Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume V, Soviet Union, March 1985–October 1986

60. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (McFarlane) to President Reagan¹

Washington, undated

SUBJECT

• Paper on the Soviet Union

As background information while you prepare for your meeting with Gorbachev, I have asked my staff to prepare a series of papers dealing with basic aspects of the Soviet system and typical Soviet attitudes.²

Attached at Tab A is the first of these papers, which discusses the fundamental question of whether the Soviet Union is an ideological power or simply an expansionist power in the traditional Russian mold. I think you will find it interesting reading.

Tab A

Paper on the Soviet Union³

Washington, undated

THE SOVIET UNION:
A COMMUNIST POWER OR A RUSSIAN IMPERIAL POWER?

When outsiders observe and assess Soviet actions and policies, many tend to interpret these in one of two ways, depending on their own psychological and ideological bent. One group operates on the assumption that the Soviet Union represents a new type of revolutionary power, motivated and driven by its ideology, which provides all the clues needed to determine Soviet motivations. The other group believes that the ideology is no more than window dressing and that at the core the Soviet Union is simply a continuation of the Russian Empire, committed primarily to pursuing Russian national interests. Both groups can advance powerful arguments to support their approach.

Those who see ideology as the ultimate motivation point to the obvious facts that the Soviet regime bases its entire legitimacy on its ideology and therefore cannot abandon the ideology without destroying itself. Furthermore, all actions are explained in terms of ideology, and the ideology is used to subvert other nations and provide a rationale for Soviet penetration of other countries, and if the opportunity exists, for Soviet control of them. The “Brezhnev doctrine,” which holds that the Soviet Union has not only the right but the duty to prevent the overthrow of “socialism” in another country, is seen as the ultimate expression of an ideological imperative.

Proponents of the “Russian imperial” approach would concede that the Soviet regime is clothed in ideological trappings, and that the ideology is used as an instrument of foreign policy and propaganda. But they would point out that very few Soviet officials really believe it, and that the ideology is simply used, in totally cynical fashion, to advance Russian national interests. Since Lenin’s pronouncements go all over the lot, citations can be found to justify any policy decision. Therefore, Soviet political leaders can decide what they want to do, without any regard to ideology, and their propaganda technicians will always find an “ideologically correct” justification.

Those who denigrate the role of ideology as a motivating force, would also point out that many key characteristics of the Soviet system simply cannot be explained by communist ideology. Take hypersecrecy, for example. This is a pronounced Russian trait, going back to the Middle Ages, and has no basis in Marxism. And—this group would add—how can you reconcile Marxism with a policy which outlaws the workers’ movement in Poland? Doesn’t the Soviet attitude toward Solidarity have more in common with nineteenth century Tsarist repression of Polish “rebels” (who also had the support of virtually all Poles)?

The truth is that both sides of this argument have cited factors which are critical for understanding the Soviet Union, but neither offers a full explanation. Their debate is like an argument over whether brass is copper or zinc. It is both, and the Soviet Union is both an ideological power and a modern-day embodiment of Russian imperial urges. What is important is not to debate which element is predominant, but to understand how the amalgam works.

The Ideological Element

The Soviets call their ideology Marxism-Leninism, but it should be called simply Leninism. Marx, after all, predicted that the working class would revolt against the ruling bourgeoisie, establish a dictatorship of the working class (not of an individual or a small group), and after eliminating other classes, live in a state of brotherly love and cooperation, without needing a government or repressive instruments. In fact, the state itself would “wither away” and no longer be necessary. This vision, though fundamentally flawed in itself, has nothing in common with the Bolshevik Revolution and the regime it established, a regime which controls the working class rather than being controlled by it, and which built the most awesome instruments of repression in human history, along with an enormous, bureaucratic state.

It was Lenin’s adaptations—some would say distortions—of Marxist philosophy which created the ideological basis of the Soviet state. Lenin, seeing that the “working class” in Russia was small and unorganized, postulated that a small number of intellectuals and professional revolutionaries were the “vanguard” of the working class and could act in its name. Therefore, he created an elite party which arrogated to itself the right to determine the “true” interests of the workers, and to rule the country on their behalf. And what is more, he established a structure of authority and discipline in the elite party itself so that it could be controlled from the top. This was the structure which Stalin inherited (and Mao Tse-tung borrowed for China) which provided the instrument for the most repressive regimes mankind has known.

Leninism, therefore, is simply a mechanism for seizing, consolidating and perpetuating power. The fact that it is clothed in high-sounding phrases about social betterment does not alter its essence. Nevertheless, the pretense that the goal of this power is to improve the lot of the “masses” is better suited to propaganda than Nazi “master race” theories, which are guaranteed to turn off anyone not a member of the “master race.”

The Role of Ideology

Most persons who have dealt extensively with Soviet officials, even those officially charged with propaganda, are struck by how few really believe the ideology. In private, most are frank to say that the social theories are not consistent with reality and that Soviet-style “socialism” does not work very well in terms of meeting human needs. In Soviet schools, obligatory classes in ideology are considered dull make-work, good only for cynical jokes and material for opportunists who must master the “catechism” to make a career with little work. None seem to see their ideology as offering a practical guide to policy decisions. One senses none of the revolutionary elan today which observers described in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

But the loss of revolutionary elan is not the whole story. The fact is that those who run the Soviet system cannot give up the ideology, whether they believe it or not. They cannot because it provides the sole source of their own legitimacy as rulers. Their power does not stem from constitutional processes; it can only be justified on ideological grounds, both to their own people and to the world at large. When so much at home seems to be either unsuccessful or inconsistent with the proclaimed ideology, it becomes important to the rulers to claim victories of the ideology abroad. Such claims have a legitimizing impact and contribute an important element to Soviet objectives which were absent from the motivations of monarchs and would be absent from those of a real constitutional republic.

Leninist ideology has, moreover, struck deeper roots than the pattern of cynical manipulation which we often observe would suggest. The fact is that so much Soviet discourse has been forced into the mold of Leninist reasoning that it affects the thinking even of those who would privately profess disbelief in its fundamental tenets. Entirely aside from its use as a propaganda tool, it provides a framework for looking at the world and analyzing developments.

Thus, Soviet citizens are inclined to interpret events in democratic countries in terms of the “class struggle,” and—paradoxically—to assume that official statements put out by other countries are as duplicitous as those put out by their own. They tend to see other countries as ruled by elites which oppress the “masses” and deny them social services such as free education and medical care. And while the Soviet rulers do not find clear-cut answers to policy dilemmas in the ideology, the ideology acts to define options and to channel decisions in particular directions.

The ideology is also a dandy tool for an expansionist foreign policy. Its rhetorical element promising power to the masses and economic betterment for the poor has an appeal to naive reformers and provides a cloak of benign intent to cover Soviet attempts to extend their influence and establish control over others. Its Leninist core provides a rationale to would-be dictators to gain and retain power, and a propaganda “justification” for accepting “fraternal assistance” in the form of Soviet arms and Cuban troops.

The Russian Tradition

Leninist ideology explains a lot, but it does not explain it all. The Soviet system also exemplifies a number of characteristics which are deeply rooted in the non-communist Russian past.

One of the most striking and pervasive of these involves the relationship of the state and its citizens. Russia has no tradition of individual rights or of the rule of law binding on both rulers and the ruled. All inhabitants were considered servants of the state (or of the Tsar), and virtually the sovereign’s property. A ruler might be liberal or repressive, but “rights” were not inherent but rather privileges dispensed from above. And he who giveth can also take away. This is still a deep-seated Russian attitude which underlies much of the regime’s behavior on human rights issues and explains why the population as a whole is relatively indifferent to them. This tradition produces an unspoken and perhaps subconscious attitude which holds that foreigners who press for the right of emigration are, in effect, out to rob the Russian regime of its property, and those who want to leave are guilty of disloyalty which smacks of treason.

Another deepseated Russian tradition is that of hypersecrecy, especially as regards foreigners. Western visitors to Muscovy as far back as the fifteenth century wrote about this trait, which even then was carried to absurd extremes, not only by the authorities, but by ordinary people as well. Often the secrecy stemmed from a desire to cover up weaknesses or potential embarrassments and was connected with a feeling of technological and cultural inferiority in comparison with Western Europe. Even today tourists are often harassed by ordinary citizens if they photograph buildings in disrepair or primitive-looking open-air markets. The popular assumption seems to be that any foreigner is a potential threat, actively trying to uncover weaknesses which can be exploited in some fashion. The Communist regime exploits and fans this attitude in its “vigilance” campaigns, and the traditional attitude bolsters official resistance to intrusive verification measures of arms control agreements. As Gromyko once remarked when pressed to agree to additional confidence-building measures, “What you want is a license to spy on us.”

The Russian attitude toward Western Europe has always been ambivalent. On the one hand, the material prosperity, civic spirit and (for intellectuals at least) political freedoms have been envied. But, feeling that Russia was backward in all these respects, Russians indulged in psychological compensation by telling themselves that they were spiritually superior. Historically, this took various forms, sometimes with claims that their values were more spiritual and not so materialistic as the West, and sometimes with claims that they were more devoted to the good of the whole community rather than that of the most vigorous individuals who, in the West, were held to exploit others. Communist ideology exploits this deepseated ambivalence in numerous ways, by claiming that sacrifices are required today to build a better society for tomorrow, by picturing Western societies as marked by ruthless exploitation and callousness toward the unfortunate, and by stimulating the implicit xenophobic strain in these attitudes.

Traditionally the Russians have always been suspicious of their immediate neighbors and have striven to dominate them. Muscovy grew steadily from a tiny city state in the fourteenth century to a giant empire by adding, piece by piece, the territory of its neighbors. Usually territorial expansion was “justified” by claiming that the neighbor threatened them, or might be used by another powerful state to threaten them. Sometimes the threat was real, but often it did not exist at all. But whether or not the threat really existed, the Russian people as a whole seemed persuaded by their leaders’ claims.

Expansion of the Russian Empire was also justified by many on grounds of ideology and religion. For centuries, it was commonplace to speak of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” in the sense that it was the successor of Rome and Constantinople as the seat of true Christianity. According to this concept, Russia had both the right and duty to spread her rule over Orthodox Christians to protect them from the Turks (and Western Protestants and Catholics.) The great writer Dostoevsky, for example, a fierce enemy of Marxism and all forms of socialism, supported aggressive wars against the Turks to protect Orthodox Christians in the Balkans.

At first it might seem that this has little to do with atheistic communism. But in fact it does, because the “Brezhnev doctrine” is really only a secular version of the traditional Russian messianic vision. What the Communists have done in this case, as in the others, is to fuse a distorted Marxian concept with a traditional Russian one. If Orthodox Tsarist Russia had the duty to “protect” Orthodox believers by establishing its rule over them, then the communist Soviet Union has a comparable duty as regards other “socialist” states.

The Amalgam

One of the achievements of the communist regime in Russia has been to convince the Russian people in general that the Soviet system is “theirs”—that is, authentically Russian. This is important, since even those who complain about its failures rarely consider it an alien imposition. And for many, outside criticism of the system—even for failures they know are real—is resented as damaging to their national pride.

Russia’s communist leaders have been able to do this precisely because they grafted elements of Leninist ideology on to the tree trunk of Russian nationalist tradition, so that they are able to tap and mobilize attitudes which have deep roots in the national psyche.

The result, however, resembles not so much a plant with grafts as a chemical amalgam, with ideology and Russian traditions intermixed in an intimate and complex fashion. In this intermixture, those traditions useful to centralized, totalitarian rule have been accentuated and those traditions which do not fit it have been resisted.

The Russian Empire was well known for its secret police, forced labor camps and censorship. The Bolsheviks adopted these institutions and made them much more efficient, pervasive and oppressive.

Religion is a good example of a tradition which was not adopted, but opposed. The Russian peasantry, in particular, has traditionally been deeply religious. The Orthodox Church, however, for several centuries operated under tight state controls. The communists did two things. They waged an unremitting campaign against the practice of religion, by propagating atheism and at the same time trying to build up the cult of Lenin and the Party as a replacement for religious belief. At the same time they utilized the Russian tradition of state control of the Orthodox Church to bring the Church under their ultimate control, which makes it possible to monitor and limit what the Church does, and when the opportunity occurs—as with contacts with foreign religious groups and “peace” organizations—to use it as an instrument of official policy.

Ideas of Western-style constitutional government and the rule of law penetrated the Russian intellectual class in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Russia seemed to be evolving belatedly in that direction when World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution cut this evolution short. The Revolution, however, swept away most of the educated class which espoused these ideas. Many were killed, many others were driven into emigration, and those who survived and stayed in the country were driven to the fringes of society and were further decimated in the purges of the 1930’s. In their place there arose a new “upper class” which came primarily from the peasantry, a group steeped in traditional, non-Western attitudes and little touched by the influx of Western ideas.

The regime has never succeeded in extirpating either religion or Western ideals of constitutional government. By all accounts, the practice of religion is growing, particularly among the young, and the dissident movement and figures like Andrei Sakharov make clear that, while they may be down, those who strive to establish a government of limited powers subject to the rule of law are not entirely out. Up to now, however, the communist regime has demonstrated the capability of keeping the practice of religion within tolerable bounds and of preventing ideas of constitutional government from spreading to the population as a whole.

For us, the fundamental fact to bear in mind in managing our relations with the Soviet Union and dealing with its leaders is that the system and its motivations cannot be explained exclusively in either ideological or traditional Russian geopolitical terms. We are dealing with a superpower which combines, in ways unique to it, ideological and traditional attitudes, institutions and motivations. Subsequent essays will probe in more detail how this “amalgam” works out in practice.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Jack Matlock Files, Chronological File, 1980–1986, Matlock Chron July 1985 (3/8). Confidential. Sent for information. Drafted by Matlock. The memorandum is unsigned.
2. See Document 39.
3. No classification marking. Drafted by Matlock.