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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Is there a clear-cut Soviet concept of satellite states? Apparently not, for, from the official Soviet point of view a satellite state east of the Iron Curtain is an anomaly: ca n'existe pas. The very idea, the Soviets would have us believe, is an aberration, a falsification concocted, to use the Communist jargon, by the “ideological armbearers of the American monopolists and imperialists.” Unfortunately, this stand is not corroborated by facts. It is for us in the Western world as well as for the millions of private, honest citizens in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe that the existence of satellite states behind the Iron Curtain means a most disquieting and indeed a sinister reality.
The term “satellite state” is first of all a question of political semantics. If one consults the records of the United Nations Commission which has just completed its work on the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” he can readily appreciate the polarity between our approach and that of the Soviet camp to a whole register of political definitions.
1 Already in the first meeting of the Human Rights Commission in January 1947 “indications of a fundamental difference of approach appeared when the Yugoslav member stated that new economic conditions in the twentieth century have given birth to a collective spirit, that personal freedom can be obtained only through perfect harmony between the individual and the community, and that the social ideal lies in making the interests of society and of die individual identical.” And one of the basic difficulties throughout the work of the Commission was the question “whether the emphasis in the Declaration should be on the right of the individual or the right of the state.” The Brookings Institution, Major Problems of United States Foreign Policy, 1948–49 (Washington, 1948), p. 113 f.Google Scholar
2 The inconsistencies in the Soviet attitude towards the idea of sovereignty since die revolution and its present “glaring contradictions and the biased advocacy of different solutions for identical problems, dependent solely on partisan considerations and political expediency” are very well demonstrated by Vishniak, Mark in his article “Sovereignty in Soviet Law,” The Russian Review, 01 1949, Vol. VIII, no. 1.Google Scholar
3 Levin, I. D., The Idea of Sovereignty in Soviet and International Law (Moscow, 1947), p. 15 ff. (in Russian).Google Scholar
4 Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins; An Intimate History (New York, 1948), p. 713.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., p. 852.
6 Eisenhower, Dwight D., Crusade in Europe (Garden City (New York) 1948), p. 465.Google Scholar
7 This Realm was to consist of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Czardom of Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Montenegro. If possible, the last two kingdoms were to be amalgamated. Of the other countries of southeastern Europe, Romania (enlarged through the annexation of southeastern Hungary and southern Bucovina) and Greece (strengthened through the incorporation of southern and eastern Albania) were meant to conclude a mutual alliance and enter into a customs union with the All-Slav Realm. Similarly, Hungary, deprived of the bulk of its former territorial possessions and with a population reduced to 5–6 million inhabitants, was expected to fall because of its geopolitical environment, into the orbit of the Slavic Realm. And finally Russia proper was to add to its former possessions eastern Galicia, northern Bucovina, Carpathian Russia, and a part of East Prussia, including the town of Koenigsberg. Jung, Rudolf, Die Tschechen (Berlin, 1937), pp. 98 ff. and 206 ff.Google Scholar
9 Conolly, Violet, Soviet Economic Policy in the East (London, 1933), p. 95.Google Scholar
8 Ballis, William, “Soviet Russia's Asiatic Frontier Technique: Tannu-Tuva,” Pacific Affairs, March 1941, p. 92.Google Scholar
10 The countries of Eastern Europe did not need, according to the Moscow Pravda of January 28, 1948, “a problematic and invented federation or customs union but a strengthening of their independence and sovereignty through the organization of internal popular and ‘democratic’ forces, as has been stated in the declaration of the nine Communist parties (Cominform).” U. S. Department of State, Documents and State Papers, 07 1948, Vol. I (Washington, D. C.) p. 223 ff.Google Scholar
11 Trainin, I. P., “The Soviet Multi-national State.” Trudy iubileinoi sessii Akademii obshchestvennykh nauk (Moscow, 1948), p. 36.Google Scholar
12 U. S. Department of State, op. cit., p. 236.Google Scholar
13 Dean, Vera Micheles, op. cit., p. 63.Google Scholar
14 Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly (New York, 1948), p. 32.Google Scholar
15 Beloff, Max, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1929–1941 (London, 1947), Vol. 1, pp. 239 and 246.Google Scholar
16 See House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Report on the Strategy and Tactics of World Communism. Supplement III. Country Studies. C. Communism in China.
17 USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute of Law. The Basic Elements of Soviet State and Law (Moscow, 1947), p. 15 ff. (in Russian).Google Scholar
18 Georgi Dimitrov frankly admitted in his closing remarks at the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist party in Sofia on December 25, 1948, that the Soviet regime and the so-called people's democracies are “two forms of the proletarian dictatorship” (Izyestia, December 28, 1948).Google Scholar This opinion is also shared by Matyas Rakosi, the head of the Hungarian Communist Party: “A people's democracy,” he observed, “is according to its function, a dictatorship of the proletariat without the Soviet form.” And this phenomenon, he added, is only possible because “the people's democracies and among them the Hungarian people's democracy … can base themselves on the great Soviet Union.” (New York Times, January 23, 1949.)Google Scholar
19 Varga, E., Democracy of a New Type. Mirovoe Khoziaistvo i Mirovaia Polilika, March 1947, p. 3 ff.Google Scholar
20 Lauterbach, Richard E., These are the Russians (New York, 1944), p. 334.Google Scholar
21 See Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute. Text of the published correspondence (London, 1948).Google Scholar
22 Varga, , op. cit., pp. 5 ff.Google Scholar
23 It is interesting to note that the Soviet-Yugoslav treaty of April 11, 1945 was the only one among the Soviet pacts signed during the war which did not provide “against interference in the internal affairs of the signators.” U. S. Department of State, op. cit., p. 221.Google Scholar
24 By the same token Wladyslaw Gomulka, the former Secretary-General of the Polish Communists and Polish “would-be Tito,” was accused in August 1948, before his surrender to Moscow's point of view, of “misinterpretation of the ideological essence of the relations between the people's democracies and the USSR, and of the leading role of die Soviet communist party in the international front of the anti-imperialist struggle.” From the resolution of the Central Committee of the Polish (Communist) Workers Party, cited in the Washington Post, September 12, 1948.Google Scholar
25 For a lasting peace, for a people's democracy! Bucharest, 11 1, 1948, No. 21 (24).Google Scholar
26 Burdzhalov, E., The International Significance of the Historical Experience of the Bolshevik Party. Bol'shevik, September 15, 1948, No. 17, pp. 50 f.Google Scholar
27 The Montreal Gazette, September 2, 1948.Google Scholar
28 Royal Institute of International Affairs, op. cit., p. 38.Google Scholar
29 Sherwood, , op. cit., p. 342.Google Scholar