The Foreign Relations of "Socialism in One Country"
The doctrine of "socialism in one country" had as its central proposition that it was possible to construct socialism in the Soviet Union alone—in the absence of proletarian revolution in Europe, and out of the social circumstances and economic resources present in the USSR. Russia had, after all, achieved and consolidated proletarian power without the assistance of revolution in Europe. A secondary proposition was that, although socialism could be constructed in the USSR independently, there would be no "complete victory" for socialism, and no guaranteed security for the revolution in Russia, until the threat of imperialist interference and intervention was
banished by proletarian revolution in several European countries. "Socialism in one country" formally deprioritized international revolution on the agenda of Soviet politics and asserted the primacy of the task of internal development. Revolutionary internationalism was not ideologically renounced, however; it remained an integral feature of the Bolshevik theory of global history.
"Socialism in one country" was implicit in elements of Bukharin's thought as early as November 1923, at the time of the failure of "the German October." Stalin first enunciated the idea formally in December 1924. Bukharin began to address the question publicly and explicitly in April 1925. The resolutions of the Fourteenth Party Congress the following December adopted the doctrine as the central principle of socialist construction. In general, it was Bukharin who worked "socialism in one country" into a proto-program for the socialization and industrialization of Soviet Russia, and who developed the theoretical basis for it. Stalin popularized the idea by proclaiming it in his speeches and writings during the two years extending from late 1924 to late 1926. He thereby gained the political benefit that accrued from the acceptance of the doctrine among the party rank and file.[39]
"Socialism in one country" was a significant ideological innovation. Before the years 1924-1926 the transition from capitalism to socialism had been linked in Marxism-Leninism to transnational proletarian revolution. Socialism would emerge throughout Europe as the result of a single process during one historical period lasting, the Bolsheviks thought, at first weeks, then months, and then perhaps years. This was Lenin's original vision of "world revolution," and it was this conception of Lenin's, rather than the "permanent revolution" of Trotsky, against which Stalin was really polemicizing between 1924 and 1926, although for obvious political reasons he could not and did not say so.[40] By contrast, "socialism in one country" formulated in ideological terms the proposition that socialism could be achieved independently in separate nations at different times, that Soviet Russia would survive into the indefinite future in a world composed of nations as well as of classes, and that its "complete victory" would be guaranteed when revolution in one or more of the imperialist powers rendered impossible outside capitalist interference with socialist construction in Russia. Thus, in the doctrine of "socialism in one country," the achievement of socialism became a national occurrence, its survival and ultimate triumph a matter of international relations. It has been aptly termed "a theory of international relations par excellence. "[41]
Indeed, declaration of the doctrine was accompanied by a thorough consideration of the matrix of foreign relations in which the USSR was set
in the mid-1920s. Stalin and Bukharin were impressed by the twin reversals of late 1924: on the one hand, the "Zinoviev letter," the fall of the Labour government, and the rejection of the Anglo-Soviet Draft Treaty; on the other, the Dawes Plan, the intervention of American capital in Europe, and Germany's attraction to what Stalin now consistently called "the capitalist camp."[42] In these events they saw a decisive turning point in the international situation, one that would influence an entire phase of historical development. Bukharin first proclaimed—in June 1924 at the time the Dawes Plan was formulated—that a new stabilization period in the history of capitalism was beginning, a notion he then vigorously defended in theoretical debates.[43] Stalin meanwhile explained the international situation to the party membership in a series of articles, interviews, speeches, and reports beginning in September 1924 and culminating in December 1925 with his presentation of the Political Report of the Central Committee to the Fourteenth Party Congress.[44]
The Stalin-Bukharin conception of world politics began with the proposition that "world revolution" was not an event but a lengthy process. The "epoch of world revolution," which had begun with the struggle of the proletariat in Russia in 1905, comprised "a whole strategic period, which will last for a number of years, perhaps even a number of decades." As did Lenin, Stalin and Bukharin regarded the state of equilibrium that resulted from the ebb of the revolutionary tide and from the stabilization of capitalism as the characteristic feature of the international situation. They then expanded and extended the notion: The imperialist system had "succeeded in extricating itself from the quagmire of the postwar crisis" and achieved a "partial" and "temporary" stabilization. The Soviet system had also stabilized. The Russian economy was growing; socialism was under construction; the exploited of Europe and the oppressed of Asia were rallying around the USSR. "A certain temporary equilibrium between these two stabilizations" resulted. Although the duration of this equilibrium could not be predicted, "there is no doubt," Stalin stated, "it will be a long one." In 1918, Lenin had thought the end of the war with Germany would be followed by a short "peace break"; after the Civil War he predicted a lengthier truce; in 1924-25, Stalin announced what he called "a whole period of respite." What had begun in 1920-21 as a tenuous breathing space, Stalin told the Fourteenth Party Congress, "has turned into a whole period of so-called peaceful coexistence of the USSR with the capitalist states."[45]
The data informing the Stalin-Bukharin analysis of capitalist stabilization and international equilibrium came from the events of global politics: With the failure of the revolution in Germany in November 1923, "the
period of revolutionary upsurge has come to an end." There existed now "a new situation" in which the Communist parties would have to find their bearings again.[46] The stabilization of capitalism, although it remained temporary and partial, was now definite in a way it had not been in 1921. In Europe, the postwar inflation had ended; currencies were stabilized; agricultural output and industrial production were increasing; international trade was expanding; both production and commerce were approaching prewar levels. This financial-economic stabilization had been achieved "mainly with the aid of American capital, and at the price of the financial subordination of Western Europe to America."[47] Most important, Germany—once the locus of revolutionary upsurge in Europe—had been "Dawesified" into an appendage of Anglo-American capital. With the Dawes Plan, the British, the Americans, and the French had struck a deal regarding "the scale on which [Germany] was to be robbed," and the United States had come to the verge of financial hegemony in the capitalist world.[48] While capitalism was stabilized on these conditions, there were others in addition. The British, the Americans, and the Japanese had struck a "deal" over China (the Washington treaties of 1922), and the imperialist powers had made arrangements among themselves promising mutual respect for each other's colonial possessions. And there was one more. "The stabilization of capitalism," Stalin forecast in May 1925, "may find expression in an attempt on the part of the imperialist groups of the advanced countries to strike a deal concerning the formation of a united front against the Soviet Union."[49]
Capitalism had stabilized for the present, but, according to the dialectic Stalin elucidated in 1925, "the process of capitalism's 'recovery' contain[ed] within itself the germs of its inherent weakness and disintegration."[50] Stabilization had not settled the issues over which the World War had been fought. The imperialist powers still struggled with each other for markets. Anti-imperialist national liberation movements were "growing step by step" and "beginning in some places to assume the form of open war against imperialism (Morocco, Syria, China)."[51] And while "the capitalist world [was] being corroded by a whole series of internal contradictions .... the world of socialism [was] becoming more and more closely welded, more united." Industry had revived and would continue to develop, giving the proletariat of the USSR "a new way of life" and leading the workers of Europe to demand workers' states of their own. At the same time, the working class of Europe had come to regard the Soviet state "as its own child," Stalin stated, and "having adopted our state ... is ready to defend it and fight for it" "against imperialism and its interventionist machinations."[52]
In predicting the eventual demise of capitalism, the Stalin-Bukharin
duumvirate counted heavily on the Dawes reparation agreement of 1924 proving incapable of stabilizing the Weimar Republic. Their prognostication was that German workers would be required to bear the costs of reparation payments to France, Britain, and Belgium in addition to the surplus extracted by the German bourgeoisie, and would impose on them a "double yoke" of exploitation. "To think that ... the German proletariat will consent to bear this double yoke without making repeated serious attempts at a revolutionary upheaval means believing in miracles." "The Dawes Plan must inevitably lead to a revolution in Germany." Correspondingly, the governments of Britain, France, and Italy had to increase the burden of taxation on their populations to make war debt payments to the United States, meaning that "the material conditions of the working people in Europe ... will certainly deteriorate and the working class will inevitably become revolutionized."[53]
The developing international conflict was disguised, Stalin claimed, by a facade of "false and mendacious bourgeois-democratic pacifism." When the London Conference adopted the Dawes Plan in July-August 1924, MacDonald and Herriot had indeed emphasized the peaceful collaboration of Britain and France, reconciliation with Germany, and normalization of relations with the USSR. Stalin maintained that such statements camouflaged not only the contradictions among the victors of the World War but also "the intense antagonism between Germany and the entente" and "the deadly enmity of the bourgeois states" toward the Soviet Union.[54] When the Locarno agreements were concluded in October 1925—accompanied by further rhetoric lauding a new spirit of international cooperation and peace—they confirmed in Stalin's mind the view that international relations were recapitulating those of the pre-1914 era. Like the treaties, agreements, and conferences that preceded the World War, Locarno was "an example of the matchless hypocrisy of bourgeois diplomacy, when by shouting and singing about peace they try to cover up preparations for a new war." "If the Dawes Plan is fraught with a revolution in Germany," Stalin told the Fourteenth Party Congress, "Locarno is fraught with a new war in Europe."[55]
Such was the concept of international relations generated by the Stalin-Bukharin duumvirate for the collective leadership and adopted by the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925. What was its significance for the development of Soviet foreign relations? The adoption of the Dawes Plan and the signing of the Locarno Treaties called into question the fundamental precepts of post-revolution Leninist foreign relations as they had been formulated in 1920-21: that the German problem was insoluble, that the postwar crisis would bring proletarian insurrection to Europe despite
the setbacks of 1919, and, most important of all, that the inevitability of interimperialist conflict could be counted on to make the Soviet Union secure from the danger of a united anti-Soviet coalition. The developing reconciliation between Germany and the former Allies and the increasing stabilization of international relations in the West made imperative a comprehensive and agonizing reappraisal of Soviet security policy in the light of new realities seven years after the October Revolution. Seemingly no such reappraisal took place either in the ECCI or the NKID, or in the Politburo, despite a few inconclusive efforts in this direction.[56] Instead, the party reaffirmed Lenin's notion that the antagonisms among the imperialist powers could be depended on to benefit Soviet security. That reaffirmation was strongly influenced by the position Stalin had articulated to the Moscow party organization the previous January. "The struggle, conflicts, and wars between our enemies," were among what Stalin called the three available "allies of Soviet power," the other two being the proletariat of the advanced capitalist societies and the oppressed colonial peoples.[57] Here was a statement remarkable in two respects. Stalin not only reaffirmed Lenin's belief that interimperialist conflict would protect the USSR but he also formally raised relations among nations to the level of class relations in deciding the eventual outcome of the contest between socialism and capitalism.
From the principle that Soviet security could depend on intercapitalist conflict, the collective leadership derived an optimistic prognostication for the future of the one country in which socialism was being constructed. To wit, it was within the capability of foreign policy to extend the prolonged respite from imperialist war by centering foreign relations on "the struggle for peace." Both by means of diplomacy and through the activities of foreign Communist parties, they could moderate the war-prone tendencies of the imperialist powers and extend the conditions of "peaceful coexistence." Such a prolonged respite constituted an opportunity for constructing an independent industrial economy in the homeland of socialism. This prognostication was resolved by the delegates to the Fourteenth Party Congress. However, the doctrine of the inevitable resumption of imperialist warfare was not forgotten. The potential threat it posed to the USSR, the resolution continued, made imperative the creation of a modern defense establishment.[58]
In promoting this defense establishment, Stalin personally played a particularly important role. Although he informed the Party Congress in December that the international situation was at a point of stable equilibrium that would last for years, Stalin had told a closed session of the Central Committee the previous January that "a radical change in the international situation has begun lately." In fact, on at least three separate
occasions during the relatively tranquil year of 1925, he stated that current international relations resembled those which had existed during the prelude to the outbreak of the great imperialist war in 1914.[59] There was another crisis in Morocco, and the powers of Europe were again contesting among themselves for control of North Africa and the Balkans. A renewed postwar arms race was under way. The French were building a large air force, and the British, Americans, and Japanese were competing over naval power. "The conflict of interests among the victor countries is growing and becoming more intense," he stated; "collision among them is becoming inevitable, and in anticipation of a new war, they are arming with might and main." Coming to a conclusion that differed strikingly from the line adopted by the party as a whole—"a whole period of peaceful coexistence" based on prolonged capitalist stabilization—Stalin maintained that a new war was inevitable within a few years and that the USSR must prepare for it by building up its armed forces.
Thus, as Stalin emerged as a member of the duumvirate that directed the collective leadership and as spokesman for the party's conception of foreign relations, he brought with him a distinctive set of opinions about international relations in the mid-1920s. The stabilization of capitalism, he thought, was "ridiculously unstable" and a second imperialist war was both inevitable and imminent, "not tomorrow or the day after, of course, but in a few years time." The approach of war would "intensify the internal revolutionary crisis both in the East and the West," bringing revolution to Germany and uprisings to the colonies of the European powers. That revolutionary surge, Stalin's scenario continued, was "bound to turn the ruling strata of the Great Powers against us." Threatened with global revolution, they would attack at its source. "The danger of intervention," Stalin concluded as early as January 1925, "is again becoming real."[60]
During 1925, Stalin's version of the international situation made significant inroads among the Soviet party/state elite. In May the resolutions of the Third Soviet Congress stated: "The capitalist states are making preparations for new conflicts and new wars," preparations that are accompanied by "a hostile encirclement of our Union which takes the form of an entire system of military conferences, agreements, and support for the measures taken by different governments against the USSR, and also of campaigns based on forgeries and lies." The delegates to the Fourteenth Party Congress in December, selected by Stalin (except for those from the Leningrad Soviet controlled by Zinoviev), partially incorporated Stalin's foreign relations concept in the resolutions they adopted. Those resolutions assailed the "blocs of capitalist states under Anglo-American hegemony [that are] accompanied by the frenzied growth of armaments and therefore fraught
with the danger of new wars, including the danger of intervention." The resolutions of both May and December stressed the need for the USSR "to guard its frontiers from possible attack," to strengthen the country's defense capabilities, and "to intensify the power of the Red Army and the Red Navy and the Air Force."[61]