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The Uncertainty of Soviet Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

S. I. Ploss
Affiliation:
International Studies at Princeton
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Extract

Politics cannot tolerate indulgence, it must be logical and consistent.” This was a lesson in Soviet foreign policy which N. S. Khrushchev administered in July 1957, or just after the organizational finale to his bitter struggle with V. M. Molotov, whom the victorious leader accused of favoring “the policy of ‘tightening all the screws’” in relations with the West. However, in the past two and a half years, erraticism has often marked the Kremlin's foreign political behavior. Does this vacillation originate entirely in “objective” pressures on the party First Secretary and premier, or in his own allegedly impulsive nature, or may it sometimes be due in part to a recurrence of factional clashes in the Soviet hierarchy?

Type
Research note
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1963

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References

1 Pravda, July 14, 1957.

2 The Kremlin and World Politics: Studies in Soviet Policy and Action (New York 1060), 380.

3 Pravda, October 18, 1961.

4 Ibid., November 1, 1961.

5 Druzhinin, N. M., ed., Sovetskaya istoricheskaya nauka ot XX k XXII S'yezdu KPSS: Istoriya SSSR; sbornik statey [Soviet historical science from the 20th to the 22nd CPSU Congress: USSR history; A collection of articles] (Moscow 1962), 494.Google Scholar

6 Pravda, March 15, 1962.

7 See Meissner, Boris, “Parteiführung und Parteiorganisation,” Osteuropa, No. 1/2 (1962), 324.Google Scholar

8 Pravda, March 12, 1962.

9 Kommunist, No. 6 (1962), 46.

10 Ibid., No. 7 (1962), 11ff.

11 Korniyets, L. R., in Plenum Tsentral'nogo Komiteta Kommunistischeskoy Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza, 15–19 dekabrya 1958 goda, Stenograficheskiy otchyot [Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, December 15–19, 1958, Minutes] (Moscow 1958), 518.Google Scholar

12 Pravda, November 7, 1962.

13 Partiynaya Zhizn', No. 21 (1962), 29.

14 Pravda, December 13, 1962.