A history of Russia

by Riazanovsky

  Short of physical violence, the thawing of Soviet society and the emerging opposition views gave rise to the blossoming of a striking and varied samizdat, that is, self-published, illegally produced, reproduced, and distributed literature, and to the appearance of dissenting intellectuals and even groups of intellectuals on the fringes of official cultural life. Harassed and suppressed in many ways, including on occasion incarceration in dreadful mental hospitals, the opposition kept nevertheless delivering its message, or rather messages, ranging from a kind of conservative nationalism and neo-Slavophilism to former hydrogen-bomb physicist, the late Andrei Sakha-rov's, progressive, generally Westernizer, views and the late Andrei Amalrik's personal, catastrophic, almost Chaadaev-like vision. And it produced the phenomenon of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Whatever one thinks of that writer in terms of literary stature, ideological acumen, or scholarly precision, most of his works, especially the Gulag volumes, are likely to be linked as indissolubly to the Russia of Stalin as Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Turgenev's Gentry Nest have been linked to the Russia of the landed gentry - probably unto the ages of ages. Isolated, weak, armed only with a belief in individual moral regeneration, so prominent in Solzhenitsyn, the intellectual opposition remained a highly troublesome element in Soviet society and a forerunner of glasnost.

  Jewish self-affirmation, protest, and massive migration to Israel (about 235,000 emigrants up to 1985, some 10 per cent of the total Jewish population of the U.S.S.R., with many more applying) - together with the permitted emigration of some non-Jews - represented another development to disturb the post-Stalin Soviet scene, a development closely linked to the intellectual opposition, although also quite distinct. One suspects that the decision to let numerous dissatisfied Soviet citizens leave, while solving the immediate problem of dealing with those people as well as responding in a conciliatory way to world public opinion, potentially raised more questions for the Soviet system than it settled. It is apparently among many Soviet Jews that the alienation from the established order was especially thoroughgoing, as in the anecdotal story of the Moscow Jew who was accused of receiving a letter from a brother in Tel Aviv, although

  he had claimed that he had no relatives abroad. He explained: "You don't understand: my brother is at home; I am abroad."

  The post-Stalin relaxation of restrictions appeared especially striking in an area that spans domestic and foreign policies: foreign travel and international contacts in general. Modifying the former Draconian regulations, which had made a virtually impenetrable "iron curtain" between the Soviet people and the outside world, Soviet authorities began to welcome tourists, including Americans, and allow increasing numbers of their citizens to travel abroad. Always strong on organization, they proceeded to arrange numerous "cultural exchanges," ranging from advanced study in many fields of learning to motion pictures and books for children. Soviet scientists, scholars, athletes, dancers, and musicians, not to mention the astronauts, drew deserved attention in many countries of the world. At the same time Soviet citizens welcomed distinguished visitors from the West and vigorously applauded their performances. In 1976, following the Helsinki agreements of the preceding year, foreign travel and cultural exchange gained further strength, supplying the U.S.S.R. with more international contacts than had been the case at any time since the discontinuation of the N.E.P. Bit by bit, the Soviet Union was becoming better acquainted with the West and the world.

  Foreign Relations

  Soviet foreign policy after Stalin's death also continued to follow the established pattern in many respects as the U.S.S.R. and the Communist bloc faced the United States and its allies. No conclusive agreements on such decisive issues as control of atomic weapons, general disarmament, or Germany were reached between the two sides. Crises in widely scattered areas appeared in rapid succession. The Soviet Union made a special effort to profit by the emancipation of former Asian and African colonies from Western rule. Yet the post-Stalin policy, especially as developed by Khrushchev, also had its more conciliatory side. The new party secretary elevated the fact of coexistence of the two worlds into a dogma and asserted that all problems would be solved without war. The apparent contradiction of the two approaches probably stemmed from a real inconsistency in Khrushchev's thinking rather than from tactical considerations. It reflected further the dilemma faced by aggressive communism in an age of hydrogen warfare. Brezhnev was to pursue the substance, if not the flamboyant style, of his predecessor's foreign policy, engaging in an enormous arms race and pushing hard Soviet influence and interests in Europe, Asia, the Near East, Africa, and elsewhere, while emphasizing at

  the same time detente with the United States and the march of history towards peaceful evolution and international cooperation.

  Stalin's death and Malenkov's assumption of the leading role in the Soviet Union marked some lessening of international tensions as well as some relaxation at home. The new prime minister asserted that all disputed questions in foreign relations could be settled peacefully, singling out the United States as a country with which an understanding could be reached. In the summer of 1953 an armistice was finally agreed upon in Korea. In the spring of 1954 an international conference ended the war in Indo-China by partitioning it between the Communist Vietminh in the north and the independent state of Vietnam in the south. Although the Soviet Union had not participated directly in the Indo-Chinese conflict, that local war had threatened to become a wider conflagration, and its termination enhanced the chances of world peace. In January 1954, the Council of Foreign Ministers of the four powers, inoperative for a long time, met in Berlin to discuss the German and Austrian treaties, but without result. The Soviet Union joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, and the International Labor Organization, or ILO, that April. Malenkov spoke of a further improvement of international relations and of a summit meeting.

  That a policy of even moderate relaxation had its dangers for the Soviet bloc became, however, quickly apparent. In early June 1953, demonstrations and strikes erupted in Czechoslovakia, assuming a dangerous form in Pilsen - or Plzen - where rioters seized the city hall and demanded free elections. In the middle of the month East Berlin and other centers in East Germany rose in a rebellion spearheaded by workers who proclaimed a general strike. Soviet troops re-established order after some bitter fighting. Beria's fall that summer might have been affected by these developments, for the police chief had stressed relaxation and legality since the death of Stalin. Malenkov's resignation from the premiership in February 1955 ended the role of that former favorite of Stalin on the world scene.

  Bulganin, who replaced Malenkov as head of the government, became the most prominent Soviet figure in international affairs, although he usually traveled in the company of and acted jointly with the Party chief, Khrushchev. Molotov, in the meantime, continued in charge of the foreign office. "B. and K." diplomacy, as it came to be known, included much showy journeying on goodwill missions in both Europe and Asia. The Soviet Union paid special court to India and other neutralist countries, which had formerly been condemned as lackeys of imperialism. At the same time the two Soviet leaders claimed to be ready to settle the points at issue with the United States and the West. And, indeed, in May 1955 the great

  powers managed to come to an agreement and conclude a peace treaty with Austria, which included the permanent neutralization of that state as well as certain Austrian payments and deliveries to the U.S.S.R. in recompense for the Soviet return of German property in Austria to the Austrian government. The height of the detente was reached at the summit conference in Geneva in July 1955. While no concrete problems were solved at that meeting, the discussion took place in a remarkably cordial atmosphere, with both Bulganin and Eisenhower insisting that their countries would never engage in aggressive action. The following month Soviet authorities announced a reduction of their armed forces by 640,000 men. In September the U.S.S.R. returned the Porkkala base to Finland and concluded a t
reaty of friendship with the Finns for twenty years. Yet in the autumn of 1955, as soon as the ministers of foreign affairs tried to apply the attitude of accommodation and understanding expressed by their chiefs to the settlement of specific issues, a deadlock resulted, with Molotov not budging an inch from the previous Soviet positions and demands. The "spirit of Geneva" proved to be an enticing dream rather than a reality.

  Since the rapprochement between the U.S.S.R. and the West failed to last, the polarization of the world continued. Following the Communist victory in northern Indo-China, the Manila pact of September 1954 created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO. Great Britain, France, Pakistan, and Thailand joined the four countries already allied, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, to establish a new barrier to Communist expansion in Asia. In Europe, West Germany rose steadily in importance as an American ally and a member of the Western coalition. The Soviet Union in its turn concluded the so-called Warsaw Treaty with its satellites in May 1955 to unify the Communist military command in Europe.

  The year 1956 was a memorable one in Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev's February speech denouncing Stalin further shook the discipline in the Communist world. On the other hand, the improvement in Soviet-Yugoslav relations, which had begun with Bulganin's and Khrushchev's visit to Belgrade in 1955, received a boost, the break between the two states now being blamed on Stalin himself as well as on Beria. In April 1956 the Cominform was dissolved, and in June Shepilov replaced Molotov as foreign minister. The ferment in the Soviet satellite empire finally led to explosions in Poland and in Hungary. In late June 1956, workers in Poznan clashed with the police and scores of people were killed. Polish intellectuals and even many Polish Communists clamored for a relaxation of controls and a generally milder regime. On October 19, Wladyslaw Gomulka, who had been imprisoned as a Titoist and had been reinstated in

  August, became the Party secretary. That same day Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders flew to Warsaw to settle the crisis. In spite of extreme tension, an understanding was reached: the U.S.S.R. accepted Gomulka and a liberalization of the Communist system in Poland and agreed to withdraw Soviet troops from that country.

  Events in Hungary took a graver turn. There, under the influence of the happenings in Poland, a full-scale revolution took place in late October, during which the political police were massacred. The army sided on the whole with the revolutionaries. The overturn was spearheaded by young people, especially students and workers. The new government of a revisionist Communist, Imre Nagy, constituted a political coalition rather than single-party rule and withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Treaty. But on November 4, after only a few days of freedom, Soviet troops began storming Budapest and crushed the revolution. The imprudent attack on Egypt staged at that time by Great Britain, France, and Israel over the issue of the Suez Canal helped the Soviet move by diverting the attention of the world, splitting the Western camp, and engaging some of its forces. While crushing the Hungarians, the U.S.S.R. championed the cause of Egypt and threatened its assailants. But the moral shock of the Hungarian intervention proved hard to live down: it led to the greatest popular condemnation of the Communist cause and the most widespread desertions from Communist party ranks in the free world since the Second World War. There were strikes, demonstrations, and protests even in the Soviet Union.

  As already suggested, Khrushchev might have been lucky to survive these grave perturbations in the Communist world. Yet he did defeat and dismiss Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich, together with Shepilov who sided with them, in the spring and summer of 1957. After Bulganin's fall in March 1958, the first secretary, now also prime minister, became the undisputed chief of Soviet foreign policy, while Andrei Gromyko headed the foreign office. Khrushchev's behavior on the international scene showed a certain pattern. He remained essentially intransigent, pushing every advantage he had, be it troubles in newly independent states, such as the Congo, or Soviet achievements in armaments and space technology. Nevertheless, he talked incessantly in favor of coexistence and summit conferences to settle outstanding issues. Also, he paid friendly visits to many countries, including the U.S.A. in 1959. The summit conference in the summer of 1960 was never held, for two weeks before it was scheduled to begin Khrushchev announced that an American U-2 spy plane had been brought down deep in Soviet territory. But in 1961 Khrushchev met the new American president, John F. Kennedy, in Vienna. In the summer of 1962 both aspects of Soviet foreign policy stood in bold relief: fanned by

  the U.S.S.R., a new Berlin crisis continued to threaten world peace; yet, on the other hand, Khrushchev emphasized more than ever coexistence abroad and peaceful progress at home, having made that his signal theoretical contribution to the program that was enunciated at the Twenty-second Party Congress. To be sure, as officially defined in the Soviet Union, coexistence meant economic, political, and ideological competition with the capitalist world until the final fall of capitalism. But that fall, Soviet authorities came to assert, would occur without a world war.

  However, in the autumn of that same year, Khrushchev overreached himself and brought the world to the brink of a thermonuclear war. The confrontation between the United States and the U.S.S.R. in October 1962 over the Soviet missiles in Cuba, which resulted in a stunning Soviet defeat, can be explained, at least in part, by the Soviet leader's enthusiasm and his conviction that the United States and capitalism in general were on the decline and would retreat when hard pressed. The outcome, no doubt, strengthened the argument for peaceful coexistence and emphasized caution and consultation in foreign policy, symbolized by the celebrated "hot line" between Washington and Moscow. The Soviet Union proceeded to measure carefully its reactions and its involvement even in such complicated and entangling crises as the Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and 1973 and the Vietnam War. In the latter conflict, the Soviet Union denounced of course "American imperialism" and provided extremely valuable materiel to North Vietnam, but it avoided escalation. Yet, following the complete victory of communism in Indo-China in 1975 and the shattering impact of the catastrophic American policy in Vietnam on the American public, the Soviet Union might have felt that it had a freer hand on the international stage, in Angola or elsewhere.

  With the Soviet Union as well as the United States acquiring a second-strike capability, that is, the ability to retaliate and inflict "an unacceptable damage" on the enemy after absorbing a nuclear blow, a true balance of terror settled on the world. Ever-improving technology made virtually all established strategic concepts obsolete. Numerous bases and indeed whole sections of the globe lost their importance in terms of the possible ultimate showdown between the two nuclear giants.

  From the mid-seventies it was authoritatively estimated in the West-and apparently realistically in contrast to earlier alarms about alleged "missile gaps" and the like - that the U.S.S.R. had caught up with the United States in overall nuclear military strength, and indeed had perhaps moved slightly ahead. Even the Soviet navy, insignificant compared with its American rival at the end of the Second World War, had risen to be, according to many indices, the strongest fleet in the world, although still behind the Americans in aircraft carriers and perhaps in such intangibles as naval tradition and

  the expertise and spirit of its personnel. Yet the enormous economic burden, terror, and inconclusiveness of the arms race did not lead to a full negotiated settlement. Important results were achieved, to be sure. Following the earlier banning of nuclear tests in the atmosphere, the nuclear non-proliferation agreement was signed by the two superpowers and other states in early 1968. Other agreements were reached concerning outer space, where 1975 witnessed the celebrated joint effort of the Russians and the Americans. The crucial issue of military limitations itself was tackled in numerous negotiations, including the so-called S.A.L.T. II talks and President Ford's discussions with Brezhnev in Vladivostok in 1974. Still, in spite of a considerable measure of agreement, the S.A.L.T. II talks remained inconclusive, primarily b
ecause of the problems of the Backfire bombers on the Soviet side and of the cruise missile on the American. Moreover, as Edward Teller and other scientists have pointed out, the difficulty in the negotiations resides not only in the entire complex of aims, attitudes, and policies of the two superpowers, but also in the very nature of scientific and technological advance, which rapidly makes prearranged schemes of limitation obsolete.

  The very closely related but even larger issue of detente between the Soviet Union and the United States also sailed to an uncertain future. With explicit "cold war" a thing of the past, detente scored a resounding success at the Helsinki conference in the summer of 1975, where the United States and other Western countries accepted in effect the communist redrawing of the map of central and eastern Europe following the Second World War in exchange for unsubstantiated promises of greater contacts between the two worlds and a greater degree of freedom in those contacts. But a comprehensive economic agreement between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. failed over the questions of the most favored nation clause, credits, and the American concern with the fate of Soviet Jews. Furthermore, before long detente was again swamped by new international developments, to be detailed later in this chapter.

  Ironically, while Soviet-American relations improved and became more stable after the Cuban confrontation, and while the Soviet leaders found welcome in Gaullist France and other capitalist countries, their standing in the communist world deteriorated. The conflict with China broke out into the open around 1960 and has widened and deepened since. After the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet personnel from China in August of that year and the discontinuance of assistance, relations between the two countries quickly became those of extreme antagonism. To the sound of violent mutual denunciations the two states and parties competed with each other for the leadership of world communism, the Chinese usually championing the revolutionary position against Soviet "revisionism." Moreover, China became an atomic power and formulated large claims on Soviet Asiatic