1965.04 克里姆林宫的艰难选择

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The Kremlin's Difficult Choice
The leaders in the Kremlin have long been dogged by a fateful, ines capable choice, as Professor Lowenthal makes clear in this penetrating analysis. The author teaches at the Free University in Berlin and this year is serving as Senior Fellow at the Research Institute on Communist Affairs at Columbia University. This article grew out of a talk he delivered at a recent conference of parliamentarians of NATO countries in Paris.

By Richard Lowenthal
APRIL 1965 ISSUE
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THE sudden fall from power of Nikita Khrushchev came to the Western world as a shock. To the professional analysts of Soviet affairs in particular, it was a rude reminder of the persistence of secret and unpredictable elements in Soviet politics, or, to put it differently, of the inevitable limitations of our knowledge and our powers of prediction in this field. No Western expert, as far as I know, had expected the overthrow of the Soviet leader at that time; and not many had even thought it possible that the man who combined the offices of First Secretary of the ruling Communist Party, Chairman of its Bureau for the Russian Federative Republic, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and who had taken care to run each of these three executive organs with the help of different and changing deputies, could be overthrown at all by the collective action of his immediate associates and subordinates. We still have to depend largely on deduction and guesswork about the personal infighting within the ruling group in the Kremlin — and it is just those personal alignments and rivalries that may often determine the day-to-day decisions of an autocratic power.

The value of our knowledge for the orientation of Western policy will thus more or less depend on the kind of question we ask. If we wish to know what Brezhnev and Kosygin will do next week or next month, or how stable the allocation of power among Khrushchev’s successors will prove, even the best-informed answer can only be a guess. But long-term changes in the Soviet outlook depend to a large extent not on the wishes and preconceived ideas of particular Soviet leaders, but on the domestic and international conditions in which they have to operate—just as they do with other great powers; and especially in the field of foreign policy, these conditions have been in part determined by our own action and may continue to be influenced by our actions in the future.

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What, then, are the factors likely to shape the Soviet outlook in world affairs in the post-Khrushchevian period? Any answer must start from the basic dual motivation that has been present since the birth of the Soviet state in 1917: the national interests of Russia as a great power on the one hand, and the worldwide ideological goals of the ruling Bolshevik party on the other. The Bolsheviks govern Russia, and they have sought to secure the independence and territorial integrity of their country, to develop its natural resources and human capacities, to surround it with a protective sphere of influence, and to prevent the formation of hostile coalitions of overwhelming strength, as the government of any sovereign state will try to do. But the Bolsheviks are also a totalitarian party, and they rule in the name of a revolutionary ideology that aspires to the total transformation of the world. They have conceived their relation to all nonCommunist regimes as one of ultimately irreconcilable conflict — a type of conflict that need not and indeed should not lead to world war, but that could be resolved only by the gradual expansion of their own type of regime over the whole world as the march of history offered opportunities for revolution or conquest with limited risk.

There is, of course, a dilemma between a foreign policy geared to the limited aims of national security and one geared to the unlimited aims of world revolution. But the Soviet leaders have for many years refused to admit the existence of this dilemma; instead they have sought to harmonize the two contradictory motivations, with considerable success. Stalin, as we know, interpreted Russian national interest in the ideological framework of the irreconcilable conflict with the non-Communist world. He insisted on forced industrialization, giving priority to heavy industry at the price ol decades of sacrifice by the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union; and he insisted on the establishment of Communist regimes on Russia’s frontier as the only reliable guarantee of its security. Conversely, Stalin interpreted the prospects of world revolution as wholly predicated upon the gradual expansion of Russian state power, Even when Khrushchev, in the early years of his rule, adopted a wider and bolder view of the growth of a commonwealth of socialist states by the spread of independent revolutionary movements, he conceived of Russia as its natural head, so that the progress of the world revolution could culminate only in Russian world leadership.

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For more than forty years, then, the fears of Trotsky and the hopes of so many Western statesmen that the Soviet leaders would sooner or later have to make a choice between their two kinds of goals—that they would abandon their commitment to world revolution in order to pursue limited national aims — obstinately refused to come true. It was only during Khrushchev’s declining years that events at last forced on the Soviet leaders an awareness that the two motivations could no longer be harmonized, that their ideological ambitions for worldwide leadership were no longer compatible with their national interest. To put it in a nutshell, the Russian national interest has emerged clearly as that of a more or less saturated power, an imperial power with much to lose and little prospect of further expanding its dominions without incurring prohibitive costs and risks; and the national interest has thus come increasingly into conflict with an official ideology which, being committed to the goal of world revolution, is insatiable by its very nature. Three main factors have, in my opinion, been responsible for forcing this dilemma into the consciousness of the Soviet leaders, and indeed of the Soviet elites. The first is domestic: the erosion of ideology by the effects of industrial maturity. The second is due to Western policy: the effects of successful containment. The third has its origin in the changes in relations among Communist governments and parties: the effects of pluralistic decay, or the diminishing returns of empire.

FROM COERCION TO INCENTIVES
There can be no doubt that the achievement of industrial maturity has been the decisive factor for changing the internal climate of the Soviet Union. Brutal exploitation of workers and collectivized peasants and mass deportation to slave-labor camps had been possible methods for ensuring the rapid construction of modern factories, mines, and power stations, and the opening up of the inhospitable regions of the far east and far north; but they were not possible methods for running these industrial installations efficiently in competition with advanced Western countries. Once economic progress ceased to be primarily progress in the creation of the physical skeleton of modern industry and came to depend on the steady raising of its productivity, slave labor ceased to be rational. Economic motivation had to be drastically shifted from coercion to incentives. The urge of the post-Stalin leaders to carry out this shift, and to convince the whole gigantic bureaucracy of party and state of the need for it, was surely one of the motives for the condemnation of Stalin’s mass terrorism in Khrushchev’s secret speech at the Party congress in 1956.

In Khrushchev’s mind, the abandonment of Stalin-style mass terrorism did not at first mean the renunciation of Stalin’s program of revolutionary social change inside and outside Russia. An ideological believer as well as an economic modernizer, Khrushchev stuck to Stalin’s vision of bringing about the “higher stage” of Communism by assimilating the collective farms to the state farms, even though he wanted to achieve this end by different means. But Stalin had been able to operate on societv as with a surgeon’s knife, imposing his “revolutions from above’ by the ruthless application of force. Khrushchev was not only limited in the forms of’ pressure he could and would apply: he also had to take care that his social experiments were compatible with the vital imperative of increasing production. As late as 1959. he developed a program aimed at modifying the social structure of the collective farms — for instance, by pressing the peasants to sell their private cattle. But wherever these measures were carried out, output went down. By the time the new Party program was adopted at the Party congress in 1961, structural changes were no longer envisaged as a practical task to be promoted and enforced by the Party, but as a distant hope for the beneficial effects which a rise of productivity would bring about at some unspecified time in the future. The demands of economics had won over the demands of ideology.

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The 1961 Party program also showed that Khrushchev and his colleagues had recognized the basic political condition for steady economic progress: a climate of personal security and internal peace. In claiming that the class struggle inside Russia was at an end and that the Soviet state was no longer a “dictatorship of the proletariat” but a “state of the whole people,” they did not, of course, mean to abandon the dictatorial rule of the Communist Party. But they did mean to assure the ordinary Soviet citizen that he could henceforth go about his business not only without fear of arbitrary arrest and deportation but without fear of further Party-imposed revolutionary upheavals in his way of life.

It is just this desire for a climate of internal peace rather than of permanent ideological and social struggle which has been rightly branded by the Chinese Communists as a revisionist departure from principle. For it indicates a weakening of the power that militant ideology exerts on the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party; and it thus, in turn, encourages the long-apparent weakening of the ideology’s hold on ordinary Soviet citizens.

That weakening began with the spread of general and higher education, and by the attendant awakening of the critical faculties of large numbers of people. At the same time, the economic and technological need for growing contacts with the non-Communist world has undermined the Party’s monopoly of information. An official or technician who has traveled in the West or a scholar who reads learned journals from other countries and meets Western visitors no longer depends exclusively on regime-controlled channels for forming his ideas of the outside world. He may be a Soviet patriot and loyal to the regime, but he has no militant desire to impose his country’s dogma on other nations; and in the absence of an atmosphere of omnipresent terror, he can no longer be forced to pretend a conformist enthusiasm he does not share. A young Soviet writer or artist is able to develop his own critical standards, based on both Russian traditions and foreign developments; he may be temporarily silenced by Party pressure, but he can no longer be compelled to produce propagandist hackwork in which he does not believe —just as a Soviet biologist can no longer be made to accept the “dialectical” superiority of Lysenko.

In the crucial held of economic theory, the Party, for urgent practical reasons, has had to tolerate, and even to stimulate, a discussion of the need not only for greater managerial independence but also for market indicators, including profits and interest, as a means of reducing production costs and improving the quality and variety of consumer goods. Practical experiments have been started on the basis of these undogmatic ideas.

All this is far indeed from any “democratization” in the sense of a wider sharing of political power, of popular participation in the framing of policy. The fall of Khrushchev has again shown that politi cal decisions in the Soviet Union are still taken within a narrow circle of leaders, who do not even have to give a coherent explanation to their constituents. But there has been a considerable shift away from the extreme of totalitarian tension toward a more relaxed and less ideological form of bureaucratic autocracy, and limited areas of freedom have emerged from ideological control, from the straitjacket of Marxist-Leninist dogma. Such a weakening of ideological fanaticism from below and above cannot fail to have a long-term impact on the role of ideological motivations in Soviet foreign policy.

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL FAILS
In foreign affairs, the Soviets have never been able to carry out a program of world revolution according to plan. They have always had to adapt their strategy to the constellation of forces prevailing at the given moment— to wait for the chances which the internal weaknesses of their opponents or the international conflicts among them might offer to Communist expansion. Yet under Khrushchev as well as under Stalin, they clung with amazing consistency to the ideological vision of their ultimate aim, of a worldwide new order under Communist rule. It is a fact too often overlooked in the West that when Khrushchev came to power, he was rather more sanguine than Stalin had been about the prospects of world revolution — because he was somewhat naively convinced that the advance of a number of independent Communist revolutions could proceed without mutual conflicts of interest, and hence without challenge to the unity of world Communism under Russian leadership. The recognition of the thermonuclear balance of terror did not lead Khrushchev to lower his sights in the international field, as his passionate speeches on the need for peaceful coexistence caused many Western readers to believe; for while those speeches expressed a sincere determination to avoid the supreme risk of world war, that determination was, in Khrushchev’s mind, perfectly compatible with any forms of local violence and nuclear blackmail that stopped short of this risk.

More than that: after the launching of the first sputniks had proved the Soviets’ capacity for launching intercontinental missiles with accurate aim, Khrushchev thought that he could overturn the military balance of world power by political means. Now that the United States had become vulnerable to massive nuclear attack, it seemed obvious that American nuclear retaliation would no longer be the automatic response to any Soviet aggression against America’s exposed allies; hence nuclear blackmail at points of Russia’s choosing, combined with diplomatic overtures to the American imperialists, should now have been sufficient to disintegrate the Western alliance.

That was the rationale for the persistent attempt to force a Western retreat from Berlin. It was also the background for the unprecedented boldness with which Khrushchev developed a truly worldwide offensive, seeking to exploit the numerous conflicts spawned by decolonization not only with propaganda but also with open political and thinly disguised military intervention all over the globe. When the pressure on Berlin met with unexpectedly determined resistance, Khrushchev sought to make the nuclear blackmail more effective by sending missiles to Cuba; it was at this moment that the two prongs of his offensive were closed. Never before had Soviet hopes of a decisive international victory been so high; never had a Soviet leader freely moved so close to the limit of risk compatible with an instinct of self-preservation.

When the gamble failed and the hope of worldwide victory was sunk in the Caribbean, it was not only the missiles in Cuba and the threat against Berlin that had to be withdrawn. The whole Soviet estimate of the West-East relation of forces had to be revised, and with it the order of priorities for Soviet policy.

BUILDING COMMUNISM AT HOME
For years, Khrushchev had acted on the overconfident assumption that the Soviet Union could bear at the same time the burden of the armaments race required for its worldwide offensive and the cost of a rising standard of living for its own people. Many of the agricultural campaigns which his successors now describe as harebrained schemes sprang from his desire to avoid the hard choice in the allocation of resources: he tried to make the Russian soil yield more food without correspondingly increased investment. His international optimism had also fed on the Leninist belief that the superior standard of living of the Western workers rested on the fruits of colonial exploitation, and was bound to decline as decolonization dried up the sources of imperialist wealth.

Thus the continued prosperity of the West, particularly the success of the Common Market in Western Europe, like the success of Western containment, and Soviet economic troubles, all pointed to the need to give more weight to the material needs of the Soviet people and less to the effort to subvert the non-Communist world. In November, 1962, Khrushchev proclaimed the improvement of the domestic economy as the principal task of the Soviet Communist Party; in the summer of 1963, the signing of the partial-test-ban agreement marked the Kremlin’s recognition that a measure of détente in East-West relations was a necessary corollary of this shift of emphasis.

Of course, Soviet policy has repeatedly seen similar changes from phases of revolutionary expansion to phases of consolidation, from the deliberate creation of international crises to the search for relaxation of tension— and back again. Both Lenin and Stalin were skillful at engineering such pauses when the international or internal situation seemed to require them; they did this without abandoning their worldwide ideological goals. Yet the turn that marked the last phase of Khrushchev’s reign differed from those precedents in several ways. First, the previous pauses were used to carry out major revolutionary changes inside the Soviet Union or the newly Sovietized countries; the ideological zeal of the Party cadres, temporarily prevented from finding fulfillment in the outward progress of world revolution, was nourished by the needs of the class struggle at home or in the bloc. This time the scope for revolutionary transformations was waning on the Soviet domestic scene just when it had been effectively restricted in the outside world.

Second, the previous pauses did follow on phases of major revolutionary expansion; they served to consolidate conquests, to digest the fruits of victory, whereas the present turn has been forced on the Soviets by defeat, by the failure of their prolonged offensive effort.

Third, pauses in the past were inaugurated by leaders with virtually uncontested authority, who could afford to justify their turns by a frankly realistic analysis of the international relation of forces. The present turn had to be carried out by men of gravely impaired authority who could not admit their previous miscalculation without handing ammunition to their militant critics in Peiping; yet precisely because the turn had to be accomplished under the fire of Chinese ideological attack, it had to be justified in terms of ideological principle. When M. A. Suslov declared in February, 1964, that the international duty of the Soviet Communists consisted first of all in building Communism at home so as to furnish the foreign comrades with an attractive example, he formulated a principle which would allow the rulers of the Soviet Union to free themselves from the ideological pressure from China and elsewhere.

CHINA CHALLENGES THE SOVIETS
This brings us to the third major factor of longterm change in the Soviet outlook: the pluralistic decay of the former unity of the Communist bloc, the world Communist movement, and even the Communist dogma. I am not using the term polycentrism, for that was coined to express the hope that several independent Communist centers could exist side by side yet cooperate harmoniously. What has actually developed with the growing emancipation of various Communist governments and parties from Soviet control has been conflict and schism.

Clearly, the danger of such conflict has been implicit in the situation from the moment that the Chinese Communists achieved full control of mainland China under the independent leadership of Mao Tse-tung in 1949. Ever since then, two major Communist powers have existed, with all the potential for differences of interest that is inevitable among sovereign states. For some time, the Chinese Communists hesitated to push their interests openly in conflict with a country on which they had to rely for economic, military, and diplomatic support, and which they had long been trained to recognize as the model of their own revolution and the fountainhead of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. But when Khrushchev, in his secret speech on Stalin’s crimes at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956, deliberately set out to destroy the myth of Stalin’s infallibility, he unwittingly inflicted irreparable damage also on the general dogma of the infallibility of the Soviet Communist Party and its leaders, which had been the basis of Moscow’s authority in the world Communist movement. At one stroke, Khrushchev thus removed the crucial factor which had so far restrained Chinese as well as other Communists from openly challenging Soviet policy.

In view of the immense differences in the situation of the two main Communist powers, the grounds for such a challenge were many. The contrasts between Russia and China in their economic development, in the degree of military security achieved by nuclear deterrence, and in the scope for diplomatic flexibility are all too obvious to require elaboration. These required a unilateral dependence on Russia, with the inevitable tension such dependence produces between allies, because the dependent ally will always feel that his interests do not rank high enough on the priority list of his “big brother.” The contrasts between the two also led to the elaboration of different concepts of the proper strategy for dealing with the Western enemies and the major neutrals. Above all, the Chinese were less anxious to keep under control local armed conflicts arising from national liberation movements, and therefore denounced the Soviets for seeking to subordinate their support of such movements, even during the years of their worldwide offensive, to their general line of peaceful coexistence — that is‚ to the principle of limited risk.

Finally, the different stage of internal development has produced in China an ideological climate utterly different from that of Russia today. Ever since the failure of the Hundred Flowers experiment in 1956 and 1957, Mao and his team have been convinced that they can maintain their power only in an atmosphere of the besieged fortress — of relentless, unceasing struggle against internal as well as external enemies. The Soviet program of comparative internal relaxation, of moving from “dictatorship of the proletariat” to a “state of the whole people,” was thus bound to appear to the Chinese leaders as a direct danger to their own regime.

The Soviets, being the stronger power, would have liked to keep these differences quiet in order to pursue their own policy without public ideological challenge; even after the first Chinese public attacks in 1960, the Soviets offered formally to renounce their traditional leading role in the Communist world movement so as no longer to have to justify their policy in international ideological discussions. It was the Chinese who saw, and still see, their best chance in exerting ideological pressure on the Soviets by challenging their “revisionism” and “betrayal” in the forum of the world Communist movement— because China is the weaker power, and also because of its internal need for ideological militancy. Finding the Soviets unyielding, the Chinese after 1961 gradually prepared both an ideological platform and the organized contacts for a complete international schism, working everywhere to discredit the Soviets and present themselves as the only true Marxist-Leninists.

As the struggle proceeded, the Soviet leaders became drastically aware of the limitations of their control of foreign Communist governments and movements. They had not only failed to control China; they were not even able to induce Fidel Castro, despite his total dependence on Soviet economic support and military protection, to condemn the Chinese or sign the test-ban agreement. In Eastern Europe, the Communist rulers of one country after another used the Soviet need for support against Peiping to complete their own emancipation from satellite status, which had begun with the crisis of destalinization. Occupied East Germany was left as the only wholly submissive protectorate, while Rumania stayed neutral in the Sino-Soviet dispute and refused to coordinate its economic policies within the bloc.

The embarrassments caused by Mao and Castro and the experience of the diminishing returns of empire even in Europe must thus have caused the Soviet leaders to wonder whether further independent Communist revolutions would necessarily redound to the greatness of Russia; while the Chinese attempt to exert pressure on Soviet policy by ideological means proved that far from being able to control independent Communist powers, the Soviets now had to take care to avoid being controlled by them. The obvious conclusion was that a stage had been reached when Russian national interest required a certain loosening of the ties to the world Communist movement so as to ensure the Kremlin’s freedom of diplomatic action. And Moscow’s preparations for a Communist world conference do indeed show, along with the effort to retain influence over the maximum number of parties in competition with Peiping, a new willingness to make cooperation loose and informal— not only to make the prospect more attractive to independent-minded foreigners but for Russia’s own sake as well.

THE PARTY’S DILEMMA
The effects of the decline of Soviet authority in the international Communist movements have thus combined with the consequences of industrial maturity at home and with the disappointments inflicted by successful Western resistance to Soviet expansion to make the Soviet leaders increasingly aware of the need to choose between a realistic policy of national interest and the ideological pursuit of world revolution. But a resistance to change has also been at work, originating in the ruling Communist Party apparatus itself. For the Soviet Communist Party has conquered, exercised, and maintained its power in the name of the revolutionary task defined by its ideology, including world revolution; and it cannot abandon the ideological beliefs which justify its claim to rule in the eyes of its own members.

Throughout the post-Stalin era, the CPSU has been caught in this dilemma between the need for realistic adjustment and the need for ideological continuity, and the career of Khrushchev has reflected it. Khrushchev emerged soon after Stalin’s death as the controlling figure in die Party apparatus, and he rose to national leadership as the exponent of the supremacy of the Party over all other organs of power, but also as the exponent of a policy that aimed at maintaining the Party’s rule by modernizing its methods and outlook. Hence, as soon as he had climbed to the pinnacle of power, he had to begin to restore some kind of balance between the power of the victorious Party bureaucracy on one side and the unorganized, inarticulate, but increasingly important new forces of Soviet society on the other. He needed the Party’s monopoly of power to keep society under control, but he needed the pressure for modernization exercised by society — by economists and managers, by technicians and scientists, even by writers and artists — to keep the Party bureaucrats up to scratch. That is why he turned so many Central Committee meetings into huge, semipublic confrontations between the Party officials and the representatives of the economic, technical, and cultural elites of the nation.

As Khrushchev probably became aware of the dilemma confronting the Party, he tried in his usual sanguine way to cut the knot by a drastic operation. When in November, 1962, just after the Cuban debacle, he tried to turn the Party’s nose to the grindstone of steady economic effort, he proposed a reorganization of the whole Party according to the “production principle,” dividing all its organizations into industrial and agricultural sectors and tending to leave the ideologists in midair. Yet it was precisely at that moment that he began to encounter serious resistance within the Party leadership for the first time since his victory over his rivals in 1957; and this reorganization has become the one major measure of Khrushchev’s reign which his heirs have hastened to rescind after his overthrow.

Part of the reason is no doubt that the reform had hurt many vested interests of the Party bureaucracy, and that it had been intended also to increase Khrushchev’s personal power and reduce his dependence on the constituted organs of the Party. But it seems clear that many of the Party leaders felt that in seeking to reduce the role of ideological work so drastically, Khrushchev was touching the vital nerve of the Party — the legitimation of its rule; and it was this point which Khrushchev himself was forced publicly to correct, during the winter following the reorganization, in the course of the campaign for bringing the writers and artists under stricter ideological control.

So far from solving the Party’s dilemma, Khrushchev’s reorganization had indeed only pointed it up more sharply. In a situation which offered no scope for internal and little for external revolutionary policies, the Party might easily appear as parasitic unless it proved its value by concentration on constructive economic tasks; but if it did concentrate on these tasks, would not many of its administrators reveal their lack of technical competence? Indeed, it had been easy enough to see why a centralized totalitarian party was needed to carry out a policy of permanent external and internal revolution; it was far more difficult to argue that such a party was needed to raise productivity, to lower costs, to improve the quality and variety of consumer goods. Khrushchev, it seemed to many, was shifting the Party’s main work onto a ground where its performance could all too easily he checked by its subjects: the promise of goulash may be far more attractive to the present Soviet generation than the promise of world revolution, but “goulash tomorrow” may lose its credibility much more quickly than “world revolution tomorrow.”

The Party’s instinct of self-preservation, then, has been the one great factor of resistance to change, the major force opposing an open discarding of world-revolutionary ideology. From all we know about the circumstances accompanying Khrushchev’s overthrow, this same force led the very men whom Khrushchev had designated as his eventual successors to remove him. Since then, they have undone his reorganization and freed the Party from direct responsibility for production; but they have not escaped from the dilemma any more than he did. For they cannot, and indeed will not, return either to the former program of imposing periodic violent upheavals on Soviet society or to the former strategy of worldwide revolutionary expansion. Hence they cannot come to terms with the militant Chinese position: in the face of bitter Chinese attacks, they have recognized the need to accept the main results of the Khrushchev era by publicly defending the decisions of the Khrushchevian Party congresses, including the “revisionist” Party program of 1961.

Clearly, the defenders of tradition and bureaucratic inertia are still powerful enough to slow down the process of ideological erosion and to cause occasional setbacks; but they seem no longer able to reverse the trend— to produce an ideological revival such as Khrushchev attempted in his early years, much less a return to Stalinism.

From the point of view of Western policy, this means that the strategic concept of containment has proved its worth, because its original objective was a realistic one. That objective, it will be remembered, was to stop Soviet expansion by concerted action until the time came when the Soviet leaders would realize that their worldwide ideological goals could not be attained. The concept of containment assumed that there were forces of change at work inside the Soviet Union which could eventually bring about a less missionary outlook in world affairs, that time would work in our favor if only we used it properly. That is exactly what seems to have happened.

Yet to be useful as a guide for Western policy today, this optimistic verdict must be taken with three qualifications. The first is that in practice, we are dealing not with the long-run trends described by our analysis, but with the actual shortrun Soviet policy of each given moment. In retrospect, the all-out offensive which Khrushchev pursued for five years, from the fall of 1957 to that of 1962, may appear as a short-run aberration: but it was extremely serious while it lasted and might have had disastrous consequences had he been allowed to get away with it. With the balance of world power once decisively upset in Russia’s favor, the trend toward a realistic acceptance of limited aims would have been fully reversed, and even the Sino-Soviet split might have been healed by Khrushchev’s peaceful triumph over the imperialists. So long as setbacks to the new realism are still possible, the danger persists, and with it the need for a vigilant and united defense of the common interests of the West.

The second qualification is that the distinction between limited national interests and worldwide ideological goals, though vitally important, is not in practice as clear-cut as many of us would like to believe. Different governments may define the national interest of their country in different ways; and the Soviets, once having given the concept a wholly ideological content, are more likely to change its interpretation by degrees than by a sudden and wholesale conversion. Even an ostensible concentration of the Soviets on national objectives would not automatically eliminate all causes of major conflict between them and the Western world: to mention a striking example, so long as the Soviets believe that their national interest requires the partition of Germany and the artificial maintenance of a Communist satellite in its eastern part, they will have to maintain large armed forces in the heart of Europe, causing a permanent state of military tension. In our view, of course, the idea that national security requires Communist regimes on Russia’s borders is a remnant of the ideological outlook. But this merely proves that the conflicts due to the ideologically motivated expansion of Soviet power in the past are as yet far from resolved.

The third qualification concerns the continuing role of Western policy as a factor in the process of change, or, to put it more crudely, in the education of the Soviet leaders to realism. If a relaxation of Western, and particularly American, vigilance gave the new Soviet leaders the impression that ideological successes could again be reaped in various parts of the world cheaply and without serious risk, or if serious conflicts within the Western alliance tempted the Soviets into new adventures, the gains achieved by the common efforts of the past could still be undone and the trend reversed. On the other hand, the process of ideological erosion could also suffer a setback if the West assumed a militantly “crusading” attitude toward all Communist powers, refusing to treat them differently according to their different international behavior and to resort to negotiation where appropriate.

Thus in Vietnam, where the popular political basis for the American presence in the south has virtually disintegrated and cannot possibly be replaced by any extension of military operations, the Chinese Communists are advising their Vietnamese comrades to continue fighting at all cost in the hope of complete military victory, while the Soviets appear to favor negotiation which would get rid of the American presence without a military triumph but also without the risk of wholesale destruction in the north. In the circumstances, an American policy that threatened such destruction without offering at the same time to negotiate terms for a withdrawal from a neutralized Vietnam could only force the Soviets back into closer cooperation with the Chinese, while a readiness to negotiate such terms might not only result in limiting the defeat which the West has in fact already suffered but might help to keep Sino-Soviet rivalry alive in this important region.

More positively, in areas of Western strength the process of change may be fostered by a calculated willingness to reward rational behavior, to improve cultural and economic contacts, and to explore every opening for the settlement of specific conflicts that may appear thanks to that strength. For indeed, if a realistic Western policy helps to ensure the continuation of the trend toward ideological erosion on the Soviet side, the time may well come when a number of disputed issues between the Soviets and the West — issues that have proved insoluble ever since World War II f and the rise of the Soviet Union to the status of a world power may at last become capable of a negotiated solution.


Some of us may anticipate that as the ideological poison is drained out of East-West relations and the more critical specific conflicts arc settled, the very need for the Atlantic military alliance in its present form may disappear. Nobody need be shocked at such a thought, for defensive alliances are distinct from economic or political unions precisely in that they have no abiding purpose in themselves, but depend for their survival on a common danger menacing their members: it is normal for them to dissolve once the danger has clearly passed. But the history of the Vienna Congress— and of Napoleon’s return from Elba— - stands as an eloquent warning of what may happen to allies who allow their bond to dissolve before its purpose has been finally achieved.

Next month Ernst! Halperin wilI discuss Communism’s dissension as it affects Latin America, and William Griffith will I analyze its meaning for American policy.





克里姆林宫的艰难选择
长期以来，克里姆林宫的领导人一直被一个决定性的、有能力的选择所困扰，洛温塔尔教授在这篇深入浅出的分析中明确指出了这一点。作者在柏林自由大学任教，今年在哥伦比亚大学共产主义事务研究所担任高级研究员。本文源于他最近在巴黎举行的北约国家议员会议上的一次演讲。

作者：理查德-洛温塔尔
1965年4月号


尼基塔-赫鲁晓夫的突然下台，让西方世界感到震惊。特别是对苏联事务的专业分析家来说，这是对苏联政治中持续存在的秘密和不可预测的因素的粗暴提醒，或者换句话说，我们在这个领域的知识和预测能力不可避免地受到限制。据我所知，当时没有一个西方专家预料到苏联领导人会被推翻；甚至没有多少人认为，这个集执政的共产党第一书记、俄罗斯联邦共和国主席团主席和部长会议主席的职务于一身，并注意在不同和不断变化的副手的帮助下管理这三个行政机关的人，根本不可能被他的直接伙伴和下属的集体行动所推翻。我们仍然不得不在很大程度上依赖对克里姆林宫统治集团内部个人内斗的推理和猜测--而正是这些个人的结盟和争斗可能经常决定一个专制政权的日常决策。

因此，我们的知识对西方政策导向的价值将或多或少地取决于我们提出的问题的种类。如果我们想知道勃列日涅夫和柯西金下周或下个月会做什么，或者赫鲁晓夫的继任者之间的权力分配会有多稳定，即使是最知情的答案也只能是一种猜测。但是，苏联前景的长期变化在很大程度上并不取决于特定的苏联领导人的愿望和先入为主的想法，而是取决于他们必须运作的国内和国际条件--就像其他大国一样；特别是在外交政策领域，这些条件已经部分地由我们自己的行动决定，并可能在未来继续受到我们行动的影响。

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那么，在后赫鲁晓夫时期，有哪些因素可能会影响苏联在世界事务中的前景？任何答案都必须从1917年苏维埃国家诞生以来的基本双重动机出发：一方面是俄罗斯作为大国的国家利益，另一方面是执政的布尔什维克党的世界性意识形态目标。布尔什维克统治着俄罗斯，他们试图确保国家的独立和领土完整，开发其自然资源和人力，用保护性的势力范围包围它，并防止形成具有压倒性力量的敌对联盟，正如任何主权国家的政府都会努力做到的那样。但布尔什维克也是一个极权主义政党，他们以渴望彻底改造世界的革命意识形态的名义进行统治。他们把自己与所有非共产主义政权的关系看作是一种最终不可调和的冲突--这种冲突不需要也不应该导致世界大战，但只能通过他们自己的那种政权逐步扩展到整个世界来解决，因为历史的进程提供了革命或征服的机会，而且风险有限。

当然，在面向国家安全的有限目标的外交政策和面向世界革命的无限目标的外交政策之间，存在着两难选择。但苏联领导人多年来一直拒绝承认这种两难境地的存在；相反，他们一直试图协调这两个相互矛盾的动机，并取得了相当大的成功。如我们所知，斯大林在与非共产主义世界不可调和的冲突的意识形态框架内解释了俄罗斯的国家利益。他坚持强制工业化，以苏联工人和农民几十年的牺牲为代价优先发展重工业；他坚持在俄罗斯的边境建立共产主义政权，作为俄罗斯安全的唯一可靠保障。相反，斯大林把世界革命的前景解释为完全取决于俄罗斯国家权力的逐步扩大，即使赫鲁晓夫在他执政的最初几年采取了更广泛和更大胆的观点，即通过独立的革命运动的传播来发展一个社会主义国家的联邦，他也认为俄罗斯是它的自然首脑，所以世界革命的进展只能在俄罗斯的世界领导地位上达到顶峰。

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促进友谊的六种力量
朱莉-贝克
四十多年来，托洛茨基的担心和许多西方政治家的希望，即苏联领导人迟早要在他们的两种目标之间做出选择--他们将放弃对世界革命的承诺，以追求有限的国家目标--顽固地拒绝实现。只是在赫鲁晓夫的晚年，事件最终迫使苏联领导人意识到，这两种动机不再能够协调，他们对世界领导地位的意识形态野心不再与他们的国家利益相容。简而言之，俄罗斯的国家利益已经明显成为一个或多或少饱和的大国的利益，这个帝国主义大国会有很多损失，而且在不承担过高的成本和风险的情况下进一步扩大其领土的前景不大；因此，国家利益与官方意识形态的冲突越来越大，因为官方意识形态致力于世界革命的目标，其本质是贪得无厌。在我看来，有三个主要因素迫使苏联领导人乃至苏联精英们意识到这种两难处境。第一个是国内因素：工业成熟度的影响对意识形态的侵蚀。第二个原因是西方政策：成功遏制的影响。第三种是源于共产党政府和政党之间关系的变化：多元化衰败的影响，或者说是帝国收益的递减。

从胁迫到激励
毫无疑问，工业成熟的实现是改变苏联内部气氛的决定性因素。对工人和集体化农民的残酷剥削，以及将他们大规模驱逐到奴隶劳改营，是确保迅速建设现代工厂、矿山和发电站，以及开放远东和远北荒凉地区的可能方法；但它们不是在与西方先进国家竞争中有效经营这些工业设施的可能方法。一旦经济进步不再主要是在创造现代工业的物质骨架方面的进步，而是取决于生产力的稳步提高，奴隶制劳动就不再是合理的。经济动机必须从胁迫急剧转向激励。斯大林之后的领导人敦促进行这种转变，并使整个党和国家的巨大官僚机构相信这种转变的必要性，这肯定是赫鲁晓夫在1956年党代会上的秘密讲话中谴责斯大林的大规模恐怖主义的动机之一。

在赫鲁晓夫的心目中，放弃斯大林式的大规模恐怖主义起初并不意味着放弃斯大林在俄罗斯内外的革命社会变革计划。作为一个意识形态的信仰者和经济的现代化者，赫鲁晓夫坚持斯大林的设想，即通过将集体农庄同化为国营农场来实现共产主义的 "更高阶段"，尽管他想通过不同的手段来实现这一目的。但是，斯大林能够像用外科医生的刀子一样对社会进行手术，通过无情地使用武力来强加他的 "上面的革命"。赫鲁晓夫不仅在他能够和将要运用的压力形式上受到限制：他还必须注意他的社会实验与增加生产的重要任务相一致。早在1959年，他就制定了一项旨在改变集体农场社会结构的计划--例如，迫使农民出售他们的私人牲畜。但无论这些措施在哪里实施，产量都在下降。到1961年党代会通过新的党纲时，结构改革已不再被视为党所要推动和实施的实际任务，而是对生产力的提高在未来某个不确定的时间所带来的有利影响的遥远的希望。经济学的要求已经战胜了意识形态的要求。

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1961年的党纲还表明，赫鲁晓夫和他的同事们已经认识到经济稳步发展的基本政治条件：个人安全和内部和平的氛围。在声称俄罗斯内部的阶级斗争已经结束，苏联国家不再是 "无产阶级专政"，而是 "全体人民的国家 "时，他们当然并不意味着放弃共产党的独裁统治。但他们确实意味着向普通的苏联公民保证，今后他不仅可以不用担心任意逮捕和驱逐出境，而且不用担心党对他的生活方式施加进一步的革命动荡。

正是这种对内部和平气氛而不是长期意识形态和社会斗争的渴望，被中国共产党人正确地称为对原则的修正主义背离。因为它表明激进的意识形态对苏联共产党领导人的力量有所减弱；因此，它反过来鼓励了意识形态对普通苏联公民的长期明显减弱。

这种削弱始于普通教育和高等教育的普及，以及随之而来的大量民众批判能力的觉醒。同时，与非共产主义世界日益增长的经济和技术需求也削弱了党对信息的垄断。一个在西方旅行过的官员或技术人员，或者一个阅读其他国家的学术期刊和会见西方访客的学者，不再完全依赖政权控制的渠道来形成他对外部世界的想法。他可能是苏联的爱国者，对政权忠心耿耿，但他没有把自己国家的教条强加给其他国家的好战欲望；在没有无处不在的恐怖气氛的情况下，他不能再被迫装出他不认同的守旧热情。一个年轻的苏联作家或艺术家能够在俄罗斯传统和外国发展的基础上发展自己的批评标准；他可能会被党的压力暂时压制，但他不能再被强迫生产他不相信的宣传主义黑客作品--就像一个苏联生物学家不能再被强迫接受李森科的 "辩证法 "优越性。

在关键的经济理论方面，党出于紧迫的实际原因，不得不容忍甚至鼓励讨论不仅需要更大的管理独立性，而且需要市场指标，包括利润和利息，作为降低生产成本和提高消费品质量和品种的手段。在这些非教条主义思想的基础上，已经开始进行实际的实验。

所有这些确实离任何 "民主化 "都很远，也就是更广泛地分享政治权力，让民众参与政策的制定。赫鲁晓夫的下台再次表明，苏联的政治决策仍然是在一个狭窄的领导人圈子里做出的，他们甚至不需要向他们的选民做出连贯的解释。但是，现在已经从极权主义的极端紧张状态向更宽松、更少意识形态的官僚专制形式转变，有限的自由领域已经从意识形态的控制、从马克思列宁主义教条的束缚中出现了。这种自下而上的意识形态狂热的削弱，不能不对意识形态动机在苏联外交政策中的作用产生长期影响。

核讹诈失败
在外交事务中，苏联人从来没有能够按照计划执行世界革命的方案。他们总是不得不使自己的战略适应特定时刻的力量组合--等待对手的内部弱点或它们之间的国际冲突可能为共产主义扩张提供的机会。然而，在赫鲁晓夫和斯大林的领导下，他们以惊人的一致性坚持他们最终目标的意识形态愿景，即共产主义统治下的世界性新秩序。西方人常常忽略的一个事实是，当赫鲁晓夫上台时，他比斯大林对世界革命的前景更加乐观--因为他有点天真地相信，一些独立的共产主义革命的推进可以在没有相互利益冲突的情况下进行，因此不会对俄罗斯领导下的世界共产主义的统一性构成挑战。对热核恐怖平衡的认识并没有导致赫鲁晓夫降低他在国际领域的视线，正如他关于和平共处必要性的热情演说使许多西方读者相信的那样；因为虽然这些演说表达了避免世界大战这一最高风险的真诚决心，但在赫鲁晓夫看来，这一决心与任何形式的地方暴力和核讹诈都是完全一致的，而这些都是不符合这一风险的。

不仅如此：在第一批人造卫星的发射证明了苏联有能力准确地发射洲际导弹后，赫鲁晓夫认为他可以通过政治手段来推翻世界力量的军事平衡。既然美国已经变得容易受到大规模的核攻击，似乎很明显，美国的核报复将不再是对任何苏联侵略美国暴露的盟友的自动反应；因此，在俄罗斯选择的地点进行核讹诈，再加上对美帝国主义的外交姿态，现在应该足以瓦解西方联盟。

这就是不断试图迫使西方从柏林撤退的理由。这也是赫鲁晓夫史无前例地大胆发展真正的世界性攻势的背景，他不仅通过宣传，而且通过公开的政治和薄薄的军事干预在全球范围内寻求利用非殖民化产生的众多冲突。当对柏林的压力遇到意想不到的坚决抵抗时，赫鲁晓夫试图通过向古巴发送导弹使核讹诈更加有效；正是在这个时候，他的攻势的两根支柱被关闭。苏联对取得决定性的国际胜利的希望从未如此之大；苏联领导人从未如此自由地接近与自我保护本能相符的风险极限。

当这场赌博失败，世界性胜利的希望沉没在加勒比海时，不得不撤回的不仅是古巴的导弹和对柏林的威胁。苏联对西方和东方力量关系的整体估计必须修改，苏联政策的优先次序也必须修改。

在国内建设共产主义
多年来，赫鲁晓夫一直根据一个过于自信的假设行事，即苏联可以同时承担其全球攻势所需的军备竞赛的负担，以及为其本国人民提高生活水平的费用。许多被他的继任者称为 "胡闹 "的农业运动，都是源于他想避免在资源分配方面做出艰难选择的愿望：他试图在不相应增加投资的情况下让俄罗斯的土地产出更多的粮食。他的国际乐观主义也得益于列宁主义的信念，即西方工人优越的生活水平依赖于殖民剥削的成果，并且随着非殖民化使帝国主义的财富来源枯竭而必然会下降。

因此，西方的持续繁荣，特别是西欧共同市场的成功，就像西方遏制措施的成功，以及苏联的经济困境，都表明需要更多地重视苏联人民的物质需求，而不是努力颠覆非共产主义世界。1962年11月，赫鲁晓夫宣布改善国内经济是苏共的主要任务；1963年夏天，部分禁试协议的签署标志着克里姆林宫认识到，东西方关系的某种程度的缓和是这种重点转移的必然结果。

当然，苏联的政策一再出现类似的变化，从革命扩张阶段到巩固阶段，从故意制造国际危机到寻求放松紧张局势--然后再回来。列宁和斯大林都善于在国际或国内形势似乎需要时设计这种停顿；他们这样做并没有放弃他们的世界性意识形态目标。然而，标志着赫鲁晓夫统治的最后阶段的转变在几个方面与这些先例不同。首先，以前的暂停被用来在苏联内部或新的苏维埃化国家进行重大的革命变革；党的干部的意识形态热情，暂时无法在世界革命的外向进展中得到满足，而是被国内或集团内的阶级斗争的需要所滋养。这一次，当革命变革的范围在外部世界受到有效限制时，在苏联国内舞台上却在减弱。

第二，以前的停顿确实是在重大革命扩张的阶段之后；它们有助于巩固征服，消化胜利的果实，而现在的转折是由于失败，由于他们长期的进攻努力的失败而迫使苏维埃的。

第三，过去的暂停是由具有几乎无可争议的权威的领导人开始的，他们可以通过对国际力量关系的坦率现实的分析来证明他们的转向是正确的。目前的转折必须由权威严重受损的人执行，他们不能承认自己以前的错误判断，否则就会给他们在北平的激进批评者提供弹药；然而，正因为转折必须在中国意识形态的攻击下完成，所以它必须在意识形态原则方面得到辩护。当苏斯洛夫（M. A. Suslov）在1964年2月宣布，苏维埃共产党人的国际义务首先是在国内建设共产主义，以便为外国同志提供一个有吸引力的榜样时，他制定了一项原则，使苏联的统治者能够摆脱来自中国和其他地方的意识形态压力。

中国对苏维埃的挑战
这就把我们带到了苏联前景长期变化的第三个主要因素：共产主义集团、世界共产主义运动、甚至共产主义教条以前的统一性的多元性衰落。我不是在使用多中心主义这个词，因为这个词是为了表达希望几个独立的共产主义中心能够并存但又和谐地合作。随着各个共产党政府和政党日益摆脱苏联的控制，实际发展的是冲突和分裂。

显然，从1949年中国共产党人在毛泽东的独立领导下实现对中国大陆的完全控制那一刻起，这种冲突的危险就已经隐含在局势之中。从那时起，两个主要的共产主义大国就存在了，而主权国家之间不可避免地存在着所有潜在的利益分歧。一段时间以来，中国共产党人犹豫不决，不敢公开推动他们的利益与一个他们必须依赖经济、军事和外交支持的国家发生冲突，而且他们长期以来被训练成承认是他们自己革命的典范和马克思列宁主义正统思想的源头。但是，当赫鲁晓夫在1956年苏共第二十次代表大会上就斯大林的罪行发表秘密讲话时，故意要摧毁斯大林不可战胜的神话，他无意中也对苏共及其领导人不可战胜的一般教条造成了不可弥补的损害，而这一直是莫斯科在世界共产主义运动中的权威基础。因此，赫鲁晓夫一举消除了迄今为止限制中国和其他共产党人公开挑战苏联政策的关键因素。

鉴于两个主要共产主义大国的情况存在巨大差异，这种挑战的理由很多。俄国和中国在经济发展、通过核威慑实现的军事安全程度以及外交灵活性的范围方面的对比都是显而易见的，无需赘述。这些都需要单方面依赖俄罗斯，而这种依赖在盟友之间产生的紧张关系是不可避免的，因为被依赖的盟友总是觉得自己的利益在 "老大哥 "的优先名单上排名不够高。两者之间的对比也导致了对处理西方敌人和主要中立国的适当战略的不同概念的阐述。最重要的是，中国人不太急于控制民族解放运动引起的局部武装冲突，因此谴责苏联试图将其对这些运动的支持，甚至在其全球攻势的几年中，从属于其和平共处的总路线--也就是有限风险原则。

最后，内部发展的不同阶段在中国产生了与今天的俄罗斯完全不同的意识形态氛围。自从1956年和1957年百花试验失败以来，毛泽东和他的团队一直相信，他们只有在被围困的堡垒的氛围中才能维持他们的权力--对内部和外部敌人进行无情的、不间断的斗争。因此，在中国领导人看来，苏联的相对内部放松计划，即从 "无产阶级专政 "到 "全体人民的国家"，必然是对他们自己政权的直接危险。

苏联作为强国，本希望保持这些分歧的沉默，以便在没有公开意识形态挑战的情况下推行自己的政策；甚至在1960年中国第一次公开攻击后，苏联正式提出放弃其在世界共产主义运动中的传统领导地位，以便不再需要在国际意识形态讨论中为其政策辩护。正是中国人看到了，而且现在仍然看到了，通过在世界共产主义运动的论坛上挑战苏联的 "修正主义 "和 "背叛"，对苏联施加意识形态压力的最佳机会--因为中国是弱国，也因为中国内部需要意识形态的激进性。发现苏联不屈不挠，1961年后，中国人逐渐为彻底的国际分裂准备了一个意识形态平台和有组织的联系，到处努力诋毁苏联，把自己说成是唯一真正的马克思列宁主义者。

随着斗争的进行，苏联领导人急剧地意识到他们对外国共产主义政府和运动的控制是有限的。他们不仅没能控制中国；他们甚至没能促使菲德尔-卡斯特罗，尽管他完全依赖苏联的经济支持和军事保护，谴责中国人或签署禁试协议。在东欧，一个又一个国家的共产主义统治者利用苏联对北平的支持需求来完成他们自己从卫星地位的解放，这种解放是随着脱盐危机开始的。被占领的东德成为唯一完全顺从的保护国，而罗马尼亚在中苏争端中保持中立，拒绝在集团内协调其经济政策。

因此，毛泽东和卡斯特罗造成的尴尬，以及即使在欧洲，帝国的回报也在减少的经验，一定会使苏联领导人怀疑进一步的独立共产主义革命是否一定会有利于俄罗斯的伟大；而中国试图通过意识形态手段对苏联的政策施加压力，证明苏联远不能控制独立的共产主义国家，现在必须注意避免被它们控制。显而易见的结论是，已经到了一个阶段，俄罗斯的国家利益需要在一定程度上放松与世界共产主义运动的联系，以确保克里姆林宫的外交行动自由。而莫斯科为共产主义世界会议所做的准备确实表明，在努力保持对与北平竞争的最大数量的党派的影响的同时，还表现出一种新的意愿，使合作变得松散和非正式--不仅是为了使前景对有独立思想的外国人更有吸引力，而且也是为了俄罗斯自身的利益。

党的两难境地
因此，苏联在国际共产主义运动中的权威下降的影响与国内工业成熟的后果以及西方对苏联扩张的成功抵抗所造成的失望相结合，使苏联领导人越来越意识到需要在现实的国家利益政策和对世界革命的意识形态追求之间做出选择。但是，对变革的抵制也一直在起作用，源于执政的共产党机构本身。因为苏共以其意识形态所定义的革命任务（包括世界革命）的名义征服、行使和维持其权力；而且它不能放弃在其成员眼中证明其统治主张的意识形态信念。

在整个后斯大林时代，中央社会主义学院一直处于这种现实调整的需要和意识形态延续的需要之间的两难境地，赫鲁晓夫的职业生涯就反映了这一点。赫鲁晓夫在斯大林去世后不久就作为党的机构的控制人物出现了，他作为党对所有其他权力机关的至高无上地位的阐述者，同时也作为旨在通过使党的方法和观念现代化来维持党的统治的政策的阐述者，上升为国家领导。因此，他一登上权力的顶峰，就必须开始在胜利的党的官僚机构的权力和无组织的、不善言辞的、但日益重要的苏联社会的新生力量之间恢复某种平衡。他需要党对权力的垄断来控制社会，但他需要社会--经济学家和管理人员、技术人员和科学家，甚至作家和艺术家--施加的现代化压力来使党的官僚们保持清醒。这就是为什么他把许多中央委员会会议变成了党的官员和国家的经济、技术和文化精英代表之间的巨大、半公开的对抗。

当赫鲁晓夫可能意识到党所面临的困境时，他试图以他一贯的悲观态度，通过一个激烈的行动来切断这个结。1962年11月，就在古巴的失败之后，他试图将党的鼻子转向稳定的经济努力的磨刀石，他提议根据 "生产原则 "重组整个党，将其所有组织分为工业和农业部门，并倾向于将思想家们留在半空中。然而，正是在那个时候，他开始在党的领导层内遇到严重的阻力，这是他在1957年战胜对手以来的第一次；而这次改组也成为赫鲁晓夫统治时期的一项重要措施，他的继承人在他被推翻后急忙取消了这项措施。

部分原因无疑是改革伤害了党内官僚机构的许多既得利益，而且改革的目的也是为了增加赫鲁晓夫的个人权力，减少他对党内组成机关的依赖。但似乎很清楚，许多党的领导人认为，赫鲁晓夫在寻求如此大幅度地减少意识形态工作的作用时，触动了党的重要神经--其统治的合法性；正是这一点，赫鲁晓夫本人在改组后的冬季，在对作家和艺术家进行更严格的意识形态控制的运动中，被迫公开纠正。

赫鲁晓夫的改组不但没有解决党的困境，反而更加尖锐地指出了这个问题。在一个没有内部革命政策和外部革命政策的空间的情况下，党可能很容易被视为寄生虫，除非它通过集中于建设性的经济任务来证明自己的价值；但如果它确实集中于这些任务，它的许多行政人员岂不是会暴露出他们缺乏技术能力？事实上，我们很容易理解为什么需要一个中央集权主义政党来执行永久的外部和内部革命政策；但要论证需要这样一个政党来提高生产力、降低成本、提高消费品的质量和种类，则要困难得多。在许多人看来，赫鲁晓夫正在把党的主要工作转移到它的表现很容易被其臣民检查的地方：对现在的苏联一代来说，古拉什的承诺可能比世界革命的承诺更有吸引力，但 "明天的古拉什 "可能比 "明天的世界革命 "更快失去其可信度。

因此，党的自我保护本能一直是抵制变革的一个伟大因素，是反对公开抛弃世界革命意识形态的主要力量。根据我们对赫鲁晓夫被推翻的情况的了解，这股力量也导致了赫鲁晓夫指定为其最终接班人的那些人将他赶走。从那时起，他们撤销了他的改组，使党摆脱了对生产的直接责任；但他们并没有像他那样摆脱困境。因为他们既不能，也不会回到以前的方案，即把定期的暴力动乱强加给苏联社会，也不能回到以前的世界性革命扩张战略。因此，他们无法接受中国的激进立场：面对中国的猛烈攻击，他们已经认识到必须接受赫鲁晓夫时代的主要成果，公开为赫鲁晓夫党代会的决定辩护，包括1961年的 "修正主义 "党纲。

显然，传统的捍卫者和官僚的惰性仍然强大到足以减缓意识形态的侵蚀过程，并偶尔造成挫折；但他们似乎不再能够扭转趋势--产生像赫鲁晓夫早年尝试的意识形态复兴，更不用说回到斯大林主义。

从西方政策的角度来看，这意味着遏制的战略概念已经证明了其价值，因为其最初的目标是现实的。人们会记得，这个目标是通过协调一致的行动阻止苏联的扩张，直到苏联领导人意识到他们的世界性意识形态目标无法实现的时候。遏制的概念假定，在苏联内部存在着变革的力量，这些力量最终会在世界事务中带来较少的传教士的观点，只要我们适当利用时间，时间就会对我们有利。这正是似乎已经发生的事情。

然而，为了对今天的西方政策起到指导作用，这种乐观的判断必须有三个条件。首先，在实践中，我们所处理的不是我们的分析所描述的长期趋势，而是每个特定时刻的实际短期苏联政策。回过头来看，赫鲁晓夫从1957年秋天到1962年的五年中所推行的全面攻势，可能看起来是一个短期的反常现象：但它在持续的时候是非常严重的，如果让他逃脱的话，可能会产生灾难性的后果。随着世界力量的平衡一旦被决定性地打破，对有限目标的现实接受的趋势将被完全逆转，甚至中苏分裂也可能因赫鲁晓夫对帝国主义的和平胜利而被治愈。只要新的现实主义的挫折仍有可能，危险就会持续存在，随之而来的是需要警惕地、团结地捍卫西方的共同利益。

第二个条件是，有限的国家利益和世界范围内的意识形态目标之间的区别，尽管极其重要，但实际上并不像我们许多人愿意相信的那样明确。不同的政府可能会以不同的方式定义本国的国家利益；而苏联人一旦赋予这个概念以完全的意识形态内容，就更有可能通过程度上的改变而不是通过突然和全盘的转换来改变其解释。即使苏联表面上集中于国家目标，也不会自动消除他们与西方世界之间重大冲突的所有原因：举一个突出的例子，只要苏联认为他们的国家利益需要分割德国，并在其东部地区人为地维持一个共产主义卫星，他们就必须在欧洲的中心地带保持大量的武装力量，造成永久性的军事紧张状态。当然，在我们看来，国家安全需要俄罗斯边境的共产主义政权的想法是意识形态观的残余。但这仅仅证明，过去由于苏维埃政权在意识形态上的扩张而产生的冲突还远远没有解决。

第三个限定是关于西方政策作为变革过程中的一个因素的持续作用，或者更粗略地说，在对苏联领导人进行现实主义的教育方面。如果西方，特别是美国放松警惕，给新的苏联领导人留下印象，认为可以再次在世界各地廉价地获得意识形态上的成功，而且没有严重的风险，或者如果西方联盟内部的严重冲突诱使苏联人进行新的冒险，那么过去共同努力取得的成果仍然可能被推翻，趋势也会逆转。另一方面，如果西方对所有共产主义国家采取好战的 "讨伐 "态度，拒绝根据它们不同的国际行为而区别对待，并在适当的时候诉诸谈判，意识形态的侵蚀过程也可能遭受挫折。

因此，在越南，美国在南部的存在的民众政治基础几乎已经瓦解，不可能通过任何军事行动的扩展来取代，中国共产党人正在建议他们的越南同志不惜一切代价继续战斗，希望取得完全的军事胜利，而苏联人似乎倾向于谈判，这将在没有军事胜利的情况下摆脱美国的存在，但也没有在北部造成大规模破坏的风险。在这种情况下，美国的政策如果威胁要进行这种破坏，同时又不提出从中立的越南撤军的谈判条件，只能迫使苏联回到与中国更紧密的合作中，而准备进行这种谈判的结果不仅可能限制西方事实上已经遭受的失败，而且可能有助于保持中苏在这个重要地区的竞争。

更为积极的是，在西方的强势地区，变革的进程可能会被一种经过深思熟虑的意愿所促进，即奖励理性的行为，改善文化和经济联系，并为解决由于这种强势而可能出现的具体冲突探索一切机会。事实上，如果一个现实的西方政策有助于确保苏联方面的意识形态侵蚀趋势的继续，那么，苏联和西方之间的一些有争议的问题--自二战以来证明无法解决的问题以及苏联上升为世界大国的问题--最终可能成为能够通过谈判解决的时机。


我们中的一些人可能会预料到，随着东西方关系中的意识形态毒药被排出，更关键的具体冲突得到解决，目前形式的大西洋军事联盟的必要性可能会消失。没有人需要对这样的想法感到震惊，因为防御性联盟与经济或政治联盟不同，恰恰是因为它们本身没有持久的目的，而是依赖于威胁其成员的共同危险而生存：一旦危险明显过去，它们的解散是正常的。但是，维也纳会议的历史--以及拿破仑从厄尔巴岛返回的历史--是一个雄辩的警告，说明那些允许他们的纽带在其目的最终实现之前就解散的盟友可能发生什么。

下个月，恩斯特！哈尔帕林将讨论共产主义。哈尔佩林将讨论共产主义的分歧，因为它影响到拉丁美洲，威廉-格里菲斯将分析它对美国政策的意义。