The Soviet View of War, Peace and Neutrality

This book, first published in 1975, analyses the three tools which the Russians used for attaining their political objectives: war, peace and neutrality. This study shows how they have evolved a clear-cut view, based on Marxism-Leninism, of the origins of war, the categories of war, the ways in which it can be made to serve the Marxist revolutionary interest, and the circumstances in which it is profitable to use it. As for peace, both Lenin and Khrushchev described it as a ‘temporary, unstable armistice between two wars’. In the Leninist view, peace is a tool for attaining political objectives just like war, while neutrality is essentially ridiculous: ‘he who is not with me is against me’. Nevertheless, there are occasions when neutrality is a concept acceptable to the Soviet leaders, and this study examines instances of this, alongside war and peace.