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The communist party of the Soviet Union and the nonruling communist parties: policies, tactics, negotiating behavior
T H E C O M M U N I S T P A R T Y O F T H E SOVIET UNION AND T H E N O N R U L I N G C O M M U N I S T PARTIES: POLICIES, TACTICS, NEGOTIATING BEHAVIOR
Introduction The study of foreign policy decisionmaking is a difficult and hazardous enterprise under the best of circumstances even in open democratic societies. It becomes progressively more difficult as we move toward closed societies, and, afortiori, in Communist countries with their unique Party-state structure, ideological ballast and resultant esoteric communication patterns. In the case of the Soviet Union, a tradition of Russian xenophobia and suspiciousness further complicates such analysis. Despite these difficulties, however, the examination of Soviet dealings with Communist Parties in democratic advanced industrial societies may shed some light on the Soviet foreign policy process. The attempt to understand the hows and whys of the Soviet decisionmaking process poses several problems. First, there are almost no reliable first-hand accounts of Soviet decisionmaking, and even demoted Politburo members like Viacheslav Molotov have been carefully assigned to places like Ulan Bator where they are unlikely to have the opportunity to give a scoop to a Western scholar or journalist. ~ Second is our uncertainty about the best methodology to use in such an analysis. Much has been written in the West about the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of analyzing Soviet decisionmaking, and many a model has been constructed to deal with the problem. Yet, despite our predilection for theoretical constructs and heuristic devices, the need for analysis remains. A helpful approach to the problem has not yet been fully explored and may offer promising new perspectives. It is the study of the records and recollections of those who negotiate with the Soviets. Although these records may not shed much light on the initial stage of decisionmaking, they may on occasion provide insights on how decisions are made during negotiations and on the identity of the decision1. Nikita Khrushehev's memoirs are a special case, and some doubt has been expressed about their authenticity: Nikita S. Khrushehev, ghrushchev Remembers, ed. and trans, by Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). STUDIES IN COMPARATIVECOMMUNISM
VOL. XV, NO. 3, AUTUMN 1982, 163-166
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STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM
makers. A number of books have detailed Western experiences in dealing with the Soviets during and after World War II, beginning with the well-known Negotiating with the Russians, 2 a collection of essays written by a number of Western negotiators. But Soviet negotiations are, of course, not limited to those with Western adversaries. Following Stalin's quarrel with Tito, Western scholars gained access to the texts of secret communications between the Soviet and Yugoslav leaders. 3 More recently, the Sino-Soviet dispute has produced official revelations of unpublished treaties, diplomatic and military demands and ultimata, and even previously unknown border clashes. 4 The record of Soviet negotiations with nonruling Communist Parties, as noted above, is yet another aspect of this approach. Western analysts have long stressed the dual character of Soviet foreign policymaking and foreign relations. In the prewar period, they have pointed to the differences between the Narkomindel and the Comintern. In the postwar era of domination over Eastern Europe, the Soviets handled relations with their satellites not on a state-to-state level, but rather on a Party-to-Party level, with the CPSU Central Committee (CC) apparatus, rather than the diplomatic personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, playing a decisive role, especially in the execution of policy and the selection of Party apparatchiks as ambassadors, z Robert McNeal has written a most useful introductory essay on this subject in his documentary collection on international relations 2. Raymond Dennett and Joseph E. Johnson (eds.), Negotiating with the Russians (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1951). For Asian Communist negotiators, see Admiral C. Turner Joy, How Communists Negotiate (New York: Macmillan, 1952). See also Soviet Diplomacy and Negotiating Behavior: Emerging New Context for U.S. Diplomacy prepared by Joseph G. Whelan of the Congressional Reference Service, Library of Congress for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979; Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1982), and especially "A Selected Bibliography" (pp. 549-562) of over two hundred books, pamphlets, articles, and government publications. 3. The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute: Text of the Published Correspondence (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948). Also illuminating is Milovan Djilas' Conversations with Stalin, trans, by Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1963). 4. Among the many relevant documentary collections, is G. F. Hudson et al. (eds.), The Sina-Soviet Dispute (London: The China Quarterly, 1961; Praeger, 1962); Alexander Dallin (ed.), Diversity in International Communism: A Documentary Record, 1961-1963 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963); Peter Benon (comp.), The Russian-Chinase Dialogue: A Collection of Letters Exchanged Between the Communist Parties of China and the Soviet Union and Related Documents (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1964), 2 vols.; and William E. Griffith, The Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964). 5. Good examples are Yurii Andropov, Whose Party career in the Komsomol and the CC (and later in the KGB) included several years in the mid-1950s as Soviet ambassador to Hungary, and Pavel Yudin, a Party apparatchik and editor-in-chief of the Cominform organ, For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, who served as ambassador to China.
THE CPSU AND THE NONRULING COMMUNIST PARTIES
165
among Communist states and Parties. 6 Unfortunately, the International Department of the CC apparatus, described by Leonard Schapiro as the "key to Soviet policy," has been rather cursorily and inadequately described in the various Western texts on Soviet government and only two recent specific references come to mind. They are Schapiro's short article in the Canadian International Journal 7 and Elizabeth Teague's research report on "The Foreign Departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU" in the Radio Liberty Research Bulletin series. 8 Because relations with nonruling Communist Parties are also handled by the CC apparatus, an examination of Soviet negotiations with these Parties might shed light on the role of the apparat in the formulation and conduct of foreign affairs in general. Among the nonruling Communist Parties as negotiating partners of the Soviets, those that have either broken off relations with the Soviet Party or engaged in polemics are more likely to provide inside information on negotiations, personalities, process, tactics, and so on. The Parties in question need to defend themselves against direct or indirect Soviet attacks and to present and justify their case to their own national constituencies and to the international Communist movement. The most candid and sensitive information is most likely to emerge from Parties which operate in open Western societies under the sharp scrutiny of their national press and communication media. Under these criteria, t h e Communist Parties of Italy (PCI), France (PCF), 9 Spain (PCE), and Japan (JCP) are perhaps the most important and the most likely to yield data on Soviet decisionmaking, policies, tactics, and negotiating behavior. These considerations led me to organize a panel on "The CPSU and Nonruling Parties: Policies and Negotiating Behavior" at the Thirteenth National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, held September 20-23, 1981, at Pacific Grove, California. Well-known scholars on Eurocommunist Parties were in6. Robert H. McNeal (ed.), International Relations Among Communists (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967). 7. Leonard Schapiro, "The International Department of the CPSU: Key to Soviet Policy," International Journal (Toronto), XXXII, 1 (Winter 1976-77), pp. 41-55. 8. Elizabeth Teague, "The Foreign Departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU," Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, Supplement (October 27, 1980), 47 pp. This report pulls together the available information on several CC departments and provides biographical sketches or brief identifications on almost one hundred apparntchiks involved in foreign affairs, including Boris Ponomarev, Mikhall Suslov, Yurii Andropov, Vadim Zagladin, and Konstantin Zarodov. 9. Although the PCF has four members in the Cabinet, it is still considered a nonruling Party because it does not control the government.
166
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vited to prepare papers on the relationship between the Party of their expertise and the CPSU: Joan Urban on the PCI, Julius Friend on the PCF, and Eusebio Mujal-Le6n on the PCE, while I appointed myself to deal with the JCP. Jerry Hough, who is currently researching Soviet policymaking for the Brookings Institution and who has reworked Mere Fainsod's classic How Russia Is Ruled, l° was enlisted to provide the necessary background on the institutional framework and the personalities involved in Soviet dealings with nonruling Communist Parties. Heinz Timmermann, a longtime student of Eurocommunist Parties with extensive personal contacts, agreed to serve as a discussant to pull the papers together and to provide some generalizations about Soviet policies, tactics, and negotiating behavior toward the Eurocommunist Parties. The panel was well attended and produced a stimulating dialogue between the panel members and the audience, which included a number of scholars with long experience in the topic under discussion, among them Richard Lowenthal and Eric Willenz. The success of the panel has led me to ask the panelists to revise their papers in light of the exchanges among themselves and between them and the audience and to submit them to Studies for possible publication in a special issue. These revised papers were sent out for additional evaluations, which were uniformly positive. And so, a year after the original panel, we are bringing out this special issue for a much wider audience of our readers. The four Communist Parties presented here differ greatly with regard to their social and cultural setting, their position in widely different national political spectra, their electoral strength, and their importance on the domestic political scene. They also differ in major ways in their leaders' personal and Party ties with the CPSU, including residence in the Soviet Union. Yet, the record of the experiences of these four Parties, along with the introductory and concluding essays, may offer fresh insights and shed new light on Soviet decisionmaking, with all of its big power chauvinism, esoteric language, and Byzantine intrigue. P.B.
10. Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19"/9).
Introduction The study of foreign policy decisionmaking is a difficult and hazardous enterprise under the best of circumstances even in open democratic societies. It becomes progressively more difficult as we move toward closed societies, and, afortiori, in Communist countries with their unique Party-state structure, ideological ballast and resultant esoteric communication patterns. In the case of the Soviet Union, a tradition of Russian xenophobia and suspiciousness further complicates such analysis. Despite these difficulties, however, the examination of Soviet dealings with Communist Parties in democratic advanced industrial societies may shed some light on the Soviet foreign policy process. The attempt to understand the hows and whys of the Soviet decisionmaking process poses several problems. First, there are almost no reliable first-hand accounts of Soviet decisionmaking, and even demoted Politburo members like Viacheslav Molotov have been carefully assigned to places like Ulan Bator where they are unlikely to have the opportunity to give a scoop to a Western scholar or journalist. ~ Second is our uncertainty about the best methodology to use in such an analysis. Much has been written in the West about the strengths and weaknesses of different methods of analyzing Soviet decisionmaking, and many a model has been constructed to deal with the problem. Yet, despite our predilection for theoretical constructs and heuristic devices, the need for analysis remains. A helpful approach to the problem has not yet been fully explored and may offer promising new perspectives. It is the study of the records and recollections of those who negotiate with the Soviets. Although these records may not shed much light on the initial stage of decisionmaking, they may on occasion provide insights on how decisions are made during negotiations and on the identity of the decision1. Nikita Khrushehev's memoirs are a special case, and some doubt has been expressed about their authenticity: Nikita S. Khrushehev, ghrushchev Remembers, ed. and trans, by Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). STUDIES IN COMPARATIVECOMMUNISM
VOL. XV, NO. 3, AUTUMN 1982, 163-166
164
STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM
makers. A number of books have detailed Western experiences in dealing with the Soviets during and after World War II, beginning with the well-known Negotiating with the Russians, 2 a collection of essays written by a number of Western negotiators. But Soviet negotiations are, of course, not limited to those with Western adversaries. Following Stalin's quarrel with Tito, Western scholars gained access to the texts of secret communications between the Soviet and Yugoslav leaders. 3 More recently, the Sino-Soviet dispute has produced official revelations of unpublished treaties, diplomatic and military demands and ultimata, and even previously unknown border clashes. 4 The record of Soviet negotiations with nonruling Communist Parties, as noted above, is yet another aspect of this approach. Western analysts have long stressed the dual character of Soviet foreign policymaking and foreign relations. In the prewar period, they have pointed to the differences between the Narkomindel and the Comintern. In the postwar era of domination over Eastern Europe, the Soviets handled relations with their satellites not on a state-to-state level, but rather on a Party-to-Party level, with the CPSU Central Committee (CC) apparatus, rather than the diplomatic personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, playing a decisive role, especially in the execution of policy and the selection of Party apparatchiks as ambassadors, z Robert McNeal has written a most useful introductory essay on this subject in his documentary collection on international relations 2. Raymond Dennett and Joseph E. Johnson (eds.), Negotiating with the Russians (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1951). For Asian Communist negotiators, see Admiral C. Turner Joy, How Communists Negotiate (New York: Macmillan, 1952). See also Soviet Diplomacy and Negotiating Behavior: Emerging New Context for U.S. Diplomacy prepared by Joseph G. Whelan of the Congressional Reference Service, Library of Congress for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979; Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1982), and especially "A Selected Bibliography" (pp. 549-562) of over two hundred books, pamphlets, articles, and government publications. 3. The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute: Text of the Published Correspondence (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948). Also illuminating is Milovan Djilas' Conversations with Stalin, trans, by Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1963). 4. Among the many relevant documentary collections, is G. F. Hudson et al. (eds.), The Sina-Soviet Dispute (London: The China Quarterly, 1961; Praeger, 1962); Alexander Dallin (ed.), Diversity in International Communism: A Documentary Record, 1961-1963 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963); Peter Benon (comp.), The Russian-Chinase Dialogue: A Collection of Letters Exchanged Between the Communist Parties of China and the Soviet Union and Related Documents (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1964), 2 vols.; and William E. Griffith, The Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964). 5. Good examples are Yurii Andropov, Whose Party career in the Komsomol and the CC (and later in the KGB) included several years in the mid-1950s as Soviet ambassador to Hungary, and Pavel Yudin, a Party apparatchik and editor-in-chief of the Cominform organ, For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy, who served as ambassador to China.
THE CPSU AND THE NONRULING COMMUNIST PARTIES
165
among Communist states and Parties. 6 Unfortunately, the International Department of the CC apparatus, described by Leonard Schapiro as the "key to Soviet policy," has been rather cursorily and inadequately described in the various Western texts on Soviet government and only two recent specific references come to mind. They are Schapiro's short article in the Canadian International Journal 7 and Elizabeth Teague's research report on "The Foreign Departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU" in the Radio Liberty Research Bulletin series. 8 Because relations with nonruling Communist Parties are also handled by the CC apparatus, an examination of Soviet negotiations with these Parties might shed light on the role of the apparat in the formulation and conduct of foreign affairs in general. Among the nonruling Communist Parties as negotiating partners of the Soviets, those that have either broken off relations with the Soviet Party or engaged in polemics are more likely to provide inside information on negotiations, personalities, process, tactics, and so on. The Parties in question need to defend themselves against direct or indirect Soviet attacks and to present and justify their case to their own national constituencies and to the international Communist movement. The most candid and sensitive information is most likely to emerge from Parties which operate in open Western societies under the sharp scrutiny of their national press and communication media. Under these criteria, t h e Communist Parties of Italy (PCI), France (PCF), 9 Spain (PCE), and Japan (JCP) are perhaps the most important and the most likely to yield data on Soviet decisionmaking, policies, tactics, and negotiating behavior. These considerations led me to organize a panel on "The CPSU and Nonruling Parties: Policies and Negotiating Behavior" at the Thirteenth National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, held September 20-23, 1981, at Pacific Grove, California. Well-known scholars on Eurocommunist Parties were in6. Robert H. McNeal (ed.), International Relations Among Communists (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967). 7. Leonard Schapiro, "The International Department of the CPSU: Key to Soviet Policy," International Journal (Toronto), XXXII, 1 (Winter 1976-77), pp. 41-55. 8. Elizabeth Teague, "The Foreign Departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU," Radio Liberty Research Bulletin, Supplement (October 27, 1980), 47 pp. This report pulls together the available information on several CC departments and provides biographical sketches or brief identifications on almost one hundred apparntchiks involved in foreign affairs, including Boris Ponomarev, Mikhall Suslov, Yurii Andropov, Vadim Zagladin, and Konstantin Zarodov. 9. Although the PCF has four members in the Cabinet, it is still considered a nonruling Party because it does not control the government.
166
STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM
vited to prepare papers on the relationship between the Party of their expertise and the CPSU: Joan Urban on the PCI, Julius Friend on the PCF, and Eusebio Mujal-Le6n on the PCE, while I appointed myself to deal with the JCP. Jerry Hough, who is currently researching Soviet policymaking for the Brookings Institution and who has reworked Mere Fainsod's classic How Russia Is Ruled, l° was enlisted to provide the necessary background on the institutional framework and the personalities involved in Soviet dealings with nonruling Communist Parties. Heinz Timmermann, a longtime student of Eurocommunist Parties with extensive personal contacts, agreed to serve as a discussant to pull the papers together and to provide some generalizations about Soviet policies, tactics, and negotiating behavior toward the Eurocommunist Parties. The panel was well attended and produced a stimulating dialogue between the panel members and the audience, which included a number of scholars with long experience in the topic under discussion, among them Richard Lowenthal and Eric Willenz. The success of the panel has led me to ask the panelists to revise their papers in light of the exchanges among themselves and between them and the audience and to submit them to Studies for possible publication in a special issue. These revised papers were sent out for additional evaluations, which were uniformly positive. And so, a year after the original panel, we are bringing out this special issue for a much wider audience of our readers. The four Communist Parties presented here differ greatly with regard to their social and cultural setting, their position in widely different national political spectra, their electoral strength, and their importance on the domestic political scene. They also differ in major ways in their leaders' personal and Party ties with the CPSU, including residence in the Soviet Union. Yet, the record of the experiences of these four Parties, along with the introductory and concluding essays, may offer fresh insights and shed new light on Soviet decisionmaking, with all of its big power chauvinism, esoteric language, and Byzantine intrigue. P.B.
10. Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19"/9).