The Socialist Commonwealth

on the road to socialism

Let me share some thoughts about the countries belonging to the socialist camp. First, I will make some specific observations about how Stalin organized relations with those countries. He did everything in his power so that those countries would develop along the socialist path. Of that there can be no doubt. That was his dream, and he didn’t spare any effort in pushing those countries along toward the building of socialism. He also wanted the countries of people’s democracy to be in a state of friendship with the Soviet people. But he had a one-sided understanding of friendship, seeking to ensure that in all respects they would unfailingly follow in the wake of Soviet policy, espe-

cially in contacts with the West and the United Nations.

After Stalin’s death we strove toward the same goals. This kind of policy seemed correct to us, since it was bound up with the ultimate aim of building socialism and communism. All forces struggling against the capitalist world should apply their efforts in a coordinated way toward a single goal. But Stalin was Stalin. He sought to carry out goals that were correctly posed, but he did so with his own barbaric, uniquely Stalinist methods. It was from this angle that the purges were carried out in the countries of people’s democracy in the years after World War II. The “advisers” and informers who were working there gathered preliminary information in order to point their finger ultimately at who was to be the next victim. And of course you can always find out something about any person if you really want to find it out. Depending on what your orientation is, you can gather information that will reveal this person in the desired light, coloring his actions so that they appear to be politically incorrect. For Stalin, that meant the portrayal of such a person as unfriendly toward the Soviet Union and therefore an “enemy of the people.” As a result heads flew in those countries, just as they had in the USSR and in our party. This same policy was pursued not only toward a broad spectrum

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of people in the people’s democracies1 but also toward the Communist leaderships of those countries.

Stalin maintained contacts with the leaders of those countries on the basis of their absolute subordination [to him] and did not tolerate any dissenting opinions or even the simplest objections. In a discussion on any question, if a person insisted on his own point of view, that made Stalin very angry and raised doubts in his mind about the sincerity of the individual. The strength of that person’s Communist convictions and his devotion to Marxist-Leninist doctrine were called into question. From there it was only one step to the person’s destruction. At the same time Stalin was very concerned about the economic development of the people’s democracies and helped them in whatever way the USSR could. For example, the construction of a major metallurgical plant in Poland [at Nowa Huta] was thought of and begun under Stalin.2 I remember Bierut3 raising this question. In Moscow at that time everyone was working together to choose a location for this plant and decided it should be built in the region of Krakow, the ancient capital of the Polish state, but a city without any industry. They took into account the great historical importance of Krakow for the Polish people and its power of attraction for them. Bierut based his arguments on the following considerations: by building the new plant near Krakow a new proletarian center would be created as a base of support for the party and the building of socialism in Poland. This was an intelligent proposal on Bierut’s part, and Stalin took an understanding attitude toward it. Aid was provided accordingly to the Poles in building this plant. It is still functioning successfully today.4

In 1946 the USSR had very few resources with which to meet the needs of the Soviet people for bread. There actually was famine in Ukraine, and isolated cases of cannibalism were even recorded. At the very same time Stalin was providing generous assistance in the form of grain for bread to Poland, although Poland was not suffering as great a need as some parts of the Soviet Union, in particular Ukraine. I remember at that time Wanda Wasilewska made a trip to Warsaw, where her mother lived, and on her return she spoke indignantly about the way the Poles were cursing the USSR for sending them rye together with deliveries of wheat. The Poles were not used to eating rye bread. Wasilewska had seen how we were living then in Ukraine, where people were dying of hunger.

The aid to the people’s democracies also had promotional aims. (Stalin was very meticulous about this.) He wanted to make it look as though the USSR had inexhaustible resources. All this was done in order to tie the people’s democracies more closely to the USSR and ensure their loyalty to Stalin.

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I have mixed feelings about all this. The main direction of this policy was good. It really was necessary to do everything possible to strengthen the friendship between all of our countries and leaderships. But what methods should have been used? That is the main question. Everything is good in moderation. Any abuse of power is impermissible, even if correct goals are being pursued. Such actions do irreparable harm. That’s how things turned out in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, where innocent people were executed. Their heads rolled as a result of Stalin’s political line and his harsh character. What friendly relations we used to have with Yugoslavia! How much respect Stalin once had for [Josip Broz] Tito! But when the Yugoslavs disagreed with us on certain questions and expressed their views, that was enough for them to be considered seditious, and after that not only did our relations with them go sour; our relations became hostile. In the USSR the merits of the Yugoslav people were no longer recognized, even though under the leadership of the Communist Party headed by Tito they had waged an outstanding fight against Hitler. The leaders of Yugoslavia were transformed into “butchers and traitors.” We began to argue that what they were building in that country was not socialism, although the socialist foundations laid during the period when friendship flourished between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union had not been altered. On the contrary, they were being strengthened. However, since this was being done without consulting Stalin, and since disobedience was being displayed, it followed that these were no longer Communists and friends of the USSR, but enemies. This kind of intolerance on Stalin’s part toward any manifestation of independence distorted our relations [with other countries] to an impossible extent, and if Stalin had lived longer, I don’t know what it all might have led to and how it might have expressed itself, both in our country and among our neighbors.

Even at that time relations with China were also gradually worsening. As a Communist, Stalin treated the new Chinese system correctly, and we did everything in our power to help the Chinese [Communists] at the culminating stage of their struggle against Chiang Kaishek.5 When Japan was defeated and its Kwantung Army was disarmed [in 1945], all the captured weapons were transferred to the Chinese Communists, creating conditions that led to the defeat of Chiang’s forces by the Communists. We also gave them a lot of our own weapons, especially because the war had ended and we had a surplus. Stalin had no confidence in Mao Zedong. His lack of confidence persisted among us, his successors and former collaborators, and we began to view China in a guarded way, especially after our [first] trip there [in 1954]. Nevertheless, Stalin himself more than once gave the Chinese good reason for their

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negative attitude toward the Soviet Union. He should not have acted that way! China was an independent, rich, and ancient country. Its Communists had fought for many years against reactionary forces and had defeated them and been victorious. And suddenly they were supposed to act in a subordinate way toward the Soviet Union and turn themselves inside out to please Stalin? It was not good that Stalin demanded all the things he did demand [from China], even if we were paying at the normal rate of exchange in foreign currency for the things we took from the Chinese.

It is the internal affair of each government to decide what goods or raw materials, and in what quantities, to share with fraternal countries and what to keep in their own country for internal consumption or for sale on the capitalist world market. The needs and requirements of fraternal countries should be treated with understanding. One should not try simply to increase one’s own wealth or treat another country and its leadership in an insulting way. Stalin, however, had absolutely no regard for such an approach. Whatever whim came into his mind, that’s what he did.6 On one occasion when I tried to tell him that it would be better to act more gently, he barked at me and his eyes flashed. How dared I try to correct him—Stalin!—on such an important question of political principle? After all, he was the leader and the top theoretician. Was he, the leader and theoretician, making a mistake and [the lowly] Khrushchev [daring to] correct him? However, when he received a telegram from Mao Zedong in response on a similar matter and read it aloud to us (in the letter Mao was replying that if you give us the resources, we ourselves can do what’s necessary and then we’ll supply you with goods), Stalin at that point ended the conversation with members of the Politburo. He broke off, without looking at anyone. It turned out that Mao had taken a position similar to the one I had been proposing.

It was impossible to try and construct our relations with the people’s democracies in this manner. What was the problem? Didn’t Stalin understand that he was insulting the dignity of others, offending their self-esteem? Didn’t he realize that such actions, far from strengthening our unity, placed us in a bad light in the eyes of the leaders of the fraternal countries? Didn’t he see that? Not much was required of him to understand it. But he didn’t know how to restrain his desires or hold back from any whim that occurred to him. And he didn’t want to hold back. As he saw it, all his orders should be carried out unquestioningly. Otherwise friends immediately became enemies, and relations went into reverse. On the economic plane Stalin used the methods of the strong against the weak. That’s the kind of thing that goes on in the capitalist camp. But such things are absolutely impermissible under socialist

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conditions. Each country should develop as an independent country, both in cultural and in economic respects. And it’s not at all obligatory for everything in another country to be the same as in our country, as was done under Stalin. On the other hand, on his lips everything that was actually Stalinist was transformed supposedly into being Leninist. And those who disagreed with him became enemies of Leninism. Such encrustations that built up in Stalin’s personality did not contribute in any way to the consolidation of our ranks.

Later [in 1949] the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), also called Comecon,7 was established to coordinate the economic development of the people’s democracies and the USSR. The CMEA was an organization that was very useful and necessary for the socialist countries as a headquarters for coordinating the points of contact between the economies of the various countries in the course of their development on national but socialist bases. Mutual assistance was to be given among the socialist countries based on principles of independence and respect for sovereignty. If economic relations were to be organized this way through the CMEA, a useful and absolutely necessary organization would result. I think that after Stalin’s death we adhered to such principles at all times. But that was later. When Stalin ordered that a treaty be signed for the delivery of coal from Poland to the Soviet Union, he set the price arbitrarily, just as he wished. Mikoyan signed the treaty for us and [Jozef] Cyrankiewicz8 signed it for Poland, but later this treaty caused a lot of trouble for the Soviet Union. We had to repay Poland [in 1956] for having shortchanged it. Prices had been set lower than those on the world market [and those prices were set by Stalin arbitrarily]. I’m not even talking about the harmful political and moral effect that resulted from Stalin’s incorrect approach to economic relations among the fraternal countries.

The same thing happened in our dealings with Romania. The Romanians, when relations between us began to go sour, simply could not express or say the word Sovrum, the acronym for the Soviet-Romanian Company.9 For the Romanians, “Sovrum” was a curse word. We shut down such joint operations, or bi-national companies, after Stalin’s death. We did it on our own initiative before our neighbors began to express dissatisfaction. Later I said to the Romanian leaders: “What are you scolding and denouncing us for now? It was we ourselves who proposed that those unequal relations be ended.”

When, after Stalin’s death, we began building friendly relations with the countries of Africa and Asia that were winning their freedom from colonial oppression, the economic relations we established with them were not at all on the model of “Sovrum.” We were now operating on a basis of economic equality. I remember when we made an agreement with the Indian government

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to build the Bhilai steel mill,10 great effort was required of us to make the point that the USSR would by no means take on the work of construction. We would provide credit and technical direction, but India would have to build the complex itself. That is, we didn’t want to assume the role of contractor or subcontractor, because then we would have to hire labor and pay wages, and this would inevitably result in conflicts between us and the Indian workers, who would have appeared to be employees of ours.

We adhered to the same policy in other countries where we did any kind of work at the other country’s request. Many facilities were built according to our plans or blueprints, and we provided the credits for them. But the sovereignty of the young governments [of these newly independent countries] was something we sought to protect, and we turned over to local cadres the tasks of construction and management of the workforce. They would argue with us that they didn’t have the experience or the engineers, that they couldn’t do it. We replied that we would assume the technical responsibilities, but they would have to set to work, appoint their own people, and as long as they followed our recommendations, we would take responsibility for the final results of the facility once it was built, and we would provide all the essential technology. I think this is a very important aspect of relations between countries. Respect for the sovereignty of another country, respect for the local way of life, culture, and existing traditions—all this has great importance, sometimes decisive importance, in building friendly relations. There is no need to act like an overseer. Of course the building of a socialist commonwealth is something new in the world. We didn’t have any practical experience in this matter. But I’m absolutely convinced that if we were now to start over from scratch with the building of socialism in the USSR, we would not do many of the things that were done in the Stalin era.

Other countries that have begun the building of socialism later than we did have the right to take into account both the positive and the negative aspects of our experience. The positive side should be used, but sometimes it should by no means be used in such an extreme revolutionary form as happened in our country. Rather, any particular measure that now needs to be carried out should be refashioned and adapted to the times and the conditions. Everything negative in our experience should be rejected and thrown out. Not only should we not feel offended or gnash our teeth at this; on the contrary, we ourselves have the obligation to warn our friends not to repeat our mistakes. Some fastidious types, or “super purists” (chistoplyui), will say there never were any serious mistakes in our country, but that is nonsense.

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On the whole the CMEA has demonstrated its viability and has shown that it is necessary to coordinate development plans not through accidental or episodic trade relations, such as exist with any country, but through a permanent coordinating body. In such a body the trends of economic development in each country are studied more profoundly, and the interests of the fraternal countries are harnessed together through the joint elaboration of long-term plans for economic cooperation. The existence of enormous resources in the USSR, which facilitates the common cause as a whole, sometimes creates a situation in which some countries are, alas, able to obtain more from us than the USSR obtains from them. After all, a great deal is required of us, and no fraternal country has the capacity to satisfy our needs correspondingly.

The other countries come to us asking for help. They say: “Considering your tremendous resources, what is it going to cost you to help us? We have such-and-such a terribly difficult situation. . . .” And the USSR is obliged, while clenching its teeth and denying its own needs, to provide the assistance. Of course this is not charity. It will all be paid back, but sometimes the payback is not at all on equal terms. Sometimes it’s in the form of goods that we ourselves don’t need. To be sure, these goods find consumers in the marketplace eventually. These are not goods that you would throw away. However, they are goods that we could produce ourselves without any special effort. Any competent economist, who looks at the list of materials delivered to the USSR through the CMEA, will find much there that is superfluous. For example, we fill many large orders for machinery and are repaid in consumer goods. They also have value, but we could do without them quite well. That is, the USSR is not deriving any special advantage now from the CMEA. In their propaganda the capitalist countries accuse us of exploiting the other countries of Comecon. That’s foolishness. They’re using their own capitalist yardstick to measure things. The fact is that the other countries that belong to the CMEA, which have less powerful economies than the Soviet Union, extract much more from this form of economic cooperation.

There’s another point: cooperation through Comecon brings not only economic advantage but political advantage as well. Friendly relations are strengthened, the fraternal countries develop on a more equal basis, the defense capabilities of all are enhanced, and favorable conditions arise for peaceful coexistence and for the increasing satisfaction of the needs of all the populations of the Comecon countries. The CMEA was supplemented in military respects by the Warsaw Pact.11 This defensive alliance of the socialist countries

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arose as a result of the Cold War. The Cold War was imposed on the Soviet Union and the socialist countries by the West.

It was Churchill who lit the fuse for the Cold War. After World War II ended, he put his hand to the task of impairing the good relations that had existed among the former Allies. Of course this was not simply his personal desire. Churchill was the most ardent opponent of the new socialist system, the enemy of Communism, and he did everything he could to defend the capitalist world and organize it as a force to counter socialism. He wanted to keep the socialist countries in check or “on a tight rein,” as the saying goes, so that not only would they be unable to develop and flourish but that they would be “rolled back.” He wanted to do everything he could to that end— to undermine the foundations of socialism and to detach allies from the Soviet Union. The term “rollback” and other similar formulations were used fairly widely by the enemies of socialism among the Western politicians. Churchill and Dulles were especially avid opponents of ours, but there were others who displayed no less energy in that direction.

The Western countries and the capitalist world as a whole created what was called a temporary organization, NATO,12 aimed against the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries.

This was an extremely powerful military organization of the capitalist countries whose existence has done great harm to the socialist countries. The socialist countries, headed by the Soviet Union, were subjected to a blockade, and the Western world refused to trade with us. We had a special need for industrial equipment and machine tools. They wouldn’t sell them to us, and even to this day the prohibition on the sale of such items to us has not been removed in a number of capitalist countries, above all the United States. Our opponents quickly built up the armed forces of NATO. At first West Germany was not part of NATO, but later, not only did it join, but it now holds the dominant position in NATO after the United States, because it has the most powerful industry in Western Europe and a mighty army. This is dangerous, because to this day chauvinist and revanchist sentiments lie at the basis of the propaganda against the socialist countries, and all of that is based on great military power. The situation created in that way is what forced us to take action [that is, in forming the Warsaw Pact].

After Stalin’s death, in my opinion, our main achievement in increasing our defense capability was the rapid growth of our industry. In addition, we made a more correct assessment of the direction in which our armed forces should be developed and we began to invest our capital in arms production more rationally. We set ourselves the task of building an extensive submarine

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fleet. Nuclear-powered submarines armed with missiles and nuclear warheads were the key component of this fleet. We developed intercontinental ballistic missiles and medium-range missiles (with a range of up to 4,000 kilometers [about 2,500 miles]) as strategic weapons. We created tactical weapons of a new kind for our army. The measures we took increased our military strength. It was not accidental that the American president, the late President Kennedy, correctly assessed the balance of forces and adopted a policy of negotiating with the USSR. He was an intelligent president. He began to search for ways to relax tensions and improve relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. Before him American propaganda had been based on the notion that the United States had military superiority over all the socialist countries and therefore could dictate its conditions and impose them. But Kennedy declared that although of course the United States could destroy the USSR twice over, the USSR had the capability of destroying the USA once, and of course a second time was not needed. Kennedy’s statement forced all Americans with common sense to weigh his words. The United States had to revise its understanding of the military might of the Soviet Union, recognizing the necessity and inevitability of a change of course, which previously had been determined by its military supremacy. Now things had to be geared, if not toward friendship with us, at least toward a policy of not letting relations reach the boiling point, so that our two countries would not be consumed in a nuclear fire. This more sober understanding of the existing balance of forces on the part of the U.S. leaders I consider a great victory for us, after which the only basis for our relations could be a policy of peaceful coexistence, the policy of détente. And if the policy line of peaceful coexistence is pursued rationally and our military forces are maintained at a definite level, than a new world war can be avoided.

How can war in general be avoided as long as the capitalist and socialist camps exist in opposition to each other, as long as the world is divided into antagonistic groups? In such circumstances no absolute guarantee of peace can be achieved and it is necessary to restrain a potential aggressor. We must make sure that a potential aggressor sees that if he tries to unleash a war, he may be destroyed. That will have a sobering effect on him. The Caribbean crisis [i.e., the Cuban missile crisis] which we lived through was a classic example in this connection. After Kennedy’s death the new U.S. president, Lyndon Johnson, informed Moscow through channels we had established under Kennedy that the reciprocal agreement [that is, withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba in return for a U.S. commitment not to invade the island] was known to him and he would abide by it. We must give the U.S. leaders credit. They kept the promise Kennedy had taken on himself.

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Let me return to the subject of the founding of the Warsaw Pact [in 1955]. The Soviet foreign minister at that time was Molotov. When we had reached a final agreement [with our allies] to establish this organization, the Central Committee Presidium assigned Molotov to prepare the appropriate proposals. Some time went by, and the proposals were presented to the leadership of the party and government for review. It became evident that fundamental changes were required.

Molotov had presented a list of countries that would belong to the Warsaw Pact. Neither Albania nor East Germany was on the list. At that point I asked him: “Why haven’t those countries been included?” Molotov was still guided in his thinking by the concepts of the Stalin era. Stalin had expected that a new world war could break out at any moment. At that time, as I have said, antiaircraft batteries surrounded Moscow and the guns were on constant alert with live shells next to them. There was a continuous state of alert, in which the order to fire could be given at any moment. The United States already had atomic bombs, and we had only just produced our first thermonuclear device while the number of atomic bombs we had was insignificant. Under Stalin we didn’t even have the means of delivering those bombs over long distances. We didn’t have long-range bombers that could reach U.S. territory, never mind long-range missiles; we only had short-range missiles. This situation weighed heavily on Stalin, and he correctly understood that we could not allow the USSR to be drawn into a world war. As for Molotov, he was Stalin’s shadow in his understanding of world politics.

Although by 1955 not a great deal of time had passed since Stalin’s death, fundamental changes had taken place in our arsenal. The situation had changed. Molotov answered my question this way: “Albania is far away from us and inaccessible. We don’t have contiguous borders. Its neighbor is Yugoslavia, and it’s only through Yugoslavia that we could have overland contact with the Albanians.” At that time our relations with Yugoslavia had been ruined. Molotov himself considered Yugoslavia not to be a socialist country but an enemy country. Therefore he continued his explanation: “Why should we include Albania? It might be attacked. It is situated right next to a powerful opponent, and we could not provide it with any aid. That’s why I think we shouldn’t include Albania in the Warsaw Pact.”

“What about East Germany?”

“What? Are we going to go to war with the West over the German Democratic Republic?”

Astounded by this reply, I said: “Don’t you see, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich”— there were good relations between him and me at that time, and I used this

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familiar way of addressing him by his first name and patronymic—“if we establish a military organization to which all the fraternal countries belong except for the GDR and Albania, that will be a signal to our Western opponents. We would be saying, to put it crudely: ‘There, we’re leaving them for you, and when you want to gather up and take Albania and the GRD for your own, the choice of time remains up to you.’ That’s how such an action on our part would be evaluated. It would arouse the appetites of the Western revanchists. That’s something we cannot do.” This was not an argument, but simply a discussion as part of our study of the situation, a clarification of the possibilities under which a defensive alliance might best be established.

At that point Molotov agreed: “Yes, you’re right. I didn’t take those considerations into account. Let’s include Albania and the GDR in the draft treaty.” The structure of the Warsaw Pact is well known. Each country belonging to it has assigned a certain number of troops, which are subordinated to the commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact. A headquarters staff was established to assist the commander-in-chief. When we discussed who should be appointed commander-in-chief everyone agreed it should be a military leader from the Soviet Union. There was no argument about it. Everyone understood correctly that the Soviet Union had the most powerful army and the strongest war industry. Thus far, only the USSR among the socialist countries has nuclear weapons. And we have the greatest experience of war. We graduated from a school in which the course of instruction cost the lives of 20 million of our citizens. It was agreed that the defense ministers of the countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact would be deputy commanders-in-chief. In establishing this organization, we wanted to put pressure on the West and to show them that they could not speak with the language of force when talking to the socialist countries. Those days were gone. If they could form the NATO alliance, we could, in response, form the military organization of the Warsaw Pact. Those are the two main forces in the world which today stand

opposed to each other.

However, we have not stopped fighting for détente and peaceful coexistence, emphasizing that we created the Warsaw Pact for defensive purposes and only in response to the founding of NATO. We have proposed many times (in conversations with Western government leaders and in official documents) that we would abolish the Warsaw Pact on the condition that the West abolishes NATO. I proposed that it would be a very intelligent step if our opponents became our partners and we reached an agreement to eliminate all military pacts. Even then we proposed an agreement on mutual disarmament, and if not total disarmament, then at least an equal reduction of armed forces. We

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also proposed the elimination of military bases in third countries. Incidentally, the USSR closed the military bases that it had in Finland and in China unilaterally. We wanted to demonstrate good will in that way and win over other countries by setting this good example for the West. But they didn’t follow our example; instead, they continue to build up their military strength. That forces us to maintain our military strength at a corresponding level, as before.13

[At Camp David in September 1959] we had talked with Eisenhower, watched movies, and eaten supper together. Later we came back to the same question more than once; still, matters never moved from dead center. I believe that Eisenhower was sincere when he said he wanted to reach an agreement. And I replied to him just as sincerely. But our positions in the world at that time were at such wide variance that the conditions necessary for an agreement did not exist. We stood on class positions, the proletarian position of building socialism, while the United States was a mighty capitalist power, pursuing other aims; it had assumed the role of world policeman. In the end I said to Eisenhower: “Let’s come to an agreement on the following basis: let’s consider mutual disarmament our main goal, and noninterference in the affairs of other countries the main principle of our relations.” This was not said during official negotiations, but during an informal, freewheeling conversation. Still, it was very important. We were touching on the most important question, but unfortunately the conditions had not yet ripened for that problem to be solved back then. And soon our relations generally became strained to the point of unbelievable heat and intensity.

Today different conditions exist. The explanation for this is the fact that the balance of forces between the USSR and the United States, in terms of arms and economic strength, has shifted in our favor. This gives us more opportunities to take the offensive in promoting disarmament and peaceful coexistence. But when NATO and the Warsaw Pact came into existence, a different balance of forces existed. The West surpassed us many times over in both economic and military respects, and that’s what forced us to take the step of organizing the Warsaw Pact.

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