The Justification for Intervention: Soviet Perceptions of

Limited State Sovereignty 		 
    The study of communist ideology in the field of international relations has been aptly described as a delicate task magnified by Soviet liturgical rhetorics of "friendship", "trust" and "international relations of a new type" between socialist states.( Lynch, p. ). The pertinent point in the study of Soviet foreign policy is to identify the rôle played by ideology in the conduct of it - was marxism-leninism the main determinant of Soviet policy in the international arena, or was it primarily an ex post facto rationalization and justification for Soviet actions and orientations really based on Realpolitik? My argument is the primacy of the latter in Soviet-East European relations. The Marxist terminology had a largely authenticating function - it served as a cover for the pursuit of pragmatic Soviet state interests.

 
    The Soviet interference in East European intrastate affairs has a long tradition of justification in communist scholarly literature. The founding fathers of communism, Marx and Engels, wrote astonishingly little on the nature of the socialist society of the future. They nevertheless emphasized that the forthcoming revolution would be a world revolution and that the cleavages between classes had already internationally replaced those between states. In the brave new world of communism the proletariat would no longer be fragmented by state frontiers or by bonds of national sentiment. The nationstate was a phenomenon of capitalism and would in due time be relegated to History's Museum of Antiquities along with the bronze ax.(Robert Jones p. 5, Meissner(1967),p.7)

 
    When the Soviets came to power in Russia they had a strong belief in such rather a chiliastic World Republic of the Proletariat. Trotsky, as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, in 1917 professed as his intention merely to issue a few revolutionary proclamations, thus achieve a world revolution and shut up shop. Neither did Lenin believe in the usefulness of bourgeois diplomacy during the first years of Soviet rule. Faced, however, with the stubborn refusal of the world revolution to arrive on time, Lenin and the Soviet leadership, being militarily weak, were forced to adhere to the principles of "capitalist" diplomatic intercourse between free and sovereign nations.(Robert Jones, p. 7). This was, however, a purely tactical decision by the then vulnerable Soviets. Lenin never lost his contempt for state sovereignty; he actually rejected the thought of the "United States of Europe" endorsed by other Soviet leaders for a "United States of the World". In order to achieve this end the communist regime embraced the doctrine of "justful intervention" in bourgeois states. The Red Army was given the right to intervene at bayonet point beyond the borders of Russia - as was Comintern through agitation - to produce revolutions in capitalist states. Red intervention was justified on the grounds that the rise of socialist societies would "objectively" benefit all mankind and therefore fundamentally differed from the selfish and predatory military interventions of the capitalist states. The interference of these states in Soviet domestic affairs was regarded as undisguised imperialism. It was inconceivable that there could exist a single system of international law that was common for both bourgeois and capitalist states.(Lynch, 14-16.)

 
    World War Two and the rise of socialist states in Eastern Europe radically changed the Soviet view of state sovereignty. All of a sudden Soviet scholars started to endorse the idea of mutual respect for sovereignty as a central feature of communism. The independence of the East European states was seen to embody a higher stage of sovereignty: the independencies of the capitalist states had an only formal-legal character, whereas the ones of the communist bloc were infested with a higher meaning, since socialist sovereignty was the sovereignty of all the people, not merely the upper classes. The difference was supposed to be one between legal form and factual content. Furthermore, the weaker capitalist nations were hopelessly dependent on the goodwill of the Great Powers; the communist regimes on the other hand were protected from imperialist interference in their domestic affairs by Soviet might. (see for instance Meissner, Westen, Brunner in Kontinuität€). The communists assaulted polemically Western prognoses concerning the obsolescence of full state sovereignty. Organizations such as the UN were seen to encroach upon socialist sovereignty, since the draft Charter of the UN did not overtly forbid groups of states to intervene in domestic matters. At the same time the socialist commonwealth reacted with implacable hostility to any suggestions that intra-socialist international organizations, explicitly the Warsaw Pact, involved any limitations upon the free conduct of policies for a state.(Robert Jones, p. 9-10).

 
    The Soviet Union had in the 20's acquired the role of mentor and leader of the European communist parties in its capacity of the only socialist state in the world. This rôle was preserved when the new communist states of East Europe were born. There were several justifications for Soviet leadership of the camp. First, Soviet theorists underlined the importance of age-old Slav solidarity. A few exceptions notwithstanding, the new communist states were Slav, so it was only natural that they should pay homage to their "elder brother".(ibid. p.62-63). Second, the USSR was said to be blazing a trail for the other socialist societies to follow. It had an experience of 30 years of socialism that should not be disregarded. Thus the new regimes created new constitutions that bore an unmistakable resemblance to the Soviet one, agencies of administration closely modeled on Soviet example, and adapted economic programs based on Soviet doctrines. The USSR was not passive; it took an active role in imposing such policies in case the willingness was not there.(Gati, p. 20-21). Third, the USSR had, according to Soviet commentators, played a major part as an economic benefactor of the East European nations. Therefore it had the right to demand the leadership of the commonwealth in exchange. Soviet economic help, unadulterated by motives of interference in domestic policies, was said to have had a crucial effect on the recovery of these states after the war. Western economic assistance, by contrast, was interventionist in character: it was motivated purely by the desire to exploit and dominate the recipient countries.(Stern in Schöpflin(ed.), p. 193-194,Robert Jones, p. 64-65.) Ultimately the rôle of the USSR was based on it being the defender of the Peoples' Democracies. This "chaperon" function is vital for understanding the later Soviet interventionist policies in Eastern Europe. The dangers from which the Soviets were to defend its junior partners were essentially of two kinds. Externally, it was maintained, there was a risk of capitalist aggression from the West, which could take the form of either direct military assault or econo-political subversion. Only the USSR possessed the military means for defense against such action.(Robert Jones, p. 64-65.) On the other hand there was the immediate internal danger of "nationalism" and "bourgeois capitalism" at this delicate stage of the Peoples' Democracies' path towards socialism. This danger could only be evaded by unquestioning adherence to "proletarian internationalism". In Stalin's words, "an internationalist is one who is prepared unreservedly, unhesitatingly and unconditionally to defend the USSR". (Deutscher, p. 549)

 
    The Soviet leadership of East European communism meant that it reserved itself the right to determine whether its junior allies were "internationalist" enough. Workers' riots in GDR in 1953 and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 were crushed because they represented serious threats to Soviet leadership of the bloc and thus to the security interests of the USSR in the region. The harsh reaction to the events in East Germany has to be seen against the background of the fear of a strong, united Germany. The Hungarians, on the other hand, declared themselves neutral in 1956 and made clear that they intended to withdraw from the WTO. The Soviet military intervention of 1956 demonstrated beyond doubt that the Kremlin would not permit the secession of a member of the Warsaw Pact. The Russians painted a picture of the Hungarians as deviating from the true path of socialist internationalism as a result of a combination of domestic nationalism and Western imperialism.(McGregor, p. 32-33, Remington, p. 39).

 
    The rules for defining true East European communism were, however, diffused. Especially the conciliatory approach of the USSR towards Yugoslavia, which had pursued a distinctly national path to communism since the forties, confused the delineation of prohibited ideological zones for East European states. The Soviet-Yugoslav declaration of 1955 specifically affirmed that the relations of the two states were based on sovereign equality. There could not plausibly be any conceivable reason why relations between other socialist nations should differ from the Soviet-Yugoslav ones.(Bass-Marbury, p. 55). But there were reasons, and these were the security interests of the Soviet Union. In 1968 the Soviet leaders found it necessary to make a formal redefinition of the limits of sovereignty for East European states. The developments in Czechoslovakia earlier the same year and the intervention by WTO troops led to the formulation and rationalization of a set of principles guiding the inter-state and inter-party relations within the socialist commonwealth and Soviet policy towards the countries of this camp. In the West these principles were labeled the Brezhnev Doctrine. The Soviet Party Secretary, whose name thus undetachably became associated with the doctrine, himself stated in 1968: " When external and internal forces hostile to socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of restoration of a capitalist system€this is no longer a problem for the country's people, but a common problem, a concern for all socialist countries. It is quite clear that an action such as military assistance to a fraternal country to end a threat to the socialist system is an extraordinary measure; it can be called forth only by the overt actions by the enemies of socialism within that country and beyond its boundaries, actions that create a threat to the common interests of the socialist camp". (cited by Summerscale in Dawesha, p. 28) The Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, A. Gromyko, further elaborated: "€the socialist states cannot and will not allow a situation were the vital interests of socialism are infringed upon and encroachments are made on the inviolability of the boundaries of the socialist commonwealth and, therefore, on the foundations of international peace".(cited in Holtsmark, p. 13.)

 
    In the Czechoslovakia of 1968 there was no faction within the communist party that would have applied for Soviet military "assistance", i.e. intervention. The Warsaw Treaty of 1955 defined assault as external; there was no mention of joint military measures against internally uncalled-for developments in a member country. Therefore the justification had to be ideological in character. There is however no doubt that the intervention was motivated primarily by Soviet security concerns. The geopolitical position of Czechoslovakia was vital to the WTO as it was the bridge between the Northern Tier of the Pact (GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia) and the Southern one (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria), or , potentially, the wedge between them. (Dawesha, p. 16).

 
    In proclaiming the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Kremlin stated that it was the common cause of the socialist countries to determine whether in any given country there existed a risk of deviation from the common natural laws of socialist reconstruction. These "common natural laws" were however never spelt out. Neither was there offered any clear process by which the communist commonwealth was to decide whether a "deviation" had taken place. Despite the claim that decisions to intervene in fraternal countries should be a collective responsibility, there never was serious doubt that the decisive factor was the Soviet leaders' judgment as to whether the security interests of the USSR were at stake. (Summerscale in Dawesha, p. 30.)

 
    In the seventies the USSR demonstrated a need to obtain acceptance in Eastern Europe for the principles underlying the Brezhnev Doctrine. The new bilateral treaties that the Soviet Union signed with its East European allies during the decade bore an explicit reference to the need to take joint measures to preserve "the achievements of socialism". (Edmonds, p. 94.)

 
    The formulation of the Brezhnev Doctrine can be seen in the light of what is called "conflict prophylaxis": Knowing the rules means that behaviour leading to conflict can be avoided. The events of the seventies and the early eighties showed that Moscow avoided armed confrontation with its allies as far as it could and resorted to military intervention only when there appeared to be no acceptable political solutions left to the conflicts in its commonwealth. (Robert Jones, p. 113) The signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 further emphasized the need to find more sophisticated means for ascertaining bloc cohesion than straightforward military intervention. The Declaration of Principles in the Final Act contained the ideas of "Sovereign Equality of Nations, the Refraining from the Threat or Use of Force and Non-Intervention in Internal Affairs, all of which were more than a little difficult to reconcile with the continuing validity of the Brezhnev Doctrine.(Steele, p. 1960). More to the point, the seventies saw the rise of huge problems for communism in Poland. Any attempts to achieve normalization by Soviet military intervention in a country as fiercely nationalistic as Poland would have been likely to induce resistance on an unprecedented scale. Prospects of encountering armed resistance with resulting heavy casualties seem to have led the Soviet establishment to refrain from violence. (MacKintosh in Dawesha, p. 32.). The point I am trying to make here is that the use of force never was a necessary component of the Brezhnev Doctrine but rather a possible last resort. It is here that the Warsaw Treaty Organization comes into the picture. The WTO had vital functions in upholding the validity of the Doctrine pertaining both to the political and the military considerations of it. On the political side, the WTO became the perhaps most important monitoring device for the Soviet leaders of trends within the countries of the bloc. At all levels of the Pact, and not least at the PCC, meetings became much more frequent after 1968 (Fodor, p. 169.), which means that the Kremlin would have been aware of any inappropriate deviations from true socialism in its allied countries and, conversely, could have signaled back its displeasure in the face of such deviations. On the other hand, as will be shown in the next chapter, the WTO functioned as a means to ensure sufficient political cohesion through a host of important methods. The resulting identical interests of Moscow and the East European military-political elites were supposed to secure a status quo which would render the military application of the Brezhnev Doctrine unnecessary. Third, the WTO represented physically the abovementioned "conflict prophylaxis" aspect of the Doctrine. The very stationing of Soviet troops on East European soil as Pact forces combined with the potential applicability of the Doctrine functioned as a guide to expected behaviour and as a concrete reminder that deviation would be punished.

 
    Militarily the function of the Warsaw Pact in relation to the Brezhnev Doctrine naturally was to carry out its stipulations in Eastern Europe when needed. The interventionism of the WTO by justification of the Doctrine based on socialist internationalism was made easier by a number of means that also shall be examined in the next section of the essay. From the military point of view the WTO was furthermore important as it designated small elite units from the pseudo-sovereign junior member states to a greater Pact army which would carry out interventions when so required. These units thus gave the ultimately false impression that the interventionist army was a multilateral concoction, not a purely Soviet one. The symbolical significance of this should not be underestimated. Militarily more or less unimportant detachments of Polish, East German, Hungarian and Bulgarian units participated in the 1968 coup in Czechoslovakia. Similarly, when planning for an intervention in Poland in 1980, the Soviets placed great importance on using troops from Czechoslovakia and the GDR.