FEW ISSUES are of graver moment for the world than maintaining peace. For Americans, both the informed citizen and the policy maker, concerns about the Soviet Union, its policies, and its relations with the United States are central. However, the problems are so numerous, they are so closely related to many other issues in other parts of the world and to American politics, and the evidence is at once so abundant and so limited, so clear and so contradictory, that few reach and maintain well-founded opinions about Soviet power and policy. Moreover, some no sooner believe they have achieved some clarity than a single event creates uncertainty.
Western policy makers and their publics have often proved trag-ically mistaken in their judgments of the Soviet system and of Soviet policy, whether they were ill-informed, as they were forty years ago, or whether they have mountains of information and analyses, as now. In this troubling situation, the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies, with generous financial support from the Frederick Henry Prince Trusts, has undertaken a study of the factors that will help determine Soviet policy in the next decade.
The basic purpose of this volume is to provide a framework through which the interested citizen and the policy maker can analyze and understand the Soviet Union and the elements that will most affect its policies in the 1980s. It seeks to identify the fundamental features of the Soviet system, which are as basic to it as the political processes, the religious makeup of the population, and the character of the economy are to the United States, and to provide informed and careful judgments about Soviet society as a whole. It identifies the main elements of the Soviet system, its strengths and its weaknesses, and the kinds of challenges and opportunities the outside world presents to the Soviet rulers. It describes the important internal questions and the hard choices Soviet leaders must make within the next decade to try to resolve these crucial problems. It demonstrates that these converging issues are interrelated and are inextricably intertwined with delicate international relationships and therefore with Soviet foreign policy. The concatenation of these emerging difficult choices at the same time the system must complete the transfer of authority from Brezhnev to Andropov and then to another younger generation makes the next decade an especially momentous one, a time that provides both risks and opportunities for American policy as the United States looks ahead in this long-term political struggle.
This volume does not seek to estimate or forecast particular Soviet policies. Instead, it brings together information and analyses concerning the important factors and the essential questions. Making judgments about future developments is a most hazardous enterprise, even when one does not consider the element of chance in human affairs, catastrophes of one kind or another, the emergence of especially powerful or weak leaders, and the unexpected, which seems especially common in our fluid world.
However, each chapter in this volume does describe some of the various ways in which social, intellectual, and other factors in Soviet life might develop over the next decade and the range of options the Soviet rulers have as they encounter various domestic and foreign policy issues. The final chapter concentrates on a number of the hard choices Soviet leaders face and identifies the dilemmas that the available options raise.
The list of critical questions Americans and others outside the Soviet Union have about that country, its likely development, and its policies is almost endless. What is the nature of the Soviet system and of Soviet society? Who is likely to rule in the next decade and in what ways will this affect Soviet policy? Will the system and its policies remain as immobile as they were under Brezhnev, or can the system move innovatively to meet potential threats of stagnation, instability, and decline?
What is the role of the military in Soviet policy making and in what ways is that role likely to change? Are the Soviets preparing for nuclear war? Do they expect such a war?
How strong is the Soviet economy? How long will the Soviets be able to choose guns and capital investment over butter before the economic and social strains become unbearable? What is the likelihood that the Andropov government will introduce innovations in the economy? Can the Soviet government decentralize the economy without undermining Communist control?
To what degree do religion, the revival of national consciousness among the minorities and of nationalism among the Russians, dissenters, and social malaise affect Soviet power? How significant is the stagnation of living standards?
The leveling off of the Russian rate of population growth, at a time when that of the Moslems in Central Asia continues to rise— what does it mean? The defections and the decline in civic morale evident in party programs and in pulp literature—how significant are they? And what has happened to Marxism-Leninism? Is it a vivid faith for at least the ruling few, or is it just part of the justification of the system?
Poland—can the Soviet leaders resolve the intractable economic, political, and strategic problems that mass rejection of party rule and collapse of the economy reflect? Is Poland the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire? What other countries, including the Soviet Union, will soon be affected by food shortages, widespread corruption, and visible political incompetence as Poland was, and is?
In what way can a society that seeks to borrow extensively from the outside world but at the same time to wall itself off from foreign infection manage to import effectively? Can the Soviet system cope with the information revolution? Is authoritarianism possible, or, rather, is it inevitable in the Soviet future?
When one raises one’s eyes from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to the wider world, the questions multiply and seem even more portentous. Is Soviet foreign policy a reflection of power and confidence, an attempt to escape internal problems, or a reflection of Western weakness and of alluring opportunities? What is the likelihood that the Soviets and the Chinese can resolve their differences? What might happen if they should? What are the Soviet Union’s goals in Western Europe and which policies is it likely to consider most effective there? The opportunities that abound, or may pop up, in South Africa, Southwest Asia, Central America, almost anywhere and everywhere in this anarchic and chaotic world—how attractive are these openings? What restraints and what temptations or prods help explain Soviet policies toward these developments?
What is the Soviet view of the West? What effects do restrictions on trade have upon the Soviet economy? Can the West do business with the Soviet Union? What can the United States and its allies do to affect Soviet power and policy? In short, the questions are endless and of immense importance.
Those who have helped produce this volume believe that the Soviet Union is a society in many ways different from ours, not necessarily inferior and not necessarily superior, but different, and therefore difficult to understand. They are convinced that one must try to comprehend the society as a whole, its history, the way in which it operates, the views its rulers in particular have of the world, the number and quality of the internal issues it confronts, and its strengths and weaknesses before one can begin to comprehend the Soviet system and consider the domestic and foreign policies its leaders are likely to adopt.
Many Soviet problems resemble those the United States and other countries face. The tensions of this rapidly changing age, the rivalry between the two states and systems of values, the particular set of glasses through which foreigners view the Soviet Union because of its history, and because of their history, all increase the difficulty of obtaining a clear understanding of that country. Finally, foreign analysts must overcome severe obstacles to obtain reliable information of even the most basic nature because of the controls the Soviet state exercises over access to data and over travel to and through the country.
This volume represents an intense eighteen-month effort by a group of scholars to study another society, a major world power, a competitor, and a threat, and to reach agreement concerning the basic factors or elements likely to affect the policies of that country’s leaders. The group includes thirty-five men and women from seven disciplines, twenty colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom, seven private research organizations, two journals, and the Library of Congress. All involved have profited from the deep knowledge of Russian and Soviet history essential for comprehending things Soviet and from extensive life and travel there. They have benefited from long-term study of the research completed in the last three decades in the Soviet Union, in Eastern and Western Europe, and in the United States, but they also recognize distinct limits to their knowledge and understanding. They have sought objectivity in their analyses. In a sense, this study represents a concise and clear summing up of the available knowledge of another country and the central questions that society faces.
The approach this group has adopted, the way in which it has defined and divided the subject, and the cooperative method effective throughout distinguish this analysis from other sets of essays on the Soviet Union. In a number of ways, it incorporates research methods often used on large and difficult problems in the natural, physical, and social sciences because it studies the Soviet Union and its empire from a number of disciplines and angles. The approach also seeks to combine the virtues of independent scholarly research with those of cooperation on problems beyond the competence of individual scholars. In short, this study of the major aspects of Soviet society—in concert, not just isolated as the political system, or economic strengths and weaknesses, or “the silence in Russian culture”—has established a multidisciplinary framework through which the participants have reached judgments about the Soviet Union and the main elements affecting its policies. It seeks to produce a synthesized, coherent view of a number of specialists concerning the principal factors, both historic and current, influencing Soviet decisions and likely to affect them over the next decade.
American academics enjoy rugged independence, although they cooperate well in many ways. Those involved in this enterprise have demonstrated both independence and recognition of the need to work together in a process that involved four stages. First, the editor, the seven authors of chapters, or chairmen, and others defined and outlined the entire project. Each chairman then chose a team of three to five able and independent scholars and in cooperation with this group defined his or her group’s work, identified the important questions, divided responsibilities, and prepared draft versions of an essay, on which the team members commented. The editor, the chairmen, members of all groups, and members of the CSIS staff then together reviewed full sets of all the draft chapters. The editor, the chairmen, and a few other Center advisers subsequently reviewed the summary chapter and the entire set of papers revised after the first session. The individual authors then prepared their essays for final review and publication. At several stages, all benefited from deep and perceptive reviews by three “external readers,” Professor John Armstrong of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mr. John Huizenga of Washington, D.C., and Professor Hugh Seton-Watson of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of the University of London, who participated in sessions and commented on the several sets of draft papers.
In short, each chapter is the responsibility of one scholar and represents his or her views, but the writer has in every case worked closely with a small team of specialists and on occasion with a group of thirty-five. The volume as a whole reflects to a large degree the views of all participants and is therefore a unique approach to analyzing the Soviet Union.
All of us agree that there is no likelihood whatsoever that the Soviet Union will become a political democracy or that it will collapse in the foreseeable future, and very little likelihood that it will become a congenial, peaceful member of the international community for as far ahead as one can see. It will instead remain an inherently destabilizing element of the international political system. We are in full agreement concerning the framework and general theses of the volume, the characteristics of the Soviet Union as a society and as a political system, the converging problems and opportunities the Soviet Union encounters, and the difficulties its leaders face when volume, the characteristics of the Soviet Union as a society and as a political system, the converging problems and opportunities the Soviet Union encounters, and the difficulties its leaders face when considering changes of significant character in the system’s structure and in its basic policies. We do not all agree on some specific details, but the general level of agreement is very high.
I should like to thank all those who have participated in this undertaking, especially the authors of the individual chapters, who contributed erudition and energy, chose effective team members, commented on each other’s work and accepted suggestions with candor and grace, and above all tolerated with general forbearance my proposals and my insistence on meeting deadlines. David M. Abshire, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Amos A. Jordan, Jr., Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies provided all possible assistance and above all allowed us the complete freedom essential for research and writing. Aileen Masterson coordinated the activities of our far-flung group with skill, tact, and good humor, and, with Gerrit Gong, also added a valuable research and editorial dimension to the project. James Townsend and Lee Agree assisted them and provided research and administrative services essential for such an undertaking. Jeanette Haxton and many other typists throughout the country transformed our scribbles and constant revisions into manageable prose. In sum, this volume is the product of a number of men and women, to all of whom I am grateful.
Robert F. Byrnes