable of giving up the policy of compromise with the capitalists and landlords, is in a position to defeat the reactionary forces opposed to the interests of the people, to capture a stable majority in parliament, and transform the latter from an organ of bourgeois democracy into a genuine instrument of the people’s will.16
In another theme directed more perhaps at his home audience, Khrushchev appealed to Soviet workers to increase productivity until the Soviet system demonstrated its superiority by outstripping the West economically. This "competitive coexistence" would, in turn, demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet system to others, especially in the Third World where it might be emulated.17
Winning power through parliamentary majorities or model emulation were clear departures from Lenin’s view that war or violent revolution were the midwives of social change. What Khrushchev was struggling to define through doctrinal revisions were the means for advancing communism in the nuclear age and in the face of Western military superiority. He provided a formula for peace that did not require a stalemate in the class struggle.
It is ironic that the reception of Khrushchev’s revisions in both China and the United States ranged from skepticism to hostility. Chinese leaders feared that Soviet timidity would slow the world revolutionary movement. Publicly, they saw nuclear weapons as a means for advancing world communism. Privately, they may have been more concerned that the Soviet leader had, in effect, removed their protective, nuclear umbrella at a time of intense hostilities in Sino-American relations. There was good cause to question the value of an alliance with the Soviets in the event of war with the United States. Khrushchev’s revisionism sounded very much as if the Soviets were prepared to leave their Chinese brethren "twisting in the west wind."
In the United States, Khrushchev’s reversal of the inevitability of war went largely unnoticed. Instead, Americans saw his support for wars of national liberation as a threatening new means for escalating the global struggle. For Americans, the linkage of Soviet activities in the Third World was a pivotal part of Soviet-American relations. Protracted conflict, even at a low level of intensity, was not a sphere of activity governed by a different set of laws. For President Kennedy, Khrushchev’s challenge was one of the major threats faced by the new administration. Our early involvement in Vietnam can be traced to Kennedy’s belief that Southeast Asia represented a test case for the future success or failure of wars of national liberation.18
There were compelling reasons for American skepticism of peaceful coexistence. In practice, the Soviets were discriminating in supporting only those struggles that seemed to enjoy Lenin’s criteria for "objective conditions." This meant that "progressive forces" had to be either already in power or very likely to achieve it in the short term. But Soviet support ranged far beyond political endorsements and model emulation. Soviet strategy included massive arms support, advisers, and, more recently, surrogate military forces. It is also true that successive U.S. administrations have credited the Soviets with more power and influence than they have actually enjoyed in directing change in a politically intractable and nationalistic Third World.
Nikita Khrushchev presided over a remarkable period of ideological and conceptual innovation. He might have succeeded in forging a new and less tense era. The fact that he managed some of the most severe crises of the Cold War demonstrates the problem that continues to plague Soviet-American relations. How can the Soviets embrace a "science" of history that prescribes sharp political, economic, and ideological struggles between capitalism and communism while precluding military conflict between states that embrace the contending systems?
No bill of particulars was ever articulated in the Soviet Union to explain Khrushchev’s removal. But his colleagues evidently feared he was moving too far, too fast, on too many fronts. There may well have been widespread agreement after the Cuban missile crisis that the unfavorable strategic military balance threatened the source of Soviet power on which Khrushchev had built his theoretical revisions. Cuba may well have reminded them of Stalin’s cynical observation: "You’ll see, when I am gone the imperialist powers will wring your necks like chickens."19
In October 1964, a vacationing Khrushchev was informed that his colleagues were to install a more "stable" team of leaders. He received the news while conversing with two orbiting cosmonauts.20 With a final message to outer space, Nikita Khrushchev "retired" to the sudden obscurity that only the Soviet system could provide.
Brezhnev had been a protégé of Khrushchev. Western newsmen had once asked who would replace him as first secretary if he died. "Brezhnev," was his insightful answer.21 Khrushchev’s forced departure was followed by what appeared from the outside to be a collective leadership. Four dominant leaders emerged from the seven members of the Politburo who survived politically into the post-Khrushchev period. Brezhnev at age 58 became Party Secretary, Aleksei Kosygin headed the State bureaucracy as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Nikolai Podgorny headed the State as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and Mikhail Suslov carried on as guardian of party ideology through his functions as Secretary of the Central Committee.
These four presented a common front and a return to normalcy. How contested the internal struggle for dominance was is not known, but it is clear that like all previous leaders, Brezhnev as First Secretary of the party was best positioned to consolidate his personal power. This he did, but only after a period of more than ten years. His dominant position became clear by the Twenty-fifth Party Congress (1976) where he was given top military rank, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and his position as Chairman of the powerful Defense Council was publicly acknowledged for the first time. The following year, Podgorny was removed as President, and Brezhnev became both head-of-state and party leader.
The policy transition that accompanied Brezhnev’s rise to power shows considerable modification from the Khrushchev period. Peaceful coexistence remained as Khrushchev had defined it but with substantial de-emphasis in policy priorities. When the goals of Soviet foreign policy were listed in Brezhnev’s speeches, peaceful coexistence was often ranked last, behind proletarian internationalism, building communism in the Soviet Union, and building the strength of world socialism.
Building the strength of socialism seemed especially important to the new Soviet leadership. It is essential to remember that Khrushchev built his theories on the foundation of growing Soviet military power, especially nuclear weapons. He seems also to have made greater claims for that power than were justified at the time. The shortcomings of Soviet power were revealed during the Cuban missile crisis. Determined never to be so vulnerable again, Khrushchev’s successors expanded Soviet military programs. These programs produced steady and dramatic increases in Soviet strategic forces during the late l960s while the United States was preoccupied in Vietnam (testing theories of national liberation).
By 1971 the Soviet Union had equaled and then surpassed the United States in the number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The United States retained its strategic advantages in other areas, but it was clear to everyone that the Soviets had overcome the military and political disadvantages that they may have associated with our strategic nuclear preeminence. "Strategic equivalence," much like the original Soviet deployment of strategic nuclear weapons under Khrushchev, accompanied a new Soviet interest in peaceful coexistence, this time under the rubric of détente.
The strategic nuclear buildup was accompanied by a severe downgrading of the importance attached to economic competition. Under Khrushchev, economic competition or "competitive coexistence" played a major part in East-West relations. He argued in the strongest possible terms that the Soviet Union would fulfill its obligation to proletarian internationalism by defeating the West in the battle of economic indices. The Brezhnev leadership had no such faith in economic competition.
Ironically, military priorities contributed substantially to the inability to compete or improve the living standards of the Soviet people. Greatly increased military capabilities under Brezhnev became the principle substitute for a growing inability to compete with the West in any other arena. Military might is the one symbol that continues to confer superpower status.
Strategic parity brought with it other challenges to Soviet foreign policy that were best served by détente in the early l970s. It remained imperative to the Soviets to avoid a nuclear confrontation with the United States. Trade and technology were required by an unsound and declining economy. Détente also served to limit collusion between the United States and China. Even so, détente, like coexistence, did not end the class struggle. According to one widely circulated text in the ‘70s:
Peaceful coexistence is a principle of relations between states which does not extend to relations between the exploited and the exploiters, the oppressed peoples and the colonialists. . . . Marxist-Leninists see in peaceful coexistence a special form of the class struggle between socialism and capitalism in the world, a principle whose implementation ensures the most favorable conditions for the world revolutionary process.22
The widely circulated endorsements of peaceful coexistence through détente exemplified the Soviet ideal of East-West relations. Détente served the security interests of the Soviet state while increasing the opportunities for peaceful socialist construction elsewhere.
The dual track diplomacy of détente and endorsement of the world revolutionary process may have been the Soviet ideal. In the United States, this era of negotiation that accompanied the winding down of American participation in the Vietnam War was to be played by a different set of rules. The Nixon-Kissinger strategy offered concessions in trade, credits, technology, arms control, and European security provided the Soviets made concessions in areas of vital interest to the United States. These concessions were inevitably linked to Soviet behavior both at home (human rights) and abroad (Third World intervention).23
Even though détente resulted in five Soviet-American summits and more than two dozen formal agreements, no consensus on permanent rules of the game were established. The cracks in détente were exposed where Soviet activities in the Third World collided with American theories of linkage politics. Soviet doctrine made it clear that peaceful coexistence combined cooperation with competition. Its competitive aspects were aimed at limiting Western influence and, if possible, increasing Soviet influence throughout the globe. The waning of détente began over issues of human rights and the failure to ratify SALT II, but the critical blow was wielded by Soviet policies in Africa and the invasion of Afghanistan.
Brezhnev presided over both the high and low periods of détente. His final party Congress in February 1981 reaffirmed the policies of détente and pledged to cooperate with the United States in reestablishing superpower dialogue at the highest level.24 The direction and substance of that dialogue will be subjected to the intrigues and power struggles of the Brezhnev succession.
At this writing Yuri Andropov appears firmly established in all three of Brezhnev’s former positions: Party Secretary, Chairman of the Defense Council, and State President, a largely ceremonial post but one with added prestige and authority in foreign affairs.
Much has been made of his former role as Head of Soviet Internal Security in paving his way to power, but it is probably inaccurate to base predictions on his future policies on any negative associations with the KGB. While these contacts make him a well-informed leader, they apparently have not resulted in dogmatism or ideological orthodoxy. In fact, the death of Mikhail Suslov, the last of the rigid Stalin-era ideologues in February 1982, removed what may have been the most formidable opposition to Andropov’s successful drive within the Politburo structure.
Andropov’s early speeches predictably pledged to base policies on "the invincible might" of the Soviet military. These capabilities are to be retained in support of what Andropov later developed as a major endorsement of peaceful coexistence. On 22 November, in his first speech as top party leader before the party’s Central Committee he stated:
We are deeply convinced that the 70s, characterized by détente, were not—as is asserted today by certain imperialist leaders—a chance episode in the difficult history of mankind. No, the policy of détente is by no means a past stage. The future belongs to this policy.25
Andropov’s strong endorsement of peaceful coexistence and his assertion that there are no acceptable alternatives are a positive sign at this early stage of succession. His pledge to retain Soviet military power is not inconsistent with his early effort to show a conciliatory face to both the West and China. Once political power is consolidated, the Soviet military should not be regarded as an irresistible force given the magnitude of domestic problems the new leadership has inherited. Andropov referred explicitly to many of these problems. The obligatory clichés of communism’s triumph over capitalism were dropped in favor of a critical examination of Soviet economic deficiencies. He spoke of "initiatives and enterprise," of greater decentralization, and studying "the experience of fraternal countries." He spoke of the need for incentives for workers and for placing policy personnel correctly so the best workers and scientists were in a position to aid economic growth. This last statement is intriguing for its potential challenge to a Soviet tradition of granting defense industries first call on the Soviet "best and brightest."26
With a declining economy, unrestrained military growth cannot be sustained without at least intermediate efforts to reform and stimulate economic growth. For an economy approximately 60 percent as large as that of the United States, to make progress on issues ranging from such basics as food, consumer goods, health, and housing to more complex issues that include restive nationalities in the U.S.S.R., unstable allies in Eastern Europe, and dependent clients in the Third World will require all of Secretary Andropov’s administrative skills. Further repressing of Soviet citizens will not solve these problems. Dissent does not express itself on Moscow streets. Political activism is sublimated often in the form of apathy, indolence, and alcoholism throughout Russian society. These are not the symbols of a strong economy or powerful state. The former head of the KGB confessed that he "did not have ready recipes" for solving Soviet economic problems. From the tone of his early speeches and in spite of police crackdowns against truant workers, Soviet labor may have less to fear than corrupt and inept bureaucrats from Andropov’s initial wielding of "carrots and sticks." At age 69 and in poor health, Andropov does not have the ten years it took to consolidate the Brezhnev era. He appears to be prepared to move quickly at home and abroad to liquidate weak positions. Early overtures to China, India, Pakistan, and the West indicate efforts to realign diplomatic and military strength for future cooperation or conflict with the United States. That future rests primarily on progress in strategic and theater arms reductions and in developing general ground rules for mutual conduct in the Third World.
In retrospect, Soviet leaders have embraced the strategy of peaceful coexistence first as a shield that protected the development of "socialism in one country." With the deployment of nuclear weapons during the Khrushchev era and the achievement of strategic parity under Brezhnev, military power reinforced that shield and extended its protection over the global class struggle. This will undoubtedly continue but with priority given to Soviet national interests rather than proletarian internationalism.
The East-West conflict in this arena might be alleviated in one of two ways. First, Soviet domestic demands will require less activism in the Third World and could result in less willingness on the part of Soviet leaders to create dependencies. Second, the United States should undertake a much-needed reevaluation of its own strategy. National liberation movements are formed in most instances by broad but extremely nationalistic political coalitions. The United States would be well served by political strategies that distinguish between Soviet support and Soviet domination.27 For the former, U.S. economic power in the form of trade, technology, and investment offers more effective instruments of policy than the military containment of revolution that has plagued Soviet-American relations since the end of World War II. Like Stalin after World War II, the United States should "pick up the banner of nationalism" where it has been dropped by aging bureaucrats who seem unable to solve their own internal problems, much less extend socialism beyond their borders.
In looking at past successions, the one optimistic trend that can be identified is the lack of dogmatism in Soviet ideology. New leaders have not been wedded to a single course of action. Soviet pragmatism and flexibility in the past indicate that U.S. initiatives and policies can play a significant part in determining whether the Andropov era produces a less dangerous period in Soviet-American relations.
U.S. Army War College
Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania
Notes
1. Joseph L. Nogee and Robert H. Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy since World WarII (New York, 1981), p. 14.
2. For a readable account of these views see Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (New York, 1967), chapter VI.
3. A detailed analysis appears in Frederic S. Burin’s "The Communist Doctrine of the Inevitability of War," The American Political Science Review, June 1963, p. 337.
4. Stalin’s consolidation of power is described in Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979), chapters 4 and 5.
5. For a discussion of the debate see Elliot R. Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World State (New York, 1960), pp. 129-63.
6. See Hough and Fainsod, p. 112.
7. Stalin’s world view is described in Burin, pp. 334-54.
8. Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67 (New York, 1974), p. 150.
9. For somewhat different interpretation of these events see Ulam, pp. 257-60 and D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins (Garden City, New York, 1961), pp. 84-97.
10. Fleming, pp. 106-34. See also Otto P. Chaney, "Was It Surprise?" Military Review, April 1969, pp. 56-67.
11. For Stalin’s views, see the account of the Nineteenth Party Congress in Leo Gruliou, editor, Current Soviet Policies (New York, 1953).
12. Hough and Fainsod, pp. 204-06.
13. Ibid., p. 209.
14. For Khrushchev’s statement on the new theory, see Leo Gruliou, editor, Current Soviet Policies II (New York, 1957), pp. 29-63. Emphasis added.
15. Quoted in Paul Marantz, "Changing Soviet Conceptions of East-West Relations," International Journal 27, Spring 1982, p. 226.
16. Quoted in Nogee and Donaldson, p. 30.
17. Marantz, pp. 230-35.
18. Virtually all of Kennedy’s biographers are in agreement on this point.
19. Strobe Talbott, editor, Khrushchev Remembers (Boston, 1970), p. 392.
20. Ulam, p. 573.
21. Hough and Fainsod, p. 242.
22. Quoted in Nogee and Donaldson, p. 245.
23. For Kissinger’s views on linkage politics, see White House Years (Boston, 1979), pp. 129-30.
24. The Congressional Research Service Report No. 8l-203F, The 26th Soviet Communist Party Congress (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1 September 1981), pp. 1-2.
25. New York Times, November 23, 1982, p. A13. Emphasis added.
26. Ibid.
27. See Dan Papp, "Wars of National Liberation and Détente," International Journal 23, 1 (Winter 1976-77), pp. 82-99.
Contributor
Gary L. Guertner
(B.A., M.A., University of Arizona; Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School) is the Henry Stimson Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He has been an officer in the Marine Corps and has taught international relations at California State University, Fullerton, and the University of California at Irvine. Dr. Guertner has written numerous articles on defense and foreign policy for professional journals.Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor