Peaceful Coexistence

Origins and early practice

The expression entered Soviet usage in the 1920s, but under the prevailing idea of world proletarian revolution it was equated with a "peaceful respite." On 10 April 1922, at the Genoa Conference, Soviet Russia's representative Georgy Chicherin, on Lenin's instructions, put forward the principle of peaceful coexistence and economic cooperation between states with different social systems, giving the principle its first official airing before a broad postwar international conference. Lenin himself never used the term "peaceful coexistence" in his writings or speeches, though he used "peaceful cohabitation" (мирное сожительство) in a 1920 interview; Soviet authors generally asserted that he first formulated the principle. In the late 1920s and the 1930s the idea took shape in a series of non-aggression treaties, including the Soviet treaties with France, Poland and Finland in 1932, the German-Soviet pact of 1939 and the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact of 1941.

Codification under Khrushchev

Under Khrushchev the policy of peaceful coexistence developed further in theory and practice. Stalin himself had said in a 1952 interview with leading American publications that coexistence of capitalism and communism was entirely possible given a mutual desire to cooperate, a readiness to honour obligations and respect for equality and non-interference in other states' internal affairs. In 1956 the 20th Congress of the CPSU adopted peaceful coexistence as a principle of the international communist movement, and it was anchored in numerous party documents including the Third Programme of the CPSU. Western historiography widely holds that the policy originated with Khrushchev, though it is more accurate to say that his task was to carry out a policy whose foundations had been laid earlier.

The core of the concept was that although antagonistic class contradictions existed between the capitalist and socialist camps, they need not always be resolved by military force, a conclusion closely bound up with awareness of the danger of nuclear war. In practice the theory was interpreted as peaceful coexistence between the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states on one side and the United States and NATO states on the other. Khrushchev expected the blocs to coexist peacefully and their rivalry to become "peaceful competition" in which the superior system would ultimately prevail. The Soviet state actively supported pacifist and anti-war movements in the West sympathetic to its conception, with the World Peace Council founded in 1949 as a principal vehicle.

Coexistence as a form of class struggle

The ideology of peaceful coexistence came largely into conflict with Marxist-Leninist theory and the principle of the antagonism of the two systems, which insisted on the irreversibility of world revolutionary processes; peaceful coexistence was therefore interpreted as a form of class struggle. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had advocated world revolution through workers' internal revolutions within their own nations, not its spread by international warfare such as invasion by a neighbouring socialist state's army. Khrushchev used this aspect of Lenin's politics to argue that socialism would triumph over capitalism not by force but by example. Implicitly this meant ending Soviet advocacy of revolution spread by insurrectionist violence, which some communists worldwide saw as a betrayal of revolutionary communist principles. Disquiet over the shift helped bring Khrushchev down, but his successors did not return to the theory of inevitable conflict between the two systems.

The Sino-Soviet split and the Chinese Five Principles

Differing interpretations of peaceful coexistence were one aspect of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s and 1960s. Under Mao Zedong, China argued that a belligerent attitude toward capitalist countries should be maintained and initially rejected the theory as Marxist revisionism. After establishing a trade relationship with the United States in 1972, China cautiously adopted a version of the theory for its relations with non-socialist countries, and from then through the early 1980s and the adoption of socialism with Chinese characteristics it extended its own concept to all nations. Albania's Enver Hoxha denounced the concept and turned against China over the latter's growing ties to the West, exemplified by Nixon's 1972 visit; Hoxhaist parties still denounce it.

China's conception has a separate lineage. In 1954 Zhou Enlai proposed the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence during negotiations with India over Tibet, and they were written into the agreement he and Nehru signed that year. The principles are mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. They were reaffirmed at the Bandung Conference and incorporated into its declarations, and from the 1960s formed an important part of the ideological background of the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1982 the Five Principles were written into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China.

Effects on Western communist parties and the doctrine's end

As peaceful coexistence extended to all countries and social movements tied to the Soviet interpretation of communism, it quickly became a modus operandi for many individual communist parties, encouraging quite a few, especially in the developed world, to give up the long-term goal of amassing support for armed insurrectionary revolution in exchange for more active participation in electoral politics.

Under Brezhnev the doctrine underwent no ideological revision, but the détente policy Khrushchev had begun continued. Major achievements were the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the foundation in 1975 of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 slowed the détente process. After December 1991 none of the former Soviet republics remained socialist, and the Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved at a Prague meeting on 1 July 1991, so the traditional Soviet doctrine of peaceful coexistence appeared to have lost its reason to exist.