Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T02:12:47.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Stalinist Theory and Soviet Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Diplomaticus
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

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.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 1952 , pp. 468 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1952

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 History of the CPSU (b), Short Course, p. 355Google Scholar. (English edition published by International Publishers, New York.)

2 Quoted in Stalin, , Problems of Leninism, p. 26. (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1947Google Scholar. English translation of eleventh Russian edition.)

3 Ibid., p. 26.

4 For a Lasting Peace for a People's Democracy, No. 1, 11 10, 1947.Google Scholar

5 See Historicus, , “Stalin on Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, 01, 1949.Google Scholar

6 Stalin, , Problems of Leninism, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 202. (Stalin's italics)

8 “Interview With the First American Labour Delegation in Russia,” Stalin, , Leninism, Vol. 2, p. 71. (New York, International Publishers, 1933.)Google Scholar

9 For a Lasting Peace for a People's Democracy, No. 1, 11 10, 1947.Google Scholar

10 Stalin, , Problems of Leninism, p. 70.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 70.

12 For a Lasting Peace for a People's Democracy, No. 1, 11 10, 1947.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. (Author's italics)

14 Stalin, , Problems of Leninism, p. 68.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 69.

16 “The Programme of the Communist International,” International Press Correspondence, Vol. VIII, No. 92, 12 31, 1928Google Scholar. (Reprinted in Blueprint for World Conquest, Chicago, Human Events, 1946.)Google Scholar

17 One should read in this regard “The Character of a ‘Peoples Democracy’,” the translation of an article by Joszef Revai in a Hungarian periodical, in the October, 1949, Foreign Affairs.

18 Problems of Leninism, p. 69.Google Scholar

19 For an excellent analysis of this phase of Chinese Communist history, read Schwartz, Benjamin I., Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951.)Google Scholar

20 Tse-Toung, Mao, La Nouvelle Democratie, p. 78. (Paris, Editions Sociales, 1951.)Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 72.

22 Ibid., p. 73.

23 Ibid., p. 73.

24 Ibid., p. 74.

25 Ibid., p. 74.

26 There are many other principles, similar to the four that apply to the employment of reserves, which affect the actual manner in which a given plan of action is implemented. In this regard, the reader is referred to Leites, Nathan, The Operational Code of the Politburo. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951.)Google Scholar

27 Stalin, , Problems of Leninism, p. 70.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 74–77.

29 “The Programme of the Communist International,” International Press Correspondence, 12 31, 1928, p. 1767.Google Scholar

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.