Soviets Blame Own Policies for Some World Tensions

Soviet foreign policy, already revamped by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Communist Party general secretary, is undergoing even more questioning as many long-held Kremlin positions are re-examined.

After years of viewing its foreign policy as an extension of a worldwide class struggle against capitalism and taking a “good guys, bad guys” approach in its international relations, Moscow has concluded that many of its policies not only were wrong but also contributed substantially to world tensions.

The Cold War, the arms race, the division of Europe, regional conflicts from Latin America to Africa to Asia--all were rooted as much in Soviet actions as in the West’s, according to leading Soviet foreign policy specialists, whose reassessments are reordering Moscow’s relations with the world.

‘Revisionism’ Opposed

But conservative voices, strongly defending past Soviet policies, are objecting to such “revisionism” as a departure from long-held principles. On Monday, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda published a rare, full-page historical review on the “origins of the Cold War” in which the only clear point was to absolve Moscow and blame Washington after recent domestic criticism here.

Still, even as the debate continues among Soviet leaders, the revisionism is cutting deep. Even some major Soviet achievements, notably nuclear parity with the United States, are now seen by many here as strategic errors.

“The hegemonic, great-power ambitions of Stalinism, which took root in our foreign policy, frequently posed a threat to the political balance between different states, especially between East and West,” one prominent critic, Vyacheslav I. Dashichev, contended in a new appraisal of Soviet foreign policy over the past 50 years.

While Moscow’s broad goals of “peace, security, disarmament, cooperation and so on” were correct, Dashichev said that its actual foreign policy for years lacked “any thought-out, sensible and scientifically grounded actions. . . .

‘We Were Wrong’

“And we were wrong in assessing the global situation . . . and in not making any serious effort to settle the fundamental political contradictions with the West,” he added.

Alexander I. Bovin, a political commentator for the government newspaper Izvestia, was even more blunt. “Time and again, our foreign policy failed to make use of our opportunities. Flabby and devoid of dynamism, it abounded in blunders,” he wrote in the paper.

The Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and the decision to deploy intermediate-range SS-20 missiles in Europe were typical of such “blunders,” Bovin argued. Such policies resulted, he said, in “the ebbing international prestige of our country, to say nothing of great moral and material damage and, last but not least, the victims of the Afghan warfare. . . .”

Bovin accused previous leaders of “stale cliches and outdated political thinking” and added: “Only a crucial change of reference points in foreign policy allowed the Soviet leadership to reappraise the situation and take the right decisions--to adopt the zero option in the Euromissile issue and to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.

“Pivotal in themselves, both decisions were also graphic examples of the overall perestroika effort, of sweeping change in Soviet foreign policy with its style and methods radically updated.”

Critical Re-Examination

Almost as soon as he came to power in March, 1985, Gorbachev began the same sort of critical re-examination of Soviet foreign policy that, on the domestic side, has led to his radical reforms, and those involved in the current debate predict a further reorientation in the Kremlin’s approach to international relations.

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister and one of Gorbachev’s closest allies in the Communist Party leadership, convened a special three-day conference of the country’s top diplomats and foreign policy specialists last month to press for the expansion of “new political thinking” in a variety of fields.

New initiatives are likely soon, according to some who took part, in relations with the United States and its NATO allies, in arms control, in relations with Eastern Europe, in foreign trade, in relations with the Third World and in the way that Moscow’s policies are formulated.

But the growing pragmatism in Soviet foreign policy has its conservative critics within the party leadership.

Shortly after the Foreign Ministry conference, Yegor K. Ligachev, the second-ranking member of the ruling Politburo after Gorbachev, reasserted that “international relations are particularly ‘class’ in nature, and this is of fundamental importance.”

Opposite Systems

Shevardnadze had stressed that international relations “must not be equated with class struggle. . . . The struggle between the two opposite systems (of socialism and capitalism) is no longer the decisive factor of reality.”

But Ligachev warned that this approach “sows confusion among Soviet people and among our friends abroad.”

Other close Gorbachev supporters have rallied to his defense, making foreign policy one of the pivotal issues in the continuing debate between conservatives and liberals here.

The Kremlin’s reassessment was originally intended to “create some space” for the country as Gorbachev pursued domestic reforms, according to foreign affairs specialists here. It has apparently achieved that: Already the new policies have transformed what Moscow saw as “a circle of hostility” around it into “new partnerships.”

The greatly improved relations that Moscow enjoys with the West, particularly the United States; the Soviet-American treaty eliminating ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear weapons, and the agreement on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan--all are counted as major achievements of the Kremlin’s new political thinking.

Reshape Relations

But Soviet foreign policy specialists, hoping to reshape their country’s international relations, are going much further now, questioning many fundamentals of previous Soviet policy and raising issues that used to be closed to any public discussion here.

Their current focus is on the past, exposing what they regard as years of mistakes and exploring the reasons for them, but the intent is to begin formulating new approaches to international relations.

“We are now moving into uncharted waters, and we can make more mistakes, but we must take measures to avoid real blunders, like Afghanistan,” Oleg T. Bogolomev, director of the Institute of the Economy of the World Socialist System, an influential Soviet think tank, said recently.

Moscow’s military intervention in Afghanistan, an initial focus of the reappraisal, is seen not just as “Brezhnev’s war,” but as the result of an erroneous approach to international relations going back not just to the “period of stagnation” under Leonid I. Brezhnev, the late Soviet leader, but to the Soviet Union’s past view of the world.

‘Incompetent Approach’

The crisis following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December, 1979, was “largely caused by the errors and incompetent approach of the Brezhnev leadership in foreign policy matters,” Dashichev, a historian at Bogolomev’s institute, asserted in his critique.

“Pursuing our political, military and diplomatic involvement in regional conflicts,” he continued, “we ignored its effect on detente between the Soviet Union and the West and the entire system of their relationships.

“This reflected no clear conception of real Soviet state and national interests . . . which certainly did not lie in petty, formal triumphs linked to internal coups d’etat in the leaderships of some developing countries,” Dashichev asserted.

Lev I. Mendelevich, the Foreign Ministry’s planning director, responded to such growing criticism that “it would be wrong to delete all our foreign policy experience and to treat it in a very negative way” because there had been “periods of considerable activity and achievement.”

But Mendelevich, who like Bogolomev spoke at a foreign policy forum organized by the influential Soviet newspaper Literary Gazette, acknowledged that the intervention in Afghanistan--”a grave and fateful decision”--finally made clear to Soviet leaders the crisis facing Soviet international relations.

Complete Failure

“In that dark period, we were practically encircled by unfriendly states--NATO, Japan, China, hostile neighbors to the south,” Mendelevich said. “It was a complete failure in foreign policy. No country had ever so brilliantly isolated itself. . . . We were forced, as a consequence, to build up our military potential, and this put an unbearable burden on our economy.”

The critics of past Soviet foreign policy trace these problems back to Josef V. Stalin’s rule before World War II. Soviet foreign policy, they argue, has been fatally flawed for decades.

The Cold War, long blamed on Western “imperialism,” is seen by these critics as stemming at least as much from Soviet policies, particularly those of Stalin, and Western perceptions of them.

In the past, the West has been blamed by the Soviet Union for not allying itself to the Soviet Union before Nazi Germany began its conquests, and this has been seen here as laying the foundation for the Cold War. But Soviet historians and foreign policy specialists are now acknowledging that Britain, France and the United States had reason to avoid an alliance with the Soviet Union in the 1930s, because Stalin’s purges had destroyed the Red Army’s top leadership, making him an unreliable military ally.

‘Cruel, Criminal Methods’

“It was also difficult for them to deal with a ruler who was trampling on all human morality and was using cruel, criminal methods to consolidate his authoritarian power through unprecedented repressions,” Dashichev said.

Creation of the socialist states of Eastern Europe, while now a historical fact, may also have been a mistake in the way that it was carried out, according to some Soviet foreign policy specialists. A power-hungry Stalin had sought after World War II, according to Dashichev, to “spread socialism of the Stalinist type wherever he could in a unified fashion in every country, ignoring national identity.”

Soviet efforts to dominate the new socialist states then led to the break with Yugoslavia in 1948 and contributed to later conflicts with China and Albania, according to Dashichev.

The Soviet Union’s military intervention in Czechoslovakia 20 years ago this month, ending the liberal reforms of the “Prague spring,” is a far more sensitive issue, Soviet scholars say, because not only the legitimacy of the action is in question but also that of the current Czechoslovak leadership.

“This is a question that, first of all, concerns our Czechoslovak comrades, and we have to respect their views,” a Foreign Ministry official commented. “While we, of course, have some thoughts of our own, we will wait for any re-evaluation to come first from Prague.”

Yet Soviet foreign policy specialists are moving closer to acknowledging that the Czechoslovakia intervention, too, was wrong. Moscow no longer asserts the right of socialist countries to protect the gains of socialism worldwide by intervening in a fraternal country, thus scrapping the ideological justification for the 1968 move.

Nuclear Race

The nuclear arms race is also being seen as resulting from Soviet decisions as much as Western moves.

The Soviet desire for nuclear “parity,” which became the basis for the arms limitation agreements of the 1970s, actually trapped the country in a costly competition with the United States, foreign policy specialists here now believe.

Parity, once hailed as the major achievement of Soviet foreign policy, “was in the first place not necessary and secondly put us at a disadvantage,” Dashichev said. “It was impossible to reach an equilibrium with the United States, all the NATO countries and with China . . . without undermining our civilian economy.”

Mendelevich of the Foreign Ministry agrees. The economies of the NATO countries are roughly 3.5 times the size of those of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, he noted, and that means for the same defense effect, the Soviet Union and its allies need to spend three times as much of their gross national product, or roughly 15% to the NATO average of 5%.

“Parity was being maintained at a cost of minimal domestic consumption,” he said. “There are millions of people here barely making ends meet. So these foreign policy questions are matters of life and death for the people.”

Parity, moreover, “creates a situation where countries fear each other,” Mendelevich added, arguing that the new Soviet policy of “sufficient defense,” based on the ability to withstand a nuclear first strike and then to launch a counterattack, is more rational.

Threat to Peace

Similarly, the Kremlin’s decision to deploy its intermediate-range SS-20 missiles in Europe is seen here as confirming its image in the West as a threat to peace.

As foreign policy specialists from outside institutes, universities and the press move into previously “forbidden zones,” where only government and party officials were permitted to discuss issues, the debate is growing in scope and intensity, with the shape of future policy at stake.

“As a state, we have not allowed foreign policy issues to be the subjects for public debate, not even at the Supreme Soviet (the country’s parliament), but we are starting to consider it necessary,” Mendelevich said.

Shevardnadze went further last month, arguing the “urgent need to ensure active public involvement in formulating foreign policy.” Proposed constitutional changes, he said, will create a new forum in the strengthened Supreme Soviet for the discussion and adoption of major foreign policy decisions.