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p Despite the sharpness of the discussion in the communist and revolutionary movement, the struggle round the principles of peaceful coexistence has been and remains the main front of struggle against imperialism. The prime task was to force peace on capitalism, to compel it to abandon its attempts to destroy socialism by war. Of course, this was achieved not so much by the force of theoretical argument as by the argument of the growing strength and might of socialism as proved in practice.

p At first the capitalist powers were inclined to regard the proposal for peaceful coexistence as a sign of weakness. It was claimed that socialism was eagerly advocating peace only because it could not count on victory in war. It took several decades, in the course of which the imperialists time and again tested the strength of socialism by war, economic blockades and subversion, for the imperialist rulers to realise that this claim was untenable. The view that any attempt to destroy socialism by war is suicidal 265 is today accepted by a growing body of opinion among the ruling circles of the Western powers.

p More, this is leading to a new and more realistic approach by a considerable section of these ruling circles to the principles of peaceful coexistence. The most striking expression of these changes in Western political thinking is that the US Government has formally recognised peaceful coexistence as the only foundation of relations with the Soviet Union. In a document headed Basic Principles of Relations Between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America, signed by L. I. Brezhnev and Richard M. Nixon, it is explicitly stated that the two countries "will proceed from the common determination that in the nuclear age there is no alternative to conducting their mutual relations on the basis of peaceful coexistence".  [265•*  This is one of the key results of the Soviet-US summit talks. The implementation of this principle could vastly influence the development of relations between the two countries and also the situation in the world as a whole.

p Nevertheless, it cannot be considered that the struggle for peaceful coexistence has ended either on the practical level (for the most aggressive groups of imperialists continue to nurture plans for the military destruction of socialism) or on the level of theory and ideology.

p Western theorists attack the concept of peaceful coexistence mainly along two lines.

p One of these is linked with serving the policies of the most bellicose groups. It does not suit these “critics” that peaceful coexistence confines the struggle between the two systems to non-military means, that it excludes war from the relations between countries.

p Of course, it is becoming increasingly difficult to articulate this sort of disagreement with peaceful coexistence. Nonetheless many figures in the West still venture to do so—they are representatives of extreme reaction like General LeMay and Goldwater and their fellow theorists for whom even thermonuclear war remains an acceptable instrument of struggle against communism.

p A more widespread method of undermining the idea of peaceful coexistence, is the attempt to prove that the Soviet 266 Union and other socialist countries do not themselves believe in peaceful coexistence and advocate it only in order to "lull the vigilance" of the West while they make their preparations for war. This view is preached by very many representatives of the imperialist circles, and to some extent it is even part of the Western official outlook and a major ideological means of spurring military preparations.

p More significant from the standpoint of the subject of this book is the charge that peaceful coexistence is "not peaceful enough”. Recourse is had to one and the same argument that in the Leninist understanding of the term peaceful coexistence does not rule out the war of ideas. That, they claim, makes the demand for peaceful coexistence pointless. There is no war between socialist and capitalist powers and in this situation a relentless ideological struggle is not something new or appealing—it is tantamount to the cold war that mankind had already witnessed.

These attacks on peaceful coexistence were started at the close of the 1950s and the early 1960s, precisely when the cold war began to slacken, when the first signs appeared that tension might give way to normalisation. These changes were the result of the consistent policy of peace pursued by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. That was exactly when attempts were made, on the one hand, to credit the West with the signs of improvement in the international situation and, on the other, to discredit the socialist concept of peaceful coexistence. Bourgeois ideologists and politicians launched into clamorous assertions to the effect that only "Western democracy" was offering a programme of “genuine” peace, while the foreign policy principles of the socialist countries, which reject ideological tolerance, signified "aggressive coexistence" that hardly differed from the cold war. In those years these assertions were made both in the USA and in Western Europe. For example, W. Grewe, a West German apologist of bourgeois policy and ideology, wrote: "Coexistence is a form of conflict and not conciliation."  [266•*  In their arguments the bourgeois theorists make every attempt to obscure the fundamental difference between the concepts of "cold war" and "peaceful coexistence" and depict the latter as a kind of "political war".

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p This theme is elaborated on in particularly great detail in American literature, in which the concept of peaceful coexistence is violently attacked by theorists representing the extreme Right wing of political science. This may be illustrated with the following passage from A Forward Strategy for America by Strausz-Hupe, Kintner and Possony: "For, short of the outbreak of the Third World War, the immediate prospect is for a continuation and intensification of the cold war—the great and protracted psychopolitical conflict. For Moscow, the real alternative to a nuclear showdown is not peace or ’peaceful coexistence’ as we understand these terms, but the waging of a psychopolitical war that will so weaken, demoralise and divide the free world that a general nuclear war need not be fought at all or can be waged with impunity against distraught and defenseless peoples."  [267•* 

p Summing up the arguments on peaceful coexistence presented in scores of new books brought out in the West and asking, "What, then, is the meaning of peaceful coexistence?”, the American anti-communist journal Problems of Communism gives the following reply: "The concensus of opinion of the books listed ... is that it is really the cold war under another name.... What peaceful coexistence does not mean is a Communist will to establish genuinely friendly relations between ’countries of different social systems’. For indeed how can there be such relations if an essential part of one system is the belief that its ’historic task’ is the revolutionary overthrow of the other?"  [267•** 

In their attempts to discredit peaceful coexistence bourgeois theorists and politicians persevere in depicting it as a cunning subterfuge designed to "lull vigilance" in the West and demoralise it from within. The West German publicist Walter Schmitt declares: "Parallel with the repudiation of war peaceful coexistence amounts to nothing less than a bold attempt to nullify the value of all the former methods of defending the non-communist world from further communist seizure with the aim of changing the internal and external conditions throughout the world."  [267•*** 

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This theme is featured iii the book No Substitute for Victory by Frank Johnson, whose recommendation is that the US Government send the Soviet Union a kind of ultimatum declaring that the USA interpreted the communist statements about the ultimate triumph of communism in the world as an admission that geniune peaceful coexistence was unachievable. The peaceful coexistence offered by the socialist countries, Johnson writes, represents nothing more than "rules of the game" inspired by Communists with the objective of “converting” the world to communism. The USA, Johnson insists, should reject these “rules”, tell the Communists that it would not accept their concept of peaceful coexistence and bluntly state: "Our objectives ... include the liberation of every nation now under communist control and the destruction of the world-wide communist conspiracy. We will do everything within our power ... to destroy communism throughout the world and to diminish the influence, power, and prestige of the Soviet Union."  [268•* 

p The bourgeois theorists close their eyes to the fact that the "rules of the game" determining the “unequal” position of capitalism and socialism in the world have been laid down not by the Communists but by history. Its laws dictate society’s steady advance towards socialism, towards the downfall of the capitalist system. This is what the critics of the Marxist-Leninist concept of peaceful coexistence cannot accept. As they see it it is much more simple to regard the trends of world development as communist “conspiracies”. In the journal Problems of Communism we read: "The syllable ’co’ in ’coexistence’ suggests some sort of parity or mutuality in the relations, but there is nothing equal about it as the Communists conceive it; it is designed as a game in which they can win, but never lose, because conversion in one direction ... is legitimate, but conversion in the other direction is prohibited."  [268•** 

p This interpretation of a key element of peaceful coexistence as the repudiation of all attempts at “exporting” both revolution and counter-revolution is untenable to say the least. The socialist countries reject the idea of artificially " pushing" revolution but demand that imperialism should 269 abandon its design of intervening in the affairs of peoples who have accomplished the revolution. On this score there can and must be complete parity between the two sides. But the Communists’ belief that the laws of history will sooner or later bring capitalist society to revolution and that the reverse development is unnatural is a totally different matter.

p In this there can be no “parity” of the two sides. By demanding it the imperialist ideologists are in effect soliciting guarantees from the Communists and the socialist countries against revolution, against the growth of the influence of communist ideas throughout the world. But these solicitations are quite absurd.

p A typical attempt to depict peaceful coexistence as a sinister means of achieving world supremacy was made by the “Sovietologist” Richard V. Allen (for a few months in 1969 he was a member of an advisory group to the US President on national security) in a book commissioned by the American Bar Association, which engages in anticommunist “education”. Entitled Peace or Peaceful Coexistence? this book claims to be a "theoretical study" and is an attempt to discredit the concept of peaceful coexistence and undermine public trust in Soviet foreign policy. "After ten years of peaceful coexistence as the principal strategic line of the international communist movement,” Allen writes, "we have no evidence that it seeks genuine peace with the rest of the world. Above all, it is clear that the Communists have not given up their long-range goal of world domination, and in the final analysis we must judge their motivations according to that goal."  [269•* 

p We have quoted this passage because it sheds light on the fundamental tactics employed today by the opponents of peaceful coexistence: they criticise this principle from a position of “genuine” peace and bracket peaceful coexistence with the cold war. This swing in criticism makes it necessary to examine the basic distinctions between peaceful coexistence and the cold war.

p First and foremost, it is not a case simply of distinctions but of antipodal policies and political principles. With the 270 "hot war" advocates forced to go over to the defensive and surrender some of their positions in face of the socialist community’s might and the resistance of the working people of all countries and their struggle for peace, peaceful coexistence is more and more becoming the political opposite of the cold war.

p The cold war is not an ideological conflict between the two opposing systems but a state of acute tension in international relations witnessing a ceaseless arms race and political, economic and, frequently, military clashes precipitated by imperialism’s policies. It is a line stemming from the policy of expansion, of seizing markets and spheres of influence, of infiltrating other countries and subjugating them to the big imperialist vultures. It is a line of subversion against socialist countries with the object of restoring capitalism in these countries. It seeks to reimpose some form of colonialism on countries that have shaken off foreign rule.

p Of course, compared with a world thermonuclear conflict even the coldest cold war may be regarded as a kind of peace. But it is a poor peace, a peace for which the peoples pay with astronomical spending on armaments, with political sacrifices forced on them by mounting militarism, imperialist interference in their internal affairs and pressure from the reactionaries. Besides, it is not only a poor but a precarious peace.

p A whole series of international crises has demonstrated that today the threat of a global thermonuclear war comes not only from the hawks, who consciously pin their hopes on such a war. The hawk clique exists and it would be absurd to belittle its menace. But even if it is completely isolated and deprived of all political influence in the imperialist countries, would that eliminate the threat of war? It will not. In its present shape official imperialist policy itself constantly reproduces the cold war and creates the possibility of a world-wide thermonuclear explosion. This possibility lies in the policy of sustaining international tension, in the conflicts that constantly break out in different parts of the world, in the accumulation in international relations of combustible matter that any spark can set aflame.

p In the past decade mankind was brought closest to a 271 thermonuclear war during the Caribbean crisis in 1962.  [271•*  But that crisis, it will be recalled, was provoked not by President Kennedy and his advisers deliberately steering towards a world war but by the entire logic of imperialist policy, by the power struggle engendered by that policy, by the unremitting attacks on socialist Cuba and by the unbridled nuclear arms- race. A potential threat of a big explosion existed in the sharp conflict-laden situation created by imperialist policies in Southeast Asia. It still exists in the Middle East.

p Properly speaking, the threat of a world thermonuclear war has been and remains an intrinsic component of imperialist foreign policy. This was admitted officially when the USA adopted the "massive retaliation" doctrine, openly proclaiming that a nuclear war would be the response to an undesirable course of events. Nuclear blackmail has in fact been included also in the doctrines that replaced the " massive retaliation" doctrine. Within the context of these doctrines the purpose of such blackmail is to give the USA a free hand to fight “local” wars in different parts of the world. Constant "balancing on the brink of war" may lead to some power, which has chosen this road, losing its footing and stepping over the brink, and thereby plunging mankind into a nuclear catastrophe.

p Even regardless of the subjective intentions of individual Western leaders, the policy of tension and cold war is a fearful and real threat to peace, particularly in our day when weapons of mass annihilation increase the danger of an “accidental” war triggered by a simple error, the breakdown of mechanisms, criminal negligence or even the insanity of individuals.

p Accidents involving “patrol” bombers carrying nuclear bombs, such as have happened time and again on the territory of the USA and its allies, harbour the threat of an “accidental” war. Similar consequences may result from the failure of a radar installation, errors committed by the men 272 on duty at command posts, and so on.  [272•*  In an atmosphere of fear and hysteria the risk of war breaking out " accidentally" grows to the dimension of a real threat. Still more dangerous is, perhaps, the fact that such an atmosphere is to the liking of the many adventurists in imperialist circles.

p In short, a cold war stockpiles combustible matter and, at the same time, constantly kindles the sparks that may set it on fire. Essentially, a cold war is rather the substitute of war than the substitute (albeit a very defective one) of peace, for the cold war policy rests on military strength, includes war blackmail as an inalienable element and, in effect, pursues military aims.

A concept, widespread in the West, to the effect that in the modern world peace can only be maintained by an "equilibrium of fear" likewise exposes the practices of the imperialist policy of strength and cold war. This concept, as one can judge from many official documents, has become one of the favourite ideological covers for the arms race. For example^ in a report on military technology and its influence on the strategy and foreign policy of the USA, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee drew the conclusion that an optimistic view on the prospects of peace can only be based on "a comparatively stable strategic nuclear stalemate”. Hence the call to go ahead with the arms drive which, it is alleged, "will lessen the risk of total war".  [272•** 

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p In the early 1960s the USA achieved its most spectacular post-war advance in the arms race. However, even many American bourgeois researchers admit that it not only failed to consolidate peace but, on the contrary, had consequences which made peace more precarious than before. Nevertheless, during the 1968 presidential elections one of the central points of the Republican Party’s programme was the demand for more intensive armament. The danger of this course is self-evident. The unrestrained stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction has in itself become one of the main elements de-stabilising the international situation.

p Such a policy can only benefit the armament monopolies, the militarist circles and the extreme reactionaries. It is unquestionably in their interest, even though war is becoming pointless, to go on intensifying the arms drive and international tension. This promises them enormous profits, creates the political condition in the given country for cutting back democracy, and encourages foreign policy adventures with the use of all means short of total war—"limited wars”, blackmail and interference in the affairs of other countries. Actually, here the aim is, even under conditions where global war has to be avoided, to preserve intact imperialist aggressive foreign policy and militarism as a tested weapon of reaction. Today this aim is served by the cold war.

p Peaceful coexistence, on the other hand, is the only possible alternative not only to a world war but also to the cold war. Its objective is to create firm guarantees of peace, improve the entire system of international relations, and consolidate in these relations genuinely democratic principles conforming to the interests of the peoples and to the requirements of the nuclear age. Peaceful coexistence implies more than that no state of war exists at the given time. It calls for a determined struggle against imperialist aggression, for the eradication of all the flashpoints of another world war, for the settlement of all tension-building disputes and conflicts by negotiation and in the interests of the peoples, for the cessation of the arms race, for the creation 274 of an effective international system of preventing aggression, and for the promotion of economic, scientific, technological and cultural relations between countries.

p These are precisely the principles which the Soviet Union holds in international relations.

p In the CC CPSU Report to the 23rd Party Congress it is stated that "while exposing the aggressive policy of imperialism we are consistently and unswervingly pursuing a policy of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. This means that while regarding the coexistence of states with different social systems as a form of the class struggle between socialism and capitalism the Soviet Union consistently advocates normal, peaceful relations with capitalist countries and a settlement of controversial inter-state issues by negotiation, not by war. The Soviet Union firmly stands for non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, for respect of their sovereign rights and the inviolability of their territories."  [274•* 

The attempts to bracket peaceful coexistence with cold war are thus absolutely untenable. Their only purpose is to discredit the idea of peaceful coexistence and “prove” that it is not an aim worth a serious effort.