The Uncertainty of Soviet Foreign Policy

1963 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-464
Author(s):  
S. I. Ploss
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy

Politics cannot tolerate indulgence, it must be logical and consistent.” This was a lesson in Soviet foreign policy which N. S. Khrushchev administered in July 1957, or just after the organizational finale to his bitter struggle with V. M. Molotov, whom the victorious leader accused of favoring “the policy of ‘tightening all the screws’” in relations with the West. However, in the past two and a half years, erraticism has often marked the Kremlin's foreign political behavior. Does this vacillation originate entirely in “objective” pressures on the party First Secretary and premier, or in his own allegedly impulsive nature, or may it sometimes be due in part to a recurrence of factional clashes in the Soviet hierarchy?

Initiative and Response in Soviet Foreign Policy

1963 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-187
Author(s):  
Richard J. Barnet
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Source Materials

IT is a commonplace in the West to think of Soviet foreign policy in terms of a grand strategy. Yet the subject has more often than not intimidated scholars into taking the route of specialization. Problems of obtaining source materials as well as the desire to avoid complexity and controversy have frequently discouraged Sovietologists from approaching foreign policy in other than small pieces. During the past year, however, several new books have been added to the small number which both offer detailed analysis of an extended historical period and approach the development of general theory. Each of the books covers a broad period and each uses the technique of focusing on a particular instrument of Soviet foreign policy.

Foreign Policy: USSR: Darshan Singh, (Ed.): Soviet Foreign Policy Documents, 1978. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1980, xiv, 312 p., Rs. 100.

1982 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-112
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Border Region ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
The West ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Energy Needs ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy: USSR: DARSHAN SINGH, ( Ed.): Soviet Foreign Policy Documents, 1978. JAPAN: RAJENDRA KUMAR JAIN: The USSR and Japan 1945–1980. CHINA: ANDREW WATSON, ( Ed.): Mao Zedong and the Political Economy of the Border Region (A Translation of Mao's Economic and Financial Problems). CHINA: H.D. MALAVIYA : Peking Leadership : Treachery and Betrayal. PERSIAN GULF: JAMES H. NOYES: The Clouded Lens: Persian Gulf Security and US Policy. PETER SINAI: New Lamps for Old: The Arabs and Iran Meet India's Energy Needs. AFRICA: MICHAEL A. SAMUELS, Ed.: Africa and the West. AFRICA: H.P.W. HUTSON: Rhodesia: Ending an Era.

Perceptions of foreign threats to the regime: From Lenin to Putin

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Shlapentokh
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
The West ◽  
Current Regime ◽  
The Past

During his second term, Putin’s foreign policy was strongly influenced by the belief that the West’s hostility could help the opposition change the current regime, as the West had done in Ukraine and Georgia. A regime change would deprive the ruling elite, mostly people from the security police and army, of their power and illegally acquired wealth. Moscow restored, in early 2000, the ideology of Russia’s “encirclement” from the 1920s, which suggested that the country was surrounded by enemies in order to legitimize the regime. At the same time, as in the past, Moscow tried to punish the Western governments for their disrespect for the regime with an aggressive and uncooperative foreign policy.

Soviet foreign policy in the West, 1936-1941: A review article

2004 ◽  
Vol 56 (7) ◽  
pp. 1081-1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Jabara Carley
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Review Article ◽  
The West ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy

The Union Republics and Soviet Diplomacy: Concepts, Institutions, and Practices

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon V. Aspaturian
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Precise Role

Ever since the constitutional improvisations of February 1, 1944, one of the enigmatic and obscure aspects of Soviet diplomacy has been the precise role of the Union Republics in its execution, administration and procedures. Aside from the participation of the Ukraine and Byelorussia in the work of the United Nations and its affiliated bodies and conferences, little attention has been paid to the role or potential of the Union Republics in Soviet foreign policy. Their apparent diplomatic inertia, however, is misleading, for in marked contrast to their meager formal participation in external affairs is their increasing implication in the quasi-diplomatic maneuvers of the Soviet Government. Furthermore, the juridical capacity of the Republics to embark on diplomatic adventures meets the formal canons of internal and international law, and remains intact in spite of the past dormancy of their diplomatic organs. At opportune moments it may be transmuted into concrete diplomatic benefits.

Diplomacy and Revolution: The Dialectics of a Dispute

1961 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Richard Lowenthal
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
First Time ◽  
Total Impact

The policy declaration and the appeal to the peoples of the world adopted last December by the Moscow conference of eighty-one Communist parties mark the end of one phase in the dispute between the leaderships of the ruling parties of China and the Soviet Union—the phase in which the followers of Mao for the first time openly challenged the standing of the Soviet Communists as the fountain-head of ideological orthodoxy for the world movement. But the “ideological dispute” which began in April was neither a sudden nor a self-contained development: it grew out of acute differences between the two Communist Great Powers over concrete diplomatic issues, and it took its course in constant interaction with the changes in Soviet diplomatic tactics. Hence the total impact of that phase on Soviet foreign policy on one side, and on the ideology, organisation and strategy of international Communism on the other, cannot be evaluated from an interpretation of the Moscow documents alone, but only from a study of the process as a whole, as it developed during the past year on both planes.

scholarly journals Power Fields of the modern world Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 57-75
Author(s):  
A. A. Vershinin ◽  
A. V. Korolkov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Russian Federation

he spate of violence all over the world including the West makes us to pay attention to the factor of force in world politics. During the past decades Western countries tried to reduce the problem of force to the discussion about so-termed soft power. As a result they were not politically and morally ready to the outbreaks of the use of force in its traditional meaning. This fact to large extent explains their pained reaction to the foreign policy of the Russian Federation and the ups and downs of their politics in regard to China.

A Balance Sheet on Sixty Years of Soviet Foreign Policy—Part II

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Walter C. Clemens
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Balance Sheet ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Soviet Policy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy

Last month I described eleven “successes” of Soviet foreign policy since the October, 1917. Revolution. Now it is time to turn to Soviet ““failures” and to the underlying factors that have shaped Soviet policy in the past and that should be weighed by Western policymakers in the years ahead. Partially by coincidence and partially with un eye to symmetry, I again come up with the number eleven.These assessments of success and failure are based on my own research, stimulated and refined by a survey (both written and oral) that tapped the views of other Soviet specialists visiting the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The “balance sheet.“” of course, represents my own judgment. Readers will no doubt make their own distinctions, thus reducing or expanding the list; some may quarrel about whether a certain.event ought to be rated a failure or a “ success given Moscow's apparent objectives; but I think the following represents a fair account in accord with the facts as we know them.

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