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Soviet Ideology and Soviet Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Adam B. Ulam
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Extract

None of the perplexing problems of contemporary international affairs has given rise to more confusing discussion than the relationship of Soviet ideology to the foreign policy of the USSR. The very vagueness of the term “Soviet ideology,” or “Communist ideology” (and are they synonymous?), the uncertainty to what extent this uncertain force motivates the makers of Soviet policies, have compounded our difficulties in understanding the behavior of one of the world's two superpowers. Are Russia's rulers motivated by cynical power politics? Are they ideological fanatics? Is tlie content of their ideology the gospel of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, or something else? Questions can be compounded ad infinitum.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , January 1959 , pp. 153 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1959

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References

1 MrDulles, John Foster in a letter to The New Statesman, February 8, 1958.Google Scholar

2 Plamenatz, John, German Marxism and Russian Communism, London, 1954, pp. 350–51.Google Scholar

3 This interpretation is presented in my article, “The Historical Role of Marxism and the Soviet System,” World Politics, VIII, NO. I (October 1955), pp. 20–45.

4 “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” reprinted in American Diplomacy, 1900–1950, Chicago, 1951, p. 123.

5 Ibid., p. 124.

6 From Khrushchev's report to the 20th Party Congress: “As far back as on the eve of the great October revolution, V. I. Lenin wrote ‘All nations will arrive at socialism— this is inevitable—but not all will do so in exactly the same way.’ … Historical experience has fully confirmed this brilliant precept of Lenin's. … In the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, where power belongs to the working people and society is founded on public ownership of the means of production, unique specific forms of economic management and organization of the state apparatus are arising in the process of socialist construction.” Current Soviet Policies, II, ed. by Leo Gruliow, New York, 1957, pp. 37–38.

7 “The July plenary session of the Central Committee studied in detail the reasons for the development of conflict with Yugoslavia. It was a shameful role that Stalin played there. The ‘Yugoslav affair’ contained no problems that could not have been solved through Party discussions among comrades…. No matter how much or how little Stalin shook not only his little finger but everything else that he could shake, Tito did not fall. Why? The reason was that in this case of disagreement with the Yugoslav comrades, Tito had behind him a state and a people who had gone through a severe school of fighting for liberty and independence, a people who gave support to their leaders.” Quoted in ibid., p. 183.

8 The satellite Parties were told in 1953–1954 that the office of Secretary-General could no longer be combined with that of President or Prime Minister. In Imre Nagy's statement, which appears well authenticated, he mentions the discussion of Malenkov, Molotov, and Khrushchev with the Hungarian leaders in May 1953, which was designed among other things to end Rakosi's absolute domination of Hungarian communism: “Comrade Khrushchev noted ‘the matter involved was that die leadership of the Party and the state should not be concentrated in the hands of one man or a few men, this is not desirable.’” Nagy, Imre, On Communism, in Defense of the New Course, New York, 1957, p. 250.Google Scholar

9 While there was general agreement on the over-all character of domestic reforms and the shift in foreign tactics, the pace and methods of the modification of Stalinism were the subject of considerable maneuvering within the Soviet elite. Thus the fall of Beria in the summer of 1953 was not unconnected, it is safe to say, with his attempt to claim the main credit for the alleged return to “socialist legality” and more liberal nationality policies. Malenkov's fall from the premiership was expedited by the other leaders' alarm over his identification with the policy of increased consumers' goods. In addition to administrative and inner-Party intrigues, the struggle for power in the USSR has consisted during the last five years in each faction trying to claim credit for the more liberal policies—policies on which all of them in principle were agreed.

10 Ulam, Adam B., Titoism and the Cominjorm, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, p. 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See Khrushchev's, speech quoted in Current Soviet Policies, II, op.cit., p. 177.Google Scholar