Soviet Ideology and Soviet Foreign Policy

1959 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam B. Ulam
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Ideology ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

None of the perplexing problems of contemporary international affairs has given rise to more confusing discussion than the relationship of Soviet ideology to the foreign policy of the USSR. The very vagueness of the term “Soviet ideology,” or “Communist ideology” (and are they synonymous?), the uncertainty to what extent this uncertain force motivates the makers of Soviet policies, have compounded our difficulties in understanding the behavior of one of the world's two superpowers. Are Russia's rulers motivated by cynical power politics? Are they ideological fanatics? Is tlie content of their ideology the gospel of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, or something else? Questions can be compounded ad infinitum.

scholarly journals Stalin, the Politburo, and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1946

1988 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Albert Resis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
New Wave ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

The precise function that Marxist-Leninist ideology serves in the formation and conduct of Soviet foreign policy remains a highly contentious question among Western scholars. In the first postwar year, however, few senior officials or Soviet specialists in the West doubted that Communist ideology served as the constitutive element of Soviet foreign policy. Indeed, the militant revival of Marxism-Leninism after the Kremlin had downplayed it during 'The Great Patriotic War" proved to be an important factor in the complex of causes that led to the breakup of the Grand Alliance. Moscow's revival of that ideology in 1945 prompted numerous top-level Western leaders and observers to regard it as heralding a new wave of Soviet world-revolutionary messianism and expansionism. Many American and British officials were even alarmed by the claim, renewed, for example, in Moscow's official History of Diplomacy, that Soviet diplomacy possessed a "scientific theory," a "weapon" possessed by none of its rivals or opponents. This "weapon," Marxism-Leninism, Moscow ominously boasted, enabled Soviet leaders to comprehend, foresee, and master the course of international affairs, smoothing the way for Soviet diplomacy to make exceptional gains since 1917. Now, in the postwar period, Stalinist diplomacy opened before the Soviet Union "boundlesshorizons and the most majestic prospects."

Domestic Constraints on Foreign Policy Change in Belarus

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-55
Author(s):  
Paul Hansbury
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Group Competition ◽  
Domestic Constraints ◽  
Foreign Policy Change ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Policy Shifts

Abstract After 2014 the relationship between Russia and its ally Belarus was strained. Russia was dissatisfied with Belarus’s foreign policy and sought to influence the latter’s international affairs. This article considers the extent of change and continuity in Belarus’s foreign policy, and thus whether Russia’s criticisms reflect consequential shifts, covering the period 2016–2019. The analysis begins with the removal of EU sanctions, which afforded Belarus new opportunities, and ends before the protest movement that emerged ahead of the election in 2020. The study considers three policy areas: international trade; diplomacy more broadly; and foreign policy concerns for prestige. The article argues that Belarus made appreciable policy changes in response to structural pressures in the period 2016–2019, but the parameters of these foreign policy shifts were necessarily highly constrained by domestic interest group competition which prevents Belarus distancing itself from Russia. It concludes with a brief reflection on how the 2020 election protests and repressions affect the dynamics described.

The Ubiquity of Oil

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Rosemary A. Kelanic
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Systematic Framework

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between oil and great power politics. For over a hundred years, oil has been ubiquitous as both an object of political intrigue and a feature of everyday life, yet its effects on the behavior of major powers remain poorly understood. This book focuses on one particular aspect of oil: its coercive potential. Across time and space, great powers have feared that dependence on imported petroleum might make them vulnerable to coercion by hostile actors. They worry that an enemy could cut off oil to weaken them militarily or punish them economically, and then use this threat as a basis for political blackmail. Oil is so essential to great powers that taking a state's imports hostage could give an enemy significant leverage in a dispute. The book presents the first systematic framework to understand how fears of oil coercion shape international affairs. Great powers counter prospective threats with costly and risky policies that lessen vulnerability, ideally, before the country can be targeted. These measures, which can be called “anticipatory strategies,” vary enormously, from self-sufficiency efforts to actions as extreme as launching wars.

The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) and Russia’s Proposal for a Treaty of Guarantee

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-262
Author(s):  
Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Despite the impressive scholarship devoted to the peacemaking that followed the defeat of Napoleon, significant aspects of European politics remain understudied. These include the intellectual apparatus articulated in diplomatic communications and the relationship of diplomacy to national or local political cultures. This article focuses on Russian diplomacy, itself a relatively understudied topic, by exploring the ideas and concepts that defined Alexander i’s foreign policy and the Russian understanding of European order. The article addresses these matters by focusing on Russia’s proposal for a treaty of guarantee which was presented to the allies at the 1818 Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle.

scholarly journals Socialists and Bureaucrats: The Blum Government and the French Administration, 1936–37

1974 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irwin M. Wall
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Economic Upturn ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The failure of the Popular Front government of 1936–1937 was at least two-fold: from the national standpoint it was able neither to formulate a foreign policy of anti-fascism nor to bring France out of the economic crisis; from the narrower political perspective it was unable to prevent a growing sense of disillusionment and recrimination among its constituents. Both aspects have received increasing attention from historians in recent years, although not always with sufficient regard for the extent to which the two problems might be separable. Greater intervention on behalf of the Spanish Republicans, for example, might not have saved the Spanish Republic, but even so would have gone far toward satisfying Blum's constituents and blunting communist criticism of his government. Abandonment of the forty-hour week, on the other hand, while adding to the deceptions of the left, might have permitted the achievement of the economic upturn upon which the hopes of the Popular Front ultimately rested. Spain and finances – war and economics, the twin chief concerns of western civilization in our century as A. J. P. Taylor has facetiously suggested – are the issues in terms of which most analysts of Blum's double failure have proceeded. But there is another which may have been equally important, and which appears to have been of greater significance in the eyes of contemporaries. This was the question of the relationship of the Blum government and the French administration. The increasingly blurred distinction between politics and administration characteristic of contemporary Gaullism, as well as the rigidity and resistance to innovation typical of the crisis-prone French bureaucratic style, suggest in any case a re-evaluation of the recent past in terms what Michel Crozier has aptly called “the bureaucratic phenomenon”.

The Relationship between The Maqasidic (Higher Purposes of Shari’ah) Approach and Siyar (Foreign Policy of the Islamic State)

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wahabuddin Ra’ees
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractClassical jurists have rigorously studied siyar (the foreign policy of the Islamic state), describing the nature of the principles and norms that influenced the formulation of siyar. On the basis of these principles and norms, the jurists formulated rulings to describe the nature of the relationship of the Islamic state with others. This study examines the relationship between the principles and norms that influenced siyar and the maqasid approach (higher purposes) of shari’ah. This study first presents a conceptual analysis of siyar. Second, it discusses the approach of maqasid of shari’ah. Third, it explores selected juridical rulings that describe the nature of siyar. Fourth, this study, building on an analysis of selected juridical rulings, suggests that siyar was guided by some general principles and norms. Finally, the study examines the relationship between the principles that governed siyar and the approach of maqasid of shari’ah. The study concludes that the aim of both siyar and maqasid of sharia’h was/is to establish a moral order. The genesis of this positive relationship between the maqasid of shari’ah and the principles and norms that guided siyar is found in the unity of the source of knowledge or the principle of Divine Unity (al Tawhid).

The Soviet Union and the Renner Government of Austria, April–November 1945

1987 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 246-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Piotrowski
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Joseph Stalin ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
Red Army

When the Red Army moved through Eastern Europe in 1945, it faced the problem of creating what the men in the Kremlin called “friendly” governments. In several countries, Joseph Stalin in short order resolved the dilemma by putting into power Communists who had arrived in the van of his army. In the Western mind, Stalin represented a force inexorably driven by a logic inherent in all totalitarian systems. Stalin became the reincarnation of Hitler, a dictator who sought to impose his system on all territories under his sway—and whose appetite could not be sated. Such a view left little ambiguity in interpreting Stalin's foreign policy. It offered no room for an assessment that Soviet foreign policy was driven by a mix of motives, not only by aggression steeped in Communist ideology, but also by considerations of national security, opportunism, and compromise.

The Comintern

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Vatlin ◽  
Stephen A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Policy Conflict ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Third ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The essay falls into two sections. The first examines the history of the Third International (Comintern) from its creation in 1919 to its dissolution in 1943, looking at the imposition of the Twenty-One Conditions on parties wishing to join the new International in 1920, the move from a perspective of splitting the labour movement to one of a united front in the early 1920s, the shift to the sectarian ‘third period’ strategy in 1928, and the gradual emergence of the popular front strategy in the mid-1930s. It examines the institutions of the Comintern and the Stalinization of national communist parties. The second section looks at some issues in the historiography of the Comintern, including the extent to which it was a tool of Soviet foreign policy, conflict over policy within the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI), and the relationship of ECCI to ‘national sections’, with a particular focus on the Vietnamese Communist Party. Finally, it discusses problems of cultural and linguistic communication within the Comintern.

Stalinist Theory and Soviet Foreign Policy

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 468-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diplomaticus
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
Russian Program

Arguments about Soviet foreign policy usually include a lively debate about whether the Politburo is made up of Marxists or Machiavellians. The defenders of the Machiavellian interpretation of Soviet behaviour insist that the Communists are just “power politicians” carrying out the historic Russian program of expansion under a new guise. Until recently this view has been by far the most popular with American scholars and laymen. Few people here even now would take the position diat the Soviet Union's actions are a blind fulfillment of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist theory. Some would, however, insist that an understanding of this theory will facilitate interpretation of Soviet behaviour. Indeed, some Soviet policies and actions make much more sense when placed within a Stalinist frame of reference than as “power politics.”

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