Ideology and Power:
MCLANE, CHARLES B.
Ideology and Power The Soviet Bloc. By Zbigniew K. Brzezinski. Harvard. 467 pp. $7.75. Reviewed by Charles B. McLane Chairman, Department of Russian Civilization, Dartmouth College ZBIGNIEW...
...And finally, since 1956, Poland has emerged as so unique a partner in the Soviet bloc that to dwell on Polish affairs in any less detail would be to underplay the most vital problem today in intra-bloc politics...
...While it is evident that Brzezinski, who is of Polish origin, feels most at home in discussing Polish affairs, his greater emphasis on Poland is justified by very sound considerations...
...Reviewed by Charles B. McLane Chairman, Department of Russian Civilization, Dartmouth College ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI has set himself a formidable task in seeking to make intelligible the intricate pattern of politics within the Soviet bloc...
...At the level of scholarship at which he works, this is something of a pioneer project and...
...as such, is an appropriate first publication of Harvard's new Center for International Studies which co-sponsors the book with the Russian Research Center...
...As the author himself acknowledges in his preface, China is treated only where "relevant to other problems of the camp...
...Of the many virtues of Brzezin-ski's study I would single out three...
...The relationship is an inescapable dynamic of the Communist world...
...It not only asserts the relationship between ideology and policy, it spells it out...
...He allows for errors in the light of subsequent investigation, but he leaves no significant events unrelated or unaccounted for...
...With this conceptual approach always in mind the author traces the interplay of power and ideology within the Soviet bloc from 1945 to early 1959...
...I cannot agree...
...but so also...
...During what he calls the first phase (1945-47), a degree of diversity existed by design in the relations between the Communist regimes, characterized by bilateral treaties and by more or less formal diplomatic relationships between Moscow and the satellite capitals...
...The increasing importance of China in bloc affairs makes the unique relationship of the Chinese Communists to the Soviet leadership, both before and after 1949, of crucial significance...
...This was due to the Kremlin's preoccupation with reconstruction at home and to a lingering uncertainty as to the reaction abroad if Soviet control over Eastern Europe were more vigorously enforced...
...Brzezinski analyzes this change in strategy as the consequence of a new insistence on ideological conformity in the USSR (dating from Andrei Zhdanov's anniversary address in November 1946), and of what he calls "domesticism" in Eastern Europe—that is, a tendency on the part of Eastern European leaders to think narrowly in terms of their own national interest...
...Poland from the outset was crucial to Russian objectives in Eastern and Central Europe because of its strategic position...
...First, the author brings to his book a surer command and consciousness of discipline than most writers on Soviet affairs...
...This phase culminated in the uprisings in Poland and Hungary, both of which are treated in detail in a separate chapter...
...Stalin, most would agree, was wedded to ideology...
...Of the shortcomings, which are far fewer...
...Moreover, it posed very special problems to Moscow arising from past relationships between the two states...
...The third phase (1953-56) is seen as a return to diversity in institutional and ideological relationships within the bloc, necessitated by the adjustments in Moscow following Stalin's death...
...Though acting as the principal agent of reunification, chiefly in leading a new attack on Yugoslav revisionism, China does not claim—at least not persistently— ideological leadership of the Communist world, yet clearly emerges as an independent force which the Kremlin must deal with cautiously...
...Not more than 20 of the 400-odd pages of text, in fact, deal specifically with Sino-Soviet relations...
...Mao Tse-tung...
...Tito and Wlady-slaw Gomulka...
...Brzezinski shows, are such widely different leaders as Khrushchev...
...Brzezinski's failure to explore this relationship more systematically limits the scope of his study and renders his conclusions more tentative...
...Given this narrower framework of the book — its focus on Eastern Europe—some readers will still object that disproportionate attention is given to Poland...
...The essential frame of reference in this study is "the relationship between the ideological orientation of the Communist regime, on the one hand, and the imperatives of their political power, on the other...
...I would single out the meager coverage given to China and to Sino-Soviet relations...
...The book closes with a brilliant chapter on the implications of the various theses on ideology and power elaborated in the body of the study...
...During the next phase (1947-53), unity was enforced by such institutional devices as the Cominform and by informal controls that only a long-established dictator like Stalin could safely apply...
...Second, Brzezinski has the happy faculty of placing even comparatively recent episodes in a firm historical perspective...
...Phase four (1957-59) finds China "actively intervening on the East European scene to salvage what Moscow has dissipated"—namely, the reunification of the bloc and the "reconstruction of the center...
...Third, this book is an eloquent refutation of those who sometimes grow impatient with the emphasis which students of Soviet affairs continue to place on ideology...
...He is a political scientist as much as an area specialist and this gives his book a dimension not normally found in studies of the Communist world...
...One can raise very pertinent questions as to whether a study seeking to define, even preliminarily, intra-bloc relations can afford to give so little attention to China...
...Nor is this relationship merelv a matter of preference by this or that ephemeral leader...
...it is doubtful if the people of any other satellite state are as deeply hostile to the Russians as the Poles...
...He also notes such causes for this new strategy as American disengagement in Europe after the war and the failure of the Western powers to organize a sufficient resistance to Communism in Eastern Europe, but he appears to attach less importance to these external factors than to ideological considerations within the bloc...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 21
