Abstract
The purpose of this introductory chapter is to explore in outline some of the basic determinants of the USSR’s international power. Both the tangible (military, economic, geographic) and intangible (ideological, historical, cultural) aspects of power will be examined in a very preliminary way, as a setting for the rest of the book. The evidence will be cited in later chapters. As a starting point, it is necessary to look at the importance of Soviet power in the world context.
Those who make their assessments of comparative power by statistical calculations of national production and wealth will not have much difficulty in convincing themselves that it will be a very long time before the Soviet Union is likely to ‘catch up’ with the West in any real sense.1
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Notes
J. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, vol. 13 (Moscow, 1951) pp. 38–9 (speech made in February 1931).
Ronald Hingley, The Russian Mind (London: The Bodley Head, 1978) p. 31.
Directorate of Intelligence, CIA, Handbook of Economic Statistics, 1982 (Washington, DC, September 1982) p. 27.
Strobe Talbott (ed.), Khrushchev Remembers (London: Andre Deutsch, 1971) p. 506.
Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (Sydney: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979) p. 119.
George F. Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (London: Hutchinson, 1961) p. 394.
Marshal V. Sokolovskiy and Major General M. Cherednichenko, ‘Military Strategy and Its Problems’, Voyennaya mysl’, no. 10, October 1968 (Published by the US Air Force as Selected Readings from Military Thought 1963–1973 (Washington, DC, 1982) p. 14.
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 409–10.
See in particular Jervis, Perception and Misperception’, Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); K. J. Holsti, International Politics (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972); Steven J. Rosen and Walter S. Jones, The Logic of International Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, 1977).
Gordon H. McCormick, ‘Surprise, Perceptions, and Military Style’, Orbis, Winter 1983, p. 834.
Tibor Szamuely, The Russian Tradition, (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1974) p. 9.
Ibid, p. 23. In the 200 years between the end of the Tartar yoke and the accession of Peter the Great, Russia fought six wars with Sweden and twelve with Poland-Lithuania; in the south, for 300 years interminable wars were fought with fierce Tartar and Turkic tribes.
Anatol Rapoport (ed.), Carl von Clausewitz — On War (London: Penguin Books, 1976) p. 295.
Marshal N. V. Ogarkov, ‘Guarding Peaceful Labour’, Kommunist, no. 10, July 1981, p. 91.
Hedrick Smith, The Russians (London: Sphere Books, 1976) p. 614.
Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981) p. 17.
Quoted in Arthur Schlesinger Jr, ‘The Origins of the Cold War’, Foreign Affairs, October 1967, p. 30.
Edward Grey, Twenty-five Years (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925) pp. 19–20.
Adam B. Ulam, ‘Russian Nationalism’, in Seweryn Bialer (ed.), The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colorado: West-view Press, 1981) p. 13.
A. Gromyko, ‘V. I. Lenin and the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State’, Kommunist, no. 6, April 1983, pp. 11–32.
Ye. M. Primakov, Vostok Posle Krakha Kolonial’noi Sistemy (The East After the Collapse of the Colonial System) (Moscow, 1983) p. 169.
K. J. Holsti, ‘National Role Conceptions in the Study of Foreign Policy’, International Studies Quarterly, no. 3, 1970, pp. 233–309.
For a different view, see V. Kubalkova and A. A. Cruikshank, Marxism-Leninism and the Theory of International Relations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).
Hannes Adomeit, ‘Ideology in the Soviet View of International Affairs’, in Christoph Bertram (ed.), Prospects of Soviet Power in the 1980s (London: Macmillan, 1980) p. 110.
E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1981) p. 108 and Klaus Knorr, Power and Wealth (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 25.
Ray S. Cline, World Power Trends and US Foreign Policy for the 1980s (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1980) pp. 16–23 (edn of 1977 published under the title World Power Assessment).
Joseph Frankel, International Relations in a Changing World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) p. 103.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949) pp. 98–9.
Soviet textbooks for students at military academies have a similar list. See, for example, K. I. Spidchenko (ed.), Politicheskaya i Voennaya Geografiya (Political and Military Geography) (Moscow, 1980) pp. 68–131.
Marshal N. V. Ogarkov, ‘The Defence of Socialism: Experience of History and the Present Day’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 9 May 1984, pp. 2–3.
Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: W. W. Norton 1962) p. 150 (originally published in 1919).
James Paul Wesley, ‘Frequency of Wars and Geographical Opportunity’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, December 1962, pp. 387–9.
T. B. Millar, ‘Asia in the Global Balance’, in D. H. McMillen (ed.), Asian Perspectives on International Security (London: Macmillan, 1984) p. 8.
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© 1988 International Institute for Strategic Studies
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Dibb, P. (1988). Dimensions of Soviet Power. In: The Soviet Union. Studies in International Security. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19349-3_1
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