Socialism in One Region

...If Chinese national interest could subordinate the world Communist forces to itself and become the highest Communist virtue as the Soviet national interest has been, the Communist Chinese would gain overnight that strength which they lack at present and from which Russia benefited so greatly in the past...

...Marx and Engels...

...Forty-three years after its uneasy beginning, the Soviet Union is a great world power...

...There is no other way...

...By his attempts to eliminate the rapidly developing schism between Moscow and Peking, at rapprochement with Tito, to halt the outrageous economic exploitation of the satellites and to introduce at least a semblance of political autonomy, Khrushchev was not only breaking with past Soviet policies: he was in fact repudiating Stalin as a leader of the Communist movement...

...As a young state, it is insecure, inexperienced, immature and irresponsible: as a Communist state, it is impatient, competitive, internationally maladroit, quarrelsome and aggressive...

...On a temporary basis, it was indeed valid: The more depleted the satellite economies, the stronger the Soviet economy...

...The USSR gradually had to accept polycentrism for centralization and concentration of power in Moscow, and stand by and watch while centrifugal forces of considerable dimensions were being unleashed...

...one has arrived and the other has barely departed...

...The ever-present danger of the potential "socialism in one country" position, which made the USSR what it is today, is serious in the smaller Communist states but would be critical for the USSR in Communist China...

...With the death of Lenin in 1924, this doctrinal schism on means sharpened into an acute and gradually open struggle between the leaders of the two dissident groups, the intellectual, ideologically pure but visionary Leon Trotsky on the one hand, and the primitive but businesslike and purposeful Stalin on the other, for succession to the empty seat of power...

...Still, Stalin hastened to add, this was no departure from the ideological prescriptions, but only a temporary retreat in order to insure doubly the final victory...

...The complete political subordination and dependence on the Soviet Union brought about such universal uneasiness in the satellite states that the violent Yugoslav reaction, as we know from the East German...

...Only time will tell whether the lump sum can be so conveniently and safely reduced...

...STALIN'S complete misunderstanding of the new situation brought serious complications in the small Communist states of East Europe and resulted in the complete loss of one of them...

...and the more streamlined their social systems, the easier the control by their Soviet governors...

...If Soviet "socialism in one country" proved to be so successful, its Chinese equivalent, given the aid which would emanate from the Communist camp and indeed all Communist forces in the world, would be even more so...

...A new stage of development, inevitably, had arrived: The Soviet Union became merely one, although the most powerful, among the several socialist states...

...In other words, the two factions agreed upon the desirable end—the Communist world—but differed on the means of getting there...

...He has just returned from a three-month tour of the Soviet Union (chiefly in Central Asia) and East Europe...

...The Soviet Union plays now a crucial part in the world balance of power which it helped to establish—and which it respects in its own way as much as its bourgeois partners do, even if it means the recognition of neutralism and neutrals, and even of Communist neutralism in Yugoslavia...

...The USSR depends on Red China much more, in spite of the present mutual relations, than Red China depends on the USSR...

...His shortsighted attempt to treat Communist China like an ordinary Soviet satellite, if continued, we know from the East German Communist leader Walter Ulbricht, would have meant a loss of China too, a catastrophe for the Soviet camp...

...In sharp disagreement, the adherents of "socialism in one country" maintained that the new Soviet state must become a citadel of Communism first—a strong, self-contained, advanced, prosperous stronghold—as the most powerful inducement to and immeasurable influence upon the advance of future world revolution...

...The price was indeed high but it was inevitable: The Soviet era of Communism ended with the establishment of other Communist states...

...It is a complicated, largely latent power struggle, carried out almost completely within the terms of reference of ideology...

...Conditions inside the Soviet Union have modified Soviet attitudes abroad: The concepts of friend and foe, war and peace, victory and defeat have acquired new meanings...

...In the long run, however, such simple philosophical justification of Soviet colonialism was untenable: The exhausted and impoverished satellite economies, dried up by incessant Soviet demands, were rendered virtually useless...

...On Khrushchev's side is precedent, organization and effective power...

...And forcefully and with increasing emphasis and frequency, the Communist Chinese ideologists-turned-politicians began to indicate the way...

...If we do this, a Soviet policy action which appears irrational and even hostile to Soviet national prestige and interest at present may emerge as relevant, rational, useful and necessary in the long run...

...The first historical stage of development was reached...

...Initially, the reasons for these concessions were clear and simple: The Soviet Union, realizing that in terms of power Tito was a pigmy next to Mao, could not afford even the remote possibility of a defection a la Tito in the Far East...

...he also knows from bitter experience in East Europe how attractive and indeed natural is the national Communism doctrine for each individual member of the orbit...

...Both men are proven, skillful traders: They are perfectly at home in a bargaining situation and they know well the mutual advantages and limits...

...At first Khrushchev acted under the pressure of events...

...The USSR has traveled a long way since 1917 but it has arrived: It is a satisfied, established, powerful, have-nation which has vested a great deal of its interest in that which it is, in contrast to what it may become, to take any risk which may endanger its present position in the world...

...As a potentially powerful state, however, Communist China demands and indeed receives special attention: Friends and foes cannot but take its potential position into serious consideration...

...There he inaugurated a new era of Soviet policy concessions to China, which, with a few unimportant exceptions, have continued in an increasing ratio to the present...

...IN CONTRAST with Communist Russia, Communist China is an underdeveloped, weak, have-not-nation whose very political existence remains largely unrecognized...

...It has reached heights undreamed of by revolutionary Bolsheviks...

...And, in spite of all sorts of allegations, Khrushchev is not Stalin and Mao is not Trotsky...

...But what is the price...

...The Communist gain was Soviet loss, just as 30 years ago the Communist loss was Soviet gain...

...Its Soviet friends especially, who as true Communists think in terms of the future rather than the present or the past, are well aware of China's potential strength...

...SOCIALISM IN ONE REGION By Jan F. Triska Moscow policy now subordinates Soviet national interests to the interests of the Communist camp as a whole Jan F. Triska is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Associate Director of International Studies in Conflict and Integration there...

...Stalin, however, had reality on his side: For the time being at least, the world was sick of revolutions, and the Russian Communists had better firmly keep what they had, rather than look elsewhere...

...Their sole purpose was to serve the USSR, which by then had highly developed socialism, in order to strengthen it further...

...in their terms, Trotsky properly claimed, the forced economic reorganization of Soviet Russia as proposed by Stalin was a matter of minor importance...

...The Communist strategy which, as Stalin put it, provided "general direction along which the revolutionary movement of the proletariat should be directed with a view to achieving the greatest results'' has ended its Soviet phase: In the past, it provided for Soviet security because the Soviet Union was "the inspirer," the citadel, the base of Communism in the world...

...The Soviet national interest lost its uniqueness, and the strategic goal of world Communism, "to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country," was forever over...

...The Soviet "socialism in one country'" must become regional socialism in the Communist camp...

...for a price, he transformed "the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . from a national into an international force...

...Stalin won the power struggle and on that basis, following the Soviet pattern, the doctrinal scrimmage...

...What is suggestive, though not really surprising, is that in review, while both parties to the dispute tend to underplay, for obvious reasons, both the extent and degree of the dispute, it is again Khrushchev rather than Mao who is compromising, playing the dispute down, displaying a conciliatory attitude and even, by a passivity unusual for his energetic and ebullient self, making concessions...

...Socialism in one country," a compromise of Communist ideology with the facts of life, identified the interests of world Communism with the exclusive national interest of Russia...

...With time, however, the reasons became increasingly complex, and inevitably took on ideological coloring...

...but he will never forget, or be allowed to forget, that this is so on borrowed time...

...For a price, Khrushchev broke the Stalinist isolationist tradition...

...Essentially, then, the issue between the USSR and Communist China stems from the fact that while one has developed its economy, the other has not...

...And it appears, again in review, that Khrushchev cannot do otherwise: The facts and reality are not on his side but on the side of the Chinese...

...Mao is accused of Trotskyism, dogmatism, adventurism and ultra-leftism, and Khrushchev of revisionism and gradualism, and the nature of imperialism, the inevitability of war, peaceful coexistence, the cult of the individual and the stages of Communist development are the issues being argued and disputed...

...To preserve and conserve the Communist camp from the disaster of fratricide and to avoid the danger of fragmenting the bloc, the Soviet Union has to give up some of its prerogatives within the camp...

...Trotsky's primary support consisted of extensive footnotes and excerpts from the works of the revered founders of the movement...

...As long as possible he will undoubtedly attempt to have his cake and eat it, carefully, too—calling the new long-range strategy a short-term tactical readjustment, just as Stalin did...

...it plainly cannot afford the risk...

...In the long run, it appears, the Soviet Union will have to pay the full price for the new Communist strategy and accept the regional interest as higher than and overriding the Soviet interest...

...Polish, Hungarian and Communist Chinese follow-ups, was only a beginning and the most obvious manifestation of serious strain in the orbit...

...one is coresponsible for the present order in the world and the other challenges it...

...one is satiated and the other is hungry...

...one is accepted and, for all practical purposes, respected, while the other is still rejected...

...The proposed hiatus of a tactical "comparatively short period of the ebb or flow of the movement" became a long-range Soviet strategy which, under Stalin, received a semi-permanent policy status: The preservation, building up and defense of the Communist base, the USSR, as the immediate means of insuring the future victory of Communism everywhere was made the first item on the priority list of international Communism...

...the USSR, to embrace the several satellites, exported there from "the citadel of socialism" as Stalin had predicted...

...THE STRUGGLE for socialism in one region resembles the struggle for socialism in one country 35 years ago, though its implications, scope and consequences are incomparably more far-reaching...

...The price has to be paid...

...How high an offer can Khrushchev be compelled to make and what is the lowest bid Mao is prepared to accept...

...The immediate alterations effected by Khrushchev in the Soviet policies vis-a-vis the other Communist states, although radical and far-reaching (and the resistance they evoked in many quarters was strong enough to deter and at times to unnerve even the determined Khrushchev) in affecting the equilibrium of power in the Communist world and in subjecting it to a fresh re-examination of fundamentals—and Khrushchev truly went all the way from "socialism in one country" to "proletarian internationalism in the Great Commonwealth of Socialist Nations"—have never been completed, however...

...Khrushchev's early reappraisal of the Soviet position in the Communist world in general, and of Soviet-Chinese relations in particular, led to his (and Nikolai Bulganin's) trip to Peking in the fall of 1954...

...To analyze the situation, it may perhaps be profitable—rather than to be distracted by short-term Soviet policy zigzags—to reappraise the major Soviet long-range changes and alterations...

...the more subjugated their politics, the more imposing the Soviet position...

...one has status and the other has none...

...Simplified for purposes of this analysis, the complicated strife within the Soviet Communist party in the middle '20s concerned Communist doctrine and its application: Those who believed in "permanent revolution" claimed that the Russian Revolution was the first in a long list of revolutions, to be followed immediately by others until all the states of the world were so consumed...

...Yugoslavia...

...But this is no longer the case, and that fact made the form—the Communist satellites orbiting around the Soviet sun—untenable...

...The loss of Red China would have serious and possibly fatal consequences for the Soviet Union as a world Communist power...

...It was the only Communist country...

...Khrushchev inherited Soviet power in an era, as Anastas Mikoyan put it, when "it is no longer certain who is encircling whom...

...On Mao's side is time, ideology and, willy-nilly, the other members of the bloc...

...2) that exclusive Soviet national interest may no longer be the highest virtue of world Communism: and 3) that Khrushchev is aware of this departure and views his historical role as radically different from that of his predecessors...

...Under the old "socialism in one country" slogan, this was a legitimate and proper view: To milk their economies, to subordinate their politics and to rearrange their social systems to fit their new role was imperative for the satellites as long as the Soviet "socialism in one country" precept was valid...

...The loss of the USSR would he serious for China in the short run but could lead to an independent, dominant Chinese position in the world later on...

...Tactics," he said in 1924, "is the determination of the line to be taken by the proletariat during a comparatively short period of the ebb or flow of the movement, of advance or retreat of the revolution...

...TO STALIN, the socialist "allies" of the Soviet Union in Europe and Asia were indeed satellites orbiting around and dependent upon the Soviet Union...

...He has contributed to such learned journals as the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Central European Affairs, Ost-Probleme, the British Yearbook of International Law, The Forum, etc...

...one wishes security, coexistence and peaceful competition in the world and the other needs external insecurity in order to increase its domestic cohesion...

...This, indeed, may be the case if we view Khrushchev's behavior as a reminder, rather than a cause, of a change within the Soviet orbit, and accept these basic assumptions: 1) that the Soviet Union in 1960 has tasks and responsibilities fundamentally different from those of the past...

...Trotsky, the double loser, was exiled first within the Soviet Union and then abroad, finally to be murdered there...

...Khrushchev realized this danger and pressed for change, it appears in retrospect, from the beginning...

...The price was "socialism in one country," i.e., identification of world Communism with the exclusive Soviet national interest and the absolute Soviet primacy in the Communist bloc...

...the second was about to unfold...

...Khrushchev the ideologist had a difficult time catching up with Khrushchev the politician...

...one has matured and the other is an upstart...

...NIKITA S. KHRUSHCHEV'S recent behavior at home and abroad has suggested to many observers a new lack of security, frustration, and even apprehension on the part of the current Soviet leadership over developments at home, in the Soviet bloc and in Soviet foreign relations...

...It is a powerful national state, politically satiated for the time being by all standards, notwithstanding its ideological claims to the contrary...

...If the social systems of the satellites now resembled the Soviet system, and indeed if socialism "emerged from the confines of one country," then the "socialism in one country" phase and all it stood for and all it justified as "a phase of socialist development" was ended...

...Rather than pay the full price now, he hopes to pay as he goes, on installments, in policy, ideology and nerves...

...And while nuclear war as a victorless affair became impractical for one, it is speculated upon by the other as dangerous but in its own conditions far from fatal and perhaps even desirable...

...In the process he was forced to yield more than he anticipated and still less than enough to satisfy his "satellite" friends...

...As a consequence, there is only one long-range alternative available to Khrushchev: to subordinate Soviet national interest to the interest of the Communist camp as a whole...

...With World War II, socialism indeed "emerged from the confines of one country...

...To accomplish this broader view, it is useful to go all the way back to the middle '20s and re-examine—just as leading Soviet theoreticians are doing presently—the old proposition of "socialism in one country," a strategy which has guided Soviet policies for over a quarter of a century...

...In the short run, however, Khrushchev may be expected to continue to search for constant readjustment, accommodation and avoidance of conflict between the two interests...

...Khrushchev knows all this...

...A shrewd strategist, Khrushchev knows that in order to achieve his domestic goals in the '60s, he has to motivate the Soviet masses as well as the Soviet bureaucracy less by Stalinist fear than by emphasis on rewards, incentives and promotions...

...one wants efficiency by now even more than ideological conformity while the opposite is true for the other...

...The primary allegiance of the foreign proletariat was to the fortress of socialism, the Soviet Union...

...Mao Tse-tung, on the other hand, follows Stalinist methods and worse in China, and cannot but disagree with the present diet prescribed by Khrushchev in the USSR...

...He is also co-author of A Calendar of Soviet Treaties, 1917-1957, and of the forthcoming Theory, Law and Policy of Soviet Treaties...

...On the contrary, the whole energy of Communism must concentrate on the direct, immediate and final conflict with capitalism...

...Even a casual visitor to the Soviet Union in 1960 cannot help observing the unrevolutionary and even bourgeois striving of all—citizens, officials and leaders—for regularity, permanence, stability and routine, which, unlike the Communist ideology and its insistence on permanent change, represent here the universally shared demand for private gain, higher salary, shorter working hours, installment buying, better television sets and more family cars...