Soviet treatment of Western communists: a comparative analysis

Abstract

As the essays in this issue demonstrate, relations between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Western nonruling Communist Parties have been marked by a multiplicity of open and hidden altercations since Khrushchev's de-Stalinization Congress in 1956. After the military coup of December 13, 1981 that signified the bankruptcy of the Soviet-Communist model of society imposed on Poland, these divergences have sharpened dramatically. In their reaction to the suppression of the reform process in Poland, which they regard as Soviet-inspired, the leaderships of the Communist Parties of Italy (PCI), Spain (PCE), Japan (JCP), and a series of smaller Western Communist Parties (Sweden, Australia, Mexico) have directed pointed criticisms at the basic principles of the policy of the CPSU--criticizing both its model of society and its foreign policy. For the leaderships of these Parties, Soviet policies today both discredit the idea of Socialism itself and block its spread, especially in the highly developed industrial countries of the West. These Parties now conclude that they should emancipate themselves from Moscow still further, under the sign of a new internationalism. The Italian and Spanish Communists, in any case, announced at the