Tutkimuksen tiivistelmä

Interpretations of the Concept of Peaceful Coexistence in the Soviet Union 1920-1986. Semantic Research of Soviet-Marxist Language.

About 1000 contexts on Soviet use of its basic foreign policy term peaceful coexistence (PCE) have been tabulated using semantic field theory.

All the forty-one published Soviet dissertations on PCE policy see PCE as a strategy for global revolution.

In the partial documents of Soviet Communist Party from 1917-1986, the nearest synonyms for PCE

• on the age of Lenin were 'revolution',
• in Stalin's 'class struggle',
• in Khrushchev's 'economical competition' and,
• in Brezhnev's 'ideological struggle'.

• In the 1920's PCE meant economic pacts for the transition period;
• in the 1930's, import of technical know-how for the Soviet Union;
• in the 1950's reduction in the fear of nuclear war; and,
• since the end of the 1960's, a means to preyen detection of the vast Western economic development.

Opening the term PCE into small units of meaning showed however, that at all these times Soviet foreign policy was dominated by two basic questions:

• how to escape famine, and
• how to hinder the outcome of war.

Discussion of Marxist alienation philosophy and the communist communality was totally missing. The fundamental, universal and thorough-going meaning for PCE was a staunch belief in salvation by machines and science - the mechanistic ideology. The monastic language results from technical world.

Use of linguistic methods gave the same results as ecological research on the durability of Nature: one the road to the development of the state has come to an end. Because the language-plays are not commensurable, the control of social development can be only local and restricted. The society will break up into 'linguistic clouds'.

16.1.1991 Horn 

 The aim of this study is to

-introduce a semantic method to be used in the foreign policy analysis of different cultures. The study is interdisciplinary trying to diminish emotional interpretation of the most common words used in the speeches about foreign policy in the Soviet Union.

-clarify the connection between words, consciousness and reality and

-develop a new way of understanding the Soviet history and the Soviet system of government, which I call empathical understanding.

A semantical method (text analysis) has been adapted in order to clarify a specific mode of communication between the states (peaceful coexistence) by using specific sender (Soviet State/party).

Since peaceful coexistence is understood as an ideological concept, it's investigated according to its own merits, it is in its institutional surrounding. It's official definition is to be scrutinized.

The term is understood as a movement towards a classless society. There are two questions through the study:

• how the movement should be carried out and
• where the process should lead to.

The following assumptions are the basis of the research: Any kind of contact between states requires words. Without a language no society can communicate. Since every language is formed of words and concepts, the contact between the states is never directly linked with the objects the word are supposed to describe but with the impression of these objects/matters. Since the comprehension of a word reflects the circumstances of the consciousness, not necessarily of the reality, the communication between the people also reflects the conditions of the society. The language can only be understood as a part of society.

In order to make communication possible between people belonging to different cultural surroundings, one has to be aware of the language-game of the other. Because the foreign policy of the Soviet Union has represented a closed language-game in the sense that the coherence between the different areas of society is recognized, even aimed, have the words and concepts been defined inside of that system.

References

Development of semantical theory and specially the semantical field theory (Moser 1964, Klaus 1971, Good 1975, Dieckmann 1975, Freitag 1977, Schumann 1979) is based on the German linguistic tradition.

Attitude of Marxism to the semantic systems is found in the writings of Marx, Engels (1974) and Stalin (1953).

The meaning of the concept of peaceful coexistence is sought in the reports of the conferences at the communist party of the Soviet Union (1907-1986) and in the 41 dissertations written about peaceful coexistence in the Soviet Universities in different faculties.

The most extensive writing of the surveys of the theory of the Soviet foreign policy is found by Mayerzedt 1967, Mandel, Woslenski 1973, Leonhard, Jahn 1975, Gupta 1976, Willms 1979, Gransow 1980, Borcke 1980, Kubalcova/Cruickshank 1982.

The main soviet sources are the speeches of the head of the state and especially Gromyko, Jegerov and Tunkin.

Results

During the history of the Soviet Union the terms and concepts used in the international discussion have not been changed. Only they have been given a new interpretation according to the new conditions.

Western investigations concerning Soviet policy have got stuck to concepts because the stern of a word and its substance has not been realized.

The concept of peaceful coexistence reflects the contradiction of a word as well as of its ideological concept.

The actual understanding of the word essence, short definition, implicates living in mutual toleration. The meaning of the word peaceful is calm, free from disturbance, and the meaning of coexistence is exist at the same time, in the same place.

In different documents the term obtains a special connotation, a movement (revolution) in direction of a certain goal (communist society).

Peaceful coexistence is defined as a form of class struggle, the aim of which is

• to raise the political power of the Soviet Union,
• to raise the material and cultural level of living of its population
• to produce and create the material-technical basis for communism
• -to improve the non warlike, non-violent prerequisite for the revolution.