High Spirits, Low Proof : Soviets Are Old Hands at Faking Friendship

Remember the spirit of Geneva . . . the Spirit of Glassboro . . . the Spirit of Camp David? Now we are soaking in the Spirit of Red Square. So many spirits. It reminds me of the answer an old Russian Orthodox priest in California gave to an Episcopal bishop who claimed that the Holy Spirit was moving his church to ordain female priests. “I beleef it iss a Shpirit,” said the Russian, “but vhich Shpirit iss it?”

Which spirit, indeed, is moving the likes of Ronald Reagan to recant the Cold War rhetoric and hasten toward arms pacts more daring than any ever proposed by Jimmy Carter? Which spirit is moving Mikhail S. Gorbachev to implement reforms in the Soviet Union more daring than any ever proposed by Nikita S. Khrushchev? If the wrong spirit is moving Reagan--say, the lust for a Nobel Peace Prize, or the temptation to gamble Western security on the mere hope that the Soviets are changing their spots--then Detente II will be no more lasting than Detente I. If the wrong spirit is moving Gorbachev--say, the dream of saving, not dismantling, the communist and Russian monopolies of power in the Soviet Union by tinkering with his sclerotic economy, or of making the country more competitive militarily by lulling us to sleep and tapping our technology--then once again the United States is poised for a dangerous disappointment.

For the moment, the “spirit”--good or bad--is making optimists of all but the most intractable cold warriors.

Liberals long for a return to commercial and cultural exchanges, a dream as old as Herbert Hoover’s 1920 plea that we fight communism with bread, not bullets. But as long as Leninism rules in Moscow, such “exchanges” will remain mostly one-way streets.

Yet the conservative notion of “real change” in the Soviet Union is, it seems to me, just as dreamy. The old Reagan cried in Berlin, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” and said that we will know that “real change” is occurring when the Soviets pull out of Poland, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, etc. But the Soviet Union, its communism notwithstanding, is a great power with global interests and prestige to protect. The Soviets may indeed evacuate Afghanistan, sell out the Sandinistas, reduce their nuclear arsenal. If so, it will only mean that they have made some hard choices about what is in their strategic interest--and they will expect reciprocation from us.

Great powers are all hawks. Sometimes they act like ostriches (a favorite American habit), but they cannot turn into doves without abdicating their status as great power. And, given that military might is the only measure that makes the Soviet Union great today (its gross national product reportedly has dropped below that of Japan), it is hard to imagine any Soviet leader benignly dismantling his army, rocket force or empire.

In any case, temporary Soviet retreats do not necessarily signify the end of world rivalry. Leninist doctrine obliges Soviet leaders to obey, with ruthless objectivity, the correlation of forces. Sometimes that correlation dictates a policy of “fall back to leap ahead.” That policy is as old as March, 1918, when Lenin ordered his fellow Bolsheviks to swallow the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Kaiser’s Germany. He surrendered half of European Russia, but he got out of World War I and saved the revolution. Similar peace offensives, including the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact and the 1940 nonaggression pact with Japan, have characterized Soviet policy whenever the correlation of forces seemed contrary. Why should any great power act otherwise?

So, what would be the signs of “real change” in the Soviet Union, real openness or restructuring of a kind that might truly alter the climate of diplomacy over the long haul? There are three such signs to look and hope and (if you’re so inclined) pray for. The first is the permitting of free labor unions in the satellites and in the Soviet Union itself. For this would be an admission by the Communist Party that it is not, by definition, the vanguard and savior of the working class. The second is a genuinely free press. For this would be an admission by the Communist Party that it does not have a monopoly on truth. The third is genuinely free exercise of religion. For this would be an admission that state power--the sanction of life and death--is not necessarily the highest authority in human life. To be sure, religious zeal carries its own political dangers. But a people that knows there are fates worse than death--a people that knows there are loves greater than the love of self--can never be enslaved.

So let’s not be too eager to proclaim “real change” in the Soviet Union, nor bargain away real security values in hopes of encouraging reform. Gamblers call that betting on the come. But let’s not pressure the Kremlin to “move faster,” either. If Gorbachev is sincere, he’s probably doing the best he can already. Patience is prudence when dealing with spirits. Sooner or later they’ll reveal themselves. We shall know them by their fruits.