The Soviet Union and the Uses of Pacifism

Abstract

As a former editor — until December 1981 — of the Sovietology review Est et Ouest (East and West), founded in 1949 under the title BEIPI (Bulletin d’études et d’information politiques internationales, Bulletin of International Political Studies and Information), I adhere to the Boris Souvarine school; hence it is implicit in my approach that I prefer to speak of the international Communist movement rather than of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Government appears to me to be first and foremost a tool wielded by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which is itself at the head of the international Communist movement.