Abstract
A European power in 1945, the Soviet Union today is a global power. It has stretched its political influence and its military capability to remote corners of the globe. This relatively new development, which started after the Second World War, accelerated in the 1960s as a result of the general internationalisation of economic and political life. Decolonisation and the emergence of many new independent countries, rapid progress in information and communications techniques, the irresistible growth of economic interdependence, and the development of a community of socialist states, increasingly immersed the Soviet Union in international affairs. Furthermore, its military superpower status confers on the USSR — along with the United States — the role of ‘co-ruler’ of major world affairs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
It is advisable to stress at the start that the present study does not address the traditional question of domestic constraints on Soviet external policy. Many factors determine the orientations of Soviet foreign strategy. They have been studied elsewhere, with particular skill by the contributors to the collective volume edited by Seweryn Bialer, The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1981). See also Erik P. Hoffmann and Frederic J. Fleron, Jr (eds), The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy, expanded 2nd edn (New York: Aldine, 1980) and Curtis Keeble (ed.), The Soviet State. The Domestic Roots of Soviet Foreign Policy (Aldershot: Gower for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1985). Another note of caution: this chapter deals essentially with open foreign policy and the party/diplomacy establishment, leaving aside the domain of military defence and the KGB/army institutions.
In the last twenty years, the USSR sacrificed local Communist Parties in Egypt, the Sudan, Iraq, Iran, for the sake of good state-to-state relations with these countries. See Marie Mendras, ‘La logique de l’URSS au Moyen-Orient’, Politique étrangère, 1/1983, pp. 133–48.
Cf., for instance, V. I. Gantman (ed.), Sistema, struktura i protsess razvitiya sovremennykh mezhdunarodnykh otnosheniy (Moscow: Nauka, 1984).
N. V. Chernogolovkin, author of Chapter 2 in D. A. Kerimov et al. (eds), Mezhdunarodnaya politika KPSS i vneshnie funktsii sovetskogo gosudarstva (Moscow: Mysl’, 1976) p. 58.
V. V. Zagladin, ‘The Leninist Strategy of Soviet Foreign Policy’, Social Sciences (Moscow), Vol. 5, No. 4(18) (1974) p. 7.
T. H. Rigby, ‘A Conceptual Approach to Authority, Power and Policy in the Soviet Union’, in T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway (eds), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (London: Macmillan, 1980) p. 19.
Lenin, quoted by Andrey Gromyko, Kommunist (6 April 1983) p. 16. This quotation from Lenin is very popular in Soviet writings. We have encountered it in a number of articles — for example, in E. A. Zhdanov, V. P. Okeanov, ‘Leninskie printsipy issledovaniya voyny, mira i sovre- mennost”, Voprosy filosofii, No. 4 (1986) p. 4.
Cited in E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution. 1917–1923, Vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1953) p. 56.
Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘Moscow’s War Propaganda and Soviet Public Opinion’, Problems of Communism, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (September– October 1984) p. 91.
A. Akhtamzian, ‘Les principes léninistes de la politique internationale du PCUS et de l’Etat soviétique’, La vie internationale (Moscow), No. 3 (1986) p. 14.
On Gorbachev and his approach to change in internal policies, see Archie Brown, ‘Change in the Soviet Union’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 5 (Summer 1986) pp. 1048–65;
Michel Tatu, ‘Gorbatchev: les limites du renouveau’, Politique internationale, No. 32 (1986) pp. 233–47.
We use the term ‘troika’ as a general reference to the post-Khrushchev years and with the connotation of collective leadership attached to the word at the time. It then applied to the inner group within the top leadership. Around 1966–70, the term ‘troika’ was generally employed to refer to the three heads of party, government and state — Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny. It was probably more accurate to talk of ‘an informal quadrumvirate of Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny and Suslov’ — Suslov being the only Central Committee Secretary with countervailing power to Brezhnev — as did T. H. Rigby, The Soviet Leadership: Towards a Self-Stabilizing Oligarchy?’, Soviet Studies, Vol. XXII, No. 2 (October 1970) p. 182.
Cf. Myron Rush, ‘After Khrushchev: Problems of Succession in the Soviet Union’, Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol. 2, Nos 3 and 4 (July-October 1969) pp. 79–80. Rush points out the error of many observers who failed ‘to distinguish sufficiently between the substance of Khrushchev’s power — his capacity to decide policy — and the security of this power — his capacity to protect the power he possessed’. He adds that, in his view, ‘Khrushchev was unwilling to forego the exercise of power in order to enhance its security’.
See notes 27 and 28. See also Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York: Vintage Books, 1960); Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Le pouvoir confisqué (Paris: Flammarion, 1980); Rigby, Brown and Reddaway (eds), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR.
George W. Breslauer, Khrushchev and Brezhnev as Leaders: Building Authority in Soviet Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982) pp. 290–2.
Fedor Burlatsky, ‘Nekotorye voprosy teorii mezhdunarodnykh otnosh- eniy’, Voprosy filosofii, No. 9 (1983) cited in Jerry F. Hough, The Struggle for the Third World. Soviet Debates and American Options (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1986) p. 204.
Malenkov relinquished his position as Secretary of the Central Committee in March 1953. He was probably forced to do so because, after Stalin’s tyrannical rule, the political elite was violently opposed to the cumulation of powers in one person. Khrushchev then remained the only representative of the Secretariat in the Central Committee Presidium. See Richard Lowenthal, ‘The Nature of Khrushchev’s Power’, in Abraham Brumberg (ed.), Russia under Khrushchev (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962) p. 117.
On the conflict between Molotov and Khrushchev, see Carl A. Linden, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership 1957–1964 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966) pp. 31–3.
Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), cited in Soviet Diplomacy and Soviet Negotiating Behavior, p. 314.
See Arkady N. Shevchenko’s testimony in his memoirs, Breaking with Moscow (New York: Knopf, 1985).
Michel Tatu, Le pouvoir en URSS (Paris: Grasset, 1967) p. 15.
On Brezhnev’s rise to supremacy in the period 1966–76, see Jerry F. Hough, ‘The Brezhnev Era. The Man and the System’, Problems of Communism, Vol. XXV, No. 2 (March–April 1976) pp. 1–7.
See Jiri Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968. Anatomy of a Decision (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Myron Rush, ‘After Khrushchev: Problems of Succession in the Soviet Union’, pp. 87–8; and Archie Brown, ‘the Power of the General Secretary of the CPSU’, in Rigby, Brown and Reddaway (eds), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR, pp. 147–9.
Kunaev, Shcherbitsky and Kulakov. See Archie Brown’s chapter on ‘Political Developments’, in Archie Brown and Michael Kaser (eds), The Soviet Union since the Fall of Khrushchev (London: Macmillan, 1975) p. 239.
Zhores Medvedev discusses the power of the army and the KGB in 1981–2 in Andropov: His Life and Death (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, revised edn, 1984) Chapters 9 and 10.
Christian Duevel, ‘Central Committee Plenum Ousts Podgorny from Politburo’, Radio Liberty Research, RL 122/77, 24 May 1977.
Under the 1977 Constitution, the Defence Council is a state body. It comprises the leading Politburo members, the Party Secretary for defence industry and maybe also the Chief of the General Staff. Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev successively chaired the Defence Council on assuming the Party General Secretaryship. On the limited information available on the Council, see David Holloway, ‘Decision-Making in Soviet Defence Policies’, in Christoph Bertram (ed.), Prospects of Soviet Power in the 1980s (London: Macmillan, 1980) pp. 85–6.
Christian Duevel, ‘Brezhnev Named Supreme Commander in Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces’, Radio Liberty Research, RL 260/77, 11 November 1977.
Leonard Schapiro, ‘After Brezhnev: The Limits of Prediction’, Survey, Vol. 26, No. 1(114) (Winter 1982) p. 172.
Elizabeth Teague, ‘Ambassadorial Merry-Go-Round’, Radio Liberty Research, RL 132/86, 21 March 1986, pp. 2–3.
Neither Zamyatin nor Ryabov are professional diplomats. L. M. Zamyatin had previously been director of TASS (1970–8) and head of the International Information Department of the Central Committee from 1978 until the Department was abolished in 1986. Ya. P. Ryabov made his career in the Party; from 1984 he was a deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers. Cf. Alexander Rahr, A Biographic Directory of 100 Leading Soviet Officials, Radio Liberty Research, Munich, 3rd edn (March 1986).
Philip Taubman, ‘Gorbachev Overhauling Foreign Policy System’, International Herald Tribune, 11 August 1986.
Viacheslav Dashichev, ‘Vostok-Zapad: poisk novykh otnosheniy. O prioritetakh vneshney politiki sovetskogo gosudarstva’, Literaturnaya gazeta, 18 May 1988, p. 14.
Senior officers of the Armed Forces occupy forty seats on the Central Committee elected at the Twenty-Seventh Congress (full and candidate members). Cf. Peter Kruzhin, ‘Military Representation in the Leading Organs of the CPSU Following the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress’, Radio Liberty Research, RL 139/86, 27 March 1986. The present chapter deals predominently with open diplomacy and does not permit further elaboration on the military and the KGB.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1989 Archie Brown
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mendras, M. (1989). Policy Outside and Politics Inside. In: Brown, A. (eds) Political Leadership in the Soviet Union. St. Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20262-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20262-1_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-41343-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20262-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)