The Soviet Union and the Varieties of Neutrality in Western Europe

Abstract

Soviet policies with regard to neutrality in postwar Western Europe have developed from largely unsuccessful influence attempts into more realistic and acquiescent lines seeking to find a balance between operative aims and actual leverage. There has been a change from ideologically motivated opposition toward conditional support and flexible search for areas of common interests, and from basically unrealistic grand designs to recognition of the status quo. The Soviet posture toward potentially neutral blocs and disparate neutralist trends in Western Europe has primarily been characterized by a wait-and-see attitude. In order to make Soviet policies and postures understandable, it is necessary to combine the concept of the U.S.S.R. as a rational bloc leader interested above all in weakening the opposite bloc with that of a world power interested mainly in international stability and prevention of war. The popular Western hypothesis that the Soviet union is acting on a design that would incrementally neutralize the whole of Western Europe is difficult to test; even if there were such a design in reserve or in the experimental stage, its degree of crystallization and internal integration would have to be low.