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The Concept of the Balance of Power in Soviet Policy-Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Raymond L. Garthoff
Raymond L. Garthoff
Affiliation:
Social Science Division of The RAND Corporation
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Extract

The analysis of any human concept is infinitely and inevitably complicated by the mental processes of the original user and the investigator. Dedication to objectivity by the analyst can usually prevent only the more obvious, and not always the most important, psycho-cultural pressures which condition or determine both the content and the method of the analysis, to say nothing of its purpose and material. In turn, the concept under examination, even though it is necessarily rendered an object isolate for intensive review, remains and must be treated as essentially a living precipitate of the entire environment in which it was born and nourished.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , October 1951 , pp. 85 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1951

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References

1 The fundamental reason for this is the absence of an analytical framework of political science, as we know it, based on a study of power. Leninism-Stalinism, while acutely conscious of influence and power, is restricted in its open analysis of politics to generalizations of the Marxian social-economic philosophy; this is another story.

2 The terms rasstanovka sil, “alignment of forces,” and gruppirovka sil, “grouping of forces,” convey substantially the same meaning but are less frequently used.

3 See again the Ushakov definition of a “political balance” cited above.

4 Stalin, , “On the Right Deviation in the V.K.P. (B.),” Sochineniia (Collected Works), Moscow, 1949, XII, 35.Google Scholar

5 Stalin, “Speech at the XIV Congress of the V.K.P. (B.),” ibid., VII, 274.

6 Stalin, , History of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Short Course, New York, International Publishers, 1939, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar (Russian original checked.)

7 Stalin, , Sochineniia, XII, 248.Google Scholar The English translation (London, Modern Books, 1930) translated this phrase as “balance of power.”

8 Lenin, , Selected Works, New York, International Publishers, n.d., VII, 353.Google Scholar

9 Lenin, , Sochineniia (Collected Works), 2d ed., Moscow, 1929, XXII, 265.Google Scholar

10 Lenin, , Selected Works, VII, 354.Google Scholar See also ibid., X, 104–5.

11 Lenin, , “Karl Marx,” Marx-Engels-Marxism New York, International Publishers, 1935. p. 29.Google Scholar

12 In Strategy and Tactics of the Proletarian Revolution, New York, International Publishers, 1936, p. 65.

13 Sorin, VI, Partiia i Oppozitsiia (The Party and the Opposition), Moscow, 1925, p. 42.Google Scholar See also pp. 13, 51, 64 and 71.

14 Stalin, , Leninism, New York, International Publishers, 1942, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

15 See Lenin, , Sochineniia, XII, 198 and 265Google Scholar, for examples of adventurism.

16 There was an implicit recognition of limited ability to calculate. As Lenin several times remarked, “There is no battle in this world where all probabilities are known beforehand” (Lenin, Zvezda [The Star], April 1, 1912).

17 Bukharin, , in Sedmoi S'ezd Rossiiskoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party), Moscow-Leningrad, 1928, pp. 122–23.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 56.

19 Leonov, , Moral'nyi Faktor V Souremënnykh Voinakh (The Morale Factor in Contemporary Wars), Voenizdat, MVS, Moscow, 1946, pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

20 Talensky, , Bol'shevik, No. 10–11 (May-June 1944), p. 14.Google Scholar This has been frequently stated.

21 Potëmkin, Vladimir, Istoriia Diplomatii (The History of Diplomacy), Vol. III, Moscow, 1945, pp. 35Google Scholar, 45, and 48.

22 Stalin, , Leninism, p. 440.Google Scholar

23 Stalin, , Sochineniia, VII, 14.Google Scholar

24 Stalin, , Leninism, pp. 81–82Google Scholar; italics Stalin's.

25 Major General M. Galatinov, Strategicheskaia Tsel' (The Strategic Objective), an excerpt from a Soviet publication of 1943 or later, pp. 128–29.

26 Major General Talensky, N., Bol'shevik, No. 3 (1946), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

27 Obshchaia Taktika (General Tactics), Voenizdat, NKO, Moscow, 1940, I, 16.

28 See Clausewitz, (On War, New York, Modern Library, 1943, p. 14)Google Scholar for a comparative statement that “the objective nature of war makes it a calculation of probabilities.”

29 Stalin, , Sochineniia, V, 166–68.Google Scholar

30 See Leites, Nathan, The Operational Code of the Politburo, New York, 1951, pp. 66–72Google Scholar, for a valuable discussion of advance in Soviet doctrine. This book is the best study of the political code of the Soviet leadership.

31 Major General Talensky, , in Voennaia Mysl' (Military Thought), No. 6 (June 1946), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 7.

33 Lenin, , Selected Works, VII, 358Google Scholar; italics mine.

34 Lenin, , in Sedmoi S'ezd, pp. 126 and 129.Google Scholar

35 Stalin, , in Bol'shevik, No. 3 (February 1947), p. 6.Google Scholar

36 Stalin, , Sochineniia, VI, 160.Google Scholar

37 Stalin, , History of the C.P.S.U. (B.), pp. 89–96.Google Scholar

38 Stalin, , “Two Camps,” Sochineniia, IV, 232.Google Scholar

39 Tanin, , Mezdunarodnia Politika SSSR, 1917–1924 (International Politics of the USSR, 1917–1924), Moscow, 1925, p. 5.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 5. The closing ellipsis is an emphasis of Tanin's.

41 Stalin, , “Political Report of the Central Committee, 18 December [1925],” Sochineniia, VII, 261–62.Google Scholar

42 Stalin, , History of the C.P.S.U. (B.), p. 274.Google Scholar

43 Lemin, I. M., Bor'ba Dvukh Napravlenii v Mezhdunarodnykh Otnoshenihakh (The Struggle of the Two Tendencies in International Relations), Moscow, 1947, p. 12.Google Scholar

44 Several formulations are used: two “camps” [lagen], “directions” [napravlenii], “tendencies” [tendentsii], ‘courses” [kursi], ‘systems” [sistemi], ‘worlds” [miri]. ‘Camps,” “systems,” and “worlds” are all frequent.

45 Bol'shevik, No. 11–12 (June 1946), p. 1.

46 Molotov, , Bol'shevik, No. 24 (December 1949), p. 21Google Scholar; and Mikoyan, , Pravda, March 11, 1950, p. 4.Google Scholar See also General, Major, Talensky, N., in Bol'shevik, No. 11 (June 1951), p. 36Google Scholar: “If the imperialists succeed in unleashing a third world war, it will bring the destruction not of individual capitalist states, but of the entire world capitalism.”

47 Shvernik, , Bol'shevik, No. 24 (December 1949), p. 93.Google Scholar

48 Alexandrov, G., et al, Politicheski Slovar' (Political Dictionary), Moscow, 1940, p. 93.Google Scholar

49 This reflects the Marxian idea that the dialectic of history is dynamic and constantly in flux, thus denying any “static” balance. While Soviet ideology does not express these terms, it may or may not be influenced by the earlier ideological considerations expressed in this explanation.

50 The word mir means both “peace” and “world” in Russian, so that appropriately this stock phrase also means “struggle for the world.”

51 Current policy debates over what constitutes containment are not a subject appropriate to this discussion; but consideration of the idea of containment most certainly is.

52 Alfred Vagts, in a stimulating article on “The Balance of Power: Growth of an Idea” (World Politics, Vol. I, No. 1, October 1948), has contended that the balance of power as something sought, ethically desirable, is peculiar to countries which have experienced the Renaissance, and hence not shared by successive Russian elites.

53 The author is indebted to Nathan Leites for this formulation, although the content here demonstrated is mine.

54 X, See, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25 (July 1947), pp. 566–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar