RUSSIAN DISSIDENTS DEBATE DÉTENTE
Clark, Ernest
The debate over Soviet-American detente called for by Secretary Kissinger has been in progress now for some time. Parallel with the discussions in the United States, an unofficial debate among...
...The U.S.S.R.'s Deputy Procurator General called in Sakharov for a warning...
...in different contexts he can be seen as a strong one-worldist and a classic Russian Slavophile...
...Though its benefits may be evident only in the long run, the course of detente seems the only possible one for the world...
...One must hope that the debate over detente in this country will not be so blinded by Kissinger's "triumphs" as to forget that the terms of improved relations may, to some extent, be a matter of choice...
...Society will demand the intellectual and spiritual satisfactions that only a free exchange of ideas can provide...
...Medvedev explains this fact as an attempt by "rightists" in the leadership to discredit de-Stalinization in foreign policy...
...But this unexamined assumption may be the chief weakness of his argument...
...He offers the fullest and most persuasive arguments for the original Nixon-Brezhnev vision of detente available from the unofficial Soviet world...
...By such a measure, the Soviet Union represents a threat to the world's security, and China a worse threat...
...On the one hand, many of the dissidents sympathized with the yearning of Jews, and other groups (notably ethnic Germans), to leave a country where assimilation seemed both mandatory and barred...
...His new statement reiterated his commitment to a meaningful rapprochement as a step toward eliminating the threat of nuclear war...
...The agreements Secretary Kissinger has forged (such as the Vladivostok agreement) have been difficult to evaluate precisely because we don't have sufficient information about potential alternatives...
...THE COSTS of opposing Soviet policy in strategic matters are high...
...They concur that detente can only be meaningful if it brings democratization with it...
...Detente, they insist, must address the real threats to world peace...
...Too COMMENTS AND OPINIONS 117 much would provoke further repression...
...the Jackson amendment will not result in any new law, he reasons...
...But this is a negative definition...
...Medvedev's argument merits considerable attention...
...The other tendency arises from a sense that the contemporary nation-state cannot avert the threats of mass destruction from nuclear war, hunger, or environmental exhaustion...
...His argument centers on his belief that the isolation of the Soviet Union is responsible for the vestiges of Stalinist repression...
...Parallel with the discussions in the United States, an unofficial debate among the Soviet dissidents over the terms of detente has taken shape...
...Sakharov reasoned that if all that happens is that the West extends economic, scientific, and political concessions to the Soviet Union, the closed Soviet state will benefit, not the cause of peace...
...although he qualifies his support, he opposes, for example, Congress's attempt to withhold most-favored-nation status from the Soviet Union until certain demands regarding Jewish emigration are met...
...Andrei Sakharov takes a position favoring rapprochement, but only if accompanied by the democratization of Soviet society...
...Given his disillusionment with the West, it is perhaps not paradoxical that Solzhenitsyn swings between one view emphasizing the need for international moral integration and another urging Russian national isolation...
...At the same time there arose two countervailing tendencies...
...and Soviet governments may make "detente" simply another mystification...
...When governments negotiate, as when they wage war, such terms as "detente," "national security," or "raison d'Etat" become catchwords for legitimating all official decisions...
...I have believed and believe now that the only real way to solve world problems is the movement of each side toward the other, the convergence of the capitalist and socialist systems accompanied by demilitarization, reinforcement of the social protection for workers' rights, and creation of a mixed type of economy...
...Yet because of what he sees as the imminent collapse of the Western capitalist states (the U.S., he finds, closely resembles Czarist Russia just before 1917), and the threat of Chinese demagogery, the Soviet Union must seek its salvation within itself...
...In any case, he has argued, how can detente rest on any basis but 116 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS mutual trust, and how can trust develop if one of the parties refuses to open its society...
...Reading the dissenters, one is moved to seek the distinguishing features of a "true" or "meaningful" detente...
...Solzhenitsyn insists there is no such thing any more as a state's internal affairs...
...What Medvedev does not consider, for it would imperil the argument, is that there is no intrinsic dynamic forcing detente to a logical end-point...
...To a considerable extent, it is the Jackson-Vanik amendment that has sparked the internal Soviet debate...
...Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn warn that simply signing trade agreements does not necessarily prevent war or facilitate democracy...
...Medvedev has been an indefatigable opponent of Soviet repression...
...Thus he sees the search for detente by the West as another Munich...
...He believes in detente even though the Soviet leaders are joining it to increased internal repressiveness...
...If morality is taken as a standard for international behavior, then it ought to be a single yardstick applied impartially everywhere...
...democratize...
...Roy Medvedev and Solzhenitsyn have echoed this feeling...
...Roy Medvedev has become the leading advocate of most of the policies connected with the detente...
...As a recent article by Henry Pachter in DISSENT suggests, one may distinguish between detente and detente-ism...
...Over and over Solzhenitsyn has attacked what he conceives to be the world's double standard in excusing "socialist" immorality while harshly condemning capitalist immorality...
...its premise then was that the reduction of world tensions could take only one form: the NixonBrezhnev detente...
...This anti-ideological, one-world sentiment therefore opposes ideological dogmatism as much as chauvinism...
...Solzhenitsyn is more radical in denouncing the hope of detente...
...In August he elaborated on this idea in another interview: if rapprochement is not accompanied in the U.S.S.R...
...Detente—or no detente...
...It is especially hard for people who have suffered so much through war and repression to oppose a detente policy...
...Sakharov was subjected to a denunciation campaign in the press...
...The regime's response to these notions was virulent...
...by democratization, then rapprochement will be even more dangerous than the previous absence of detente...
...Once this isolation is overcome by good international relations, world public opinion will gain influence in Soviet internal policy...
...he simply denies that the Soviet political system can...
...Formally, detente is defined as the reduction of international tension...
...Detente, for Medvedev, is most devoutly to be wished, along with scientific cooperation, trade, and exchange of tourists...
...In the fall of 1973, Roy Medvedev wrote a closely reasoned article on detente that took issue both with Sakharov's gloom and Solzhenitsyn's "MoscowCentrism...
...nevertheless they considered that the most important struggle lay in making Russia itself a just country...
...Ultimately, however, the process of detente will tend to lower the ideological barriers between states...
...In his "Letter to the Soviet Leaders" Solzhenitsyn strikes a strongly patriotic note in his insistence that the welfare of the homeland impels drastic reorientation of its external policies...
...By contrast, both Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn have lost any hope that MarxismLeninism offers practicable solutions...
...The debate really begins in the summer of 1973, with Sakharov's outspoken interview with 011e Stenholm of Swedish television...
...In many ways this comes as a reaction to Stalin's dogmatic insistence upon preserving rigid ideological boundaries between two forever hostile social systems...
...THE VIEWS of the historian Roy Medvedev pose a further contrast to Solzhenitsyn's and Sakharov's contrasting positions...
...The dissenters have defined emigration as an issue of basic human rights: every individual should have the right to choose the country of his residence...
...The coming generation of Soviet leaders will be more receptive to these influences, less inclined to dogmatism and repression...
...In fact, the evidence on this point is by no means unequivocal, and the logic is questionable...
...In fact, he asserts, detente will improve neither the internal nor the external situation...
...if the West accepts Soviet terms in detente, he claimed, the results would be "very bad...
...his conception of the Soviet Union's problems derives from his careful distinction between Leninist norms and Stalinist distortions...
...The logical end is the free international movement of people and ideas...
...The emigration issue grew in tandem with the "democratic movement" out of two strong ethnically centered movements—the Soviet Jews' intense campaign to emigrate and the demand of the Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland...
...It presumes that the terms of great power relations are immutably given, that the best interests of the two peoples are represented in the negotiated U.S.-Soviet agreements of the past few years...
...Alexander Solzhenitsyn has become the sharpest critic of prevalent conceptions of detente...
...We have recently seen how easily such umbrella terms are abused for particular interests...
...For the first time, Sakharov publicly denounced what he called the Soviet Union's "rules of the game" in its detente policy...
...This kind of pressure, though, has certain natural limits...
...In response to this vitriolic abuse, Sakharov issued a clarification of his position in September 1973...
...In its naive search for trouble-free relations, the West seems to have forgotten the question of human rights within the U.S.S.R...
...Such a detente would only spur the strengthening of Soviet military prowess and exacerbate the real international problems...
...Medvedev considers democratization inevitable...
...Since he considers the right to emigrate both to symbolize and to promote democratization, he has explicitly supported the Jackson-Vanik amendment...
...Given the "dilemma of the one alternative," this logic required that Sakharov be labeled a hawk...
...This was, of course, before Solzhenitsyn's arrest and expulsion...
...His main concern was that a false detente might delude people into believing that the threat had diminished when in fact it had, if anything, intensified: I have always' welcomed and welcome now the relaxation of international tension and the efforts of governments toward rapprochement of states, toward limitation of the arms race, toward elimination of mutual mistrust...
...What some dissenters have found, however, is that the appearance of detente may short-circuit its substance...
...The elements of a genuine detente today would presumably include two-sided compromises on arms control, mutual understanding on strategic interests, and closer integration of societies through the exchange of information and freer travel...
...Three principle camps have formed around spokesmen of courage and ability...
...The West's indifference to Soviet repression is as immoral as the Soviet Union's claim that repression is an "internal affair...
...indeed it hinges on a belief that there can only be one vision, one form of detente...
...It is true, argues Medvedev, that pressure from the West has been useful in extracting certain concessions, such as the abolition of the emigration education tax, and the continued liberty of Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn...
...By labeling hopes for better agreements unrealistic, the U.S...
...The right to emigrate has captivated the West's interest, while the situation of those who remain behind continues to deteriorate...
...A former Party member, Roy Medvedev remains devoted to his interpretation of Marxism-Leninism...
Vol. 22 • April 1975 • No. 2
