The Coexistence Debate

...It was the bitter experience of the years immediately after the end of the last war which created fear and distrust of Russia in the West and led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...

...Stalin declared that by its capture of Belgrade the Red Army had "provided the necessary conditions for the Yugoslav Communist party to come to power," but had "unfortunately been unable to perform a similar service for the French and Italian Communist parties...

...With regard to events in Eastern Europe during and just after World War II, Kennan maintains "on the strength of overwhelming historical evidence" that the Communist governments established there were not products of purely internal upheavals...

...Whereas in domestic affairs it is admitted that "the development of socialist democracy is linked with the need to overcome the consequences of the cult of the personality of J. V. Stalin," in foreign affairs it is not admitted that there has ever been any departure from the principle of peaceful coexistence between states of different ideology...

...A very different attitude was taken toward possible interventions by Western powers against upheavals in their own orbit...

...If Khrushchev were now publicly to repudiate the expansionist policies of the Stalin era and to proclaim a "new course," it would go far to restore confidence, though some evidence in practice, particularly over Berlin, would still be required before a change of heart could take place...

...From this it has been rather too easily assumed that "Stalinism" was rejected in foreign, as well as domestic, policy...

...The Soviet Union appears thus to have one law for itself and another for the West...

...If, however, we are to believe this, it would be contrary not only to historical evidence, but also to Stalin's own version of the events of 1945...

...Since the most notorious past examples of Soviet intervention to build up or preserve Communist regimes abroad are held to be quite compatible with peaceful coexistence, and since all revolutions are declared to be "carried out by the people themselves," whatever the evidence to the contrary, it can hardly be said that current Soviet assurances of good will provide much ground for hoping that the future international conduct of the Soviet Union will differ essentially from what it has been in the past...

...it is also bound to arouse suspicions about the future...

...The most recent case of Soviet armed intervention in the internal affairs of another country was of course in Hungary in 1956, when Communist rule was restored by Soviet tanks after it had been overthrown by a national insurrection...

...In the next issue Khrushchev's article was subjected to critical analysis by George Kennan, former American Ambassador in Moscow, now at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University...

...But if Khrushchev prefers to tell the world that the Soviet Union has always practiced peaceful coexistence, and that all the other Communist regimes in the world have come into existence through the spontaneous action of their peoples without any Soviet intervention, such an attitude can only strengthen expectations that Soviet aggression will be repeated in the future and will be justified by similar arguments...

...Much of the present hopefulness about prospects of a satisfactory settlement of outstanding issues with the Soviet Union depends on the belief that since the death of Stalin there has been a real change in the fundamental outlook and aims of the Soviet regime, not merely its tactics...

...With regard to internal policies, though there has been no modification of the dictatorship of the Communist party, there has been considerable amelioration in methods of government, accompanied by a qualified repudiation of the terrorist practices of the Stalin era— an admission that something had been wrong with Communist rule and needed to be changed...

...That armed support for revolution abroad was contemplated in the early days of the Soviet Union was sufficiently shown by a resolution of the Ninth Party Congress in 1920 which declared that, as a result of a proposed reorganization of the Red Army, it "will be not only a weapon of defense, but will give decisive support to the proletariat of the imperialist states in its struggle against imperialism...

...ever, Khrushchev had no word to say against any of his acts of external policy except for his campaign against Tito—which was a quarrel within the Communist family and in any case stopped short of the use of force...

...To this Korovin replies that "it is a pity that a competent diplomat and historian like Kennan should find no better way of explaining the reasons for Socialist victories in one or another country than by parroting Hitler propaganda about the omnipresent and omnipotent 'hand of Moscow...

...In his famous "secret speech" attacking Stalin, howG. F. HUDSON, who served in the British Foreign Office from 1939 to 1946, is currently Director of the Center of Far Eastern Studies at St...

...Kennan declares in his article that if the Communists appeal to the record of the early years of Soviet power as proof of their habitual attachment to the principles of "renunciation of interference in the internal affairs of the other countries and the predominance of peaceful competition as between states of different social systems, then the Western scholar cannot refrain from registering his amazement and protest...

...The controversy which has developed is very relevant to current hopes and fears about the forthcoming summit conference, for it centers on whether Khrushchev was justified in stating that the Soviet regime had "from its very inception . . . proclaimed peaceful coexistence as the basic principle of its foreign policy" and had always adhered to this principle...

...The USSR knows it is in a strong position for encouraging and assisting a Communist-led or Communist-stimulated revolutionary movement in any part of the world since the Western democracies are unwilling to take action against anything that can plausibly be represented as a purely domestic political process, however hostile...

...When the former Baghdad Pact grouping was disrupted by the revolution in Iraq, the Soviet Government indicated that it would go to any length to protect the new regime there against Western intervention, and strongly protested against even the precautionary landings of Western troops in Lebanon and Jordan at the invitation of their Governments...

...For itself it claims an unlimited right of forcible suppression of anti-Communist revolts in its own orbit, and refuses to take any notice whatever of United Nations resolutions on Hungary...

...They were brought into being, he argues, by "highly disciplined Communist minorities, trained and inspired by Moscow and supported by the presence or close proximity of units of the Soviet armed forces...

...Unfortunately the claim that the Soviet Union has always pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence is not only untenable as a matter of historical fact...

...Subsequently it was made clear that Soviet power would be used in the same way to preserve Communist control in any other country where it might be threatened by revolt and that no interference by non-Communist nations would be tolerated...

...But it does not admit any corresponding rights of intervention by the Western powers in their spheres of influence...

...In his correspondence with Tito on the eve of the rupture between the USSR and Yugoslavia in 1948, Stalin claimed credit for the victory of Communism in Yugoslavia, though the Communists there were locally far stronger than in any other East European countries entered by the Soviet forces...

...Korovin counters with the argument that Lenin's aim was "solidarity between the workers of Soviet Russia and the workers abroad, and not of military blocs with foreign countries to overthrow capitalism...

...This question cannot be regarded as a matter of past history of merely academic interest, because the answer must affect the Western observer's expectations of Russian future behavior...

...what Lenin meant was "not joint action by the working people of different countries for expansion or aggression, but against the imperialist onslaught...

...In this year of 1960," as a contribution to the relaxing of international tensions and an end to the cold war, we are asked to forget all about historical facts and accept Russian assurances that the Communist revolutions in Poland, Rumania, Hungary and East Germany were "carried out by the people themselves," because it is an "elementary truth" that such is the only way revolutions can take place...

...Khrushchev said nothing in censure of Stalin's annexation of the Baltic states, of his use of Soviet military occupation to install Communist governments in Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and East Germany, of his less direct but very effective intervention to promote Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, or of his blockade of Berlin in 1948...

...The Coexistence Debate 'Claim that Soviet Union has always pursued a policy of coexistence is untenable as a matter of historical fact and arouses suspicions about the future' By G. F. Hudson THE PUBLICITY with which Nikita Khrushchev provided himself last year in America was as near to an uncontested electioneering tour as he could make it...

...It is time, in this year of 1960, to grasp the elementary truth that revolutions are not imported, that they are carried out by the peoples themselves...

...These actions could not, indeed, be denounced, because to maintain and extend the state of affairs which they created has continued to be the aim of Soviet policy under Khrushchev...

...To concede that it has not would at once lay the Soviet Government open to proposals for making amends by restoring independence to the captive nations...

...Antony's College, Oxford...

...Soviet foreign policy has been perfect and blameless from the beginning...

...Kennan gives two quotations from Lenin to show Lenin's adherence to the view that the Bolsheviks in power in Russia ought to assist revolutionary movements in other countries...

...The distinction between working people and their governments in other countries, however, leaves the way open for intervention in any country on the ground that it is against imperialism...

...Kennan's article evoked strong adverse comment in the Soviet press, and Moscow University Professor Yevgeni Korovin wrote a would-be refutation in the English-language Communist magazine, International Affairs...

...And it was supplemented by a personal appearance in print in the October number of one of America's most notable serious political magazines, Foreign Affairs...