Stalinist foreign policy was actually very unadventurous in the Stalinist scheme

of the world that we have friends and we have enemies.

Friends means that we control them,

and enemies we have to be concerned about.

Stalinist foreign policy was not adventurous.

Stalin would not embark on a scheme which he didn't know how it would end.

Khrushchev was a different person.

He attempted to open up Soviet foreign policy,

meaning that with the West,

we want to maintain a reasonable relation.

The Stalinist slogan, the Stalinist worldview,

implied that ultimately war was inevitable.

War was inherent in the imperialist capitalist world.

Khrushchev and his fellow leaders argued that in the age of nuclear weapons,

wars must be avoided,

and wars can be avoided.

And so, attempted to come to agreement with Western powers.

That primarily, of course,

meant the United States and to a less extent, France and England.

And was called the spirit of Geneva,

where Soviet representative Khrushchev met in 1955 with Western leaders,

and come up with compromises.

The most significant of these was the Austrian state treaty,

which meant that Soviet troops were withdrawn from Austria,

and Austria became a neutral nation to the great relief of the Austrians.

This had actually consequences for Eastern Europe,

because it showed the possibility of neutrality.

Soviet bases which existed in Finland were withdrawn,

and the Soviet propagandists were saying,

"Unlike the United States,

we have no foreign bases because we are peace loving power."

And the amelioration of hostilities with

the Western world was a major shift in Soviet foreign policy.

On the other hand,

Soviet foreign policy became more adventurous and less predictable,

and consequently, in spite of the spirit of Geneva, actually more dangerous.

The Soviet Union during the days of Stalin recognized that it can have

influence only in areas which actually invited the Soviet Union.

Stalin had no knowledge,

no interest what happens in Latin America.

With Khrushchev, that changed.

And Khrushchev attempted to

establish connections with what came to be called, just at this time,

the Third World, which actually came to be organized, had conferences,

and Khrushchev went to great length to establish good relations with India,

establish relations with the Muslim world, in particular, Egypt.

The war of 1956, the Israeli, French,

British invasion of Suez which lasted for such a short time,

the Russians showed that they will come to the aid of Egyptians.

The Russians offered help of building the dam at Aswan,

which the United States did not.

And consequently, Russian influence, Russian interest,

in the rest of the world during the days of Khrushchev, greatly increased.

That also meant the willingness to

tolerate a degree of heterogeneity within the Soviet bloc,

hence, Khrushchev's attempt to regain Tito for the Soviet bloc,

which did not quite succeed,

but reduced hostility between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

And Tito came to be a major figure in the Third World Organization,

and the Soviet Union achieved a degree of influence through Tito within

this newly created rather ephemeral entity.

The great crisis came once in 1961,

when what was happening that

East Germany had relatively open borders with the West,

meaning that it was possible for somebody to achieve education in

an East German university in Hertie or Dresden or in East Berlin,

and then go to Berlin,

take a subway and go to the western part of the city.

This outgoing,

this was intolerable for maintaining the stability of the East German Communist regime.

And the response was in 1961,

to build a wall, to close the subway system, and in fact,

cut Berlin into two halves,

and thereby, secure the solidity of the East German state.

The Soviet Union was very much concerned with the rearmament of Germany.

This was, of course,

they were preoccupied with German danger,

and given the past history of first and second World War,

this was perfectly understandable.

Germany as part of the NATO,

Germany rearmed was perceived by the Khrushchev regime as a major danger.

And it seems to me that the Austrian state treaty in

the Soviet mind was offered as an example of what could be done in Germany,

namely, a unified Germany in which the Soviet Union would give up East Germany.

And what it would achieve is a demilitarized neutral Germany in the heart of Europe,

which from the Soviet point of view,

would be a great advantage.

This, of course, did not succeed.

West Germany was far too valuable.

It had the population three times of East Germany,

and the industrial strength was really incomparably greater,

so this particular Soviet goal was not satisfied.

But what was happening was

this peculiar situation that the Soviet military never fired a weapon.

In anger against a non-socialist state.

By contrast, in Hungary

the revolution was suppressed militarily.

And most significantly the Chinese Mao

introduced a set of policies which was perceived as a threat,

not merely to the unity of the state,

not on the unity of the communist bloc,

but also to Soviet security.

And the Chinese-Russian, the Chinese Soviet border came to be

the most dangerous part for the Soviet military,

where actually small scale skirmishes took place.

From the point of view of

the Russian leadership in the era of Khrushchev and also in the era of Brezhnev,

China represented something unpredictable and something particularly dangerous.

They were very much concerned about the security of

Siberia which was very thinly inhabited and which was

of course bordering on China which had its enormous manpower.

And the Mao's policy of industrialization,

Mao's policy of terror

was something which the Soviet leaders were dismayed.

And it's interesting to contrast the Soviet hostility to the West,

to the United States versus Soviet hostility to the East.

And it seems that it was more heartfelt there,

sorry if we may put it this way,

hostility to the East which had a nationalist element.

The West was predictable,

we can deal with them,

but what the Chinese might do we don't know.

Well, of course the great crisis which meant the world

came closest to a nuclear exchange was over Cuba.

Namely, of course Soviet Union had nothing to do with Castro coming to power.

But once Castro came into power and pursued a set of policies

which was perceived by the United States as something hostile,

then the Cubans turned to Russians,

the Soviets, and the Soviets responded enthusiastically.

And when the Cuban regime they perceived was endangered,

they were willing to invest nuclear weapons

in Cuba acting as a defense of the newly established revolutionary,

if you will, communist regime which fear during the war of

the so-called Bay of Pigs affair in which

American financed American organized counter-revolutionaries,

we called them that, attempted to remove Castro from power.

Now it seems that Khrushchev and his fellow policymakers were not aware,

did not perceive the American response,

and consequently the Soviet Union backed down at that confrontation

understanding that they did not have

the logistical means to confront the United States in the Western world.

Not only in the nuclear exchange, which was unthinkable,

but also in the military exchange and Russia backed down.

Now, this was shortly before Khrushchev's removal.

And the question is to what extent the failure of the Cuban policy and

the failure of Chinese policy contributed to his ultimate removal?

Probably not very much.

In as much as in matters of foreign policy, the Soviet leadership,

that is people who surrounded Khrushchev and

people who would ultimately remove him from power,

did not intend to, were not planning to pursue a different foreign policy line.

After Khrushchev's removal,

the policy makers used

scarce resources to act in comparable extent in improving the military.

This was a consequence of their failure in the Cuban Missile crisis,

at least partially the consequence.

The degree of resources invested in the military during

the days of Brezhnev was something extraordinary.

According to CIA figures,

the Soviet Union invested 15% of their domestic product in the military.

But then Shevardnadze who was a foreign minister in the days of Gorbachev,

he revealed that actually it was

25% of the gross national product was used for the military.

This is something extraordinary.

This is an infinitely greater burden on

the Soviet economy than it was in the case of any Western country.

To what extent this is ultimately contributed to

the demise of that of the Soviet system is a debated point.

It seems to me that it was not a major factor.

What was wrong with the Soviet system was something different and deeper

than it could be remedied by a reduced investment in the military.

The question is why did they invest so much in the military?

I mean after all, they did not need

enormous military to keep the Eastern Europeans in check.

There was really not major danger the war with China.

So, why did they invest so much in military?

Why did they attempt to have their influence felt anywhere in the world,

in Africa and even in Latin America?

And the reason, it seems to me,

is that what was the source of the legitimacy of this regime?

That it's not any longer that we are going to build a better future.

It could not any longer be based on Marxist ideology,

but it was based on that you live in a country which is in power second to none.

To what extent Soviet citizens derived pleasure and satisfaction for being

citizen of the one of the two great powers in the world is difficult to say.

But arguably, it did have some meaning.

So, ultimately, it was a matter of prestige for the Soviet leadership to

build a military which enabled them to make

their influence felt anywhere and everywhere in the world.

Adventures in Foreign Policy

Russian History: from Lenin to Putin

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