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Prefects as Senators: Soviet Regional Politicians Look to Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Peter Hauslohner
Peter Hauslohner
Affiliation:
the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
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Abstract

At recent all-union party congresses, Soviet republic and province leaders have devoted a progressively larger share of their speeches to foreign policy. By the 25th Congress, their remarks had become substantively rich and surprisingly diverse. Does this growing commentary signal an expansion of the Soviet foreign-policy making arena? After comparing the data to a series of alternative explanatory models, the author proposes that a model based solely on political ambition provides a promising but ultimately insufficient answer to this question and should be supplemented by a model presuming an increasing interest among regional leaders in influencing policy itself. This conclusion implies that the policy arena has expanded, an interpretation which is reinforced with additional data on the Central Committee's involvement in foreign policy discussions. Possible causes of arena expansion are then considered. However, the data suggest few concrete implications for the content of Soviet foreign policy.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , January 1981 , pp. 197 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1981

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References

1 Hough, , The Soviet Prefects (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Moses, Joel C., Regional Party Leadership and Policy-making in the USSR (New York: Praeger, 1974)Google Scholar; Miller, John N., “Cadres Policy in the Nationality Areas,” Soviet Studies, XXIX (January 1977), 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rigby, T. H., “The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation,” Slavic Review, XXXVII (March 1978), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For example, Simes, Dimitri K., Detente and Conflict: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1972–1977 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977), esp. 46–57Google Scholar; Petrov, Vladimir, “Formation of Soviet Foreign Policy,” Orbis, XVII (Fall 1973), 819–50Google Scholar; Schwartz, Morton, The Foreign Policy of the USSR: Domestic Factors (Encino, Calif.: Dickenson, 1975), chap. 6.Google Scholar

An exception is Jiri Valenta who documents the participation of several nonranking regional leaders in the internal debates preceding the Warsaw Pact's 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia, and describes it as a temporary expansion of the policy arena engineered by those forces favorable to military action who hoped, by drawing new persons into the discussions, to shift the overall balance of opinion in their direction. See Valenta, , Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 60–62Google Scholar, and “The Bureaucratic Politics Paradigm and the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 94 (Spring 1979), 60–61, 66–67.

3 Province party leaders do not seem to write for the international affairs journals and rarely mention anything connected to foreign affairs in an article or speech published in the national press. These conclusions are based on the reading of approximately 230 articles and speeches by RSFSR obkom first secretaries, published in central newspapers and journals since the early 1970s, including 187 contributions by 15 obkom leaders in 1976–1978. I have not verified these points for nonranking union republic secretaries.

4 Griffiths, Franklyn John C., “Images, Politics, and Learning in Soviet Behaviour Toward the United States,” Ph.D. diss. (Columbia University, 1972), 116, 293.Google Scholar

5 XXIII s″yezd kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza 29 marta - 8 aprelya 1966 goda: stenograficheskiy otchet [23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 29 March - 8 April 1966: stenographic report; hereafter cited as XXIII s″yezd] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1966), I, 129–30. All translations are by the author.

6 Ibid., I, 253.

7 XXIV s″yezd kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza 30 marta-9 aprelya 1971 goda: stenograficheskiy otchet [24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 30 March-9 April 1971: stenographic report; hereafter cited as XXIV s″yezd] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1971), I, 436, 512.

8 Ibid., I, 202.

9 On both these occasions republic leaders paid somewhat more attention to foreign affairs than province officials—in several instances with remarks that were rather striking. For example, at the 20th Congress, the Estonian party leader recited the history of his republic's “socialist revolution” and subsequent incorporation into the U.S.S.R. as “proof” of the possibility of a peaceful path to socialism. XX s″yezd kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskpgo Soyuza 14–25Google Scholarjevralya 1956 goda: stenograficheskiy otchet [20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 14–25 February 1956: stenographic report] (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1956), I, 443–44. At the 22nd Congress, several speakers attacked Albania (and, indirectly, the Chinese), although few as ominously as the Moldavian leader who insisted, “The international duty of all fraternal parties is to help the Albanian labor party correct the mistakes of its leadership, and not to allow Albania's separation from the socialist camp.” XXII s″yezd kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza 17–31 oktyabrya 1961 goda: stenograficheskiy otchet [22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 17–31 October 1961: stenographic report] (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1962), II, 274. Also see the Lithuanian first secretary's blunt endorsement of the Soviet threat to sign a unilateral peace treaty with East Germany (ibid., II, 52–53).

10 Main Report speakers probably provide the best indicator of the regional elite's interest in foreign affairs, since such issues as party construction, ideological work, and foreign policy customarily receive extensive treatment in the Central Committee's Main Report, but are largely ignored in the Council of Minister's report on the next five-year national economic plan. Similarly, one finds much greater attention being given to these questions in the congress discussion of the Main Report than in discussions of the economic report. congress. Included are the speeches of only those regional party leaders who at the start of the congress in question were not full or candidate members of the Presidium/Politburo. Only the heads of union republic party organizations are counted as “republic” party leaders; the secretaries of autonomous republics (ASSRs) are grouped with “province” party leaders. “Main Report Speakers” are those whose speeches appear in Volume 1 of the stenographic reports of the 20th, 23rd, 24th, and 25th Congresses and in Volumes 1 and 2 of the 22nd Congress stenogram (see fn. 10).

Coded as foreign-policy related were all comments relating to the nature of the international environment; the Soviet Union's political, military, economic, and cultural relations with other states; other countries or movements active on the world stage; lessons from the past in international relations; and the speaker's own foreign travel experiences. Brief, generalized references were not coded positively if restricted to a single clause or sentence included in a simple summary of policy achievements or placed in the middle of commentary on purely domestic issues. The coding rules allowed a speech to contain more than one foreign-policy related passage; and positively coded passages did not have to coincide with the printed paragraph delineations (although only passages that encompassed either the beginning or end of at least one printed paragraph were counted). Of 176 speeches examined (including 25 speeches by full and candidate Politburo members, 1966–1976), 114 were coded as containing foreign policy commentary. Of the latter, 94 (82 percent) contained only one passage, 19 (17 percent) contained two, and one contained three. A more detailed discussion of the coding procedure, and all raw figures, will be supplied by the author on request.

11 At the 20th Congress, seven Presidium members speaking in the Main Report discussion spent about one-third of their time on foreign policy; at the 22nd Congress, the figure was roughly 20 percent; and at the next three congresses, the number (for full and candidate Politburo members together) varied between 5 and 15 percent. Yet, at the 20th and 22nd Congresses, nearly every incumbent Presidium member gave a long speech; while at succeeding congresses, such senior Politburo figures as Suslov, , Kirilenko, , Polyanskiy, , and Voronov never spoke, and Podgornyy did so only once (in 1966).Google Scholar

12 However, variance among speakers has declined over time. Among republic leaders the coefficient of variation (s.d./X) was 1.39 for the 20th and 22nd Congresses (averaged); 1.11 for the 23rd and 24th Congresses (averaged); and 0.50 for the 25th Congress. Among province leaders, the comparable figures were 1.65, 1.19, and 0.49, respectively.

13 XXV s″yezd kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza 24 fevralya — 5 marta 1976 goda: stenograficheskiy otchet [25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 24 February — 5 March 1976: stenographic report; hereafter cited as XXV s″yezd[ (Moscow: Politizdat, 1976), I, 259, 261–62. The Main Report devoted 38 lines to China (ibid., I, 33–34); the Kirgiz leader, 42.

14 Ibid., I, 211–12.

15 Ibid., I, 424, 429–30.

16 Ibid., I, 223–24.

17 XXV s″yezd, I, 368, 239–40, 249, 424, 303–4. The summary figures reported here, as well as the rest of this section, are based on the speeches of all nonranking regional secretaries and the full and candidate Politburo members who took part in the congress discussions.

18 See, for example, the Italian Communist Party leader's speech, ibid., I, 369–73. For a good discussion of Moscow's relations with nonruling parties, at the 25th Congress and later, see Devlin, Kevin, “Communism in Europe: The Challenge of Eurocommunism,” Problems of Communism, XXVI (January-February 1977), 1–20.Google Scholar

19 XXV s″yezd, I, 159–60.

20 Ibid., I, 259, 406, 303. Also see the Ukrainian and Estonian leaders' remarks, ibid., I. 134, 329–30.

21 Several Soviet politicians seemed to hint at internal policy conflict in their speeches: see a passage in the Main Report (ibid., I, 91), and remarks by the secretaries from Azerbaydzhan, Rostov, and Dnepropetrovsk (ibid., I, 211, 337, 430). For the opposite view—that the 25th Congress proceedings yielded no evidence of intra-elite conflict over relations with the West—see Marantz, Paul, “Foreign Policy: The Soviet Union and the Noncommunist World,” in Dallin, Alexander, ed., The Twenty-Fifth Congress of the CPSU: Assessment and Context (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1977). 92–93.Google Scholar

22 XXV s″yezd, I, 205, 149, 223–24.

23 Ibid., I, 205, 249, 346. The “détente as ends” versus “détente as tactics” difference emerges still more strongly, if less explicitly, in the overall approach and tone employed by some speakers. Compare, in particular, the Primor'ye kraykom leader's passage on foreign policy with that of the Gor'kiy leader (ibid., I, 367–68, 356).

24 Ibid., I, 387.

25 Ibid., I, 401, 381, 149.

26 Ibid., II, 202.

27 XXIII s″yezd, I, 253–54; XXIV s″yezd, I, 537–38; XXV s″yezd, I, 367–68. Primor'ye Kray borders on the Sea of Japan and is a major fishing and maritime trade center, as well as the site of extensive military installations.

28 XXV s'yezd, I, 212, 182, 176.

29 The Sverdlovsk and Gor'kiy leaders allocated 24 and 23 percent, respectively, of their speeches to foreign affairs (ibid., I, 223–24, 356); the analogous figures for the Orenburg, Rostov, and Krasnodar secretaries were 7, 8, and 10 percent, respectively (ibid., I, 408, 409, 337, 205).

30 Based on biographies published in the 1971 and 1977 editions of the Yezhegodnik [Yearbook] of the Bol'shaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya [Great Soviet Encyclopedia] (Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya). Prior territorial and/or functional proximity was the main criterion used to identify possible patronage links, supplemented in some cases by other information. This methodology obviously is of uncertain reliability, and other specialists may not agree with all of my judgments. For example, the present Moldavian first secretary, I. I. Bodyul, who devoted 17 percent of his congress speech to foreign policy, has been described on occasion as a “protégé” of Brezhnev, himself a former Moldavian party chief. In my opinion, the biographical evidence of close career ties between the two men is not compelling. Moreover, Bodyul was conspicuously not one of the large majority of regional leaders who contributed enthusiastically to the Brezhnev “personality cult” at the 25th Congress.

31 On Brezhnev's “cadres policy,” see Blackwell, Robert E. Jr, “Cadres Policy in the Brezhnev Era,” Problems of Communism, XXVIII (March-April 1979), 29–42Google Scholar, and “Career Development in the Soviet Obkom Elite,” Soviet Studies, XXIV (July 1972), 24–40; Rigby (fn. 1), and “The Soviet Leadership: Towards a Self-Stabilizing Oligarchy?” Soviet Studies, XXII (October 1970), 167–91.

32 See, for example, an account of the design and implementation problems afflicting the expanding Soviet effort in the environmental protection field: Gustafson, Thane, “The New Soviet Environmental Program: Do the Soviets Really Mean Business?” Public Policy, XXVI (Summer 1978), 455–76.Google Scholar On difficulties encountered by the Brezhnev leadership's massive land irrigation and reclamation program, see Gustafson, , “Transforming Soviet Agriculture: Brezhnev's Gamble on Land Improvement,” Public Policy, XXV (Summer 1977), 293–312.Google Scholar More generally, Paul Cocks links the popularity under Brezhnev of PPBS-type administrative “rationalization” schemes to the leadership's growing determination to gain control over “a sprawling and brawling bureaucratic establishment that is fragmented, inefficient, and unresponsive to changing conditions and new demands.” See Cocks, , “The Policy Process and Bureaucratic Politics,” in Cocks, Paul, Daniels, Robert V., and Heer, Nancy Whittier, eds., The Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarAdams, Jan S., in Citizen Inspectors in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1977)Google Scholar, also discerns a sharpening concern during the 1970s for better policy implementation, reflected in a strengthening of the People's Controllers.

33 The argument that the Brezhnev leadership has largely respected established institutional interests is stated most forcefully in Hough's, Jerry F. seminal article, “The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism?” Problems of Communism, XXI (March-April 1972), 25–45.Google Scholar In fact, most; scholars today seem to accept the notion of wider, more regularized participation by bureaucratic and specialist interests in policy making under Brezhnev (while disputing its extent, impact, and permanence). However, the only serious published effort to measure and evaluate such “participation”—which strongly supports the proposition—is the careful and sophisticated study of the criminologists by Solomon, Peter H. Jr,: Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 The reference is to Hough's model of “institutional pluralism” (fn. 33).

35 Yanov, , Détente After Brezhnev: The Domestic Roots of Soviet Foreign Policy (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, 1977).Google Scholar

36 Or, as the Rostov first secretary has declared, “The party's constructive work in strengthening the economy and in raising the Soviet people's welfare is linked organically with the steadfast realization of the program for peace and peoples' security, for social progress.” XXV s″yezd, I, 337.

37 However, this age distinction did not hold for union republic secretaries, among whom older leaders displayed the greater interest in foreign affairs. Nor were there significant age differences in the commentary of previous congresses. Of course, non-Slavic politicians may face narrower career ladders than Slavic leaders and thus may have a weaker incentive to manufacture policy statements so as to impress potential recruiters. And the absence of age differences at the 23rd and 24th Congresses may simply reflect a less auspicious recruitment environment on those occasions. By 1976, the possibility of an imminent Brezhnev succession surely seemed stronger than in earlier years, possibly encouraging well-situated politicians to begin jockeying for jobs that could open up fairly suddenly.

Main Report discussion (N = 22). This group was divided into an “older generation” (born in 1919 or before; median year of birth: 1914/15), and a “younger generation” (born in 1922 or later; median year of birth: 1926/28). The statistic reported in the last column on the right is Fisher's Exact Test, which represents the exact probability that, with the marginal totals fixed, a distribution as skewed or more so (one-tailed) would have occurred by chance. Where a range of percentages is given instead of a single figure, the author was unable to decide on the appropriate coding of a passage. The identities of all cell entries will be supplied by the author on request.

The data in Table 3 are problematic and are presented with some hesitancy. On a methodological level, the N is small, the differences are not large, and the observed relationships between generation and behavior might well be spurious: the result of the “sampling” procedure by which congress speakers were selected; or a consequence of “interdependent events”—the possibility that politicians appearing later chose to amplify or respond to comments made earlier. On a substantive level, the “differences” might reflect not the varying influence of personal ambition, but more basic generational divisions in foreign policy attitudes.

38 At the April 1979 Central Committee plenum, Ryabov's removal from this post was announced in connection with his appointment as first deputy chairman of the U.S.S.R. Gosplan.

39 For quantitative documentation of this point, see an innovative paper by Ellen Jones, M. and Grupp, Fred W., “Searching for Policy Preferences Among the Soviet Elite: the Case of Ya. P. Ryabov,” prepared for delivery at the 41st Military Operations Research Society Conference, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., July 11–13, 1978.Google Scholar The authors suggest that levels of public activity may be a good method of identifying “upwardly mobile” (or ambitious) members of the Soviet political elite.

40 “We clearly recognize and understand that the class struggle on the international stage continues. Imperialism has not changed its nature or repudiated its basic objectives—to weaken and undermine the position of socialism.” XXV s″yezd, I, 224.

41 Ibid., I, 223; emphasis added. (The reference to the plenum's role in foreign policy is quoted in full on p. 229 below.)

42 This alternative interpretation corresponds rather closely to the “reformist”—not “dovish,” but hard-headed, pragmatic, flexible—policy approach that Jerry Hough believes may possibly be shared by significant numbers of the younger Soviet political generation. See his Soviet Leadership in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1980), esp. chaps. 7 and 8.

43 The Estonian party leader, who was 71 in 1976, and who was transferred to a largely ceremonial post in 1978, devoted 21 percent of his address to the subject; the Novosibirsk obkom secretary, another 71-year old, who retired in December 1978, reserved 11 percent of his address for foreign policy themes.

44 See Brezhnev's comment at the 24th Congress, XXIV s″yezd, I, 124; also Moses (fn. 1), 213–23.

45 XXV s″yezd, I, 367, 384. Only two other regional leaders alluded to the potential economic benefits of détente: the Rostov secretary (ibid., I, 337); and—although in a fashion that rejected linkage—the Leningrad party leader (ibid., I, 149).

46 This argument may help to explain the comparatively hard-line posture of the Gor'kiy and Krasnoyarsk secretaries (ibid., I, 356; II, 202).

47 Lomakin, V. P., “The Flowering of Soviet Primor'ye,” Problemy Dal'nego Vostoka, No. 3 (1977), 35.Google Scholar

48 In fact, this seems to be the Primor'ye secretary's position. See ibid., 35ff., and his “To Raise Patriots,” Sovetskaya Rossiya, March 23, 1977.

49 XXV s″yezd, I, 149, 130–31.

50 For example, in a recent interview the first secretary of the oil-rich Tyumen' oblast' differed forcefully not only with the leadership of another province (Krasnoyarsk kray) but also (and by name) with the U.S.S.R. Minister of the Gas Industry, S. A. Orudzhev, over strategies for Soviet energy development. See “The Tyumen' Complex and Its Future,” an interview with Bogomyakov, G. P., Eknomika i organizatsiya promyshlennogo proizvodstva, No. 5 (1976), 4–20Google Scholar, esp. 8–11.

51 Sources for this section can be found in Table 4. The discussion here owes much to the inspiration of a somewhat similar analysis of plenums held during the Brezhnev period, in Hough, Jerry F. and Fainsod, Merle, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 459–66.Google Scholar

52 Other than the main rapporteurs, a total of 124 (announced) speakers took part in the ten plenary discussions; 78 of them (63 percent—36 different individuals) were republic or province first secretaries, of whom 47 (38 percent) were not full or candidate Politburo members.

53 Shortly afterwards, this secretary was removed from his post. See Tatu, Michel, Power in the Kremlin (New York: Viking, 1968), 532–37.Google Scholar

54 Hough and Fainsod (fn. 51), 464.

55 See also Aliyev, , “The October Revolution and the National Liberation Movement,” Kommunist, No. 9 (June 1977), 24–38.Google Scholar (Aliyev was named a candidate member of the Politburo at the close of the 25th CPSU Congress.)

56 Kulichenko was the only one of eighteen different nonranking obkom first secretaries (excluding the Leningrad obkom and Moscow city party leaders) to speak on foreign policy at as many as three plenums. He devoted 12 percent of his speech at the 24th Congress to foreign affairs, a percentage exceeded by only two other nonranking regional leaders. Finally, Werner Hahn notes that Kulichenko was one of four officials to accompany Brezhnev to Czechoslovakia in February 1968, and that after the invasion, the Volgograd leader was especially quick to endorse it. See The Politics of Soviet Agriculture (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 222–23, n. 33.

57 XXV s″yezd, I, 91.

58 Shelest's views on foreign policy are discussed in detail by Hodnett, Grey in “Ukrainian Politics and the Purge of Shelest,” paper presented to the annual meeting of the Midwest Slavic Association, Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 5–7, 1977.Google Scholar

59 Valenta (fn. 2), 58–63. Hodnett, Grey and Potichnyj, Peter J. also make this point in The Ukraine and the Czechoslovak Crisis, Department of Political Science, Australian National University, Occasional Paper No. 6 (Canberra, 1970), 85–86.Google Scholar

60 The likelihood that plenum participants do speak to foreign policy—and do so in substantive fashion, possibly differing on important points—is considerably enhanced by the transcript of one plenum discussion of foreign policy in the Khrushchev period, apparently the only such account ever to have been published. Plenum tsentral'nogo komiteta kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza 10–15 fevralya 1964 goda: stenograficheskiy otchet [Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of 10–15 February 1964: stenographic report] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1964), 558–611.

61 XXV s″yezd, I, 223.

62 Consider the specific nature of the compliments addressed to Brezhnev by other party leaders at the 25th CPSU Congress, as discussed by Hough, Jerry F. in “The Brezhnev Era: The Man and the System,” Problems of Communism, XXV (March-April 1976), 5–6.Google Scholar

63 As far as I can determine, no discussion of foreign policy was conducted at Central Committee plenums in 1978 or 1979. At the June 23, 1980 plenum, however, Foreign Minister Gromyko delivered a report on “The International Situation and the Soviet Union's Foreign Policy.” This report and a brief speech by Brezhnev announcing the convocation of the next (26th) CPSU Congress (and also containing substantial comment on the current Afghanistan crisis) were discussed by eight speakers. Pravda, June 24, 1980, pp. 1–2.

64 Rigby, , “How the Obkom Secretary Was Tempered” (review article), Problems of Communism, XXIX (March-April 1980), 63.Google Scholar