changing soviet tactics in foreign affairs

...This is not a theoretical digression...

...It stopped all real knowledge or influence of the West inside the U.S.S.R...

...Here, as in so many other fields of action, it is obvious that the Soviets are pursuing a highly intelligent course, while we of the West, ever so military-minded, are losing ground because of our blind reliance on stupid policies which have been outdated by the great surge of events in recent years...

...In a two-hour talk I had in Moscow in the winter of 1957, with post-graduate students of the Soviet College for International Relations, every problem I raised was answered and discussed with those principles in mind...

...Soon after it became evident in the last two cases that there was real danger ahead, Moscow retreated and accepted a settlement...

...Half of the young faces marveling at the huge tree and at the Soviet version of Santa Claus (called Grandfather Frost) were dark-skinned or had slanted eyes, and were obviously of Kazakh, Mongolian, or Tartar descent—a lesson in "understated and implicit propaganda," of which Moscow knew nothing at all not so long ago...

...It is, without any doubt, the projection of Khrushchev's personality on world affairs...

...It is in the underdeveloped countries that the Soviet Union is going to challenge the West with more and more vigor: extending technical help, granting low-interest loans, offering to build roads, railways, and factories with the assistance of Soviet engineers...

...Several times recently—at the time of Suez, in the Syrian-Turkish crisis, and in the new Russian policy towards the Arab Middle East and Southeast Asia —we have seen good samples of this new Soviet daring...

...The means used by Soviet diplomacy in this field are entirely new...

...Lenin has taught us those truths, and history has confirmed them at every step," one of the students told me when I asked him why he assumed that every decision made in the West was meant to hurt the Soviet Union...

...3—The emphasis on Asia and Africa...

...On the very first day of the Bolshevik Revolution, November 8, 1917, Lenin wrote in his famous "Decree on Peace": "Everywhere governments and peoples disagree with each other, and that is why we must help the peoples to interfere in the questions of war and peace...

...But does he know how far he can go and where he must stop without losing face or prestige...

...Stalin's Iron Curtain worked both ways...

...Lenin's teachings on the way to deal with the West are still gospel in Moscow...

...This means, of course, that any diplomatic step or proposal made by a "capitalist country" is considered in Moscow a priori as hostile and highly suspicious, since they originate from the "class enemy...

...Their knowledge of their own military power could do away with the old paranoiac feeling of encirclement and inferiority which has been hanging over Soviet policy for almost 40 years...

...The emergence of Red China as a major force in the Far East, the technological progress in the Soviet Union, the prestige victories won by sheer threats of Soviet military intervention (Suez crisis, Syrian affair), have given the Soviet leaders an entirely new feeling of power, a feeling unknown to them since the birth of the U.S.S.R...

...In London, Ambassador Jacob is cracking jokes and engaging in many Paris activities, ingratiating himself especially with French right-wing politicians, and going far beyond his government's official policies on such problems as Middle Eastern borders and Algeria...

...This is a new diplomatic method for Soviet diplomacy...

...The "helping hand" and the "true brotherhood" of the Soviet Union have impressed millions of people on both continents whose ultimate fate will probably be decisive for the fate of the world...

...In the fall of 1956, he was an eye-witness to the Polish "October days" in Warsaw, then covered the Hungarian Revolution...

...Nixon and Mr...

...The speeches and promises by Khrushchev and his companion, particularly during their Indian journey, showed for the first time the massive and determined entry of the U.S.S.R...

...Some keen observers of the Kremlin believe that the new feeling of strength of the Soviet leaders will make them more pliable, more open to agreements based on mutual concessions...

...The three "aggressive moves" of the Stalin postwar period (Prague, Berlin, and Korea) were undertaken in the belief that there was no risk...

...But one should never forget the ideological sources of Soviet actions...

...It all started with the long and fascinating visit paid by Bulganin and Khrushchev to India, Burma, and Afghanistan in late 1955, less than four months after their Geneva summit meeting with President Eisenhower...

...In years of teaching and training, Soviet diplomats and officials learn the conclusions to be drawn from such principles...

...Nowadays, one has only to talk for a few minutes with a Soviet diplomat, official, or correspondent before hearing quickly some ironical remark about the "changing positions of strength...

...I do not contend that our own diplomats and governments are differently inclined towards the Soviet Union...

...He has received the Claude-Blanch-ard Prize in France for international reporting, and was awarded one of the "Oscars" in French journalism for 1957...

...And each time heavy emphasis is laid on the "help without strings attached" aspect of Soviet assistance...

...Gordey, a Frenchman of Russian descent, is married to an American girl...

...Up to now, it seems that he has always stopped on the threshold of a really grave tension...

...At the same time, Moscow misses no opportunity to stress the absence of racial discrimination in the Soviet Union...

...Since then, Moscow has extended its action to the Arab countries of the Middle East and even dispatched the first "probing expeditions" to Latin America...

...More and more Asian and African students are being invited, and given scholarships, to study in Soviet universities...

...He then went on to quote some Dulles pronouncements on "a policy of strength...

...In Syria, in Egypt, and in Yemen, the shipping of a few obsolete tanks and jet-planes provides the U.S.S.R...

...Such examples are numerous: the puzzling "new look" of Soviet diplomacy has made it more difficult for the West to deal with it than in Stalin's days when contacts were scarce and almost useless...

...True, Soviet ideology "supporting the colonial peoples' struggle for liberation" dates back to the first years of the Bolshevik regime...

...He speaks Russian fluently and carried out major assignments in the Soviet Union in 1950, 1956, and 1957...

...Khrushchev's new way is quite different...

...One has only to remember the subtle policy followed by Moscow at Bandung, then at the recent Cairo Conference of Afro-Asian peoples, to see how much this policy has paid off in a short time indeed...

...MICHEL GORDEY, roving and diplomatic correspondent for the Paris daily, France Soir, has been a specialist on Soviet and East European affairs since the last war...

...Since that note such threats have been repeated on various occasions...

...2—The taking of calculated risks...

...In the last three or four years the relation of power in the world has been changing at least in its outward manifestations...

...Black and yellow faces are dominant in cover-stories for Soviet magazines, particularly for those whose international and multilingual editions are distributed at no cost throughout Asia and Africa...

...changing soviet tactics in foreign affairs by MICHEL GORDEY Since Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet foreign policy has moved out of the harsh, brutal isolationism mixed with deep fear and distrust of the capitalist world which was the substance of "Uncle Joe's" personal diplomacy...

...The feeling of power also could give them a greater sense of responsibility in world affairs...

...America led in the military race as long as it retained the atomic monopoly, followed by vast nuclear supremacy...

...The last edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia still quotes Lenin's words: "Imperialist diplomacy is simply a tool of a policy which makes the peoples of the world into mere cannon fodder . . . Whenever these gentlemen meet, it is like a gathering of ravens and one can immediately smell the odor of dead bodies . . ." These quotations from the article on "Diplomacy" are preceded by a definition of that word: "Diplomacy aims at realizing the objectives of the ruling class of a country...

...But now Soviet action takes place not only by words and propaganda, but by deeds and practical, consistent policies...

...Of course, he added, "We Russians are against such methods, but one must admit that we could also one day be forced by events into using similar arguments...

...At that time, Soviet power was still recuperating from the traumatic shock of the German invasion of Russia...

...If the old man ever made daring decisions in the postwar period, it was rather by misinformation or miscalculation than by sheer delight in challenging and probing the West...

...Under Stalin such risks were deliberately shunned...

...more and more teachers, writers, and scientists are being trained in Soviet methods...

...One example of Khrushchev's new method is his offer to withdraw Soviet troops from all of Eastern Europe if the NATO powers evacuate their troops and bases from West Germany and neighboring countries...

...If we add to this double-sided hostility the abyss in political thinking and the different meanings of almost every word or term in the political and diplomatic vocabulary, it becomes only too clear what lies ahead of us if we want to achieve some kind of modus vivendi in the atomic age between the Soviet Union and the West...

...In the coming months, it is expected, Soviet diplomacy will use "missile-language" again if any decisions are made by NATO to strengthen the rocket-defenses of Western Europe...

...It showed the great celebration now organized every year inside the Kremlin for Moscow children...

...in the competitive field of vying for the favors of Asia...

...The new developments of Soviet foreign policy since the death of Stalin and particularly since the assumption of strong leadership by Nikita Khrushchev, seem to be threefold: 1—An increasing feeling of Soviet power...

...In Paris and London nobody has forgotten Bulganin's note of November 5, 1956, when, at the height of the Suez crisis, Moscow for the first time threatened Western Europe with long-range missiles...

...We must deprive our enemies of the chance to say that their conditions [for peace] are different from ours, and therefore that it makes no sense in negotiating with us . . . We are against secret diplomacy and we shall act openly so that all the people may know...

...At the same time, a special effort is made in the military field in those young and weak countries where the army is still the only existing power factor...

...In the summer of 1956, at the Kremlin, I heard Nikita Khrushchev drinking toasts with the Syrian, Egyptian, and Burmese Ambassadors to Moscow and shouting: "The old world is crumbling, a new world is rising, let's laugh, my friends, and rejoice, all of us together...

...Invisible strings are in such cases more binding than those more visible...

...However, Soviet diplomacy in 1958, despite its changes in method, remains faithful to the principles, to the very origin of Soviet political thought...

...This is "competitive co-existence" as seen and practiced by Moscow and the only way to deal with it lies, of course, in the economic and social fields much more than in military alliances...

...Early in 1957, he flew to Moscow, then to Washington, and wrote a dozen articles in a series called "Neither War nor Peace," comparing Soviet and American attitudes in the present international situation...

...In Washington, Soviet Ambassador Zarubin has amiable talks with Mr...

...Since then, things have moved much faster, both in Nikita Khrushchev's agile mind and in the world at large...

...Hardly a day passes now that Pravda or some other Moscow newspaper does not play up the arrival of some delegation or theater group or writers or doctors from Asia or Africa...

...It also prevented Soviet diplomacy from risky forays into areas where a spark could ignite a real conflict with the West...

...And while the students—most of them future diplomats—were friendly, intelligent, and well-briefed in their own way on recent international events, I could sense during every minute of our conversation their deep conviction that I represented the views and interests of the enemy...

...In recent years Nikita Khrushchev has assumed complete control of Soviet foreign policy and has taken to a kind of a personal diplomacy, using interviews, cocktail-talk, improvised public speeches to raise suddenly some unforeseen points on world problems...

...Stalin used to suggest measures to which he was always 100 per cent sure that the West would be obliged to say "no...

...Paris, London, Bonn, and Washington also consider every pronouncement coming from Moscow as inspired by hostile intentions...

...Will the increased feeling of Soviet strength also raise the risks which Khrushchev will be willing to take on...

...In any event, under his one-man guidance Soviet foreign policy has become much less predictable than it had ever been under his predecessor at the Kremlin summit...

...One Soviet newspaperman took delight recently in quoting articles written a few years ago by U.S...

...And in 1958 we should not overlook the peculiar traits of character of one Nikita Khrushchev...

...One typical example was a front-page picture published on New Year's eve by Pravda...

...Since 1953, Soviet diplomacy has gradually opened up for contacts, smiles, and entirely new methods...

...Stassen before winding up his assignment...

...We must never forget that from 1917 to Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet foreign policy was based on a deep-seated inferiority and encirclement complex...

...Then came the "Sputniks," the launching of the Soviet ICBM, the display of new Soviet planes: all these combined to give Nikita Khrushchev the sweet taste of a foreign policy derived from "positions of strength...

...In London, Ambassador Jacob Malik has been assiduously cultivating British Labor leaders in spite of the great scandal which arose in April, 1956, during Khrushchev's stay in London...

...The ambassadors, though representing three non-Communist governments, were glowing with pride and sharing this obviously anti-Western slant of Khrushchev's toasts...

...These words, written 40 years ago on the eve of the Brest-Litovsk peace, describe just as well the international situation of 1958...

...The real disparity of economic, political, and even military potentials of East and West led Stalin to isolate the Soviet Union from any real contact with the outside world...

...with a solid hold on the officers' corps, and thus indirectly on the vital policies of each of the recipient countries...

...Such trends can be detected in recent Soviet moves...

...generals or scientists on "World Rule by Space Conquest...

...Today Moscow still speaks to Western public opinion over the heads of the "capitalist governments" which it distrusts and hates...