By René Wadlow

Metta Spencer, The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy.

New York: Lexington Books, 2010, 348pp.

With the violence and tensions in Ukraine and the reactions of the USA, Russia, and NATO, some writers have spoken of a “New Cold War”. Thus, it is useful to look at how civil society representatives helped to keep lines of communication open during the first Cold War (1945-1990), in particular how Gorbachev’s advancement of democracy and peaceful foreign relations was fostered by private conversations with members of international civil society and NGOs.

There is in the Agni Yoga teachings of Helena Roerich, to which Raisa Gorbachev was particularly devoted, a line which says, “Not the new is proclaimed but what is needed for the hour.” This idea became a guideline for Mikhail Gorbachev whose new thinking was not really new. Many of us had been saying the same thing for years before, but none of us was head of state.

Gorbachev’s September 1987 address to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly was a clear call for the rule of law both domestically and internationally. He recommended greater use of the International Court of Justice and that all states accept its compulsory jurisdiction. He called upon the permanent members of the Security Council to join in formulating guidelines to help lead the way. This was a renunciation of a sixty-year resistance to the World Court that the then Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov − though an internationalist − had initiated in 1922 claiming that there could be no impartial arbitrator between the Soviet and the non-Soviet world saying, “Only an angel could be impartial in judging Russian affairs.”

Unfortunately, the United States (U.S.) State Department took the speech as a propaganda ploy to further embarrass the U.S. over the World Court’s Nicaragua litigation. Therefore, the U.S. delegation to the UN did everything it could to hinder discussion of giving the World Court a larger role and was successful in stopping any effort to expand compulsory jurisdiction.

Gorbachev did all he could to strengthen the peace-making role of the UN, leading to the successful completion of what had been seemingly endless negotiations at the Palais des Nations in Geneva concerning the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and the very difficult negotiations, also in Geneva, between Iraq and Iran to end their war.

Progress was also made on the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea (Cambodia) which led to the 1992 Paris Accord. This combination of deescalation in tensions and violence in the international area and significant steps in arms control was largely due to the leadership of Gorbachev. His seven years in power (1985-1991) left the world a safer place and Russia a more openly pluralistic society. However, the common ground on which he tried to stand was constantly eroded by forces he could not control, leaving him at the end with no place to stand.

Metta Spencer, Editor of Peace Magazine and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Toronto tells some of this story, especially through interviews with persons in Gorbachev’s inner circle as well as other participants in the fast-changing scene. She has continued her interviewing so that persons also reflect on events and trends in post-Gorbachev Russia − the Yeltsin and early Putin years.

What is most helpful to those of us interested in citizen diplomacy and who were involved in talks with Soviets on arms control is her account on how discussions with members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ institutes, especially the USA/Canada Institute of Georgi Arbatov and the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) had an impact on Soviet decision-making. As Spencer notes, Gorbachev’s advancement of democracy and peaceful foreign relations was fostered by private conversations with members of international civil society. Among the Soviets who participated, some became Gorbachev’s chief advisors.

The ground for these discussions had started relatively early at the time of Nikita Khrushchev. The Pugwash meetings started in 1957, and the Dartmouth conferences led by Norman Cousins and Georgi Arbatov began in 1960.

Metta Spencer sets out clearly the core of her book. Democracy, human rights, and nonviolence are rarely reinvented independently by local citizens. Usually, they are imported from abroad and spread by personal contacts in international civil society, not by diplomats or rulers. That was the way it happened in the Soviet Union. This book describes how certain back-channel relationships with foreign peace researchers and activists influenced the Soviet Union’s brief democratization, its foreign policy and its military doctrine. She adds that transnational civil society or organizations are most helpful for they create heterogeneous relationships − those that tend to bridge society’s disparate elements. Such relationships inform and strengthen individuals who, in an authoritarian setting, face heavy pressures to conform.

Metta Spencer’s interviews with people well after the events, give a sense of necessary distance, of the strengths and weaknesses of movements and individuals.

Note

1) For a good overview of citizen diplomacy efforts with the Soviet Union, see the following listed by date of publication:

Gale Warner and Michael Shuman, Citizen Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet-American Relations − And How You Can Join Them (New York: Continuum, 1987)

David D. Newsom (Ed.), Private Diplomacy with the Soviet Union (Lanham, MD.: University Press of America, 1987)

Gale Warner, Invisible Threads: Independent Soviets Working for Global Awareness and Social Transformation (Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press, 1991)

Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999)

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.