NATIONAL INTELLGIENCE SURVEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP08S01350R000602010005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 39
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: April 1, 1974
• Content Type: REPORT

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U.S.S.R.
April 1974
NA-TIONAL INTELLIGENCE SUKVEY
GENERAL
SURVEY
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NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY PUBLICATIONS
The basic unit of the NIS is the General Survey, which is now
published in abound-by-chapter format so that topics of greater per-
ishability can be updated on an individual basis. These chapters-Country
Profile, The Society, Government and Politics, The Economy, Military Geog-
raphy, Transportation and Telecommunications, Armed Forces, Science, and
Intelligence and Security, provide the primary NIS coverage. Some chapters,
particularly Science and Intelligence and Security, that are not pertinent to
all countries, are produced selectively. For small countries requiring only
minimal NIS treatment, the General Survey coverage may be bound into
one volume.
Supplementing the General Survey is the NIS Basic Intelligence Fact-
book, aready reference publication that semiannually updates key sta-
tistical data found in the Survey. An unclassified edition of the factbook
omits some details on the economy, the defense forces, and the intelligence
and security organizations.
Although detailed sections on many topics were part of the NIS
Program, production of these sections has been phased out. Those pre-
viously produced will continue to be available as long as the major
portion of the study is considered valid.
A quarterly listing of all active NIS units is published in the Inventory
of Available NIS Publications, which is also bound into the concurrent
classified Factbook. The Inventory lists all NIS units by area name and
number and includes classification and date of issue; it thus facilitates the
ordering of NIS units as well as their filing, cataloging, and utilization.
Initial dissemination, additional copies of NIS units, or separate
chapters of the General Surveys can be obtained directly or through
liaison channels from the Central Intelligence Agency.
The General Survey is prepared for the NIS by the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency under the general direction
of the NIS Committee. It is coordinated, edited, published, and dissemi-
nated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
STAT
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STAT
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GENERAL SURVEY CHAPTERS
COUNTRY PROFILE Integrated perspective of the
subject country ? Chronology ? Area Brief ? Sum-
mary Map
THE SOCIETY Social structure ? Population ?
Labor ? Health ? Living conditions ? Social
problems ? Religion ? Education ? Public infor-
mation ? Artistic expression
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS Political evolu-
tion of the state ? Governmental strength and sta-
bility ? Structure and function ? Political dynamics
? National policies ? Threats to stability ? The
police ? Countersubversion and counterinsurgency
capabilities
THE ECONOMY Appraisal of the economy ? Its
structure-agriculture, fisheries, forestry, fuels and
power, metals and minerals, manufacturing and
construction ? Domestic trade ? Economic policy
and development ? International economic rela-
tions
TRANSPORTATION AND
TELECOMMUNICATIONS Appraisal of systems
? Strategic mobility ? Railroads ? Highways ?
Inland waterways ? Pipelines ? Ports ? Merchant
marine ? Civil air ? Airfields ? The telecom system
MILITARY GEOGRAPHY Topography and climate
? Military geographic regions ? Strategic areas ?
Internal routes ? Approaches: land, sea, air
ARMED FORCES The defense establishment
Joint activities ? Ground forces ? Naval forces
Air forces ? Paramilitary
SCIENCE Level of scientific advancement ? Or-
ganization, planning, and financing of research ?
Scientific education, manpower, and facilities
? Major research fields
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0
The Other Superpower .............. 1
? Giant Land of Many Peoples
? Producing Guns and Goulash
? The Government and Its Critics
? Moscow and the World
Chronology ............................ 26
Area Brief ............................. 32
Summary Maps .................follows 32
This Country Profile was prepared for the NIS by
the Central Intelligence Agency. Research was
substantially completed by February 1974.
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The Other Superpower
Winston Churchill's famous description of Russia as
"a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"
seems less apt today. For more than a quarter of a cen-
tury of cold war, the Soviet Union has been scrutinized
and analyzed as the United States' chief adversary.
Now it is coming more fully into view in the new light
of the recent rapid development of unprecedented
levels of peacetime contact with the West.' The sum-
mit meetings of President Nixon and Communist Par-
ty General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in May 1972
and June 1973, and the signing of nearly 20
agreements in little more than a year's time, have laid
the basis for extensive cooperation between the two
countries. But there still is no clear-cut answer to the
question of Russia's real nature and intentions, no cer-
tain knowledge of the directions it will take at home
and the role it will play abroad. The Soviet Union's
nuclear arsenal and its extraordinary influence in
world politics make it the X-factor in almost all U.S.
national security and foreign policy calculations. The
NOTE-The entire content of this chapter is UNCLASSIFIEll
but is FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY.
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awesome fact that the Soviet Union could virtually
destroy the United States in a matter of
minutes-however much this oversimplifies the com-
plexities of U. S.-Soviet relations-gives the U.S.S.R. a
unique position in international affairs: it alone ranks
with the United States as a superpower.
These two countries soared to their unique status
from vastly different backgrounds in less than six
decades. Whereas America's culture has been
predominantly Protestant and Anglo-Saxon, Russia's
was Byzantine and Russian Orthodox. While in-
dividual liberty and democracy were developing in
England, America's motherland, the Mongol horde
tyrannized the conquered Russians for 250 years-tum-
ing the clock back, many Russians still believe, that
far behind the rest of Europe. Russia had neither
Renaissance nor Reformation. Its modernization,
launched by Peter the Great, has been marked not
by democratization but by the imposition of an
oppressive, highly centralized, bureaucratic autoc-
racy-first under the tsars, and then under the
Communists. On the eve of World War I, the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics did not yet exist, and its
predecessor, Imperial Russia, was underdeveloped,
weakened from its defeat by Japan in 1905, and
menaced by the rising power of Imperial Germany.
"1'he two World Wars wrought an enormous revolution
in international politics, politics which swiftly became
polarized around the American and Soviet power that
had emerged supreme. Even the remarkable
post-World War II recovery of Western Europe,
China, and Japan has been overshadowed by the
colossal growth in economic, technological and, above
all, military power of the United States and the
U.S.S.R.
Yet for all its immense power, the U.S.S.R. is
strangely insecure. It is reaching out to the West and
yet trying to hold it at bay, seemingly eager to
promote reconciliation and yet anxious to limit its im-
pact at home. It has achieved rough nuclear parity
with the United States and has consolidated its
dominance in Eastern Europe, yet it remains obsessed
by rivalry with China, a country much weaker in
economic and military terms. The Soviet Union's
.political tructure would appear to an outsider to be
solid and secure, and its society, by Western stan-
dards, would seem to be a model of law and order. Yet
political structure would appear to an outsider to be
solid and secure, and its society, by Western stand-
ards, would seem to be a model of law and order. Yet
the U.S.S.R. has tightened ideological controls and its
secret police have been engaged in a relentless cam-
paign to crush a small scattering of reform-minded
and minority national dissidents as if they posed a real
threat to Soviet power. It is a paradoxical country that
is publicly triumphant but privately defensive, con-
stantly proclaiming "socialist superiority" and yet
fearful of not being able to compete effectively with
the capitalist West. It has become industrialized yet
not really modern. It has gained growth but lost
momentum.
~~~ The Communist Party of the Soviet Union-
designated in the Constitution as the "leading
rv core of all organization. both public and
~l+ state"-dominates the country and determines the
course it is to follow, primarily by placing its people in
key posts at all administrative levels of the govern-
ment and in other vital institutions. Through this in-
terlocking arrangement the party controls the
machinery of government, runs the economy, directs
the armed forces and police, manages the news and
communications media, and regulates the country's
purportedly independent educational, legal, cultural,
and social institutions. It formulates policies and
oversees their implementation. The party vests its
decisionmaking authority in a tiny elite, the Politburo
of the Central Committee, and "politics" becomes
largely a matter of the conspiring and maneuvering
among these party leaders, rather than a struggle
between the party and special interest groups. The
power wielded by these party leaders is checked only
by the need to strike a consensus among themselves
and by the inertia of the ponderous bureaucratic ap-
paratus they manipulate.
The men cloistered in the Kremlin (the Russian
word for fortress; its ancient walls in the capital city of
Moscow enclose major government office buildings)
serve both the Soviet national interest and an
ideological commitment to promote world com-
munism. And like Russian rulers in centuries past,
they seem to be motivated additionally by a hatred of
backwardness and a consuming desire to be con-
sidered equals by the West, especially by Washington.
Like Russian tsars since Peter the Great, they are
borrowing and adapting techniques from major
adversaries the better to catch up with and surpass
them.
The Soviet system remains a secretive one, whose
communications media can extol the benefits of
cooperation with the West without disclosing to the
Soviet citizenry the giant grain purchases it had to
make from Western nations in 1972. It asks Western
bankers to put up millions of dollars in loans, but is
reluctant to permit them normal financial informa-
tion about its foreign-exchange reserves and gold
supply. Foreign enterprises negotiating long-term
deals for Soviet natural gas involving vast investments
J
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are not permitted the kind of easy access for their
specialists that they are accustomed to receiving
elsewhere. The Soviet leaders talk of opening up
East-West relations, yet demand a ban on satellite
television relay without prior approval of the
programs.
This is a country of such anomalies that almost no
portrait of it is quite accurate. It is proclaimed to be a
classless society, yet many of its members appear to be
more status conscious than their counterparts in the
capitalist West. Those who make up the political,
economic, and cultural elite are served by a special
network of well-stocked, cutrate stores; they enjoy a
host of privileges that are beyond the reach of the
common man and are often more important than
money in an economy of consumer shortages. Many
ordinary citizens genuinely seem to consider their
system a superior one, and indeed can imagine no
other. What matters most is that they are better off
now than ever before. Yet their standard of living
is not only below that in the developed West but
also below that in most of Eastern Europe.
Even though it is a superpower, extremes of ad-
vancement and underdevelopment, of the good and
the bad, exist side by side. Although the Soviet
Moscow's Metro-an ornate subway with chandeliers
economy and scientific community obviously are
capable of great achievements-exemplified by the
Sputnik of 1957 and the first manned space flight in
1961, the construction of the world's most massive
hydroelectric complexes, the rapid development of
Siberian oil fields, and the buildup of an advanced
military arsenal- perhaps its most striking feature is
the lopsided nature of its development. While earth
satellites are being launched, there still are occasional
shortages of potatoes and other staple foods. There are
subways in several Soviet cities-Moscow boasts a
superior one-and public surface transport is good.
Taut away from urban centers, most of the roads are
astonishingly primitive. At Voronezh, work progresses
on a 1,500-mile-per-hour jet transport plane while, in
surrounding villages, farmers with two buckets
dangling from a shoulder yoke tote water from
community wells to their weatherbeaten log
homes.
Typically, Soviet industry has developed the kind of
brute strength represented by the giant Kama River
project, a crash effort to build a manufacturing com-
plex capable of turning out 150,000 big trucks and a
quarter of a million diesel engines a year, dwarfing
anything in Detrcrit, or anywhere in the West. It is a
prime symbol of the Soviet passion for bigness, and
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the belief that bigger means better. But the centrally
planned Soviet economy has been unable to generate
enough quality technology and convert it into produc-
tion fast enough. It lacks the driving force of competi-
tion that stimulates technological development in the
West, and Soviet theorists and planners have yet to
devise an adequate way to fill the void.
The picture is not entirely bleak, especially for the
Soviet urbanite, for whom the quantity of new hous-
ing is impressive and the availablity of cars and even
scimmer houses outside the city is on the rise. The state
keeps housing costs low, and foots the bill for medical
care. Nevertheless, random and unpredictable short-
ages of hundreds of everyday items seem to,be almost
endemic in the U.S.S.R. Alongside shortages there are
surpluses-of poor-quality clothing and shoes, and
outmoded models of television sets and washing
-nachines. Such imbalances between supply and de-
mand, along with evidence of gross waste of resources,
have long been a part of the Soviet scene. But they
have acquired a new dimension with the embryonic
affluence of the Soviet consumer, long accustomed to
the bottom position on the totem pole of Soviet invest-
ment priorities. Even though Soviet consumers today
really can be considered affluent only in comparison
with their past levels, there has indeed been a signifi-
cant increase in recent years in the availability of con-
sumer goods in the U.S.S.R.-enough, ironically, to
increase the pressure on a system ill-designed to satisfy
more sophisticated consumer demand.
One of the most critical tasks confronting the Soviet
leadership is to forge the organization and design the
incentives that will match supply and demand over
the whole range of consumer goods and services
with efficiency and dispatch. The Kremlin's char-
acteristically topheavy, bureaucratic approach is
exemplified by the fact that the agency created 7 years
ago to study market demand is now engaged in coor-
dinating a massive (and seemingly ineffective)
demand-forecasting project involving 40 separate
research institutes. This has produced frenetic activity
and reams of reports by the multiple bureaus in-
volved, but not the answers for such critical problems
as how to generate incentives that will insure a rapid
and precise response to demand forecasts on the part
of producers and the distribution system.
The natural riches of the U.S.S.R.-including oil,
gas, uranium, and gold-are vast indeed. But the
Soviets still trail the United States in most fields of
production-except for cement and coal. And in con-
sumer goods, of course, there is no com-
parison-America's per capita lead is 3 to 1 in
ownership of refrigerators, 2 to 1 in washing machines,
Soviet medical students. With
medical care offered to every
citizen at state expense, the
demand for physicians is enormous.
Some 80% of the doctors in the
U.S.S.R. are women.
and the United States far outdistances the U.S.S.R. in
automobiles and household possession of ordinary
appliances such as radios, TV sets, and vacuum
cleaners. Growing concern about pollution provides a
certain measure of the modernization of Soviet socie-
ty. Water pollution, in particular, is becoming a
serious matter, and other kinds-as indicated by the
creation of a National Anti-Noise Committee-are
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purchases still are not sold in packaged form.
largely because the bulk of the Soviet housewife's food
getting attention. But Soviet citizens have been spared
the battle against indestructible plastic bags, non-
recyclab'le cans, and "no deposit, no return" bottles
power consideration, are comparable in quantity.
Yet, despite the surprising signs of backwardness
that can be noted in the Soviet economy, it has
nevertheless built military muscle second in its overall
strength and sophistication only to that of the United
States. In recent years the U.S.S.R. has developed its
weaponry to the point that the remaining differences
between the military arsenals of the two superpowers
are in large measure of a geostrategic nature, founded
in the world distribution of land and sea. A com-
parison of their military forces reflects the inherent
differences in land-based and sea-based power.
Inasmuch as the United,States has few neighbors, and
the U.S.S.R. many,* with several in the enemy camp,
there is a striking contrast in the number of inter-
mediate and medium-range ballistic missiles and of
long-range and medium-range bombers, and in the
number of aircraft and helicopter carriers that each
possesses. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, being es-
sentially independent of the land power versus sea
economy.
All these shortcomings in the Soviet economy are
accentuated by the present decline in the impressive
economic growth rates of the postwar period. Despite
the growth of the Soviet gross national product (GNP)
by about 80% over the past decade as opposed to a lit-
tle over 60% for the United States, America's GNP is
almost double that of the U.S.S.R., and last year the
Soviet economy grew more slowly than that of the
United States. In part, this is a result of the growing
complexity of later stages of economic development.
It is clear that the Soviet Union can no longer achieve
growth so easily by adding to its labor force and its
capital stock, as it did in the sixties. From now on,
growth depends primarily on greater efficiency, and
that has never been the strong suit of the Soviet
'The Soviet Union has more foreign states on its borders than any
other country. The United States has common land frontiers with
only two other countries, Canada and Mexico, and a radius of 500
miles extends only four more-Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and
(from Alaska) the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. has common bound-
aries with 13 countries: Norway, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China,
Mongolia, and North Korea. And within 500 miles of Soviet
territory lie 17 more: Sweden, Denmark, East Germany, West Ger-
many, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Syria,
Iraq, Pakistan, Nepal, Japan, South Korea, and the United States
(Alaska). The 4,600-mile Soviet border with China is the longest
land frontier in the world.
Reaching a position of strategic parity with the
United States has given the Soviets a new confidence
in their international standing. If that confidence is
somewhat shaken by concern about economic short-
comings and the growth of China as a great power, STAT
the leadership has closed ranks behind Brezhnev's
prescribed remedy-detente policies toward the West,
mixed with tighter political and ideological controls
at home. Brezhnev's preeminence in the Soviet
leadership was dramatically underscored at the Soviet
Communist Party plenum in April 1973. That sort of
gathering is expected to put a rubberstamp of ap-
proval on a foreign policy program enunciated by the
party's boss, but on this occasion the praise was un-
commonly lavish and convincing. Premier Kosygin,
President Podgomyy, and the leading party ideologist,
Mikhail Suslov took the dais to endorse Brezhnev's
foreign policy report, and the plenum gave the green
light to his summit trips to Bonn and Washington. At
the same time, major changes took place in the Polit-
buro, the power center of the party. It features the ad-
dition of the Chairman of the State Security Com-
mittee (KGB), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the
Minister of Defense-men who are among Brezhnev's
strongest supporters-and the explusion from the
Politburo of two of his apparent critics.
The changes in the Politburo, by adding more
government officials, give it somewhat more of the
look of a traditional cabinet. But in this, too, the
appearance is paradoxical. The shakeup actually in-
dicated that personnel changes, instead of being on an
institutional basis, still are made on personal and
political grounds and that the Soviet system of rule
remains one of men, not law. The system maintains an
essentially closed society, and its security continues to
rest, if somewhat less nakedly than in Stalin's time, on
censorship, police controls, and persistent efforts to en-
force intellectual conformity, even through threat of
arrest and banishment to prison labor camps. In all of
this there is evidence that many features of modern
Soviet society are in fact bridges from the past. May
Day and Revolution Day parades through Red
Square, for example, when huge portraits of Soviet
leaders are borne aloft, are not unlike religious
processions in old Russia. Even Brezhnev's turn to the
West for the acquisition of capital, advanced equip-
ment, and technological know-how fits the fluc-
tuating pattern of Russian history since Peter the
Great opened his celebrated "window to the West" in
the early 18th century. While its best may be based on
the borrowed or copied, the outside world is never
really admitted. For all the techniques from with-
out, Russia today remains much a continent to
itself.
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Tadzhiks in white shirts vie with Armenians in black during a "fur cap game"
at a horse festival in the Soviet Central Asian city ofAlma-Ata.
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The magnitude and diversity of the Soviet Union
are almost incredible. It is an awesome land of
prodigious dimensions, where herds of reindeer trek
through arctic blizzards while caravans of camels are
driven across burning deserts. Its rulers are still en-
gaged in a centuries-old effort to develop and consoli-
date their immense territory and their multinational
people. The political and economic benefits associated
with a country of size and diversity are numerous, as
demonstrated by the history of the United States. And
for the U.S.S.R., which is at a lower stage of economic
development, many of the benefits are only partially
realized. But the problems related to the size and
diversity of the Soviet Union are enormous,
too-including long distances to be overcome by
transport and communication lines, difficult climatic
conditions, unassimilated national cultures, and
maldistribution of resources in relation to population.
The processes of development and consolidation are
not nearly complete; the tasks and obstacles ahead
are, like the land, of epic proportions.
The U.S.S.R. is by far the largest country in the
world-more than twice the size of China, nearly 2'/a
times the size of the United States, and 40 times the
size of France, the largest country in Europe. From its
western border with Poland on the Baltic Sea, the
Soviet Union sprawls across the northern half of
Eurasia roughly 6,000 miles to its easternmost point,
Ratmanov Island, in the Bering Strait of the Pacific. It
covers the eastern half of Europe, takes up two-thirds
of the Eurasian continent, and encompasses close to
half of the northern hemisphere. From north to south
it extends 2,800 miles from the Arctic Ocean to the
Afghan border.
When on a summer evening the sun sinks below the
horizon on the western borders of the U.S.S.R., it is
simultaneously rising to greet the following day on the
eastern borders. The Soviet Union is a country where
the sun never sets-a phenomenon which actually is a
product of its polar position, but which is also
s~iggestive of the broad sweep of the land. Its territory
stretches across 171 of the 360 degrees of global
longitude and is wrapped around the Arctic Ocean
and the North Pole-the strategic significance of
which is illustrated by noting that to take the most
direct route between Moscow and Los Angeles, one
would travel northwards. The Soviet polar position is
enhanced by the fact that its Arctic coastal waters are
somewhat less bound by ice and land obstructions
than those of North America. Soviet Arctic navigation
and scientific research are more extensive than any
other nation's. In addition to the observation that
the shortest distance between the Soviet Union and
the contiguous states of the United States is across
the polar ice, the size and strategic location of the
U.S.S.R. is further illustrated by its proximity to other
key countries and areas, which gives it a natural in-
terest and potential for involvement. In Asia, not only
does it border China, North Korea, and Mongolia, but
Japan lies just across the Sea of Japan, and even closer
in the Kuril Islands. Pakistan is a mere 10 miles and
India only 175 miles from Soviet territory. In addition
to bordering on Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and the
Middle East, the Soviet Union is separated from the
Mediterranean only by the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles.
The size of the Soviet Union gives it more diversity
than any other country in natural conditions,
resources, and peoples. Its great varieties of landscape,
climate, and vegetation fall mainly into four major
natural zones from north to south-tundra, taiga,
steppe, and desert. Agricultural land has been carved
out of the more hospitable taiga and steppe areas to
form a distinctive region within the basic zones. There
is also a relatively small subtropical zone on the Black
Sea.
The often-frozen tundra of the Far North is
characterized by extremely cold climate, sparse
vegetation of mostly mosses and lichens, and poor
soils. The few inhabitants maintain a bare nomadic
existence, and reindeer herding is a primary endeavor.
South of the tundra is a broad belt of taiga forests,
encompassing 4 million square miles and stretching
across the country from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific
Ocean. The taiga is the world's richest and most ex-
tensive forest of pine, spruce, and larch. These conifers
give way to broadleaf forests on the southern edge of
the zone. The winters of the taiga are long and bitterly
cold, especially in continental Siberia. Here some of
the lowest temperatures on earth-more than 90 de-
grees below zero-have been recorded. Permanently
frozen soils prevail in much of the area. Human
settlement in these harsh conditions has been es-
tablished chiefly to exploit valuable mineral and
timber resources, but large urban-industrial centers
thrive along the southern periphery of the taiga.
Ice "road" across the Lena River-
here more than two miles wide-
in Yakutsk.
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As cold dominates the tundra and taiga, drought is
the key feature of the natural environment in the
steppe and desert zones. The natural grasslands of the
steppe support a large population, and vast areas are
devoted to agriculture, particularly in the northern
steppe where good soil and adequate rainfall prevail.
Some of~ the most fertile soils-the chernozems-are
located in an east-west belt extending from the
Ukraine to Siberia and are the backbone of Soviet
agriculture. The southern and drier steppe zone is the
Soviet "dust bowl," where habitation as well as
agriculture is marginal at best. The introduction of
irrigation systems and measures to prevent erosion
have improved land use there, resulting in more settle-
ment toward the southern limits of the steppe.
Much of Soviet Central Asia is in the semidesert or
desert zone. Rainfall is minimal because of the vast
distance from the ocean, and there is little vegetation.
Some of the highest temperatures on earth-over 120
degrees above zero-have been recorded in this
region. But in spite of the inhospitable natural con-
ditions, there are pockets of fertile land in river valleys
and several large cities flourish in these oases.
Elsewhere in the desert zone, agriculture has been in-
troduced and established through extensive irrigation
efforts, and the population is being extended into
what once was barren wasteland.
1'he small subtropical region which rims the Black
Sea provides a unique landscape in contrast with the
four major natural zones. The southern coast of
Crimea and the eastern Black Sea coast of Caucasia,
which are sheltered from polar winds, have developed
into the Soviet "Riviera," teeming with vacationers.
The mild climate and high rainfall also make it possi-
ble to raise tea and citrus crops valued throughout the
U.S.S.R.
The quarter billion inhabitants of the U.S.S.R. pre-
sent contrasts as striking as those of the land. The
Soviet Union is truly a multinational state and accords
official recognition to each of its minorities, even to
the point of giving the larger ones the trappings of
national statehood. There are more than 120 distinct
nationalities in the U.S.S.R., varying in size from the
Russian nationality-which accounts for slightly more
than half of the total population-to the Yukagir
minority, with about 500 members. National
traditions are as diverse; this potpourri of peoples in-
cludes the Europeanized Baltic peoples, the Turkic
groups of Central Asia with their Middle Eastern
lifestyles, and the dwindling Chukchi and Koryaks of
the Far North, close relatives of the American Indian.
Slavic peoples make up the dominant element in
the population-specifically eastern Slavs, the closely
related Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians. They
speak mutually intelligible languages, and together
make up more than three-fourths of the total popula-
tion of the Soviet Union. Some of the non-Slavic
nationalities show a strong tendency towards assimila-
tion. by the Russians, and are rapidly abandoning their
languages. In physical characteristics, most Slavs are
broadheaded, of medium height and stocky build and
differ little in appearance from the populations of cen-
tral and eastern Europe.
Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians all have
their antecedents in the Rus, an 8th century mixture of
Viking (or Varangian) overlords and Slavic com-
moners who held military and commercial hegemony
in North Russia and south along the Don and Dnepr
waterways to the shores of the Black Sea. Among the
Rus, the Grand Princes of Kiev were in the ascendancy
during the 9th and 10th centuries. After the sacking of
Kiev by the Mongols (in 1230), however, Russian
leadership gradually passed to Moscow, which was
relatively safe in the forested north from the raids of
steppe nomads. Vast territories in the south and west
then came under the control of foreign con-
querors-mainly Poles and Lithuanians-and the
peoples of these territories developed separately from
the Russians as Ukrainians and Belorussians.
Muscovy, the state which succeeded Kiev and was to
be the foundation of modern Russia, expanded its
control over neighboring Russian states through a
combination of fortuitous alliances and conquests. In
the 15th and 16th centuries its grand dukes came to
speak for all the Russian people and Moscow became
the focus for a growing national self-awareness.
Although checked and even thrown back in the west,
the Russians expanded rapidly to the east, conquering
the Tartar khanates along the Volga while merchant-
adventurers and their Cossack freebooters penetrated
into the depths of Siberia. Since then the Russians
have been the main and decisive nationality and have
largely determined the character of the subsequent
political organization, culture, and historical destiny
of all the non-Russian peoples that have been incor-
porated into Muscovy, the Empire, and the U.S.S.R.
As a result, even though the terms are applied loosely,
in general usage-outside the Soviet
Union-"Russia" has long denoted the entire country
and "Russians" its people.
The Soviets are clearly caught on the horns of a
dilemma as they attempt to work out a coherent
J
J
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nationalities. policy. The multiplicity of nationality
political units, languages, customs, and preferences
clearly is unwieldy and inefficient. Yet much as they
might favor rapid assimilation, Soviet leaders find it
difficult to apply pressures which smack of the
russification policies of the tsarist era. They remain
ideologically committed to Lenin's policy of assuring
national diversity, a policy which was tactically de-
signed to win for the Bolsheviks the support of the non-
Russian nationalities on the eve of the revolution.
' The result of that policy is a patchwork of national-
ity units evident in the division of the country into 15
Union Republics of widely varying size, each in-
habited by a major nationality which gives its name to
the republic. The Union Republics are divided into
120 territories and regions which are broken down into
districts, towns, urban settlements, and rural districts.
Within the territories and regions there also are a
number of smaller nationalities formed into essentially
self-governing units-20 Autonomous Republics, 8
Autonomous Regions, and 10 National Areas.
The smallest of the Union Republics, Armenia, is
nearly as large as the states of Maryland and
Delaware combined. By far the largest is the Russian
Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR)
which
,
covers all of the northern and western Soviet Union,
occupying more than three-fourths of its total
territory-extending to the Black Sea in the south and
stretching eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Both
Moscow, the U.S.S.R.'s chief metropolis and capital
city, and Leningrad which, with a population over 3.5
million, is the country's second largest city, are located
in the RSFSR.
The 14 other Union Republics border the Russian
Republic on the west and south, forming an arc which
runs counterclockwise from the Baltic Sea to the tip of
Mongolia. The republics of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania are located on the Baltic, below Finland
and reaching to Poland. Belorussia, the Ukraine-the
second largest Union Republic in population, having
more than two- and one-half times the population of
New York State-and Moldavia border on eastern
Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and
Romania). The republics of Georgia, Armenia, and
Azerbaijan lie between the Black and Caspian Seas,
and touch Turkey and Iran. Turkmenia, Uzbekistan,
Tadzhikistan, Kirghizia, and Kazakhstan are in Cen-
tral Asia, running eastward from the Caspian Sea,
above Iran, Afghanistan, and China's Sinkiang
Province. Kazakhstan, the second largest Union
Republic in area, is larger than all of the United States
east of the Mississippi, while occupying only one-sixth
as much territory as the RSFSR.
Although the U.S.S.R. has its crowded urban
centers, including 10 metropolises of more than a
million inhabitants, a larger proportion cf the Soviet
people reside in villages and on farms and have a very
rural lifestyle than is the case in the United States.
Only as recently as 1961 did Soviet urban dwellers
outnumber rural residents, a statistical phenomenon
recorded in the United States in 1918. Even now, less
than 60% of the Soviet people live in urban areas but,
as in the United States and elsewhere in industrialized
states, migration to urban centers is strong. Indeed,
population and labor maldistribution have become
major problems in the Soviet Union-while the large
cities are overcrowded, many rural and remote areas
are experiencing labor shortages. Efforts are being
made to curb the migration to cities, and workers are
being offered incentives to work in remote regions
where they are most needed for resource development.
The heaviest concentrations of population still are
in the western or European U.S.S.R., but the highest
population growth rate is in the Muslim Soviet Cen-
tral Asian republics. Able-bodied workers are
numerous there, but often lack educational oppor-
tunity and technical skills. Some conflicts and severe
urban crowding have resulted from the recruitment of
skilled Slavic workers for these areas. And this kind of
problem in the distribution of the Soviet population is
but one indication that the vastness and variety of
resources and the cultural vitality of a multinational
state are not unmixed blessings. With all its strength
and great potential, the Soviet Union also suffers great
difficulties because of its size and diversity.
Complications include the fact that its varied cultures
are unevenly developed, and assimilation produces
social stresses. Vast areas of its land are unsuitable for
habitation or agriculture. And exploitation and
transportation of natural resources and the supply of
goods are difficult over long distances and in the face
of harsh climate and terrain.
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 i I _I 'l jl ~ ~ ~ ~~ :;
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~,~~
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The Soviet version of "guns or butter," the question
of whether priorities of national. power took
precedence over consumer interests, was traditionally
answered quickly by the Kremlin. For decades of cen-
tral planning, the consumer sector was consistently
low on the list of Soviet economic priorities, with ar-
maments and heavy industry at the top. Talk of the
hoped-for consumer blessings dubbed "goulash com-
munism" during the time of Premier Khrushchev
remained largely talk. Popular aspirations for a
modest expansion of goods and services available were
met with little more than the bare necessities of life.
Beginning in the late 1950's, however, Khrushchev's
prodding began to swing the economy to the mass
production of standardized goods, gave the Soviet
consumer new importance, and brought about signifi-
cant increases in consumption, largely of more and
better food and clothing. Ironically, these gains con-
fronted Khnishchev's successors with a new set of
economic problems-those of a slowly emerging con-
sumer affluence. Steady increases in incomes and con-
sumption during the 1960's (Soviet per capita dis-
posable money income increased by more than 85%
while per capita private consumption increased by less
than half) put great pressure on a system ill-designed
to satisfy more sophisticated consumer demands.
to failures in agriculture, but even industrial produc-
tion grew by only 5%, the smallest percentage increase
for that sector since World War II. The slowed in-
dustrial growth was caused partly by raw material
shortages stemming from a poor harvest, but mainly
by the failure to complete scheduled new industrial
capacity on time and by a significant slump in the. rate
of growth of productivity.
In the face of these failures, Soviet planning
authorities made significant changes in the 1973 an-
nual plan, including an overall reduction in the in-
dustrial output goal. Once again, the consumer sector
suffered. Its priority was reduced and precedence was
restored to capital goods, with greater emphasis on the
completion of numerous projects under construction.
A much higher goal was also set for agriculture. An ex-
ceptionally (and suprisingly) good harvest did occur
last year, and largely as a result of the boost it pro-
vided, the Soviet economy recovered sharply in 1973
from its performance the year before. Even though
they are likely to be of a one-time nature, the 1973
agricultural gains enabled the Kremlin to renew its
commitment to consumer welfare in the annual plan
for 1974. But the 1973 recovery still did not make up
for earlier shortfalls, and most of the goals of the
current Five Year Plan apparently have been all but
abandoned.
J
Neglect of consumer interests has been apparent in
industries producing soft goods and processed foods as
well as in the production of durable household goods
and passenger cars. Wearing apparel manufactured in
the Soviet Union is improving, but some of it is still
unsalable because of poor sewing, neglect of finishing
details, poor sizing, monotonous styling, and other
defects in workmanship. Shoe production is affected
by inadequate supplies of raw materials, un-
imaginative styling, and outdated equipment. Radios,
television sets, and wrist watches are now routinely
available, but supplies of major electric appliances fall
far short of demand.
In recent years Moscow has begun to focus directly
on the problems of the consumer sector. The Ninth
Five Year Plan (for 1971 through 1975), although sub-
sequently altered, has as its so-called "main task" a
substantial improvement in consumer welfare. Accord-
ing to the original plan, consumer goods industries
for the first time were to grow at a faster rate over an
entire plan than the heavy industries producing
capital goods. But in 1972, Soviet authorities had to
acknowledge serious plan failures. The country's gross
national product (GNP) rose only by 2%, the lowest
rate of increase since 1963 and only one-third of the
planned increment of 5.9%. This was due in large part
J
The current Soviet leadership seems aware of the
risk of widespread alienation of the work force for lack
of incentives, and clearly has pledged itself to finding
ways of satisfying consumer needs. At the same time,
however, the Kremlin has displayed no eagerness to
alter its costly weapons development priorities and
continues to be unwilling to make sacrifices in other
economic sectors that traditionally have received most
of its attention. Nor has it shown a readiness to meet
the malaise in the consumer sector with bold or im-
aginative reforms. Instead, the leadership response
seems to be one of muddling through with stop-gap
efforts, and the Soviet economy, while demonstrably
able to provide plenty of guns and an adequate ration
of goulash, is still unable to provide the quantity and
quality of goods and services the Soviet people desire.
Before the beginning of the 20th century, the coun- '
try's industrial development was almost entirely con-
centrated in the European heartland. Raw materials
were transported to industrial sites adjacent to the
large coal deposits of the Moscow River Basin in
Russia and of the Donets River Basin in the Ukraine.
The major mineral base was the Ural Mountain
region, which itself developed as a major industrial i 1
area. As coal and mineral deposits in western Siberia ~,/
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and Kazakhstan were developed, industry expanded
eastward. Recent industrial development in the
eastern regions of the country has been significant, es-
pecially in western Siberia and Central~Asia, but it still
does not approach the level of development of the in-
dustrial centers of the western part of the country,
where skilled labor resources, industrial plants, and
transportation networks are well established.
Outside these established centers, the rest of the
U.S.S. R.-the North, large parts of Siberia, the Far
East, Kazakhstan, and other locations in Central
Asia-is engaged in exploring, building, and tying
together.,Efforts are being made to extend transporta-
tion lines, develop power resources, expand raw
material production, build factories, and encourage
settlement in these areas.
At the same time the older industrial regions and
their cities are plagued by congestion, inadequate
housing, obsolescence, pollution, power shortages and
overtaxed supply systems. The government's efforts to
encourage the expansion of industry and population
in the east, which could solve some of these problems,
have had only minimal impact. The government is
also making slow progress in dispersing industry from
congested centers to small and medium-sized satellite
towns to create new regional industrial and popula-
tion agglomerations.
To redress some of the major imbalances of resource
and industry location, the Kremlin is promoting some
grandiose schemes. Among these are efforts to bolster
.the European industrial regions by importing electric
power from western Siberia and Kazakhstan and by
diverting north-flowing river waters southward to, the
industrialized Volga region and the Caspian Sea, and
also to the steppes and semideserts of Kazakhstan.
The Soviet Union has probably the largest raw
material base of any country in the world, and a high
degree of self-sufficiency in fuels and other energy
resources. It is especially rich in metallic minerals,
such as iron, manganese, copper, zinc, and lead, and
in the energy fuels-oil, gas, and coal. It is impossible
even to estimate accurately the extent of the mineral,
timber, waterpower, and other resources still un-
developed in the very sparsely settled eastern half of
the country. But the effective exploitation and
development of these potentially enormous supplies of
natural resources are seriously hindered by the ex-
tremely difficult climatic and terrain conditions and
the great remoteness of most of these resources from es-
tablished industries, transportation routes, economical
sources of power, and areas of consumption.
Soviet industrial development since World War II
has been rapid, although the rate of growth has
declined from a peak during the early 1950's, when
growth through reconstruction and through more in-
tense use of existing capacity was relatively easy. As
the economy has expanded, problems of planning
have become more complex, and it has not been possi-
ble to sustain the rapid growth of earlier years. By the
early 1970's, the industrial sector accounted for slight-
ly over one-third of the country's GNP. But from 1971
through 1973, industry's rate of growth averaged less
than 6% per year, rather than the rate of 8% planned
for the 1971-75 period.
The Soviet GNP was an estimated $658 billion in
1973, second only to that of the United States ($1,223
billion in 1973). The Soviet economy as a whole grew
at about 5% annually during the preceding 10-year
period, compared with 4% for the United States, but
well behind the 10%-11% growth rate recorded by
Japan. The Soviet Union's performance was uneven,
with the weather and other variables that affect
agriculture determining the overall economic results in
any given year to a degree not found in other in-
dustrialized countries. Moreover, annual increments
in output in the early 1970's have fallen off substan-
tially from those registered in the 1960's.
The Soviet population of 251.2 million at the end of
1973 gave the country a per capita GNP of about
$2,619 or 45% of the $5,785 of goods and services pro-
duced per capita in the United States. The Soviet out-
put level was also surpassed, on a per capita basis, by
12 West European countries and Japan. Of this rela-
tively modest per capita product, about 60% consists
of consumption, as opposed to investment and defense;
as a result, the average per capita expenditure on all
consumer goods and services in the U.S.S.R. is only
slightly over one-third that in the United States. In re-
cent years personal savings have increased steadily to
record levels because consumer goods are not yet
available in the quantities and qualities desired by
Soviet consumers.
Financing economic development in the Soviet
Union is essentially a function of state financial in-
stitutions, which channel resources in accordance with
comprehensive economic plans. Banks exert a con-
trolling influence over enterprise operations by han-
dling virtually all enterprise financial transactions,
allocating most capital investment funds, and
providing short-term credit for working capital.
Financing of major economic programs is provided for
in the state budget, which relies on turnover taxes and
enterprise profits as major sources of revenue. The
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largest expenditure item is generally that covering
economic development, followed closely by the fund-
ing of cultural and social programs. Overt expendi-
tures on defense have been stable at 17.9 billion
rubles in the budgets of 1970 through 1973, equal to
roughly 10% of total budgeted expenditures. These
sums, however, significantly understate the defense
burden because they exclude some expenditures on
nuclear weapons, research and development on ad-
vanced weapons systems, and military elements of the
space program.
Agriculture is the Achilles' heel of the Soviet
economy. Growing seasons are short and water
supplies are inadequate and undependable. Although
the country is larger in land area than any other in the
world, the amount of arable land in the Soviet Union
is only slightly greater than that of the United States,
and potential cropping areas are poorly situated for
high yields. Commercial farming is considered virtu-
ally impossible in 90% of the country, with some two-
thirds of the land area rendered almost completely
useless for agriculture by low temperatures alone.
The most favorable agricultural area lies west of the
Ural Mountains, where rainfall and temperatures are
influenced by air currents from the Atlantic Ocean.
The remainder of the country is covered by forests,
tundra, deserts, marshes, and mountains, and may
never be developed agriculturally. Beyond the effects
of the environment, the agricultural sector is also
adversely affected by poor planning, centralized con-
trol, insufficient equipment, and inadequate incen-
tives to producers. Soviet agriculture is organized in
collective and state farms, with small plots accounting
for about 4% of the total arable area allocated to in-
dividual farmers. These plots account for a large pro-
portion of the vegetables, dairy products, and livestock
produced in the country.
The imbalance within Soviet industry in favor of
the producer goods sector and the urge to meet quan-
titative output goals have resulted in the production
of excessive amounts of simple, heavy, general-purpose
equipment at the expense of the sophisticated,
specialized equipment required by~technologically ad-
vanced industries. On the other hand, Soviet industry
has demonstrated a high degree of sophistication in
the production of modern weapons and carriers for the
country's military forces and in the production of the
hardware and precision instruments essential to the
country's space exploration program.
Machine-building is the largest industry in the
U.S.S.R., but it remains inferior to comparable .in-
dustries in developed Western countries in terms of
technology, degree of automation, and quality of out-
put. Consequently, the Soviets are interested in ob-
taining through imports many items of high quality,
often embodying the most modern Western
technology. Soviet accomplishments in the production
of sophisticated defense and space equipment,
however, demonstrate a high degree of competence in
research and development, which could be channeled
into civilian use in a different system reflecting
radically changed priorities.
Raw and intermediate materials for the machine-
building industry are overwhelmingly of domestic
origin. Production of metals has been consistently
emphasized, and by 1973 the production of crude
steel soared to 131.5 million tons. World leadership
or near-leadership has been achieved in the produc-
tion of many nonferrous metals and minerals, and
ferro-alloying materials. As with the country's exten-
sive deposits. of fossil fuels and hydroelectric power
resources, most reserves of industrial raw materials are
located east of the Urals in Siberia and the Soviet Far
East. The country also produces significant quantities
of rare and precious metals. It ranks second as a world
producer of gold, and the development of uranium
production has been intensively. pursued.
Soviet foreign trade is conducted as a state monop-
oly by specialized foreign trade corporations. The
overall volume of trade is relatively small as the
U.S.S.R. is self-sufficient in most industrial raw
materials and finished goods, and has followed a
policy of development that relies primarily on the
country's domestic resources. Trade is conducted ac-
cording to centralized planning by which imports of
goods required to meet domestic production goals are
specified, and exports are undertaken essentially as a
means of paying for these imports and for past credits.
Changes in the planning are occasionally required to
compensate for underfulfillment of production
goals, as in 1972, when the failure in agriculture re-
quired huge unanticipated imports of grain. Foreign
trade is conducted largely with other Communist
countries, with imports and exports more or less
balanced annually, through bilateral agreements. In
trade with the West, however, planned Soviet imports,
heavily weighted with sophisticated machinery and
equipment and modern technology, almost always ex-
ceed exports. The U.S.S.R. has made increased use of
Western credits to finance the resulting deficits. It
now is also selling gold to help offset the deficits, and
is certain to continue its search for Western, especially
American, technology.
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,. ~s , sa~,arsef~ diPElt~+ittlb C~1trs~tn
. .en t: hsi ~: t, fl0gp'iNN'4l C6~~~ ~~tiP1,.
Passersby in Moscow look at poster
attacking the works of dissident author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was banished
from the Soviet Union on 12 February 1974.
The book shown in the poster is titled
"Creations of Solzhenitsyn"; the caption
of "anti-Communist slander," and
the group of musicians is labeled
"the Anti-Soviet Orchestra."
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Absolute power arbitrarily exercised is common
throughout Russia's long history. To understand the
Soviet Union it is necessary to recognize that, Marx-
ist-Leninist ideology notwithstanding, the Soviet state
owes much to its Russian heritage. In many respects
the Soviet system represents a continuation, in new
trappings and with different jargon, of practices and
organizational patterns rooted deeply in the Russian
past. 1'he domination of the country by the ruthlessly
despc)tic Tartars for two and a half centuries during
the Middle Ages effectively prevented whatever native
movement there might otherwise have been toward
individual liberty and self-government and cut Russia
off from any liberating influences from the West. The
tsars who replaced the Tartars were entrenched in
their own autocratic rule over Imperial Russia 200
years before the time of the American Revolution.
Historically, the vast majority of the Russian people
were inclined toward blind submission to a central
authority that they regarded as sacrosanct. There was
an official religion, the highly dogmatic Russian
Orthodox faith, which gave autocracy its legitimacy
and inculcated in the masses the virtue of conformity
and the sacred obligation to obey the central author-
ity. The tsar's power was limited only in the way that
all autocratic power is limited-he was dependent
upon subordinates to carry out his will. The broad
scope of state power naturally gave rise to a vast
bureaucracy. There was an elaborate system of cen-
sorship and police controls, and no area of life was
secure against tsarist intervention. The state controlled
the movement of its people through such devices as
police registration papers and internal passports.
Indeed, Russians have always lived in danger of ar-
bitrary arrest and imprisonment, and the freedoms of
speech and press as well as other basic liberties have
either been absent or at best only feebly exercised.
In addition to its control of the political and even
the spiritual life of the nation, the state has historically
~ been the principal initiator of economic activity.
In' Old Russia the only capitalism that developed
was essentially state capitalism. In agriculture,
state farms occupied great areas of land and com-
manded the involuntary services of many individuals,
including state-owned peasants. Peasant life was
traditionally organized in communes. The state
managed various industries, and even those small
areas of the economy left to private operation were ex-
pected to gear their activities to the military and
economic needs of the state. Old Russia grew at the
expense of its subjects, establishing a rigid pattern of
absolutism upon which the Communists could
build-and did.
Paradoxically, the Russian tradition of political
absolutism is accompanied and opposed by a noble
humanitarian tradition, sparked and kept alive largely
by a succession of writers whose libertarian
voices-from the time of poet Alexander Pushkin to
the present period-have not been stilled despite the
efforts of tsarist and then Soviet secret police. Starin
was not long in his grave before Boris Pasternak at-
tracted world attention with a moral force reminiscent
of Tolstoy. Then from a Stalinist labor camp came the
voice of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who carried a
message from his prison hell as had Dostoyevsky a
century before. And others warned that the ghost of
Stalin could yet haunt the land.
The small group of dissident writers who exist to-
day have been joined by some prominent Soviet scien-
tists in a loose collection of critics of the Kremlin.
These critics operate partly underground and partly in
the spotlight of international publicity. At the center
of this harassed and unorganized group, which its
members sometimes call the "Democratic
Movement," is physicist Andrei Sakharov, a brilliant
scientist often referred to as the father of the Soviet
H-bomb. He first came into public view in 1968 with
the publication, abroad, of his "Manifesto," a call for
democratization of Soviet society and for
Soviet-American collaboration to combat global
problems of war, overpopulation, hunger, and disease.
Sakharov issued a second "Manifesto" in 1970 as a
blueprint for gradually changing the Soviet Union
from a Communist dictatorship to an electoral
democracy. He formed a small public committee on
human rights, and won the general support of the im-
pressive circle of intellectuals who circulate their views
in samizdat-photocopied or mimeographed
manuscripts passed from hand to hand but which
never have been formally published inside the
U.S.S.R. They include such works as Solzhenitsyn's
explosive "Gulag Archipelago," an expose of the
Soviet secret police and prison camp apparatus,
published in the West at the end of 1973.
Widespread publicity in the West for these intellec-
tual dissidents and for the Soviet Union's Jewish
minority often tends to exaggerate both the nature
and extent of the discontent they express. The Soviets
do not appear to have singled out the Jews for special
persecution; instead the Kremlin upholds the Marxist
tenet of disapproval for all religions, and with varying
degrees of subtlety makes it difficult for any faith to
flourish in the Soviet state. But a number of Soviet
Jews, emboldened by Israel's stunning defeat of Arab
forces in the 6-day war of 1967, began agitating for
freedom to leave the Soviet Union and migrate to
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i
Israel. They have' since attracted considerable atten-
tion abroad by making common cause with the in-
tellectual dissidents and by capitalizing on the senti-
ment (and political weight) of sympathizers in the
United States. But they lack the widespread support in
the Soviet Union that they enjoy in the West. Dealing
with the Jewish minority-albeit an unsettling
problem for Moscow-is more a foreign policy com-
plication than a threat to internal security. In its
dealings with the West, of course, the Soviets are at
pains to maintain that such problems are strictly inter-
nal matters that should be kept out of the inter-
national arena. Nevertheless, Moscow has grudgingly
allowed some emigration to Israel and has been flexi-
ble in responding to pressures from the West on this
issue and in defense of dissident writers. With growing
attention from the Western press centering on
Solzhenitsyn early this year, the Kremlin exiled him as
the best means of limiting damage and getting rid of
the policy problem of coping with outspoken criticism
and defiant defense of his rights.
Neither the nature of present-day intellectual dis-
sent nor the regime's response is entirely new. Tsar
Nicholas I, for example, had 19th century Russian
philosopher Peter Chaadayev declared insane and
confined to his home because of his "radical" political
opinions. Nevertheless, there are important ways in
which the kind of dissent being heard in the Soviet
Union is a new phenomenon in its character and im-
plications. For one thing, the ranks of the present-day
dissidents are drawn in significant numbers from the
scientific and technological community on which the
Soviet Union is dependent for its continued com-
petitive position as a military and industrial power.
For another, these critics are not all bent on the
destruction of the Soviet system. No doubt some of
them despair-as does dissident Russian historian An-
drei Amalrik, in his essay, "Will the U.S.S.R. Survive
Until 1984?"-of the present system's ability to
reform itself. In general, however, the critics believe
that it can be changed to correct its deficiencies. Their
objective is for the regime to eliminate the discrepan-
cies between theory and practice, to reduce the gulf
between the ideals and realities of Soviet life. They are
not directly trying to wrest political control from the
party, but would have it permit the development of a
more diverse, pluralistic society that would allow more
people the means for an independent life.
From within the U.S.S.R., Amalrik is one critic who
has expressed doubt about the staying power of the
Soviet system. At some future date-he picked 1984
for symbolic reasons-he sees the system being torn
apart by the trauma of a devastating war with China,
from which only a truncated Soviet state survives. His
vision is too apocalyptic to win many supporters, and
he was condemned to a prison camp for promulgating
it. The scientist Sakharov is perhaps more represent-
ative of the "democrats" in his assertion that the
country must change and that the party must set the
process in motion. Only if the party relaxes its grip and
abandons gray conformity, he argues, can it rein-
vigorate Soviet intellectual, artistic, and scientific life;
if it does not, the country cannot hope to stay abreast,
let alone gain, an advantage, in international competi-
tion.
Thus, central to their criticism is the Communist
Party's virtual monopoly of power and its influence on
almost every aspect of life in the Soviet Union. The
dissidents also object to the very nature of the party
and question the ideological base by which it
rationalizes its rule. They consider parasitic the ruling
Communist bureaucracy, contending that its
members come into their privileged positions neither
by merit nor any other rational criterion of advance-
ment. Instead, they see the party advancing its own.
In the critics' eyes, it exploits society in its own interest
and is dedicated above all not to the welfare of the
people nor to intellectual growth nor even to
economic development, but to the consolidation and
expansion of its own power.
Finally, critics question the viability and relevance
to an increasingly complex and industrialized society
of a dictatorial party that dominates and interferes in
virtually everything in the name of Marxist-Leninist
ideology. Nor is it only some intellectuals who are dis-
illusioned. Large segments of the Soviet population
display no enthusiasm for the dogmatic materialism of
Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Young people are bored
by it. They are more interested in those phenomena of
Western youth which have been imported across their
frontiers-the dress, the talk, the dances, the music
and, to a small but increasing extent, the drug culture.
They are restless and alienated.
The party is concerned about this growing
ideological void, but has had little success in trying to
fill it. One upshot has been to give grudging approval
to an increasingly popular revival of interest in the
Russian past. In recent years this interest has
developed into a kind of movement encompassing a
variety of scholarly, popular, and faddish efforts to
rediscover the past and elucidate the essence of the
"Russian soul." It has become a favorite pastime to
search for icons and other examples of folk art and
handicraft. Organizations have been formed to
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preserve historical and cultural monuments, and ex-
peditions scour the Russian countryside for old books
and manuscripts.
1'he historical movement, if indeed that is what this
line of popular thinking can be called, has resulted in
a new Russian chauvinism. It is not revolutionary but
conservative, seeking to preserve old values and restore
old traditions. It is espoused largely, but not exclusive-
ly, by youth, and participation is centered in the
relatively well educated urban population. It is helped
along by a growing disenchantment with the
dehumanizing effects of industrialization, and the
pollution and exploitation of irreplaceable resources
that it brings. Poets, who have folk-hero popularity in
tl~e U.S.S.R., speak of the contrast between asphalt
and birch trees, clearly preferring the latter, and
despair of the pollution of Lake Baykal and the
destruction of ancient churches, as well as other ex-
amples of historical architecture, to make way for
government hotels and housing projects. All of this has
spawned a Soviet parallel to the ecology movement in
Guitars, rather than balalaikas,
are "in"with Soviet youth like
these at Silver Pine Forest Beach
on the Moscow River.
the United States-similar in sentiment, and in-
creasingly in organization and impact on government
policy.
The regime tries to construe these sentiments as
patriotic in motivation and generally constructive in
nature, and evidently is able to accept them as such.
This acceptance may be based on the assumption that
such sentiments are better than no sentiment at all.
But even if these interests should grow with the party's
blessing, it is doubtful that they would breathe new
life into the system or inspire devotion to its
ideological and organizational underpinnings. If
anything, such sentiments represent a kind of escape
from general alienation or an outlet for feelings of dis-
content. Although they are not as pointed, articulate,
or dramatic as the views the dissidents put forward,
they also constitute a questioning of the relevance of
the Soviet system in its present mold.
There are outside observers who believe that the
Soviet system is not inert, and that the future holds the
prospect of a more pluralistic, dynamic society with a
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broadened decisionmaking base. Some expect the ad-
vance of technology to help bring that about by mak-
ing it necessary for an increasing number of functional
specialists and innovators to come into positions of
leadership and influence. Others see a new kind of
politics emerging, a participatory bureaucracy with
information, advice, recommendations, complaints,
etc., flowing not only from the top down, but upward
as well. Still other observers cite forces at work in
Soviet society that tend to undermine the
authoritarian features of the system; one such force is
the rising educational level of the party leadership.
Some say the fact that many of the system's critics
come from the same stratum of Soviet society as the
ruling elite will tend to make it less likely that
criticism will be ruthlessly suppressed.
Dissent in the Soviet context can be considered a
natural step in an inevitable chain of events. On the
one hand is contemporary Soviet society, now at a
rather high level of development, modernizing,
maturing, and growing more complex and diversified.
On the other hand is the essentially defensive role of
the highly centralized party bureaucracy, which
developed primarily as a device for control and only
secondarily as an instrument for the management of
modernization. The Soviet formula fit the society into
which it was introduced several decades ago, but there
is a real question now whether control has since
become the end rather than the means. The crux of
the issue is change-the ability of the Soviet system to
respond and adapt.
Perhaps if years continue to pass with no essential
change in the atmosphere inside the Soviet Union, in-
creasingly numerous elements of that vast country will
accumulate just causes for grievance and will generate
mounting pressures for change. Sometime in the
future the moment may arrive when the sterile
bureaucracy of the gray Soviet state will no longer be
able to cope with the disparate contentions of dis-
satisfied intellectuals, disaffected youth, discontented
consumers, disillusioned workers, and a multi-
national, multisocial populace. The collapse of the
Soviet system, barring the massive trauma of a
protracted war such as Amalrik suggests, seems as un-
likely in the foreseeable future, however, as does the
emergence of an open, democratic society along U.S.
or West European fines.
The best hope for change in the U.S.S.R. may be the
younger members of the Soviet intelligentsia, some of
whom feel that it is not the system as such which is un-
/ \ responsive, but its present aged and rigid leadership.
According to this view, those who joined the party
after Stalin's death cannot be as authoritarian in
outlook as the present generation of leaders who rose
to prominence during the purges of the 1930's.
Although now obliged to mimic the slogans of their
superiors, today's younger party leaders, untainted by
Stalinism, are expected by many to be much more
receptive to new ideas and open to change after taking
over the reins later in this decade and in the 1980's.
Although that kind of optimism may not be entirely
unfounded, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
continues to promote through its narrow ranks only
those whose attitudes it considers acceptable. It has
governed in a relatively stable style, and seems likely
to continue doing so. It is also significant in this
respect to note that the U.S.S.R. is, after all, a
remarkably stable society. During an era when many
would-be revolutions have turned out to be rather
ephemeral, the Soviet state and party have survived a
bloody civil war, a coercive transformation of the
countryside costing millions of lives, Stalin's terrorism,
and the devastation and loss of additional millions of
lives during World War II. Few governmental systems
can boast such staying power.
In addition, the average party functionary has a
real stake in preserving the Soviet system. The vast
party apparatus lives by the status quo, and within it
there is intense sentiment for holding on to what one
has, to resisting change because it may mean a loss of
status, privilege, or perquisites. Moreover, the prevail-
ing political environment links the governing elite and
the masses more closely together than it links the
critics to either. The pattern of rule that developed un-
der Stalin was in accord with the legacy of Tsarist
Russia and the current situation continues to fit this
pattern. The Soviet masses even today do not on the
whole demand freedom and representative in-
stitutions, which to them remain abstract and un-
familiar concepts. Their day-to-day demands for food,
housing, and consumer goods are modest and are be-
ing met, even though slowly and with occasional set-
backs. By their own standards, which of course are the
only ones that really matter, they have never had it so
good. As for the critics whose names are now widely
known in the West, many Soviet citizens have never
heard of them. The reaction of those who have general-
ly ranges from incomprehension to hostility. Critics
and the dissent they express may be a natural
phenomenon of Soviet society at this stage of its
development, but equally natural is the failure of the
critics to strike a responsive chord among the masses,
whose conservative mentality is similar in many im-
portant ways to that of the party functionaries who
govern in their name.
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~u~o~c~o~ ~~~ ~~~ ~o~'
For some years following the ouster of Nikita
Khrushchev in October 1964, Soviet foreign policy
was marked by uncertainty, defensiveness, and consid-
erable immobility. Pressing internal problems-espe-
cially economic concerns-took precedence for Mos-
cow's new decisionmakers. Then too, such interna-
tional developments as the 1967 Middle East war,
the Czechoslovak crisis, and the steady increase in
Sino-Soviet tensions kept the Kremlin off balance and
served to delay agreement on a broad and coherent
new foreign policy line. Finally, at least at the begin-
ning of their tenure, the new leaders faced U.S. stra-
tegic power markedly superior to their own.
By the end of the 1960's, however, the Soviets had
acquired confidence in their capacity to engage their
foreign adversaries on favorable terms, and in the
prospects for increasing their international influence,
to adopt a more assertive and innovative approach to
fcireign affairs. Attainment of rough parity with the
United States in strategic weapons was the key con-
sideration underlying this change of mood in the
Kremlin, but there were other important contributing
factors as well. For example, Moscow was encouraged
by the internal and international difficulties then be-
ing encountered by the United States over Vietnam
and by the cracks that had appeared in the NATO
alliance. Despite the storm of protest it had evoked,
the invasion of Czechoslovakia (and its subsequent
justification on the basis of the Brezhnev Doctrine of
Soviet "duty" to "protect socialist gains'') strength-
ened the U.S.S.R.'s position in Eastern Europe without
serious long-term damage to Soviet interests elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin had succeeded in substan-
tially improving its military and political position
vis-a-vis Peking. The simmering crisis in the Middle
East, while still a cause for concern, had yielded some
notable gains for the Soviets in that area. On the home
front, the economy had picked up and was performing
at a pace sufficient to support the large military es-
tablishment, foreign aid programs, and prestige-
building space spectaculars needed to achieve both
the appearance and substance of genuine superpower
status.
The emergence of Leonid Brezhnev as the leading
figure in the Politburo also had a good deal to do with
the changes that became noticeable in the Kremlin's
international behavior during 1969. While high-level
decisionmaking remained a collective process,
Brezhnev's increasing influence strengthened those in
the leadership who calculated that the Soviet Union's
long-term interests could best be served by a marked
reduction in East-West tensions. This course, in-
volving diplomatic overtures from the United States
and from West Germany, was a bold one for the
Soviet Union to set, for it risked generating new fer-
ment in Eastern Europe and further undermining the
U.S.S.R.'s revolutionary credentials throughout the
world. It also left its advocates vulnerable to charges
of ideological deviation and of failure to take full ad-
vantage of their country's growing power.
Of necessity, then, Brezhnev's "peace offensive"
.vas from the outset a complex affair-a changing
blend of accommodation and old-fashioned power
politics, of cold pragmatism and ideological revival,
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and of confidence and caution. For example, the early
moves which helped bring about such significant
developments as the Moscow-Bonn Treaty, the Berlin
accords, the strategic arms limitations talks (SALT)
and agreements, the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, and the Mutual Balanced
Force Reduction talks were accompanied by further
efforts to strengthen Soviet hegemony in Eastern
Europe, an ideological crackdown at home, an in-
crease in the delivery of weapons and other forms of
assistance to the Arabs and North Vietnamese, and the
dispatch of the first Soviet naval squadron to visit
Cuba since the missile crisis of 1962. Similarly,
Moscow's self-serving but outwardly peaceful
proposal for the establishment of a collective security
arrangement in Asia was launched against a
background of unabashed sabre rattling designed to
intimidate the Chinese and bring them to the
negotiating table. Moreover, the initiatives were ac-
companied by the emergence of a broad range of new
Soviet strategic weapons programs.
While at first overshadowed by other moves in
Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, efforts to improve
bilateral relations with the United States gradually
emerged as the key element in Moscow's new global
strategy. Important Soviet objectives in reaching a
limited accommodation with the United States have
included reducing the development of U.S. strategic
weapons programs rivalled by its own, reducing the
chance that Russia and the United States might be
drawn into war as the result of regional conflicts in-
volving their client states, and checking the move-
ment of China and the United States toward rap-
prochement. Also, the Soviets have tended to view
some measure of cooperation with the United States as
conducive to the process of negotiation in Europe,
from which they hope to achieve stabilization of their
sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, the gains in
trade and technology needed to push them into the
front ranks of the advanced industrial states, and,
eventually, greater influence in Western Europe.
The Soviets were, of course, correct in concluding
that the West vas also ready for detente. All told; the
easing of East-West tensions in Europe and the lower
temperature and broader scope of Soviet-American
relations since 1968 have been rather dramatic
developments. And there is no question but that
Moscow's shift in favor of detentist policies has indeed
yielded it some tangible benefits. The Soviets' sym-
pathetic response to West German Chancellor
Brandt's conciliatory Ostpolitik-and their
willingness to apply pressure to bring East Germany
along-has paid off in widespread de jure recognition
for their key client state and ally. Similarly, Soviet
overtures to the West, including persistent efforts to
organize a broad European security conference, have
nurtured differences within NATO and have moved
the Soviets close to their objective of securing formal
Western acceptance of the political and territorial
status quo in Central and Eastern Europe. At the same
time, the summit meetings of 1972 and 1973, several
sizable trade agreements, and numerous major end
minor diplomatic accords which have highlighted the
evolution of U.S.-Soviet relations in recent years have
brought Moscow increased international prestige,
recognition as the military equal of the United States,
and the possibility of large-scale Western economic
cooperation and assistance.
But detente has brought the U.S.S.R. certain
problems as well. Revolutionary rhetoric about con-
tinuing and intensifying the ideological struggle
between communism and capitalism notwithstand-
ing, the Brezhnev regime's growing stake in its policy
of detente with the West has affected its behavior and
complicated its position in many parts of the world.
In Eastern Europe-an area of vital national con-
cern to the Soviet Union-Moscow is unhappy about
Romania's wayward (and Western-applauded) course
in foreign policy and is worried lest the dynamics of
detente incline others toward independent action.
Although the Soviets probably could not resort to
harsh corrective measures without compromising their
own overtures to the West, if it came to a choice
between erosion of their position in Eastern Europe
and detente in Europe, they would undoubtedly
choose to let detente suffer.
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The issue is unlikely to be joined in the near future,
however, for Moscow has been demonstrating in-
creased deftness in dealing with its problems in the
area. This has been evident in its flexible response, for
instance, to leadership shuffles in Poland, Hungarian
political and economic reforms, and Yugoslavia's con-
tinued apostasy. To be. sure, Romanian Prime
Minister Ceausescu's maverick behavior in the inter-
national arena (particularly his flirtation with China)
has from time to time brought threats of dire retribu-
tion down upon his head. But most East European
Communist parties now enjoy substantial
organizational independence and-within the
"socialist limits" so dramatically reasserted by the in-
vasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968-con-
siderable freedom to formulate domestic policies. For
the time being at least, the Soviets seem to be
reasonably comfortable with a new generation of East
European leaders who, while inclined to accord first
loyalty to their own countries or their own brand of
communism, are still generally willing to defer to
Soviet sensitivities.
Another essential facet of Soviet foreign policy
which has both affected and been affected by move-
ment toward East-West detente is the problem of
China. Indeed, a major reason for the Russians' deci-
sion to seek a marked improvement in their relations
evith the United States was their anxiety about the
growing threat they perceived from Peking. Moscow's
fears have been manifested most dramatically in the
massive buildup of Soviet forces along the forbidding
frontier with China, but are equally evident in the
Kremlin's uneasiness about the possibility that
a Sino-American alliance against Moscow might
materialize. Yet the Kremlin's current emphasis on
negotiated settlement of disputes and the unique
nature of the triangular relationship which has
developed between the Soviet Union, the United
States, and China have affected Soviet behavior in
Asia and have made it harder for the Soviets to
strengthen their position in some of the smaller coun-
tries-both Communist and non-Communist-lying
on or near China's borders.
If, for example, the Kremlin ever seriously con-
sidered amilitary solution to the Sino-Soviet conflict,
the idea must now appear even less attractive than it
did originally. And such bows to U.S. sensitivities as
Moscow's relatively balanced pronouncements on the
need to halt cease-fire violations in South Vietnam
have done nothing to help the Soviets in their com-
petition with China for influence in North Vietnam
and North Korea. At the same time, the overall aura
of detente (including Peking's more friendly posture)
has prompted many non-Communist Asian nations to
seek a more even balance in their relations with the
United States, China, and the U.S.S.R. and to exhibit
a notable lack of enthusiasm for the Asian collective
security system proposed by the Soviets in 1969. Even
outside Asia-in Warsaw Pact councils and broader
Communist forums-Moscow seems to have more
and more difficulty lining up support for political,
economic, and ideological attacks on Peking.
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In keeping with their increased confidence and
their growing capability to project their power into
distant areas, the Soviets have met the ever more com-
plex challenges to their position in Asia and elsewhere
in the Third World with a new activism in bilateral
diplomacy and a new willingness to accept deeper in-
volvement in regional affairs. The treaties of
friendship they signed with Egypt, India, and Iraq
anti the speed with which they moved to establish
themselves in Bangladesh in the wake of the In-
do-Pakistani war are cases in point. But while more
energetic and no less opportunistic than in the past,
the Kremlin's approach to the Third World as a whole
is now somewhat more sober and more regionally
differentiated. Retention, consolidation, and if possi-
ble, expansion of the U.S.S.R.'s position in the Middle
East and South Asia are regarded as priority objec-
tives. On the other hand, sub-Saharan Africa and
Latin America (except Cuba, of course) are considered
to be areas of peripheral interest where political
and economic risk should be held to a minimum.
So far the Brezhnev regime seems undeterred by the
difficulties it has encountered in pursuing its new
global strategy. There are sensitive arenas of potential
Soviet-U.S. conflict, such as the Middle East, in
which events can put the new strategy to the test. But
in 1973 the Soviet-American detente survived and
helped curtail another round of war between the
Arabs and Israel, a burst of hostilities from which
Moscow seemed to gain more than it lost. The Soviets
acquiesced in helping transform the combat begun by
their Arab clients into an uneasy truce-one which
saw Moscow's Middle East ties strengthened and
America's energy crisis sharpened.
The long-term benefits of detente still are more
potential than real for the Soviets, but the Kremlin has
a major stake in maintaining its American connection
and an accommodation with the West. The detente
that tends to be looked on in the West and elsewhere
as an end in itself, as a goal worth achieving for its
own sake, represents to Moscow the means for realiz-
ing its hopes to contain China, disrupt the Western
military alliance, and close the East-West
technological gap. With these objectives in mind,
Moscow is now more willing to negotiate with
Washington and other Western capitals on the basis of
traditional concepts of national interest It is more
able to do so, too; the Soviets' more sophisticated ap-
proach to foreign relations reflects the new confidence
born of their sense of political and military parity with
the United States. Soviet readiness to take this tack
also is related to the enduring quarrel with China,
which has confronted the Soviet Union with a new
and major enemy, and demonstrated to the Kremlin
that a shared ideology is an insufficient basis for a
lasting alliance.
In foreign policy goals as in so much of Soviet socie-
ty, there is continuity as well as change. There is
evidence that the Kremlin intends detente to be a
long-term feature of Soviet foreign policy. One can ex-
pect the Kremlin to keep intact, however, the en-
during cornerstones of that policy, which include
maximizing Soviet power and influence in relation to
its rivals, maintaining a buffer zone of dependent Com-
munist states in Eastern Europe, and shielding its own
people from Western individualist thought and
culture. Whether and to what extent detente con-
tinues to be a determining factor in Soviet foreign
policy decisions depends, of course, on the interaction
of many variables. Crucial among these will be the
U.S.S.R.'s internal evolution, as well as Moscow's ap-
praisal of Washington's intentions and its assessment
of developments in the triangular relationship in-
volving the United States, China, and itself.
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Chronology
Territory of present day European Russia is settled by
Eastern Slavs.
Prosperous mercantile state with Khazar hegemony over
Slavs is established between lower Volga and Dnepr rivers.
Nicholas I institutes reactionary regime based on autocracy
and Russification, inaugurating systerr~atic use of secret
police against the people.
Alexander Herzen's revolutionary thought in the weekly
Kolokol (The Bell) is published abroad with profound
impact on Russian intellectuals.
Vikings under Rurik use river routes to penetrate Russia;
Kiyev becomes center of their dominion.
990
Christianity is introduced by Vladimir the Saint.
1237-1240
European Russia is conquered by the Mongol Golden Horde,
beginning two centuries of Tatar rule.
Prince Dmitry of Muscovy inflicts first defeat nn Tatars in
Battle of I{ulikovo Field, laying basis for rise of Muscovy in
15th century.
Ivan the Terrible reigns, proclaiming self tsar of the "third
Rome," Muscovy, and beginning settlement east of Urals.
1637
Russian pioneers reach Pacific coast of Siberia.
1689-1725
Peter the Great reigns, embarking on far-reaching reforms to
"Westernize" Russia and founding Saint Petersburg (now
Leningrad).
Catherine the Great continues "Westernization" of Russia,
partitions Poland to increase European Russian territory,
inaugurates Russian drive for warm-water ports by acquiring
Crimea.
Alexander I reigns, withstanding Napoleonic invasion which
reaches Moscow and in the wake of which the Russian army
penetrates France.
Revolt of Decembrists, a small group of noblemen favoring
social reform, fails.
Serfs are emancipated and commune-type system of peasant
social organization is established.
First Russian revolutionary party, called Land and Liberty
(later People's Will), is formed by Populists.
Mounting revolutionary activity of Populists culminates in
assassination of Alexander II.
Alexander III initiates severe repressions of revolutionaries
and fosters pan-Slavism.
1895
March
First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor
Party (RSDLP), identified by Soviet Communist Party as
its first congress, is held in Minsk.
1903
August
Second Congress of the RSDLP is held in Brussels and
London, ending in split into Bolshevik and Menshevik
factions.
1905
October-December
1914
Auguat
1917
March
February Revolution results in abdication of tsar and
formation of Provisional Government.
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1939
March
becomes Premier. 18th Congress of All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
is held.
Bolsheviks seize power in October Revolution and Lenin
1918
March
Signing of Treaty of Brest Litovsk removes Russia from war.
Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor
Party renames itself the Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks).
Bolsheviks ultimately prevail over foreign intervention and
civil war.
September
Soviet troops occupy eastern Poland.
1921
August
1922
April
Stalin is elected General Secretary of the Communist Party
(Bolsheviks).
August
Stalin-Hitler pact is signed.
1940
March
August
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are incorporated into U.S.S.R.
1941
Founding congress of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics April
(U.S.S.R.) is held.
1924
January
1928
October
NEP is abandoned. First Five-Year Economic Plan (1929-33)
goes into effect.
1929
January
1930
January
1945
February
July-August
Truman, Attlee, and Stalin attend Potsdam Conference to
draft World War II peace settlements.
U.S.S.R. declares war on Japan.
1934
December
Zhdanov's "two camps" speech intensifies opposition to
West and leads to establishment of Cominform.
1945
March
Kirov, Stalin's viceroy in Leningrad, is assassinated; Stalin
starts "great purge" and resign of terror.
1936
December August
"Stalin Constitution," which with minor modifications is Soviet blockade of land access to Berlin by French, U.S., and
still in effect, is adopted. U.K. occupation forces becomes total.
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1949
January
Council for Economic Mutual Assistance (CEMA) is created
to promote intrabloc cooperation and to counteract Marshall
Plan.
1954
March
Central Committee approves increased grain production by
"opening up virgin lands." Committee for State Security
(KGB) is established.
February
Anti-Jewish campaign results in arrest and execution of
numerous authors.
May
Moscow agrees to lift Berlin blockade.
September
First nuclear explosion takes place in U.S.S.R.
October
Communist regime is recognized by U.S.S.R. as sole govern-
ment of China.
1950
February
1952
October
19th Party Congress (first since 1939) renames party "Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union" (CPSU), revises party
rules, and renames Politburo "Presidium."
1953
January
Soviet doctors, mostly Jewish, are charged with plot to kill
Soviet leaders on orders of Western intelligence.
Stalin dies; Malenkov is named chairman of Council of
Ministers and dropped from Party Secretariat, leaving
Khrushchev the senior secretary.
April
Doctors' Plot is reversed.
Juue
Police chief Beriya is arrested for plotting to seize power.
July
Korean armistice is signed.
August
First thermonuclear device is detonated in U.S.S.R.
September
Khrushchev is named First Secretary of CPSU.
December
Execution of Beriya and top associates is announced.
April-July
U.S.S.R. participates in Geneva Foreign Ministers Con-
ference on Korea and Indochina, which concludes agreements
on Vietnam and Laos.
1955
February
Bulganin succeeds Malenkov as Chairman of Council of
Ministers.
May
Warsaw Pact establishes joint command over most Soviet
bloc armed forces.
Austrian State Treaty is signed 15 May, ending Allied
occupation.
Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Mikoyan visit Belgrade to patch
up Yugoslav-Soviet feud.
July
Big Four Summit conference at Geneva attempts to facilitate
solution of East-West problems in Europe.
1956
February
20th Party Congress convenes. Khrushchev denounces Stalin
in secret speech.
April
Dissolution of Cominform is announced.
October
Khrushchev, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, and Molotov visit
Poland in effort to reverse Gomulka's liberalization measures;
Soviet leaders accept Gomulka measures upon being made
aware of their need to prevent revolt and when assured of
Poland's continued loyalty to L'.S.S.R.
October-November
Hungarian revolt is crushed by Soviet troops.
1957
February
Khrushchev's scheme for reorganization of industrial man-
agement is accepted by Party Central Committee.
Majority in Party Presidium votes to oust Khrushchev, who
turns the tables by appealing to Central Committee. So-
called antiparty group of Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov,
and Shepilov is then expelled from Party Presidium and
Central Committee.
Soviet Union launches first earth satellite.
Central Committee expels Marshal Zhukov from Party
Presidium and calls for tightening of party controls over
armed forces.
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1958
March
Khrushchev replaces Bulganin as Chairman of Council of
Ministers while remaining Party First Secretary.
September
Khrushchev proposes reform to improve Soviet educational
system by increasing vocational training.
Khrushchev demands termination of Western occupation
rights in West Berlin.
August
Berlin wall is built, stopping refugee flow from East Germany.
October
22d Party Congress adopts new party program to replace one
adopted in 1919 and revises party rules.
1962
March
U.S.S.R. participates in 18-nation disarmament talks which
open in Geneva.
1959
Jauuary
U.S.S.R. launches "cosmic rocket."
Jauuary-February
21st Congress of CPSU approves Seven-Year Plan and
attacks "antiparty" group.
September
Soviet moon rocket is successfully launched. Khrushchev
pays official visit to United States.
September-October
Khrushchev visits Mao Tse-tung in Peking during festivities
marking 10th anniversary of Chinese People's Republic.
1960
January
May
Khrushchev announces downing of U.S. U-2 plane. Big Four
Summit meeting on Germany, Berlin, and disarmament
canceled.
Sinu-Soviet dispute flares at Bucharest blocwide conference
and World Federation of Trade Unions General Council
session, Peking.
July
Soviet fighter shoots down U.S. RB-47 plane over inter-
national waters; surviving crew is imprisoned.
September-October
Khrushchev attends U.N. General Assembly in New York,
caters to African nations, and demands U.N. reorganization.
Moscow conference of Communist parties attempts to resolve
Sino-Soviet dispute.
1961
April
First manned space vehicle is orbited.
June
hrushchev meets in Vienna with President Kennedy on
East-West issues.
October
Soviet missiles in Cuba create crisis.
November
Party is reorganized into virtually separate organizations for
agricultural and industrial affairs.
1963
March
Government is reorganized; Supreme Council of National
Economy is formed.
U.S.S.R. and United States agree to establish direct teletype
communication link ("hot line") between Moscow and
Washington.
August
U.S.S.R. and United States agree to ban all nuclear testing
except underground explosions.
September
U.S.S.R. begins purchase of an ultimate 12.5 million tons of
wheat from abroad after disastrous year in grain and fodder
production.
Khrushchev launches major chemical industry program with
strong accent on chemical support for agriculture.
1964
April
U.S.S.R. announces agreement to reduce production of
fissionable materials for weapons.
Three-man vehicle carries pilot, engineer, and medical doctor
into space.
Khrushchev is ousted from party and government jobs,
being replaced as Party First Secretary by Brezhnev and as
Chairman of the Council of Ministers by Kosygin.
November
November 1962 party reorganization is reversed.
December
New U.S.S.R. regime postpones-until March 1965-meet-
ing of 26 Communist parties called for December by Khrush-
chev to prepare for convocation of world Communist meeting
on Sino-Soviet dispute.
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1965
February
Premier Kosygin visits Hanoi, Peking, and Pyongyang in
effort to heal disunity in Communist movement.
Nineteen Communist parties attending "consultative" meet-
ing disband without agreement on date for world meeting.
Brezhnev launches massive new program promising govern-
ment support to agriculture on a scale unprecedented in
Soviet history.
Soviet cosmonaut accomplishes first "walk in space."
September-October
Brezhnev presides over Moscow celebrations on 50th anni-
versary of Russian revolution.
1968
January
Leading members of intellectual community protest trials of
young dissidents for "anti-Soviet" activities.
February
Budapest consultative meeting of some 60 Communist
parties, without Far Eastern, Albanian, or Cuban repre-
sentation, endorses Soviet call for late 1968 international
conference; Romanian delegation walks out, charging Soviet
use of pressure tactics.
Government is reorganized; national and regional councils
of national economy (sovn?rkhozy) are abolished and pre-1957
ministerial system is reestablished; role of profit as measure
of economic success is recognized.
December
Brozhn~~c t~nnoun~?r..optir.uion of Eru't}~-aato [?onu~ol Pun~?-
tions; Sikola~' Podgorn~' replaces retiring .lnastas ~likucan
as ('hairnrm of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.
1966
February
Soviet dissident writers Sinyavsky and Daniel are im-
prisoned for antistate activities in first such political trial of
intelloctuxls .inec tittllin's death.
l nmanncd spaceship makes ".oft landing? uu moon.
March
l'.S.S.R. achieves first landing of probe on Venus.
April
23d Party Congress approves directives of 1966-70 economic
plan; Party Presidium is renamed Politburo; Brezhnev
receives Stalin's old title of General Secretary.
Brezhnev reports to Central Committee on deterioration in
Sino-Soviet relations and Chinese Communist Cultural
Revolution; he receives mandate to proceed with plans for
an international Communist conference.
1967
March
Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, defects to West.
April
Brezhnev endorses broad united front tactics for Europe at
Karlovy Vary conference of European Communist parties.
Premier Kosygin seeks political settlement of Israeli-
Egyptian military clash in U.N. General Assembly and in
talks with President Johnson at Glassboro, N.J.
October
Soviet Government reveals cutback of agricultural invest-
ment goals approved in March 1965; lleputy Premier
Polyansky publicly dissents.
August
Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops (except Romanian)
occupy Czechoslovakia.
1969
January
Soviet and Chinese border troops clash on Damansky
Island in the Ussuri River.
International Conference of Communist Parties meets in
Moscow.
October
Sino-Soviet border talks open in Peking.
November
U.S.-Soviet talks on strategic arms limitations open in
Helsinki.
Treaty on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons is deposited
at United Nations.
1970
January
Moscow moves to provide air defense for United Arab
Republic.
Second essay by physicist Andrei Sakharov details the need
for economic and political reform i^ the U.S.S.R. if the
Soviets are to keep pace with the West.
One hundredth anniversary of V. I. Lenin's birth is
celebrated.
Soviet-West German Renunciation of Force agreement is
signed in Moscow.
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1971
March-April
24th Party Congress is held in Moscow. Kunayev, Kulakov,
Shcherbitsky, and Grishin added to the Politburo.
May
U.S.S.R. signs friendship treaty with Egypt.
July
Politburo member Voronov demoted from post of Premier of
the R.S. F.S. R. to Chairman of the People's Control
Committee.
August
U.S.S.R. signs friendship treaty with India.
September
Moscow signs Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin.
October
Brezhnev travels to France for summit talks with Pompidou,
his first trip to the West as party chief.
December
KGB opens "Case 24," a campaign to suppress the leading
samizdat journal, the Chronicle of Current Events.
1972
April
U.S.S.R.. signs friendship treaty with Iraq.
May
Politburo member Shelest demoted from post as head of
Ukrainian party and named Deputy Premier of the U.S.S.R.
Brezhnev receives President Nixon for summit talks in
Moscow. The accords signed include an ABM agreement
and an interim agreement on offensive strategic weapons.
July
U.S.S.R. begins massive grain imports to compensate for
harvest failures.
Soviet military advisers ousted from Egypt.
Castro visit to Moscow results in the admission of Cuba to
CEMA.
September
Candidate Politburo member Mzhavanadze loses his seat
after expose of corruption in the Georgian republic; the first
member to lose his post since 1966.
1973
February
Politburo member Polyansky demoted from post of First
Deputy Premier to Minister of Agriculture. Incumbent
minister, Matskevich, is fired in the aftermath of the harvest
failures.
Party card exchange, aimed at weeding out marginal
members, begins.
Central Committee plenum announces "retirement" of
Politburo members Voronov and Shelest, and the addition
of Foreign Minister Gromyko, Defense Minister Grechko,
and KGB chief Andropov to the Politburo.
May
Brezhnev travels to West Germany for summit talks with
Brandt.
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