In 1920, Lenin said:

we must know how to take advantage of the antagonism and contradictions existing among the imperialists. Had we not adhered to this rule, every one of us would have long ago been hanging from an aspen tree. . . .

8

In 1921, Stalin referred to certain statements by Chich-
erin, then People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs:

. . Comrade Chicherin is inclined to deny the existence of contradictions between the imperialist states, to exaggerate the international unanimity of the imperialists, and to overlook . . contradictions which do . . . give rise to war. . . . Yet these contradictions do exist and it is on them that the activities of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs are based. . . . The whole purpose of the existence of a People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs is to take account of these contradictions, to use them as a basis, and to maneuver within these contradictions." 2. Wherever possible, the Party must sharpen the conflict between other states.

In 1920, Lenin said:

The practical part of Communist policy is... to incite one
[enemy power] against the other. we Communists must use
one country against another.10

In a December 21, 1920, speech, Lenin developed the So-
viet policy of offering economic concessions to American.
entrepreneurs in areas of the Soviet Far East then occu-
pied by Japan. He explained that this policy was in-
tended to bring about an intensification of the conflict
between Japan and the United States. Although at the
time of this speech no concessions had yet been granted,
Lenin estimated that the consequences of this policy al-
ready were as follows:

...

we [have] achieved a gigantic sharpening of the enmity between Japan and America and thereby an indubitable weakening of the offensive of Japan and America against us."

CONDUCT IN DEFEAT AND VICTORY

1. History indicates that recurrent setbacks are inevitable: "Wars which began and ended with an uninterrupted victorious advance have never occurred in world history, or else they have been very rare exceptions. This applies to ordinary wars. But what about wars . . . which decide the question of socialism or capitalism?"

In 1918, Lenin said:

To think that we shall not be thrown back is utopian.12

In 1925, Stalin said:

The epoch of the world revolution . . . may occupy years, or
even decades. In the course of this period there will occur, nay,
must occur, ebbs and flows in the revolutionary tide. . . . Since
the October victory we have been living in the third stage of the

8 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 279–280.

Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, pp. 104-105.

10 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 8, p. 284.

11 V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 3d ed., Vol. 26, p. 11.

13 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 8, p. 321.

revolution, during which our objective is the overthrow of the
international bourgeoisie. . . . We shall witness a succession of
ebbs and flows in the revolutionary tide. For the time being the
international revolutionary movement is in the declining phase;
but... this decline will yield . . . to an upward surge which
may in the victory of the world proletariat. If, however, it should
not end in victory, another decline will set in, to be followed in
its turn by yet another revolutionary surge. Our defeatists main-
tain that the present ebb in the revolutionary tide marks the end
of the revolution. They are mistaken now just as heretofore . .
the revolution does not develop along a straight, continuous and
upwardly aspiring line but along a zigzag path . . . an ebb and
flow in the tide.

13

In 1927, Stalin said:

...

The fact that the Chinese revolution has not resulted in direct victory over imperialism, this fact cannot have decisive significance for the perspective of the revolution. Great popular revolutions never win through to the end on their first appearance. They grow and strengthen themselves by ebbs and flow. So it was everywhere, and in Russia too. So it will be in China." That is, major successes are often preceded by repeated failures: "We know that the transition from capitalism to socialism involves an extremely difficult struggle. But we are prepared . . . to make a thousand attempts: having made a thousand attempts we shall go on to the next attempt." ". we shall act as we did in the Red Army: they may beat us a hundred times, but the hundred and first time we shall beat them all." "Not one of the problems that we have had to solve could be solved at one stroke; we had to make repeated attempts to solve them. Having suffered defeat, we tried again..

2. It is not possible to predict how strong an "ebb" will be, and how long it will last.

3. To achieve a major advance or final victory requires a length of time commensurate to the historical importance of these events: "... the aim . . . [of the Party] is radically to transform the conditions of life of the whole of humanity, and . . . for that reason. it is not permissible to be 'disturbed' by the question of the duration of the work."

4. A Bolshevik must always control any tendency to act inexpediently after a setback: ". . . a Marxist must be able to reckon with the most complicated and fantastic zigzag leaps of history. . . .” "Whatever the . . . vicissitudes of the struggle may be, however many partial zigzags it may be necessary to overcome (and there will be very many of them-we see from experience what tremendous twists the history of the revolution is making.. .), in order not to get lost. in these zigzags and twists of history... in the periods of retreat, retirement or temporary defeat, or when history, or the enemy, throws us back . . . the . . correct thing is not to cast out the old basic programs.".

ADVANCE

1. The Party must never show "adventurism" in its attempts to advance; that is, it must never risk already conquered major positions for the sake of uncertain further gains.

13 Joseph Stalin, Leninism, Vol. 1, pp. 220-222. 14 Joseph Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 10, p. 283.

339 186 - 69 - 3

On January 20, 1918, Lenin said:

it would be a quite impermissible tactic to risk the already begun socialist revolution in Russia simply because of the hope that the German revolution will break out in a very short time, in a few weeks. Such a tactic would be adventurist. We have no right to assume such a risk."

15

On January 24, 1918, Lenin discussed the proposal that
war against Germany should be resumed in order to
maximize the chances of the German revolution:

But Germany is still only pregnant with revolution, while with us
a perfectly healthy child has already seen the light of the world,
a child which we may kill by beginning the war.1

RETREAT

1. Mastery in the skill of retreating is as necessary as mastery in the skill of advancing.

In 1922, Lenin said:

When it was necessary-according to the objective situation in
Russia as well as the whole world-to advance, to attack the enemy
with supreme boldness, rapidity, decisiveness, we did so attack.
When it will be necessary, we will know how to do this again and
again. . . . And when, in the spring of 1921, it appeared that the
advance guard of the revolution was threatened by the danger of
becoming isolated from the mass of the people . . . then we resolved
unanimously and firmly to retreat. And for the past year we have in
general retreated in revolutionary order. Proletarian revolutions
will not be able to fulfill their tasks without combining the skill
attack with the skill in retreating in revolutionary

in
order.17

DEALS

1. Any agreements between the Party and outside groups must be regarded as aiding the future liquidation of these groups and as barriers against the liquidation of the Party by them. Thus, Reformism,' 'the policy of agreement' and 'particular agreements' are different matters .. with the Mensheviks agreements are transformed into a system, into a policy of agreement, while with the Bolsheviks only particular concrete agreements are acceptable, and are not made into a policy of agreement."

Therefore there is no essential difference between coming to an ostensibly amicable arrangement with an outside group or using violence against it; they are both tactics in an over-all strategy of attack.

In 1920, Lenin said, with reference to Soviet plans for
granting economic "concessions" to foreign entrepre-

neurs:

The major theme of my speech will be the proof of two points,
namely, first, that every war is the continuation of the policy con-
ducted in peace, only by other means; second, that the conces-
sions which we grant, which we are forced to grant, are the con-
tinuation of war in another form, by other means. It would
be a great mistake to believe that a peaceful agreement about
concessions is a peaceful agreement with capitalists. This agree-
ment is equivalent to war..

18

15 V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 4th ed., Vol. 26, p. 407.

16 Ibid., 3d ed., Vol. 22, p. 201.

17 V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 3d ed., Vol. 27, p. 271. 18 V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 3d ed., Vol. 26, p. 6.

2. When an attempt by the enemy, or by the Party, to advance by violent means has failed, the conditions for an effective agreement between the Party and the enemy come into existence.

In 1920, Lenin said:

... every attempt to start war on us will mean for the states
resorting to war that the terms they will get after and as a result
of the war will be worse than those that they could have got with-
out war or before war. This has been proved in the case of several
states. . . . And thanks to this our relations with neighboring
states are steadily improving. . . . Peace on such a basis has
every chance of being . . . durable. . .

19

3. The Party must always expect outside groups to violate agree

ments.

In 1920, Lenin said about the policy of granting economic
"concessions" to foreign entrepreneurs:

Of course, the capitalists will not fulfill the agreements, say the
comrades who fear concessions. That is a matter of course, one
must absolutely not hope that the capitalists will fulfill the agree-
ments.20

These attitudes imply that a "settlement" with the Western Powersthat is, an agreement sharply reducing the threat of mutual annihilation-is inconceivable to the Politburo, although arrangements with them, codifying the momentary relationship of forces, are always considered.

19 V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 8, p. 250.

20 V. I. Lenin, Sochineniya, 3d ed., Vol. 26, p. 22.

[From Chapter 10 by Philip E. Mosely in Raymond Dennett and Joseph E. Johnson (eds.), Negotiating with the Russians. Copyright © 1951 by World Peace Foundation. Reprinted by permission of the author.]

SOME SOVIET TECHNIQUES OF NEGOTIATION*

By Philip E. Mosely

(Professor of International Relations and Director of the European Institute, Columbia University; former Director, Russian Institute, Columbia University)

There is a deep-seated tradition in western diplomacy that an effective diplomat should be a two-way interpreter. He must present his own government's policy forcefully to the government to which he is accredited and defend the essential interests of his country. If he is to give intelligent advice to his government, he must also develop a keen insight into the policies of the government with which he deals and become skilled in distinguishing basic interests and sentiments which it cannot disregard from secondary ones which it may adjust or limit for the broader purpose of reaching agreement. Occasionally, as instanced by Woodrow Wilson's criticism of Walter Hines Page, it has seemed as if individual ambassadors become too much penetrated by the viewpoint and interests of the country to which they were sent and less able to press contrary views of their own governments.

No such problem of delicate balance in functions arises to plague the Soviet negotiator. This has been especially true since the great purge of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in 1938-39 and the replacement of Litvinov by Molotov in 1939. The new foreign affairs staff was recruited among the middle ranks of Soviet officials, whose entire training had been based on rigid adherence to centralized decisions and who had rarely had informal contacts with life outside the Soviet Union. The present-day Soviet representative can hardly be called a "negotiator" in the customary sense. He is rather treated as a mechanical mouthpiece for views and demands formulated centrally in Moscow, and is deliberately isolated from the impact of views, interests and sentiments which influence foreign governments and peoples. Probably the Soviet representative abroad, through fear of being accused of "falling captive to imperialist and cosmopolitan influences," serves as a block to the transmission of foreign views and sentiments, rather than as a channel for communicating them to his government ..

*NOTE BY SUBCOMMITTEE STAFF.-Written in 1950, this classic article describes experi ences with the Soviets between 1942 and 1949. Though dated in some respects, much of the analysis is still relevant. For example: While Soviet diplomacy has certainly become better informed about the outside world, the continuing effects of dogmatism on education, on the view of the outside world, and on inter-personal and inter-national relations remain a distinctive feature of Soviet policy making and Soviet negotiation.

From 1942 to 1946 Mr. Mosely served as an officer of the Department of State in various capacities including that of Advisor to the United States Delegation at the Moscow Conference, 1943; Political Advisor to the American Delegation on the European Advisory Commission. 1944-1945; at the Potsdam Conference, 1945; and at the meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers at London and Paris in 1945 and 1946. He was the United States Representative on the Commission for the Investigation of the Yugoslav-Italian Boundary in 1946.