The Soviets, Germany, And The New Europe

Robbin F Laird

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367296209
• eBook ISBN: 9781000305937
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book assesses the evolution of the Soviet approach toward European security policy since the mid-1980s, as seen from the prism of assessments of and policy toward the Federal Republic of Germany, examining basic Soviet analyses of West Germany in the period prior to unification.

1
The Soviets and the West in Historical Perspective: The Emergent European Security Challenge

With the dramatic changes in Europe and the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, both the nature of Soviet policy toward the West and the analytical questions necessary to understand that policy have changed. This chapter will examine the basic dynamics of change in Soviet foreign policy toward the West and will assess the implications of those dynamics for Soviet foreign policy.

Phases of Soviet Foreign Policy

Soviet foreign policy has gone through a number of significant phases of development, and each phase has left its imprint on the evolving debate about the nature of that policy.¹ First, there was the period of the Russian revolution and the civil war in which the basic ideological nature of Soviet foreign policy was established. The regime sought to protect the revolution from penetration by "counter-revolutionary" forces abroad and inundation by the "backward" Russian masses at home.²

The most notable feature to outside analysts in this period was the ideological cast of Soviet foreign policy. The goal of the Soviet Union was to build a revolutionary order and traditional European geopolitics was to take a back seat to the new class-character of Soviet foreign policy.³ The Soviets sought to accelerate the revolution at home by promoting revolution abroad. This phase of Soviet foreign policy left in its wake the issue of the role of ideology in the making of foreign policy. Was Soviet foreign policy different from other Euro-Asian states on ideological grounds? If so, how important was the ideological variable in the conduct of Soviet foreign policy?

The ascendancy of Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1920s led to a new phase of Soviet foreign policy which lasted until World War II. During this period, the party purges and the great terror closed off the Soviet Union from the outside world. The Russians became a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," as Winston Churchill so aptly characterized them. A "fortress USSR" was built to protect the communist revolution of 1917, the state building and forced-draft industrialization and collectivization of the late 1920s and 1930s, and the personal rule by the General Secretary of the CPSU. A new "tsar" and a new autocracy began to emerge triumphant in this period.

The Stalinist model of economic and political development altered Soviet foreign policy as well.⁴ A new model of domestic development required the subordination of foreign policy to this model. Autarchy or the closing off of the USSR from outside influences became the order of the day. International revolution no longer was an operational goal, which required a revolutionary interaction with the outside world.⁵ Instead "socialism in one country" required the protection of the dynamic new model from outside disturbances.

This period ofRussian foreign policy underscored the tension between autarky and global influences. Did the Russians now possess a unique model of development? Could the Russians develop an autarchic model of development which would allow them to shape a new force in the global arena? (When I use the term "Russians" I am referring to the Russian leadership of the Soviet Union).

The third major period of Soviet foreign policy was that of the years of the "Great Patriotic War." The German invasion of the Soviet Union ended the debate about the preservation of "socialism in one country." Instead, the question became the preservation of the Russian nation. Stalin suddenly embraced pre-Communist symbols of Russian nationalism and he shifted dramatically from the foreign policy premises of the 1930s. Also, defense of the homeland required an alliance with the Western democracies. In short, Stalin shifted from autarchic modernization to a more classic authoritarian model, one which combined traditional nationalism and cooperation with major capitalist nation states.

This period introduced new questions, most of them associated with the failure of the wartime coalition to continue to cooperate in the post-war period. Had the Russians shifted from ideological goals to national ones? Could the Russians cooperate with capitalist countries in pursuing a classic Russian geopolitical strategy? As the Stalin leadership appeared to revive the national style of the tsars from the 16th to the 19th centuries did nationalism matter more than communism? Had the operational ideology of the Soviet leadership undergone a dramatic transformation?

The fourth major period in the evolution of Soviet foreign policy was the formation of the cold war bi-polar international system.⁶ Stalin rapidly shifted from the interdependent authoritarianism embraced during the war to the autarchic totalitarianism of the pre-World War II period, especially after the purges of the mid-1930s. But now this system was to be imposed on the new "allies" of the Soviet Union, namely the people's democracies of Eastern Europe.

In retrospect, it is clear that the downfall of the classic Stalinist model began with the attempt to engulf Eastern Europe and to promote a "socialist model of development."⁷ The Stalinist system rested upon isolating Russia from the outside world, but the building of even a system of socialist "interdependence" undercut the classic autarchic model.

The great tragedy for the Soviet Union was the reimposition of the system of the 1930s upon the Soviet Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Now the challenge was to preserve a socialist model built on Russian nationalism by imposing that model upon Eastern Europe. Foreign policy shifted from defending "socialism in one country" to building socialism in Eastern Europe and forging a new "socialist community" in the East as a basis of competition with the West.

In the early 1950s, the ideological confrontation assumed new dimensions. Now the Soviets had a bridgehead in the West arid military forces within that bridgehead to challenge the West. The "old" values of the bourgeois West were now challenged by the "new" values of the Soviet socialist order.

But the ingestion of Eastern Europe from the beginning was based on a contradiction. How could an autarchic model of development incorporate national entities with traditions and ties to an outside world that rejected isolation? How could one destroy the influence of hundreds of years of "alien" influence in Eastern Europe simply by Soviet occupation and by establishing surrogate "communist" regimes?

This period introduced a new set of questions for analysis. Was the Soviet Union inherently expansionist? Would "socialism in one country" become the model for "international socialism"? Was war with the West inevitable? Did the Russians believe that military victory over the West was the way to advance socialism, even in the nuclear age?⁸

The fifth period was associated with Khrushchev and the reexamination of the Stalinist legacy. Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956 denouncing Stalin and Stalinism began a debate that continues today. To what extent is Stalinism the same as Communism? Is there a genuine socialist alternative for the Soviet Union devoid of Stalinism? Did Stalin represent the Russian national character, or were non-authoritarian alternatives possible in a continent with no democratic experience?⁹

But the times of Khrushchev were optimistic ones. The Soviet economy was growing; the Soviets were consolidating their control over Eastern Europe; and the Soviet leaders believed in their spiritual superiority over the West. In 1956, Soviet tanks repulsed the Hungarian revolution. In 1961, Khrushchev promised to "bury capitalism" by peaceful means, and the party program boasted that the USSR would surpass American economic growth before the end of the century.

The sixth period of Soviet foreign policy was initiated by the overthrow of Khrushchev and the installation of the collective leadership. The Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership of the mid-1960s promised to combine the "advantages of socialism with rapid scientific and technological advancement.¹⁰ These less impulsive new leaders claimed to be more "rational" and more responsive to the "objective laws" of historic development.

The foreign policy of collective leadership was to be less ideological and more pragmatic While continuing to view the West as a competitor, these Soviet leaders hoped to let the West participate in its own demise. Western cooperation with the USSR in economic and arms control accords was possible as long as the West's cultural influence was held at arms length.

But this hopeful beginning was dashed by the seventh period of Soviet foreign policy. This period was begun with the repression of the Czechoslovakian revolution in 1968 and ended with the ascendancy of Yurii Andropov as General Secretary in early 1982. In retrospect, the Czech reform movement in the mid-1960s was the last chance for Soviet socialism to become a force of global significance.¹¹ The Russians, along with their Warsaw Pact allies, crushed a peaceful revolution within the confines of the Czech communist party. Unlike the action against the Hungarians in 1956, the 1968 repression was against a ruling communist party.

The so-called Brezhnev doctrine was articulated by the collective leadership in the wake of the events in Czechoslovakia. This doctrine allowed Russian intervention within Eastern Europe to eliminate anti-socialist elements. Needless to say, the Russian leadership would identify these elements itself. Never had a regime more boldly stated a naked power principle than did Brezhnev and his cohorts. It was also a clear statement of an empire in decline. It could tolerate only those changes it sanctioned itself.

The dynamic thrust of domestic change associated with the Bolshevik revolution and with Stalinism was waning.¹² Economic problems became more noticeable, and political sources of legitimacy began to be challenged. Attachment to the party became less significant than personal aggrandizement. The moral crisis which would ultimately bring down the regime actually began in earnest during the 1970s.

Soviet foreign policy became ever more traditionalist in this period, and became increasingly geopolitical and global. In order to defend the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and within the USSR, the Soviet leaders sought to promote socialism abroad. The Soviet leadership sought to preserve the legitimacy of their empire by showing its continued relevance to a dynamic global development. The way they were able to accomplish this was less by setting an example or by dynamic economic growth than by military aid and intervention.

As the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev aged, it followed an ever more myopic policy. Top politicians began to believe their own rhetoric about the collapse of capitalism and the salience of the Soviet Union to global development. They saw their economic and social problems as solvable by only modest changes within the existing order. They sought to enhance the "scientific management" of society and nurture "developed socialism," which was to evolve into a more advanced variant of the old system.

The foreign policy necessary for this leadership was that which would protect the Soviet Union from outside influence but promote pragmatic links with the West.¹³ Given Soviet leaders' confidence in their ability to compete globally, the USSR's competition with the West was pursued in areas of perceived Soviet advantage But there could be no linkage between Soviet compromises with the West in arms control "and other technical issues" and the continued "political competition" with the West in Europe and beyond.

The postwar economic success of the West underscored for the Soviets the need in Soviet eyes to create a more innovative economy.¹⁴ Especially in the Brezhnev period, the Soviets no longer perceived their economy to be the most innovative; rather, they regarded those sectors in the U.S., West European, and Japanese economies capable of rapid technological innovation as the harbingers of the future. They therefore sought to study and copy these sectors in order to bring similar Soviet economic sectors into the advanced industrial age Clearly, the Soviet economy was in need of innovation, change, and reform to bring the Soviet Union into the advanced industrial age.

The scientific, technological, and commercial success of certain key sectors of Western economies, with the concomitant lack of success in the Soviet system, led to ideological change. There was a fundamental change in the Soviet outlook since the days of Khrushchev. Marxism-Leninism evolved from a rather dogmatic ideology which saw class conflict as the motor force of historical change to a more pragmatic point of view which stressed instead the importance of science and technology as the basis for modern economic growth and social change. Soviet dogmatists assumed that the Soviet Union was an advanced society because the means of production had been socialized. Soviet pragmatists recognized, however, that in the application of modern knowledge to development, their country was not only not catching up, but was steadily falling behind the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

The Soviet pragmatic outlook emphasized that the USSR needed to make effective use of science and technology. The pragmatists remained within the framework of Marxism-Leninism by maintaining that "socialist" societies are better able than "capitalist" ones to take advantage of the opportunities for human betterment offered by the revolution in science and technology. Although in due course all societies will progress from "capitalism" to "socialism," in the Soviet view at the time, the ultimate victory of socialism was not seen in terms of class conflict or military victory. Rather the superior ability of socialism to develop and apply advanced science and technology was required.

The implementation of this pragmatic perspective led to efforts to improve production and management as well as to expand foreign trade as a means both of importing advanced technology and of providing a competitive challenge to the Soviet products that must be sold to pay for imports. But in spite of a number of changes in. the organization and operation of the Soviet economy over the many years, the Soviet Union has not been able to close the technology gap with the West. The inability to close this gap underscored the seriousness of the Western challenge to the Soviet economy.

The Soviets perceived a serious Western challenge in the economic and military spheres generated by Western superiority in the area of scientific and technological innovation. But developments in the West associated with scientific, technological, and economic competitiveness among the Western powers permitted the Soviet Union to develop and expand East-West ties as a means of enhancing their scientific, technological, and economic capabilities.

Critical issues for analysis which emerged in this period were how to understand the pragmatic aspects of Soviet foreign policy and their interconnections with broader Soviet foreign policy objectives. Did Soviet pragmatism mean an end to the classic Soviet definitions of East-West competition? Or did the policy of peaceful coexiste...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Overview
• 1 The Soviets and the West in Historical Perspective: The Emergent European Security Challenge
• 2 The Soviets and the Western Alliance: The Classical Approach
• 3 The Soviets and West European Security Cooperation, 1985-1989
• 4 Soviet Assessments of West Germany, 1985-1987
• 5 Soviet Assessments of West Germany, 1987-1989
• 6 Soviet Public Diplomacy Toward West Germany, 1985-1989
• 7 Soviet Assessments of the German Unification Process, 1989-1990
• 8 The Soviets and the New Federal Republic of Germany: Dealing with the New Europe
• Index