Soviet policy in Europe: Trends and issues in the post‐Helsinki period

Abstract

Is there really any more to say? Do not the Helsinki Final Act, West Germany's treaties with the USSR, Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Basic Treaty between the two Germanies, and the four-Power Agreement on Berlin provide all the imaginable bilateral and multilateral codification of the status quo in Europe and make further analysis of Soviet policies in that area an utterly boring endeavour? An answer is not easily given. The legal mind will undoubtedly be satisfied by the series of contractual links which, taken together, almost form something like an Ersatz peace treaty; and those looking for dramatic events, violent conflict and rapid change are well advised to turn to the Third World-to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen, or Indochina, to name but a few examples. However, to appreciate the drama of events and continuing change in Europe requires a different frame of mind. It necessitates openness to the possibility that while the signatories of the contractual relations did indeed give affirmation to the territorial status quo in Europe, they did not consider this to be an end in itself, but the precondition for the achievement of significant changes in political, military, economic, ideological and cultural relationships, both at the domestic and international levels. What is more,'there are still major difficulties with what could be called 'normalization of the abnormal', for instance, the 'unorganic' (i.e., primarily military) forms of Soviet influence and control in Eastern Europe, the continuing 'ideological struggle' with all that this entails in the Soviet definition, the superficial treatment of selected symptoms rather than the solution of the problems of Berlin and Germany, and the failure to achieve precisely what seemed to have been a major object of the normalization exercise-the establishment of an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence between East and West in Europe. There are also in the analysis of Soviet policy in Europe quite a number of basic and complex problems about which there never has been a consensus in Western scholarship. What, for instance, is the Soviet assessment of the process of West European integration, the strength of nationalism, and the likely direction of 'Eurocommunism'? How is one to interpret the undoubted improvements in Soviet military power? More specifically, is the Soviet military build-up of the past 15 years to be regarded as an outcome of bureaucratic momentum whose driving force is a combination of the military, orthodox Party apparatchiki,