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- Nygren, Bertil, 1946-
(author)
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Fredlig samexistens : klasskamp, fred och samarbete : Sovjetunionens detente-doktrin
- 1984
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation describes the contents of the foreign policy doctrine guiding Soviet relations with the Western "capitalist” countries during the detente period in the seventies: the doctrine of "peaceful coexistence". The doctrine has three discernible dimensions: an ideological (class struggle), a political (war and peace), and an economic (cooperation with the West). Besides describing the contents of the dimensions, the study traces their origin. The point of departure in the study is that, contrary to what is often believed in the West, Soviet ideology can be used as a source of information about the goals of Soviet foreign policy.The study shows that the doctrine of peaceful coexistence in many respects originated before the detente period, during Khrushchev’s time. While the doctrine was proclaimed in 1956, its contents have since changed twice. While "peace" and conflict-solving measures were at the core of the doctrine in 1956 (the political dimension of the doctrine), the international class struggle (the ideological dimension) supplemented the political dimension in the early sixties. In the early seventies advanced economic cooperation with the West (the economic dimension) was added to the two previous dimensions of the doctrine. The development of the economic dimension of the doctrine thus coincided with the inauguration of the detente period. The study also relates the doctrine of peaceful coexistence to other ideological concepts (the correlation of forces and national liberation) and identifies the status of the doctrine in relation to other foreign policy doctrines.In the detente period the ideological struggle with the West and the struggle for national independence in the Third World was particularly stressed. This constitute a change in the main form of the international struggle away from economic competition (which was the dominant form of struggle since the mid-fifties). The Soviet conception of the world revolutionary process underwent important changes after Stalin’s death and the doctrine of peaceful coexistence soon became part of the modern Soviet view of the "international class struggle". This struggle is being waged in three forms: political (struggle for peace), economic (competition with the West) and ideological (struggle of ideas). The ideological struggle intensifies as relations with the West improves. The professed goals are all related to the promotion of the world revolutionary process, especially in the Third World, in a situation where the Soviet Union had become a dominant actor in the international system. Detente to the Soviet Union thus meant something more than the creation of a "peace structure" based upon fear of nuclear weapons and linkages between political and economic relations. Soviet and Western conceptions of detente therefore differed in important respects.
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