The Soviet Concept of Peaceful Coexistence and Its Implications for International Law

Abstract

The concept of peaceful coexistence has always been the general line of Soviet foreign policy. Of course, this concept has been liable to some development and improvement but its very emergence was a result of the Great October Revolution which gave birth to the socialist system. From its very inception the Soviet state proclaimed peaceful coexistence as the basic principle of its foreign policy. The fact that the very first political act of the Soviet Russia was the Decree on Peace, the decree on stopping the bloody war, is not to be considered an accident. The peaceful coexistence policy is not a tactical move on the part of the Soviet Union. Our desire for peace and peaceful coexistence springs from the very nature of our socialist society in which there are no social groups interested in profiting by means of war or by the arms race. Moreover, the principle of peaceful coexistence is the only realistic policy to pursue nowadays when the world consists of nations belonging to different social systems-capitalism and socialism. In view of the present alignment of forces in the world and of the progress of military technique, it is impossible to find any other sound basis for relations between countries except that of peaceful coexistence. We cannot even discuss this principle in terms whether we should accept or reject it. The point is that today peaceful coexistence is an indisputable fact of international life and not someone's request or suggestion. Peaceful coexistence is an objective necessity stemming from the contemporary stage of the development of human society. If we face facts squarely, we should admit that the essence of world politics now is the character of relations between the two main socioeconomic systems-capitalism and socialism. And capitalist and socialist countries exist side by side on our planet. The rise of socialism was an inevitable objective historical development. However, the capitalist world refused to recognize this fact and has repeatedly resorted to war to destroy its unwelcome neighbor. It is common knowledge that all these attempts have turned out to be futile. The attempts to solve differences between the two systems by means of war have always been costly for the common people. They resulted in millions of killed and