THE IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSION

Abstract

Analysis of the role and significance of the ideological dimension in Soviet foreign policy is a precondition of any serious inquiry into the Soviet Union’s relations with the Peoples Democracies. Several specific reasons can be advanced in support of this view: firstly, the significance which the Soviets themselves have attached to ideology as a determinant of foreign policy (a guiding and directing force of state behaviour¹) and to ‘ideological warfare’² as a fundamental feature of the international system;³ secondly, Soviet assertions that the nature and dynamics of contemporary international relations are explicable only by reference to the ‘Marxist-Leninist science of international relations’, which, according to Zagladin, is a‘reliable compass’, enabling socialist states to identify and assess the ‘character, alignment and balance of forces acting in the world’;⁴ thirdly, the fact that the CPSU’s relations with other ruling and non-ruling communist parties have frequently been marred by ‘ideological’ disputes (even though some Western analysts perceive disputes between socialist states as being broadly explicable in terms of ‘conventional’ interstate conflicts, it is significant that the adversaries have felt it necessary to couch their arguments in the language of ideology);⁵ fourthly, the history of postwar Eastern Europe is, as Vali has argued, the history of two competing ideologies: Marxism-Leninism and nationalism and therefore the ideological dimension in the relations between the Soviet Union and the bloc states cannot be ignored.⁶ Similarly, Taras characterises the history of Peoples Poland as ‘a protracted and profound ideological crisis’: the same might be said of the history of postwar Eastern Europe as a whole.⁷ Since the Soviet regime is founded upon Marxist-Leninist ideology, a‘crisis of ideology’ is also a crisis of the system itself.⁸ Fifthly, the Soviet Union’s justifications of its duty to render ‘fraternal military aid’ to other socialist states have been based upon arguments which derive from Marxism-Leninism. We might also cite the use by the Soviets of Marxist-Leninist terminology as a coded power language during crises with the bloc.