著者

横手 慎二

出版者

一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2001, no.126, pp.23-36,L6, 2001

---

In this paper I will analyze the domestic aspects of Khrushchev's foreign policy with a special attention to the Far Eastern states: Communist China, North Korea and to some extent Japan. (I am preparing a more detailed study on the post-W. W. II Japan-Soviet relations in another form.)<br>Many scholars including G. Richter pointed out the existence of the different opinions among the Soviet leaders in the post-Stalin years. However, these studies are overly concerned with the doctrine of peaceful coexistence and less attentive to the impact on the Soviet leaders of the other new line which Khrushchev forwarded forcefully, the denunciation of Stalin and his policy. It was the July 1955 plenum of the CC of the KPSS where Foreign Minister Molotov and the First Party Secretary Khrushchev collided over the problem for the first time. Molotov asserted that the Soviet delegation led by Khrushchev should not have accepted the argument of the Yugoslavia party that it was no other than Stalin who was responsible for the rupture of the relations between the two countries. Khrushchev was skillful enough not to make a direct criticism against Stalin at this time only by making long citations from Lenin's writings and ascribing Molotov's objection to his face saving deeds. After Khrushchev's secret speech on the cult of Stalin at the 20th KPSS congress in 1956, Molotov, clearly realizing that both the Chinese and the Korean party leader-ships were bitterly critical against Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist position, was determined together with Malenkov and Kaganovich to relieve Khrushchev of his post of the First Party Secretary. But again Khrushchev displayed great shrewdness by convening the CC plenum and sweepingly dismissing them from their posts as the anti&mdash;party group in June 1957.<br>The important point is that Molotov, having faithfully supported the Soviet-China collaboration policy during the past years, claimed at this plenum that Khrushchev's foreign policy of putting the first priority on the US-Soviet Relations would make the policy of the cohesion of the communist camp difficult. The deterioration of relations between the USSR and the two communist countries of North East Asia, which clearly contrasted with the gradual progress in the US-USSR relations in the following years, fully demonstrated the sharpness of Molotov's argument. By the end of the 1950s, Communist China grew far apart from the USSR. At the same time, North Korea, though moving to conclude its alliance treaty with the USSR, went its separate way with its own unique ideology. (And Japan started to strengthen its security relations with the US.) With these developments in the background, some of the party leaders, who were discontented with Khrushchev's policy, came to realize the validity of Molotov's arguments. We know now that Polianskii, who took the lead in pushing Khrushchev out from the top of the party in the October plenum in 1964, made a party report to the effect that the Khrushchev's US-first policy did damage to the policy of cohesion of the communist camp: especially, to Soviet-China relations. Some of the naive politicians in Moscow thought that they could make use of the dismissal of Khrushchev in order to repair the relations with Communist China. Polianskii, Shelepin, Trapeznikov and others faithful to the communist ideology strongly supported the policy of rapprochement with China. But they met vehement opposition from Andropov, Zymyanin and others who were in charge of the foreign affairs in the CC departments and the Foreign Ministry. These opponents were concerned with the negative effects on the peaceful coexistence policy by adopting the policy of collaboration with Mao Ze-tong, who looked fanatically anti-capitalist in their eyes<br>Thus, Moscow's foreign policy choices in the 1960s were constrained as either a detente policy with the US or that of collaboration with China because of the domestic ideological situation created after