As late as March 8, 2022, two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry had the courage to call (via Interfax) upon the United States to return to the principles of “peaceful coexistence”. The idea of returning to the doctrine of peaceful coexistence was heard regularly in Russian enunciations in 2015-2022. In the view of Russian propagandists, this was the only possible way to establish relations with the West under the new conditions (sanctions and restrictions on contacts after the annexation of Crimea). Back then, there was no question of a return to the policy of trust and cooperation with the West from Yeltsin’s times, because Russia was simply “outsmarted” by the West and, despite alleged promises, NATO was enlarged to the east and Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet area was washed out. In Moscow’s opinion, the open confrontation was supposed to harm the West even existentially. After all, Russia is a nuclear power, and one that would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons as the first party. So, in Kremlin logic, the West should abandon Russia’s sanctions and ostracism and return to the doctrine of peaceful coexistence that modeled the relationship between the West and the communist camp in the past. After six months of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the frustration of some Russian commentators has reached a level that requires treating the West as an eternal enemy with whom the final confrontation will simply be inevitable. Others, however, make one count that the West will get tired of the war in Ukraine enough to look for some modus vivendi with Russia, and then the doctrine of peaceful coexistence will be just right.
So let’s take a look at the sources of the doctrine and its original form.
In 1915, Vladimir Lenin put forward a thesis about the possibility of the victory of the socialist revolution in one single state. However, Lenin did not give an answer to the question of how it should shape its relations with the hostile capitalist environment. This issue took on a practical dimension after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The counter-revolutionary pressure of the white armies, the intervention of Western countries, and the failure to export the revolution (to Germany, Hungary) induced the Bolsheviks to treat the survival of the Soviet power as an absolute priority. At the same time, it was predicted that the overthrow of capitalism on a global scale would take a long time. It was assumed that in conditions of peace the advantage of socialism over capitalism would manifest itself faster and more clearly. And the principle of peaceful coexistence will generally regulate relations in the transitional age. Capitalism would be taken with a long siege. It would collapse by itself under the weight of endogenous contradictions. If Stalin still endorsed the ideological belief that the contradictions would lead to conflicts between capitalist states, and that the flame of the world class struggle would blaze on the ashes of the capitalist system, his successors took it as an axiom that capitalism would fall as a domino effect, and one by one capitalist states would join the socialist camp. And when socialism prevails on a world scale, international relations will be governed by the principle of proletarian internationalism, and communism, by destroying the state, will put an end to international politics. Logic as simple as the construction of a flail.
From today’s perspective, we know that the Bolsheviks were deeply wrong in believing that in conditions of peace, socialism would inevitably win over capitalism. Nor did they anticipate that socialism could simply collapse by itself under the weight of its own failure. The transitional age they foretold was indeed a long one, but it ended in the defeat of socialism. This is not changed by the enormous development success of China, which, although it took place under the proletarian banner, is only a demonstration of the strength of state capitalism. It has little in common with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy.
I have had my share of watching (and even taking an active part in the diplomatic role) in dismantling the world socialist system. Hardly anyone predicted that this process would take place so spontaneously. I was an eyewitness to the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had enough imagination to see its effects on the reunification of Germany, and yet I was doing poorly in the fall of 1989, predicting the course of events in other European countries.
Then, in November 1989, I watched Berlin and the wall that separated it and how it fell from both sides. I was supposed to go from West Berlin to East Berlin one evening, cross the dividing line. An American think tank (Aspen Institute Berlin) organized a discreet meeting with activists of the emerging GDR opposition (Neues Forum, Demokratischer Aufbruch). We were riding in a minivan with American license plates. The Americans did not recognize the legality of the control activities carried out by the East German border services at Checkpoint Charlie (they only accepted the power of the Soviet occupation forces). So the GDR guards used to make them wait on the border. And I was sitting in the car next to Ambassador Ronald Lehman, then director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Control Agency (and later chief negotiator for START negotiations). And we speculated purely stochastically how quickly the domino effect would unfold in Central Europe and which communist regime would fall next. “Maybe Czechs?” Lehman asked (he must have known something I did not). “Oh, no, probably not, the Czechs are not so bad economically. Cheap beer and sausages give the communists peace. And the memory of the 1968 pacification is still fresh. Maybe Romanians? It’s full of desperation over there. ” This is how I made the most inaccurate of all my forecasts (and so many years later I dealt with political forecasting professionally). Because a week later, the Velvet Revolution began in Prague.
In my defense, I could claim that revolutionary protests also flared up in Romania as early as mid-December 1989, and I was in the minority (among my diplomatic colleagues in the Viennese circle) believing in their success, because Ceausescu ruled with an iron hand. After the bloody clashes in Timisoara, Western states condemned the Romanian government for the use of force at the CSBMs negotiation meeting in Vienna. And the countries of the then socialist bloc, even the USSR, refused to express solidarity with the actions of the Romanian government. In fact, like Poland and Hungary, they joined the voice of the West. The then charge d’affaires of Romania regretted the criticism from the West and the lack of understanding from the East. He did not foresee that Ceausescu himself would fall a few days later. And he himself, the loyal charge d’affaires at the time, would come to ministerial posts in democratic Romania after many years. Was he ashamed of the things he said at that time in Vienna? I did not have the courage to ask him later when he became a minister.
It also so happened that the legendary figure of the Romanian revolution Laszlo Toekoes, already as an MEP (and the most singing pastor of the planet), often came to Armenia, while I was the EU ambassador there. When I tried to portray him to the Armenians as the man who overthrew Ceausescu, it somehow didn’t catch their imagination.
The Bolsheviks then, in 1918, believed in the success of the revolution. So they called for peace, recognition by the world of the Bolshevik republic, establishing diplomatic relations, and normal economic relations. This first phase is sometimes referred to as the defensive phase of peaceful coexistence.
The agreement with Rapallo in 1922 was considered to be a model of a beneficial solution for the Soviets. And the consecutive recognition of the Soviet regime, the invitation to join the League of Nations, the conclusion of variuos treaties in the 1930s was regarded by them as a success of the chosen course.
The Kremlin fought against the stiffness of the Trotskyist concept of permanent revolution. At the same time, it was explained to the masses that giving up the world revolution did not mean the end of the class struggle on a global scale, it did not lead to an ideological ceasefire and mutual systemic tolerance.
The Second World War gave the Soviet Union a feeling of full legitimacy and power. It co-created, on equal terms, as a member of the Big Three, a new system based on the UN Charter (recognizing indirectly systemic pluralism in the world) and giving the USSR the right to permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
The export of the revolution on the Red Army bayonets brought considerable geopolitical results. Soviet expansionism after World War II, however, provoked a fierce reaction from the West in the form of the doctrine of containment of communism. The Cold War introduced a new context for the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. A world socialist system arose and it began to expand. It was assumed then that it was the offensive phase of peaceful coexistence. The aim was no longer merely to defend socialism, but to gradually transform the entire system of international relations. Socialism was to be strong enough to start dictating the conditions for shaping global international relations.
Khrushchev linked the doctrine of peaceful coexistence with the requirements of the nuclear age. As early as 1956, the official doctrine of the USSR’s foreign policy rejected the inevitability of wars. And socialism was to win peacefully, even without revolution. The development of nuclear arsenals eventually led to a situation of mutually assured destruction. Thus the doctrine of peaceful coexistence by political choice turned into necessity. The USSR tried to codify it in the United Nations. The very term of peaceful coexistence was rejected there, but many years of work resulted in the development of seven principles of “friendly relations and cooperation between states” (Declaration of the principles of international law adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 1970). It was on its basis that the so-called Helsinki Decalogue of the Final Act of the CSCE was developed. Among these princpiles such rules as the principle of non-use of force, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-interference in internal affairs, sovereign equality of states, equality of peoples were included.
The doctrine of peaceful coexistence was one of the causes of the Soviet-Chinese schism. Mao did not share, in particular, the thesis that wars were no longer inevitable. Of course, he preferred that wars should be avoided by China. However, he was not afraid of war, including a nuclear war, as he believed that China’s population advantage would allow it always to survive.
National liberation movements were programmatically excluded from the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. So civil wars were (if in a just cause) legitimate. And the support of national liberation movements by socialist states with the doctrine of peaceful coexistence was also not in conflict.
The West, of course, believed that the doctrine of peaceful coexistence remained a ploy, a tactical veil for the continued expansion of communism.
The detente of the 1970s was accepted in Moscow as a new success of the doctrine. And it was even interpreted as confirming that peaceful coexistence must simply be imposed on capitalist imperialism. It still meant rejection of the status quo. It predicted new political and social revolutions, as well as national liberation. It even suggested intensifying the ideological struggle.
In the early 1980s, it was decided to expand its content. The doctrine implied cooperation in solving general civilization problems, such as acquiring new energy sources, exploring space and oceans, preserving biodiversity and providing food. But as long as capitalism existed, contradictions, conflicts, and wars would appear constantly. Therefore, it was explained that the difficulties in the relations between the socialist camp and the capitalist camp were inevitable. The orthodox scholars of socialism (and not only at the top of the government) warned against the effects of Western attempts to build bridges, and criticized the West’s diversified approach to socialist states as subversive. In their view, it was an unacceptable abuse under the guise of peaceful coexistence. Likewise, they rejected that it should involve ending support for national liberation movements and giving the West a free hand there. The world socialist system saw no contradiction between the doctrine of peaceful coexistence and the “proxy” wars it waged or supported (in Indochina or Africa).
In the West, warnings that the Bolsheviks aimed to bury capitalism (and by all possible means) were seriously received. Both Gorbachev and Gromyko had to explain to Reagan for a long time that the collapse of capitalism was so unquestionably scientifically proven that the USSR did not have to strive for it. Just like you don’t have to pray for the sun to rise the next day. Because, from a scientific point of view, it must rise anyway. Fortunately, few believed in these Soviet explanations.
The world system of socialism remained faithful to the doctrine of peaceful coexistence to the end. It was falling peacefully. It did not try to get involved in wars, even to mobilize its last vitality. It collapsed without ideological fumes. And some even saw a smile on its Hippocratic face. As if it was leaving the world with a sense of relief.
And with the collapse of the system, the doctrine of peaceful coexistence went down in history. The attempts to revive it today look really grotesque.
