To the Editor:

In “Will Gorbachev Reform the Soviet Union?” [September], Vladimir Bukovsky says: “The scale of reform [in the Soviet Union] will be inversely proportional to the scale of Western economic assistance.” The importance of this statement cannot be overemphasized. Mr. Bukovsky, after all, is not basing his thesis on clippings from the Soviet press, as the Kremlinologists do, but on firsthand experience of the Soviet Union. He might have added that those in the West who do advocate Western assistance are regularly referred to as “useful idiots,” a term which originated with Lenin.

I do not think that the basic conflict in the Soviet Union is between the party leadership and the government—i.e., between the policymaking and the operational body; nor do I believe that without Western aid or reform the system will collapse within fifteen to twenty years. The basic problem of the Soviet Union was, is, and will remain—Marxism.

The application of Marxism leads inevitably to a totalitarian regime and a most inefficient socioeconomic system. Marxism claims that manual work is the source of a nation’s wealth, and that consequently the proletariat, as the wealth-creating force, should occupy the leading role in society. From this follows the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, actually that of its advance-guard, the Bolshevik party. Yet even in Marx’s time, intellectual work was becoming the main factor in the creation of wealth, and this is certainly the case in our own day, the age of scientific-technological revolution.

Thus the dichotomy of the Soviet system is that while the power structure is based on Marx’s concept of labor and on the dictatorship of the class of manual workers, the economy and the power of the nation depend on the application of the highest forms of intellectual achievement. Power and prosperity cannot be attained by stealing or buying the technology of the West; they require a system that offers space and incentives, i.e., first of all, freedom for human creativity.

The leadership of the Soviet Union was no doubt aware of this basic conflict from the beginning. Stalin’s “contribution” toward solving it was through territorial expansion and the imposition of the Soviet system on the conquered nations. This typically imperialist policy was applied in the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939, and after the defeat of Hitler, it remained the general line of Soviet foreign policy. Thus half of Poland, the Baltic states, part of Finland, Bessarabia, East Prussia, and the eastern part of Czechoslovakia were incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II. After the war, the military occupation of East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia led step-by-step to the imposition of the Soviet system upon these nations. The “surplus value” of their economies helped overcome the economic shortcomings of the Soviet Union. At the time, a corridor of aggression against Western Europe was established.

But even after Stalin’s death and the inauguration of an “anti-Stalinist” line, Stalinist foreign policy flourished. Hence Khrushchev in Hungary in 1956, Brezhnev in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the declaration of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which states that every Soviet advance is irreversible. Recently Gorbachev in Warsaw declared his adherence to the Brezhnev Doctrine and even rehabilitated Vyacheslav Molotov, the living symbol of Stalinism.

The strategic goal of the Soviet Union is clear—to oust America from Europe without war, gain control of the rest of Europe, and turn Europe’s highly efficient economies to the processing of Soviet raw material. Thus the “surplus value” of the capitalist West would save the Soviet system, without the Soviets having to institute reforms, without any weakening of the power structure, and without any danger to the nomenklatura, the ruling elite of the Communist party. As long as the West lacks its own strategic goal and remains divided not only within the Atlantic alliance but within each country of the alliance, the Soviets will pursue this policy.

President Reagan outlined the strategy of the free world when he declared that real peace must rest on the pillars of human rights and self-determination. To project this idea into concrete foreign policy means to declare that if the Soviet Union were to honor its commitments to the Atlantic Charter and to the United Nations Charter—i.e., to respect the right to self-determination of those nations deprived of this right by Hitler’s Germany and to abandon the goal of territorial expansion—far-reaching disarmament and peace could be achieved.

Such a policy, which follows from the very essence of Western civilization, would not only create a consensus within the Atlantic alliance but would also attract Third World nations which would profit from the increased aid that would flow from a reduction of military expansion. No doubt the Soviet satellites would also welcome such a policy since, apart from offering peace, it would lead to a reduction of military expenses. The Soviet Politburo might even be expected to support such a peace policy.

In any event, the West would be united and a new political reality would be created to which the Soviet leadership would have to respond. If the Soviets at first refused to accept this policy of freedom and peace, they would then have to face our offensive and be forced to explain why they prefer an arms race to the fulfillment of their explicit commitments. Thus it is not only Western economic assistance that matters, but also “assistance” in the realm of foreign policy.

Eugen Loebl
New York City

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