Abstract
After their emergence as newly independent states in 1991, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine had to build relationships with the rest of ‘Europe’ more or less from scratch. Yet they inherited an enormous baggage of institutional and cultural memory of Soviet engagement with the European Community and its member states, and indeed a formal treaty relationship that had been established towards the very end of the Soviet period. To understand the evolution of ideas about ‘Europe’ and what became the European Union in the three Slavic republics over the post-Soviet decades, we must begin by exploring the ways in which the Soviet leadership viewed the place of the European Community among other ‘Western’ actors and by tracing the most important developments in the evolving relationship between Moscow and Brussels. This chapter aims accordingly to provide the necessary historical context for our subsequent analysis of the three republics’ identities vis-à-vis Europe, their images of the European Community and the foreign policies shaped by those identities and images. The first part of the chapter offers a brief overview of the USSR’s interactions with the ‘West’, broadly defined. This is followed by an examination of Soviet interpretations of European integration in the early years of the relationship. The final part of the chapter investigates the main steps taken by the Soviet and Community leadership as they moved in the late 1980s towards a legal basis for a relationship they had originally repudiated.
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Notes
Vladimir I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 55 vols (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958–1965), vol. 35, p. 140.
Winston Churchill, ‘Britain and America in time of peace’, The Times, 4 March 1946, pp. 4 and 6, at p. 6.
A. Zhdanov, ‘O mezhdunarodnom polozheni’, Pravda, 22 October 1947, pp. 2–3, at p. 2. The ‘two camps’ thesis had not appeared in early drafts of the speech but was added at a later stage, almost certainly at Stalin’s behest (
Scott D. Parrish and Mikhail M. Narinsky, New Evidence on the Soviet Rejection of the Marshall Plan, 1947: Two Reports (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1994), p. 35).
Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet Political Mind, rev. edn (New York: Norton, 1971), p. 228.
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p. 6.
See Susan Butler, ed., My Dear Mr Stalin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005).
Harry Hopkins as quoted in Foreign Relations of the United States, The Conference of Berlin (the Potsdam Conference), 1945, 2 vols (Washington DC: U. S. Government Publications Office, 1960), vol. 1, p. 27.
A. Petrov, ‘K sobytiyam v Afganistane’, Pravda, 31 December 1979, p. 4.
See, for instance, Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 250–287.
Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 88.
Zbigniew Brzezinski as quoted in ‘The crescent of crisis’, Time, vol. 113, no. 3 (15 January 1979), p. 6.
Jonathan Steele, The Limits of Soviet Power: The Kremlin’s Foreign Policy — Brezhnev to Chernenko, rev. edn (Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 43.
Francis X. Clines, ‘Reagan denounces ideology of Soviet as “focus of evil”’, New York Times, 9 March 1983, p. 1.
Anatolii Dobrynin, Sugubo doveritel’no. Posol v Vashingtone pri shesti prezidentakh SShA (1962–1986 gg.), 2nd edn (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 2008), p. 568.
Ronald Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), pp. 12, 15.
Eduard Shevardnadze, Kogda rukhnul zheleznyi zanaves. Vstrechi i vospominaniya, trans. G. Leonova (Moscow: Evropa, 2009), p. 88. In Gorbachev’s own recollection the talks had indeed been going nowhere, above all because of differences about the ‘Star Wars’ programme, but on their way back to the main house Reagan invited the Soviet leader to visit the United States, Gorbachev reciprocated with an invitation to the American President to visit the USSR, both were accepted, and ‘the ice moved’ (
Mikhail Gorbachev, Naedinine s soboi (Moscow: Grin Strit, 2012), pp. 462–463).
Mikhail Gorbachev, Zhizn’ i reformy, 2 vols (Moscow: Novosti, 1995), vol. 2, p. 21.
According, at least, to Burlatsky himself: Fedor M. Burlatsky, Russkie gosudari. Epokha reformatsii (Moscow: Shark, 1996), p. 203 (Burlatsky published an unremarkable book of his own on the subject during the perestroika period: Novoe myshlenie (Moscow: Politizdat, 1988)).
Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), p. 73. The ‘Pugwash Movement’ that stemmed from the Russell-Einstein appeal was positively evaluated in the Soviet writings of the time: see for instance
V. M. Buzuev, Uchenye v borb’e za mir i progress: iz istorii paguoshskogo dvizheniya (Moscow: Nauka, 1967). Writing later, Gorbachev identifed Einstein in particular as the person who had ‘first spoken about the necessity of new thinking in the century of nuclear arms’ (Gorbachev, Naedine s soboi, p. 457).
Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaki Ikeda, Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century. Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and Communism, trans. Richard L. Gage (London and New York: Tauris, 2005), p. 51.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Ponyat’ perestroiku … Pochemu eto vazhno seichas (Moscow: Al’pina Bisnes Buks, 2006), p. 36.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, 7 vols (Moscow: Politizdat, 1987–1990), vol. 3, pp. 138, 394. There had been an even earlier reference to ‘new political thinking’ in Gorbachev’s address to the British House of Commons in December 1984, speaking as the head of a delegation of Soviet parliamentarians (ibid., vol. 2, p. 112).
Georgii Shakhnazarov, ‘V poiskakh utrachennoi idei. K novomu ponimaniyu sotsializma’, Kommunist, no. 4 (1991), pp. 18–31 (part 1) and no. 5 (1991), pp. 16–30 (part 2).
Georgii Shakhnazarov, ‘Mirovoe obshchestvo upravlyaemo’, Pravda, 15 January 1988, p. 3.
I. V. Stalin, Ekonomicheskie problemy sotsializma v SSSR (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1952), p. 36.
Valentin Zorin and Erik Pletnev, ‘Obshchii rynok’ — orudie monopolii (Moscow: IMO, 1963), p. 3.
Vyacheslav M. Chkhikvadze, ed., Kurs mezhdunarodnogo prava, 6 vols (Moscow: Nauka, 1967–1973), vol. 1, p. 157.
The establishment of the Common Market and Euratom, for Pravda, was a ‘new conspiracy against the sovereignty and independence of the West European countries, against security and peace in Europe’ (V. Grigorovich, ‘Zagovor protiv bezopasnosti v Evrope’, 11 March 1957, p. 4); the popular weekly Novoe vremya called for the abandonment of the methods of the Cold War and the development of broader forms of international economic cooperation (‘K voprosu ob “obshchem rynke”’, no. 11 (14 March 1957), pp. 18–21, at p. 21); a foreign ministry statement issued almost immediately afterwards insisted that the imminent signature of the treaty would deepen divisions and increase tensions (‘Zayavlenie Ministerstva inostrannykh del SSSR o planakh sozdaniya Evratoma i “Obshchego rynka”’, Pravda, 17 March 1957, p. 3). An earlier historiography is still of value: see particularly
David F. P. Foote, ‘The response of Soviet foreign policy to the Common Market, 1957–63’, Soviet Studies, vol. 19, no. 3 (January 1968), pp. 373–386;
Christopher A. P. Binns, ‘The development of the Soviet policy response to the EEC’, Co-Existence, vol. 14, no. 2 (October 1977), pp. 240–265; and
Christopher A. P. Binns, ‘From USE to EEC: The Soviet analysis of European integration under capitalism’, Soviet Studies, vol. 30, no. 2 (April 1978), pp. 237–261. There is an analysis of the rival understandings of the Western capitalism of the time among scholars and political leaders in
Richard B. Day, Cold War Capitalism: The View from Moscow, 1945–1975 (Armonk, NY and London: Sharpe, 1995).
Konstantin Popov, ‘Plany i perspektivy “Obshchego rynka”’, Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, no. 7 (1959), pp. 108–110, at p. 109.
Varga, a Hungarian who had served as finance minister in Bela Kun’s short-lived Soviet administration in 1919, left subsequently for Moscow, where he headed the statistical department of the Communist International and then (from 1927) the Institute of the World Economy and International Politics, becoming a full member of the Academy of Sciences. He questioned the orthodox account of Western capitalism in a book on the economic consequences of the war that appeared in 1946, but found his views described as ‘mistaken’ in the party’s theoretical journal (Bol’shevik, no. 17 (1947), p. 64) and lost his position when Stalin ordered the institute itself to be dissolved. He was allowed to return in 1956 when the institute was re-established as the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, and won the Lenin Prize in 1963 for his contribution to the analysis of the political economy of capitalism. He died the following year (see G. D. Gloveli, ‘Varga, Evgenii Samuilovich’, in Bol’shaya rossiiskaya entsiklopediya, vol. 4 (Moscow: Bol’shaya rossiiskaya entsiklopediya, 2006), p. 599).
Evgenii Varga, ‘“Obshchii rynok” i mirovoi kapitalisticheskii rynok’, Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, no. 7 (1959), pp. 110–112, at pp. 110–111, 112.
P. Suslin, ‘Ekonomicheskaya podopleka imperialisticheskoi bor’by vokrug “Evropeiskoi integratsii”’, ibid., no. 8, 1959, pp. 104–107, at p. 104.
I. Faminsky, ‘O prichinakh ekonomicheskogo “ob’edineniya Evropy”’, ibid., no. 9, 1959, pp. 86–87, at p. 87.
A. V. Kirsanov, ‘Nekotorye voprosy issledovaniya evropeiskoi “integratsii”’, ibid., no. 10, 1959, pp. 81–83.
A. Arzumanyan, ‘Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskie i politicheskie prichiny “integratsii” v Zapadnoi Evrope’, ibid., pp. 36–48, at pp. 37 and 48 (signed for the press on 11 September 1959); another version with the same title but minor variations in wording appeared in the published text of the Prague discussions, which had taken place under the auspices of the same journal in July 1959 (
Aleksei M. Rumyantsev, ed., ‘Obshchii rynok’ i rabochii klass (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1960, signed for the press on 15 June 1960), pp. 31–49). Arzumanyan’s article was evidently based on his participation in both discussions; it has been described as a ‘first step towards the recognition of the objective character of European integration’, although the circumstances of the time meant that it had to be obscured behind a ‘whole set of familiar ideological formulations’ (
P. P. Cherkasov, IMEMO. Portret na fone epokhi (Moscow: Ves’ mir, 2004), pp. 160–161).
A. Arzumanyan, ‘Novye yavleniya kapitalisticheskoi deistvitel’nosti’, Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, no. 11 (1962), pp. 56–71, at pp. 59–60.
A. Arzumanyan, ‘Krizis imperialisticheskoi “integratsii”’ (part 2), Pravda, 9 March 1963, p. 3.
Giorgio Amendola, Lotta di classe e sviluppo economico dopo la liberazione (Rome: Riuniti, 1962), p. 86. This was a contentious view at the time and there was ‘obvious disagreement between the “northerners” [of which Amendola was one] and the party leadership’ (
Rossana Rossanda, La ragazza del secolo scorso (Turin: Einaudi, 2005), p. 241).
Ugo Pecchioli, ‘Le forze democratiche e l’Europa del Mec’, Critica Marxista, vol. 4, no. 3 (May–June 1966), pp. 3–20, at p. 13.
Giorgio Amendola, I comunisti e l’Europa (Rome: Riuniti 1971), p. 7 (there were just seven Communists within a delegation of 140).
Maud Bracke, ‘From the Atlantic to the Urals? Italian and French communism and the question of Europe, 1956–1973’, Journal of European Integration History, vol. 13, no. 2 (2007), pp. 33–53, at p. 44.
Quoted in Jacques Kahn, ‘Monopoles, nations et Marché commun’, Cahiers du communisme, vol. 42, no. 4 (April 1966), pp. 10–19, at p. 19.
L. I. Brezhnev, ‘Resheniya XXIV S’ezda KPSS — boevaya programma deyatel’nosti sovetskikh profsoyuzov’, 20 March 1972, in his Leninskim kursom. Rechi i stat’i, vol. 3 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1972), pp. 473–499, at p. 490. Brezhnev, apparently, overruled his Politburo colleague Mikhail Suslov, who had removed any reference to the Common Market, in order to provide political support to German Chancellor Willy Brandt; it was the first statement in which the Soviet authorities had indicated that they were not ‘eternally its deadly enemies’ (
Anatolii Chernyaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod: dnevnik dvukh epokh, 1972–1991 gody (Moscow: Rosspen, 2010), p. 11).
L. I. Brezhnev, ‘O pyatidesyatiletii Soyuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik’, 21 December 1972, in his Leninskim kursom. Rechi i stat’i, vol. 4 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1974), pp. 41–101, at p. 77.
Andrei Kozyrev, ‘Preobrazhennaya Rossiya v novom mire’, Izvestiya, 2 January 1992, p. 3; also in Diplomaticheskii vestnik, nos 2–3 (1992), pp. 3–5.
V. Golovachev, ‘Letal’nyi iskhod nezhelatelen’, Ekonomika i zhizn’, no. 6 (1992), p. 1.
Ekonomika i zhizn’, no. 6, 1992, p. 16. The dissolution of the CMEA was reported in F. Luk’yanov, ‘SEV zaverzhen. Chto dal’she?’, Izvestiya, 28 June 1991, p. 6; the dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation was announced the following month (‘Protokol’, ibid., 2 July 1991, p. 5).
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© 2014 Stephen White and Valentina Feklyunina
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White, S., Feklyunina, V. (2014). Negotiating a Relationship. In: Identities and Foreign Policies in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453112_2
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