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Soviet Foreign Policy at the Crossroads: Conflict and/or Collaboration?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Vernon V. Aspaturian
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Extract

The decision of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to occupy Czechoslovakia in August 1968, while it represents a fundamental turning point in Soviet foreign policy, most of whose implications are ambiguous yet ominous, should not be permitted to obscure the fact that the Soviet regime remains confronted with a wide array of postponed internal and external problems that demand action and yet defy resolution. The decision to arrest forcibly the processes of liberalization in Czechoslovakia stands out as an uncharacteristic act of will on the part of a regime whose four years in power have been marked by drift, indecisiveness, vacillation, paralysis, and “muddling through.” For five years the government of Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin has postponed action on painful problems, has permitted events and situations to accumulate dangerously, and in general has allowed itself to be dominated by events rather than domesticating them. During its first two years in office the regime's inaction was perhaps inaccurately ascribed to prudence, caution, and calculated restraint. It now appears in retrospect that paralysis was confused with prudence, inertia was mistaken for caution, and factional indecisiveness was accepted as self-restraint.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Summer 1969 , pp. 589 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1969

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References

1 Khrushchev held both the post of First Secretary of the Communist Parry and that of Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Brezhnev succeeded to the former post and Kosygin to the latter.

2 Cf., for example, the remarkable document, “Thoughts on Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom,” by the celebrated Soviet scientist, Andrei D. Sakharov, which represents a virtual repudiation of ideology as a factor in Soviet foreign policy calculations. Although this document has restricted circulation inside the Soviet Union, it apparently represents the views of a significant number of Soviet scientists, artists, and other intellectuals. For the text see The New York Times, July 22, 1968.

3 “Statement by the Spokesman of the Chinese Government—A Comment on the Soviet Government's Statement of August 3,” Peking Review, 08 16, 1963 (Vol. 6, No. 33), p. 14.Google Scholar

4 Cited by Shub, Anatole, “Lessons of Czechoslovakia,” Foreign Affairs, 01 1969 (Vol. 47, No. 2), p. 267Google Scholar. cf. also Aspaturian, Vernon V., “The Aftermath of the Czech Invasion,” Current History, 11 1968 (Vol. 55, No. 327), p. 263Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Aspaturian, Vernon V., “Dialectics and Duplicity in Soviet Diplomacy,” Journal of International Affairs, 1963 (Vol. 17, No. 1), pp. 42–60Google Scholar, and “Diplomacy in the Mirror of Soviet Scholarship” in Keep, John and Brisby, Liliana (ed.), Contemporary History in the Soviet Mirror (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), pp. 243–274Google Scholar.

6 Parts of this section are adapted from Aspaturian, Vernon V., “Foreign Policy Perspectives in the Sixties,” in Dallin, Alexander and Larson, Thomas B. (ed.), Soviet Politics Since Khrushchev (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 141–144Google Scholar.

7 Pravda, December 31, 1961.

8 Khrushchev interview with Gardner Cowles, April 20, 1962, as quoted in “Confessions Concerning the Line of Soviet-US Collaboration Pursued By the New Leaders of the CPSU,” (Hung Chi editorial, February 11, 1966) (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966), p. 6Google ScholarPubMed.

9 Ibid., pp. 3–4. The two Soviet books were published by the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

10 Ibid., p. 3.

11 Ibid., p. 2.

12 Ibid., p. 5.

13 Rinascita, August 4, 1967, as cited in Brzezinski, Zbigniew, “Peace and Power,” Encounter, 11 1968 (Vol. 31, No. 5), p. 5Google Scholar.

14 Krasnaya Zvezda, February 21, 1967, Cf. also The New York Times, July 21, 1966. On the other hand, Taipei has expressed concern that the turmoil on the Chinese mainland might precipitate a joint Soviet-American intervention resulting in “another Yalta, a Russo-American deal at China's expense.” (The New York Times, February 19, 1967.) And in March 1969 Peking made the strange charge that the visit of Soviet journalist Victor Louis to Taiwan was part of a scheme to collude with Chiang Kaishek against Peking. The Soviet fear of a Sino-German and a Sino-American rapprochement directed against Moscow has become a recurrent theme in the Soviet press since March 1969.

15 This resolution was adopted in connection with the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty.

16 The average age of the Politburo is 59. The youngest member is 51, the oldest is 70.