PAUL HOLLANDER
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about the rise of interest groups in Soviet society sometimes leading
to the attribution of pluralism to the system, d'Encausse reminds us
that although the Politburo has become "the place where the various
bureaucratic apparatuses were represented," this does not mean that
the Soviet power "has evolved toward institutional pluralism" since
"the Party remains the integrating element . . . the Party exercises
. . . arbitration ."
What has certainly not changed is the "will to power [that]
allows the political system to survive, to impose itself on rebellious or
sceptical societies.. . ."
It
is the will to power that links domestic and
foreign policies and seeks to compensate for domestic stagnation by
foreign initiatives:
Domestically, the authorities have encountered nothing but in–
creasing difficulties ... to which they have opposed an inflexible
attachment to the foundations of the system and total immobility.
But in foreign affairs the same authorities have demonstrated a
flexibility and dynamism that have enabled them to raise the
USSR to the rank of the United States.... In foreign affairs the
prudent septuagenarians of the Kremlin have been audacious
and innovative statesmen taking all governments by surprise
with their untold initiatives.
Many Western policy-makers have been unable to grasp the fact
that the Soviet Union has, for a long time, pursued a "dual policy–
'detente' on the one side, destabilization on the other." Hence there is
a corresponding duality to the Soviet system, at once "a vulnerable
country ... and a triumphant power." The dynamic foreign policy
pursued under Brezhnev (himself an undynamic person) served,
among other things, the purpose of "derive[ing] legitimacy from ex–
ternal successes. Is the progress of communism in the world not ir–
refutable evidence of the Party's historic mission?"
Last but not least, the character of Soviet policies, indeed ofthe
nature of the system, is also related to the policies and postures of the
Western powers. The book ends on this somber note:
Simultaneously weak and powerful, the USSR has based its
power above all on the impotence of the capitalist world, and it
justifies the continuation of a weakened and challenged system
by invoking the weaknesses and challenges to the alternative
system. . .. Who will be the first, the USSR or the West to be
defeated by its own decline?
