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Abstract:
This article, a case study, treats the Soviet press as an historical source and applies to it traditional techniques of propaganda analysis, modified by behavioralist and postbehavioralist methodologies, as set out in general analytical method presented in the author's 1982 article in World Politics on inferential issues presented by organizational and cognitive complexity. So doing, it reaches and validates significant conclusions on interests and groups in Soviet foreign policy making. The present article has 110 notes drawing on sources in Russian, English, German and French as well on as the author's interviews with participants in the Soviet press and policy making. It includes five Tables, two Figures, and a Technical Appendix that explicates in detail the logic of inference from the Soviet press, with direct reference to examples in the case study presented..
| First publication: | Robert M. Cutler, "Domestic and Foreign Influences on Policy Making: The Soviet Union in the 1974 Cyprus Conflict," Soviet Studies 37, no. 1 (January 1985): 60–89. |
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The subject of this study is the formation of Soviet foreign policy during the 1974 Cyprus conflict. It begins with the overthrow of Archbishop Makarios on 14 July and ends with the adoption of Resolution 361 by the Security Council of the United Nations on 30 August. The analysis focuses not so much on the international situation as on how information about Cyprus was reported and analysed in the Soviet press and radio, and on what this tells us about the activity of overlapping propaganda and policy organisations. Cyprus is here the setting for a case study of Soviet foreign policy making.
Most studies of the formation of Soviet foreign policy have treated Soviet conduct in international affairs either as the product of a unitary actor or as that of conflict within the country's political elite, the Politbureau.[1] These treatments are respectively equivalent, in terms first used by Graham T. Allison, to 'rational actor' and 'governmental politics' approaches. A third approach discussed by Allison—'organisational process'—is rarely considered in studies of Soviet foreign policy making, but the 1974 Cyprus conflict provides an appropriate occasion to use it; and it guides the present research.[2]
For the Cyprus conflict was neither an international crisis that invoked continuous Politbureau intervention in policy making and management, nor a series of run-of-the-mill international events that invoked routinely patterned bureaucratic responses. The evolution of the Cyprus conflict permits the analyst to observe not only behavioural continuities in Soviet conduct that result from standard operational procedures, but also behavioural discontinuities that reflect the impact of unexpected developments in the international situation: and for precisely this reason it is an appropriate instance for applying the organisational-process framework to analyse the continuing formation and reformation of policy. This research therefore employs a decision-making approach and, like Paige's seminal study of Korea, it relies on 'a semi-structured research design in which a priori concepts and hypotheses are combined with willingness to maintain a receptive mind for the apprehension of significant unforeseen elements'.[3]
This writer's consultations in Moscow and elsewhere with professional Soviet journalists confirm that the central newspapers with broadest circulation do reflect the views of various groupings in the Central Committee and its Secretariat, and are to some extent manipulated by them. These groupings are often institutionally based but they need not be so. (An exception, for instance, has been the coalescence of Russian
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nationalist sentiment around Sovetskaya Rossiya.) The connection between such groupings and newspapers evolves informally and in an ad hoc manner. Members of different groupings acquire executive responsibility in different newspapers, they and their associates coalesce into loose cliques around the editorial boards, and it becomes
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known in an unofficial way that different climates of opinion predominate in different journalistic circles.[4] In this way the reality of Soviet press organisation supports the attribution to an interest grouping[5] around a newspaper of evaluations articulated through that newspaper. Oral and written primary sources confirm what Kremlinologists have traditionally assumed about how these opinions find their way into the Soviet press, becoming relevant for policy making and so for the analysis of policy making.
The newspapers chosen for this research were: (1) Pravda, the party organ; (2) Izvestiya, the government organ; (3) Krasnaya zvezda, the military organ; (4) Sovetskaya Rossiya, the organ of the Russian Republic; (5) Komsomol′skaya pravda, the youth league organ; (6) Trud, the trade union organ. These were chosen not because Western analysts hypothesise they represent important bureaucracies, nor only because Soviet journalists themselves suggest the six newspapers as among the most influential in Soviet foreign policy formation. Just as important, and indicative of their influence, is that they are among the few Soviet newspapers entitled to have their Own Correspondent (sobstvennyi korrespondent, or sobkorr in the vernacular) stationed permanently abroad in a given geographical area and to maintain telephonic contact with him. The main result of this privilege is that while most other newspapers are dependent on Tass and Novosti for foreign news reports and analyses these six newspapers can draw on sources particular to their respective organisations.[6]
A brief narrative of events on Cyprus is combined in Table 1 with the Soviet 'decisional flow' between mid-July and the end of August.[7] Some background, however, is first necessary. When Cyprus became a republic in 1960 after having been a British 'colony, its independence was guaranteed by a treaty among Great Britain, Greece, and Turkey, the latter two countries signing out of interest in the existence of Greek and Turkish ethnic communities on Cyprus. (Although Soviet propaganda frequently invokes the 'Cypriot people', nevertheless—as Archbishop Makarios often noted—there is no Cypriot people but only a Cypriot population composed of ethnic Greeks and ethnic Turks.) Part of the treaty arrangements included the presence on the island of a certain number of Greek officers from the Hellenic mainland, constituting a portion of the Cypriot National Guard.
On 2 July 1974 Archbishop Makarios, ethnarch of the Greek Cypriots and President of Cyprus, suspecting a plot against himself among these officers, wrote to the erstwhile leader of the junta in Athens, General Ghizikis, demanding that this Greek contingent be withdrawn from the island. [8] The request was ignored; on 14 July, a successful coup was launched. Makarios found refuge at one of the two extra-territorial British bases on the island and was flown by the Royal Air Force to London, whence he departed for New York to address the UN Security Council. Thus was inaugurated the Cyprus conflict of summer 1974, of which the principal events are recounted in the chronology that appears as Table 1.
The initial Soviet response to the coup against Makarios had both
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diplomatic and military aspects. The Soviet chargé d'affaires in Athens delivered 'a note couched in strong language' to Acting Foreign Minister Mavros. Diplomats in the Greek capital considered it a serious possibility that Soviet troops might be sent to the island in response to Makarios's appeal to the world for help, but American analysts in the Pentagon wondered how the USSR could effect a military intervention on the island at all.[9] The first Soviet comment on events in Cyprus was an authorised Tass statement that gave factual background to Makarios's letter to Athens of 2 July, and stressed the importance of the tripartite accords of 1960 which gave Cyprus its independence.[10] The Soviet ambassador to Ankara requested a meeting with President Korotürk of Turkey, after which he made no comment to newsmen but only repeated a sentence from that Tass statement, which responded to the news of the revolt against Makarios: 'In this difficult period for Cyprus, the Soviet people are on the side of, that is, with, those struggling against the rebels'.[11]
The Soviet authorities called a military alert, but sources differ concerning its scope. American newspapers reported a US Defense Department press leak that all of the USSR's airborne divisions had been placed on alert.[12] The Russian-language version of a Tass statement denying an Agence France-Presse report of the alert asserted that 'the armed forces of the Soviet Union remain in their usual state'; the English translation of the dispatch, distributed to Western newsmen, maintained that 'the armed forces in the Soviet Union remain in their usual state'.[13] The Bulgarian Press Agency's denial of an alert of its own national army does not exclude an alert of Soviet units in Bulgaria.[14] Inference for such an alert is strengthened by recalling that these Soviet units were the ones alerted during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
The first article to appear in the Soviet press that analysed the events on Cyprus was signed by Nikolai Bragin and headed 'Opinion of an Observer'. This rubric, which is used only in comments on complex and fast-developing international situations, carries a personal signature and differs from the category of anonymous articles signed simply by Observer. Former and current Soviet journalists independently confirm that signed articles titled 'Opinion of an Observer' are authoritative on the level of the Central Committee; they lack only the legal standing of an official statement, and so enable the party and state to disclaim responsibility for the 'opinion' should any unpleasantness ensue.
Bragin, erstwhile editor for the Department of European Countries at Pravda and a member of the paper's editorial board, emphasised in the article not the 1960 accords but the clashes on the island between its Greek and Turkish communities in 1963. These he called a 'provocation [designed] … to create a crisis situation [to be used] as a pretext for interference in the internal affairs of Cyprus, in the guise of "mediation" to resolve the Cyprus question, so that a NATO presence could be asserted on Cypriot soil.[15] The 'plot' failed, according to Bragin, because of 'the decisive opposition of the patriotic forces in Cyprus' and 'the support of the peace-loving peoples' of the member-states of the United Nations. A Soviet perception that the UN had helped to thwart a 1963 attempt to abridge Cypriot sovereignty helps to explain the anxiety of the Soviet representative at the UN, who, 'speaking seriously', noted that his delegation was 'gravely concerned at attempts of certain NATO countries to delay the Security Council's adoption of measures'. [16] The first Soviet government statement, published on
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18 July, also blamed the coup on 'certain NATO circles' that could not reconcile themselves to 'an independent Cyprus with a non-aligned foreign policy'.[17]
The second Soviet government statement, issued late on 20 July, followed the landing of Turkish troops on Cyprus. Between the first and second statements, Pravda, Izvestiya and Komsomol′skaya pravda had adopted the practice of using subheads to their main headlines over unsigned Tass dispatches concerning Cyprus. The subjects present in these subheads were: (1) the military resistance on Cyprus to the coup against Makarios, and the clashes resulting therefrom; (2) a joint focus on Makarios, as president of the legal government, and the United Nations, toward whose headquarters he was fleeing and which was being called upon to defend the country's sovereignty; (3) the use of repressive violence on Cyprus by those who carried out the coup; and (4) the culpability of Athens and/or NATO in the coup. In addition to these four categories appearing in the subheads, two more were prominent and significant enough to be included in a quantitative analysis of the differential editing of the Tass dispatches by the several newspapers.[18]
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Krasnaya zvezda and Trud were also included in this analysis; Sovetskaya Rossiya was excluded ecause it was published on only two of these three days, and because its reports are significantly less extensive than those of the other newspapers. Inspection of Table 2, which displays as percentages the relative prominence of the six given themes across the five newspapers, yields inferences, from a rank-ordering of newspapers
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according to the attention that each devotes to each theme, concerning the viewpoints of the various editorial boards. For example, the resistance/clash theme was, as a percentage of the total number of sentences, relatively most frequent in Trud and relatively least frequent in Izvestiya. A comparison of such relative frequencies across newspapers suggests that a more or less common set of predispositions to note some facts and to ignore others was shared among the editorial boards of Trud, Komsomol′skaya pravda and Krasnaya zvezda. This interpretation is only tentative, because two or three newspapers together scoring high on one theme will ceteris paribus together score low on others. Moreover, the relatively more frequent appearance in Pravda and Izvestiyaof themes directly relevant to international relations—such as Makarios UN or US diplomacy—may be explained simply by the international readerships of Pravda and Izvestiya; the other three newspapers, by contrast, have domestic readerships. Also, the relatively infrequent appearance of the theme of Greek/NATO culpability in Tass dispatches edited by Pravdaand Izvestiya could be explained by observing that these newspapers published separate, signed commentaries on those matters.[19]
Quantitative analysis thus yields two plausible explanations—which are not necessarily mutually exclusive—for the frequency distributions displayed in Table 2: policy conflict, i.e., disagreements among editorial boards; and functional differentiation, i.e., readership targeting. But critical data—i.e., data that allow us to choose between the two explanations—do exist. Functional differentiation explains neither the emphasis placed by Trud on the resistance/clash theme nor that placed by Komsomol′skaya pravda on items relative to Turkey. This observation guides the further, qualitative, analysis of the press publications.
It is not surprising that the armed-forces newspaper, Krasnaya zvezda, should print more information about armed clashes on Cyprus than do other newspapers. But it is less clear why Trud should devote such great attention to military resistance on the island. To state that 'the interferers control the whole territory of the island' and that 'the putschists have tanks stationed at every strategic point in Nicosia' is alarmist. The emphasis on Turkey in Komsomol′skaya pravda, which Krasnaya zvezda shares, creates a similar effect; only these two press organs, other than Trud, published reports of Turkish military preparations before the Turks landed on Cyprus. (Izvestiya reporting about Turkey, for instance, concerned only Prime Minister Ecevit's diplomatic efforts and the activities of the Turkish parliament.) The emphasis on Turkish military preparations in Komsomol′skaya pravda is not explicable by readership targeting alone. The common treatment of such news of Cyprus in Krasnaya zvezda, Komsomol′skaya pravda and Trud for the days 18–20 July cannot be entirely explained by readership considerations. The ensemble of available evidence suggests that those responsible for foreign news coverage in these newspapers are predisposed to perceive, and so to emphasise, threat.
The Soviet attitude changed markedly between the publication on 22 July of the second Soviet government statement on Cyprus and that of its third statement six days later. The second Soviet statement portrayed the landing of Turkish troops as a means 'to enable the legitimate government of Cyprus, headed by President
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Makarios, to remove all Greek servicemen from the island'; and it took favourable note of Turkey's assertion that military action was necessary because 'peaceful ways of settling the conflict had been exhausted'.[20] Prime Minister Ecevit's response to a reporter's question at a 22 July news conference confirmed tacit Soviet approval of the Turkish invasion: 'The whole world, with the sole exception of Greece, has conceded the rightfulness of Turkey's position', he declared; 'I don't know a single country that thinks otherwise′.[21] But Ecevit's announcement of Turkey's intention to remain on Cyprus caused the Soviet authorities great anxiety; to this, the apprehension apparent in the third government statement (28 July) is testimony:
The question whether there is or is not to be an independent sovereign state and member of the UN is most acute. …
… Certain NATO circles are working towards confronting the world with the fait accompli of the partition of the country, or at least creating the conditions of such a partition. …
… In effect, an effort is being made to consolidate the occupation of the island, to tear it asunder, and this is happening in the sight of the entire world. … Encroachments on … the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus must be stopped, and as soon as possible.[22]
The military junta in Greece collapsed after the Turkish landing on Cyprus, but the political situation in Athens remained amorphous. The colonels' abdication was welcome news to the Soviet Union, but its meaning was ambiguous; the Turkish move onto Cyprus, by contrast, spoke for itself. In fact, Soviet perceptions of the Cyprus conflict seem unaffected by events in Greece up to the Greek government's withdrawal from NATO's joint military command in mid-August. The motivation for the Soviet government's third statement on Cyprus was Ecevit's announcement of Turkey's intention to remain on Cyprus.[23]
The reason why the Soviet government needed a full week to produce its third statement on Cyprus is unlikely to have been lack of interest. The fact is that during the last week of July the top leadership, including the entire Politbureau, was required to participate in preparations for the 24 July Plenum of the Central Committee, itself held in preparation for the opening of the first session of the Supreme Soviet on 25 July.[24] One may surmise that the delay between the second and third Soviet government statements was caused principally if not entirely by the temporary distraction of top decision makers to relatively routine but unavoidable and time-consuming concerns. Under such conditions, policy-relevant opinion-group activity is particularly salient. It is therefore especially appropriate, in the analysis of this brief period, to attend to organisational process, as reflected in the Soviet press.
Can the evolution of the Soviet view between 22 and 28 July be traced and accounted for? There is convincing evidence that a short interpretative report, 'About the "Cyprus Crisis"', published in the September 1974 issue of SShA (the journal of the Institute of the USA and Canada in Moscow),[25] contributed to the framing of the third Soviet government statement. Although the September issue of the journal was not signed for the press until 15 August 1974, the article, written by an Arabist then working at the USA Institute, Vik. Kudryavtsev,[26] bears the earmarks of a specially prepared policy report. Strong internal evidence points to its having been written between 24 and 28 July, the period leading up to the third Soviet government statement. First, none of the Western press quotations liberally sprinkled throughout the article is from any date after
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24 July. Had Kudryavtsev been writing at a later date, he would have been more likely to use more recent citations, as Drobkov did in his Pravda article published during the second week of August.[27] Second, the quotations that Kudryavtsev uses are the same ones that other Soviet writers had used during the seven to ten days preceding the 28 July statement of the Soviet government. Third, Kudryavtsev uses an editorial from the Washington Post of 24 July to illustrate how 'the United States is now evaluating the mistakes of its Atlanticist policy'.[28]
Further, Kudryavtsev's analysis displays confusion over what is American policy, what is NATO policy, and what is British policy—as though all those things had not yet been sorted out. Such confusion is typical of East European commentators during the last week of July, who disagreed among themselves over the answer to the question, was there any divergence between American and British policy in the Cyprus conflict;[29] but this confusion is not characteristic of Soviet press commentary in August, which uniformly inveighed against NATO, omitting to discuss or even name the US in any connection. All these characteristics of Kudryavtsev's article support the inference that it was written prior to the third Soviet government statement. Such an analysis of American recalculations of American foreign policy would be an important component of, if not a surrogate for, Soviet recalculations of Soviet policy concerning the Cyprus conflict up to that time. The analysis is published in a section of the journal devoted to discussions of topical international situations; but it is not unified by a single 'line', such as characterises items 'For the Propagandist' in Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn′, which is less technical than SShA. These circumstances of the publication of 'About the "Cyprus Crisis"', together with the dating of its composition, support the inferences that the article was a specially prepared report written to guide policy and that its influence was exerted in particular on the formulation of the Soviet government's third statement.[30]
On 23 July Sovetskaya Rossiya published a long, informative, interpretative article on Cyprus by Leonid Zamyatin, erstwhile chief of Tass, who was a frequent contributor to the newspaper in the early and mid-1970s, and who often used the press organ to announce and implement domestic propaganda campaigns.[31] Written before Ecevit's assertion that Turkish forces would remain on Cyprus, the article contained no criticism of Turkey's actions. Its principal polemical lines were (1) to accuse NATO, without the support of which, Zamyatin alleged, the Greek junta would not have thought of overthrowing Makarios; (2) to criticise unnamed member-states of NATO for 'paralys[ing] the action of the Security Council in support of the legal government of Cyprus'.
The Western press gave Zamyatin's article great attention and treated it as authoritative,[32] probably because Zamyatin was head of Tass and because the official Soviet silence about the Turkish invasion was otherwise deafening. But because authoritative statements on Soviet foreign policy are reserved for Pravdaand Izvestiya,which have a more significant international readership and wider circulation than Sovetskaya Rossiya, Soviet propagandists and policy makers alike would have been surprised at the attention that Zamyatin's article received in the West. Such surprise may well have motivated the restatement of moderation contained in the long and important article, again by Nikolai Bragin, published in Pravda on 6 July.[33]
Bragin significantly de-emphasised NATO's connection with the Cyprus conflict and
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lauded detente for having prevented the conflict from widening. Referring almost certainly to Ecevit's statement that Turkey would prefer a 'federal solution' to the Cyprus problem.[34] Bragin criticised 'the attempt to paralyse the action of the Security Council by substituting—for the necessity of sending away from the island the Greek officers [whose departure Makarios had requested on 2 July, a necessity conforming] with the [Security Council's] resolution, [the implementation of which is] being limited only to the call for a ceasefire—the question of the restoration of the constitutional system [vosstanovlenii konstitutsionnogo ustroistva] of the Republic of Cyprus'.[35] Ecevit's reassurance that Cyprus must remain 'sovereign and independent' was unlikely to have assuaged Soviet trepidation about the Republic's integrity. As a reporter for The Times (London) observed:
[Turkey's] plan envisaged partition, the Turks prefer the word division, of Cyprus into three sectors. These would be the Greek and Turkish sectors with a third neutral sector dividing the two. …
… The problem inherent in such a plan is the status of a partitioned island.
Turkish Government circles speak of an 'independent federation of states' but at the moment offer no firm idea of how such a federation would be governed or by whom, except to emphasise that it would not be by Archbishop Makarios. Mr. Ecevit … says the Turkish military presence on the island is irrevocable. …
This opens up the possibility that Cyprus could eventually have not only British bases but Greek and Turkish ones as well with United Nations troops of varying nationalities, keeping [them] apart.[36]
Hardly any other scenario would be a worse nightmare for the Soviet Union.
Signed commentaries about Cyprus that appeared in Soviet newspapers during the period 23-28 July regularly contain two attitudinal indicators
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which may be used, through quantitative content analysis, to produce hypotheses on opinion group activity for qualitative investigation. These indicators are NATO's standing in the events around Cyprus and the lessons of Cyprus for Soviet-American detente. Table 3 provides a comparison of the signed commentaries along these indicators and combines the indicators into a single index of perceived threat.[37]
The index of threat perception compiled in Table 3 suggests the possibility of an opposition between Pravda on the one hand and Krasnaya zvezda and Trud on the other. A possible explanation of this opposition would be that newspapers with international readerships—Pravda and Izvestiya—attempted to portray a calm situation in order to influence decision makers in foreign governments, while the other newspapers, having essentially domestic readerships, implemented a propaganda strategy that had no relation at all to Soviet foreign policy. This 'functional-differentiation' hypothesis can explain the quantitative content characteristics of signed commentaries in Table 3, with respect to general issues of NATO and detente, but it does not account for qualitative content characteristics appearing in unsigned Tass dispatches that refer to the Cyprus conflict in particular.
There is a very good association between the 'quantity of threat' perceived in a newspaper's editorial board, according to the index in Table 3, and the quality of the newspaper's daily reports about Cyprus. For example, early reports in Krasnaya zvezda and Trud refer directly to the Turkish desire to 'discuss the future political status of Cyprus', which phrase does not exclude the possibility of changing the constitutional system of the country (there otherwise being nothing to discuss). By contrast, in Pravda 'Our Correspondent in Istanbul' cites the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reminding its readers that 'we did not enter Cyprus in order to stay there'.[38] Bragin makes this point later in Pravda, without naming Turkey; Krasnaya zvezda and Trud make the point earlier, naming Turkey. Versions of a Tass report in Krasnaya zvezda and Trud include a direct quotation of Secretary of State Kissinger's 23 July press conference, when he stated that 'it is difficult to foresee when all this [military intervention] will end'; Pravda pointedly omits even indirect reference.[39]
Further in this vein, Krasnaya zvezda and Trud published a Tass dispatch about the talks in Geneva among Britain, Greece, and Turkey, and quoted an unnamed representative of the Turkish Foreign Ministry to the effect that 'there is no way to talk about a ceasefire without at the same time discussing the future political status of Cyprus'.[40] Reporting the same day on these talks, Pravda published a dispatch signed by two of its Special Correspondents; this signature indicates that the view expressed in the report is endorsed at the level of the newspaper's editorial board.[41] The Pravda Special Correspondents not only omitted the quotation of the Turkish official found in the dispatch printed by Krasnaya zvezda and Trud, but also cited Turkish Foreign Minister Gunes by name to the effect that 'it will be possible to resolve other questions only within the limits of the restoration of constitutional procedures [vosstanovlenii konstitutsionnykh poryadkov] on Cyprus, which must be discussed first'.[42] To the Soviet authorities the 'restoration of constitutional procedures' meant nothing less than the return of Archbishop Makarios to power; and although Gunes in his statement specifically excluded this possibility, Pravda omitted that important precision of the Turkish position.
The quantitative data in Table 3 further suggest that the position of Izvestiya fell
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between that of Pravda on the one hand and Krasnaya zvezda and Trud on the other. Qualitative analysis reinforces the plausibility of this interpretation. In particular, Izvestiya and its commentators refrain from criticising, even implicitly, either Greece or Turkey. For instance, Mikhailov's commentary of 25 July—although its title is 'The Threads [of the Conspiracy against Cyprus] Lead to NATO'—is concerned not with international conspiracy against Cyprus but with analysing the conflict within NATO over Cyprus. The excerpts from his commentary broadcast by Radio Moscow also emphasised intra-NATO conflict.[43] The reluctance of Izvestiya to criticise Turkey is also evident in its re-writing of Tass reports on 28 July, when—in contrast to the reports in Pravda, Krasnaya zvezda and Trud—it impartially and laconically reports Turkey's position that the ceasefire is not only a military but also a political problem, and limits its quotation of Gunes to his statement that carrying out the Security Council resolution of 20 July is 'an urgent and necessary step'.[44]
Because Komsomol′skaya pravda printed no commentaries on Cyprus during this period, it does not appear in Table 3. Also, its editing of Tass reports during this period is wholly unexceptional. This behaviour is noteworthy, inasmuch as evidence from the previous period had indicated a common approach among Komsomol′skaya pravda, Krasnaya zvezda, and Trud. No plausible central propaganda directive explains the absence of previously shared content characteristics; therefore, this propaganda behaviour may plausibly be interpreted as representing a withdrawal by the grouping around Komsomol′skaya pravda from the debate over Cyprus, and possibly too as a reconsideration of the position previously taken.[45]
This interpretation of the behaviour of Komsomol′skaya pravda receives important support from a less than covert dialogue that occurred among editorial boards and the groupings around them during the last few days of July, after the Soviet government had issued its third statement on Cyprus. Content characteristics in this dialogue also validate the use of NATO and detente issues as attitudinal indicators in the preceding analysis.
On 30 July Komsomol′skaya pravda ran the first installment of a two-part article that praised detente without qualification, using superlatives to laud the Nixon-Brezhnev meeting which had occurred at the beginning of that month. 'It is possible to speak with plenty of reason of an expansion of detente, of realistic prospects for the realisation of numerous new possibilities open on the basis of [those] already achieved', wrote G. Oganov, the newspaper's deputy editor-in-chief. Concerning Cyprus he opined: 'The general atmosphere of detente restricted the activities of the aggressive forces to a certain degree, and did not permit NATO to lend open support to the fascist junta of Athens, which had discredited itself'. Perhaps most striking, his lengthy catalogue of factors in world politics that contribute to detente excluded any mention of the Soviet armed forces.[46]
Replying unmistakably to this statement, Krasnaya zvezda published an editorial on 31 July, the very next day. It repeated the allegation, contained in the Soviet government statement of 28 July, that 'certain NATO circles' were using Cyprus to consolidate 'their military-strategic positions in the eastern Mediterranean'; using Cyprus as a point of departure for an object lesson, the armed-forces newspaper then proceeded pointedly to comment:
Despite the relaxation of [international] tension that has been achieved, the international
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situation remains difficult. It would be extremely dangerous if a view prevailed in social circles [v obshchestvennykh krugakh] that everything is perfectly all right now, that the danger of war has been eliminated, and that the task of securing peace can be relegated into the background or even further. [47]
Evidence suggests that this apparent inter-organisational conflict, insofar as it touched on Cyprus, was resolved by a Soviet decision on propaganda strategy, viz., to raise the intensity of the theme that NATO's machinations around Cyprus were linked to Israel's 'aggression' against Arab countries. Although this theme had first appeared immediately after the second Soviet government statement on 22 July, it was then present only in Arabic-language Soviet radio commentaries.[48] Now it gained prominence in the pages of Pravda.[49] The absence of this theme from commentaries devoted primarily to the Middle East situation does not weaken the inference that this change in propaganda strategy was related specifically to developments on Cyprus.[50]
Soviet decisions on the diplomatic front, taken at the same time that the 28 July statement was issued, appear to conform to two general objectives. The first of these objectives was to continue to improve ties with Turkey, to draw Turkey away from the US, despite disquiet over Cyprus. The reinvigoration of the USSR's languishing economic aid programme to Turkey at this time testifies to the pursuit of this objective.[51] The favourable nature of Ecevit's comments on the Soviet position, even after the 28 July Soviet government statement which many observers took to be critical of Turkey,[52] reinforces the impression. Still more significant was the USSR's apparent retreat from overt advocacy of Makarios's cause to the 'merely diplomatic support' for which it had criticised Britain at the beginning of the conflict. The Soviet statement on 28 July, for instance, made no more than two mentions of the Archbishop, one of them only in passing. Although the Soviet leaders may have continued to prefer the return of Makarios to the installation of the Western-educated Kliridhis, nevertheless long-term strategic calculations seem by the end of July to have taken precedence over short-term situational reactions.
The second general Soviet objective was to obtain a role in any settlement of the Cyprus issue. The UN was the only diplomatic instrumentality through which the Soviet Union might break the Western-oriented framework of international agreements guaranteeing Cyprus's independence, so that was where it turned. The first Soviet action to this end was to announce the sending of a Soviet observer to the tripartite talks in Geneva.[53] Another UN-related action was to use the organisation as a forum for a new propaganda offensive.[54] A third move was to propose that the Security Council send a mission to Cyprus to verify the ceasefire agreed at the tripartite talks in Geneva; stressing that Cyprus was a non-aligned state, Soviet delegates contended that such a mission could comprise representatives of the USSR and of two non-aligned countries, Kenya and Indonesia.[55]
Still another UN-related action was really an inaction: late in the evening of 31 July Soviet Ambassador Malik vetoed a Security Council draft resolution that would have authorised the United Nations Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) to assume the expanded role foreseen for it in the tripartite agreement negotiated among Greece, Turkey, and
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Britain in Geneva and signed there by them during the night of 30-31 July.[56] Malik said that the Security Council should study the problem further before considering the new draft resolution on UNFICYP; since he had arrived from Moscow in the middle of the meeting, he very possibly meant that he needed time to contact his government in order to obtain authorisation to vote one way or the other. In the event, the resolution was approved the next time; the Soviet Union abstained. Soviet initiatives were overtaken, and their moves became reactive.[57]
During the first several days of August Cyprus was relatively quiet, and the Soviet press was relatively quiet about Cyprus. Pravda and Izvestiya appear to have undertaken a division of labour: the former emphasised the need to fulfil UN Security Council resolutions 353 and 354, and the latter concentrated attention on the Soviet diplomatic offensive and on the continued tense situation on the island. But evidence from several days later indicates internal Soviet discord over the question of instability on Cyprus. The most extensive Soviet reporting about Cyprus during the first two weeks of August occurred on the seventh and eighth days of the month. Table 4 portrays an index of perceived threat for each newspaper on each of those days. For 7 August, there seem clearly to exist two divergent perceptions: one shared by Pravda and Izvestiya; the other shared by Krasnaya zvezda, Sovetskaya Rossiya, and Trud. (The silence of Komsomol′skaya pravda at this time is consistent with the interpretation of the 'dialogue' among newspaper editorial boards at the end of July.)
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Such a bipolarization could be explained by a readership effect on the editorial practices of Pravda and Izvestiya of their international readerships. But that explanation cannot account for the apparent convergence of perceptions evident on 8 August, which date marks the publication of the first major Soviet statement on Cyprus since the government statement at the end of July. That article, perfectly timed to coincide with the reopening of the trilateral (UK–Greece–Turkey) talks in Geneva, was titled, 'Without Procrastinations and Delays', in reference to the full implementation of Security Council
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resolution 353. It was printed over the signature of Boris Svetlov, and excerpts were used in overseas broadcasts in English by Radio Moscow and reported by the Tass English-language service.[58] To infer from the convergence in Table 4 of the level of perceived threat a quelling, by Svetlov's article, of an incipient internal conflict over the question, is not necessarily a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Between the appearance of Svetlov's article and the middle of August, only two signed commentaries on Cyprus appeared in major Soviet press organs other than Pravda. The first, in the 11 August edition of Izvestiya, dealt mainly with Israel and Lebanon but drew the geostrategic connection between Israel and Cyprus in its penultimate paragraph. The second was the weekly international review in Trud, which continued to paint the relatively quiescent situation on Cyprus in threatening colours.[59]
Only slight changes modify the previously observed comparative patterns in the editing of unsigned Tass dispatches. The contrast between Krasnaya zvezda and Trud on the one hand, and Izvestiya on the other, remained in evidence. The rewritten Tass reports in Izvestiya, printed over the signature 'Izvestiya–Tass', noted the arrival in Geneva of the leaders of the Greek and Turkish communities on Cyprus, whose participation in the negotiations the USSR had long advocated, as well as the absence of armed clashes on the island itself.[60] By contrast the Trud commentator both contended that 'skirmishes continue' which have 'transformed [the island] into an armed camp', and asserted that only England, Greece, and Turkey were taking part in the talks in Geneva.[61] Krasnaya zvezda, like Trud, omitted any mention of the Cypriot communal leaders in its reporting on the Geneva talks and continued to assert the existence of armed clashes on Cyprus.[62]
Komsomol′skaya pravda continued to maintain silence during this period. A new element, however, was the inclusion by Sovetskaya Rossiya in the edited Tass reports it published on 14 August of two separate sentences noting that Cyprus's constitutional system had come onto the negotiating agenda. The rarity of predictions in Tass dispatches makes even more significant the ominous conclusion that 'it can thus be foreseen that the constitution of Cyprus will undergo radical changes'.[63] Krasnaya zvezda included this phrase also, but Pravda omitted it.[64] Trud excluded the sentence but printed another Tass dispatch—to be found in no other Soviet newspaper—that cited a Turkish press agency's report of Turkey's proposal that 'two fully autonomous federative states be established, having equal rights and forming a federal government'.[65]
The Soviet reaction to the second Turkish landing on Cyprus and to the Greek withdrawal from NATO's military structure was slow and equivocal. The Soviet press reported Greece's action without comment and continued to denounce NATO.[66] This propaganda strategy enabled the USSR to attack indirectly both the US and the UK, to avoid attacking either Greece or Turkey, and to avoid the appearance of silence. The Soviet press had always criticised the Geneva talks for being limited to NATO members, but it had never contended that they were not taking place in response to UN Security Council resolution 353, passed on 20 July. For the first time, the trilateral talks in Geneva were now described as a failure; this polemic seems connected with Ambassador Malik's renewal of the Soviet proposal to send to Cyprus a mission composed of representatives of members of the Security Council.[67]
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Although the second Turkish invasion of Cyprus would seem to lead to an eventual partition of the island, against Moscow's interests, Tass not only did not condemn the move but indeed published a long report of Turkey's justification for it.[68] The major press organs hardly differed in their treatment of the story. All Soviet newspapers except Pravda and Izvestiya simultaneously stopped running subheads to highlight different aspects of their Cyprus reporting, and the subheads in Pravda and Izvestiya became almost identical. This propaganda behaviour bespeaks a central propaganda directive. The exception was Krasnaya zvezda, which continued to de-emphasise moves taking place at the UN and continued in its previous belligerence, asking, 'Is it necessary to underline the threat to peace and security, not only of Cyprus but of the whole eastern Mediterranean, that is contained in [NATO's] plans?!'.[69]
On 18 August, Pravda, Izvestiya, and Krasnaya zvezda ran different signed commentaries discussing Cyprus; the next day Sovetskaya Rossiya, which was not published on the 18th, carried another long column by Zamyatin on the matter. Content characteristics in all these columns replicate previously observed differences among the press organs. The Pravda commentary was part of a weekly review by Viktor Maevsky, who condemned 'NATO's interference in the internal affairs of Cyprus' and connected it with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Maevsky did not mention the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which had occurred on 14 August, but only the ceasefire announced on 16 August. Asserting that the explosiveness of the situation all across the Mediterranean was a reason to take up the proposal to denuclearise the Sea (made by Brezhnev in a 22 July speech to the Polish Sejm), he noted favourable prospects for detente with President Ford.[70]
The Krasnaya zvezda commentary failed to mention either detente or Brezhnev's proposal and condemned NATO's 'ominous role', juxtaposing its commentary on Cyprus and NATO with one on Israel and NATO. [71] Remarks in Izvestiya published over the signature of B. Vladimirov called attention to NATO's attempts 'to use [Cyprus] as an outpost against the national-liberation movement in the given region of the world'—a reference to the PLO in the Middle East. Vladimirov criticised NATO's self-portrayal in the role of peacemaker and asserted the necessity 'to increase the role of the Security Council in the political settlement [uregulirovanii, connoting emphasis on the international-legal framework] of the Cyprus question'. [72] Zamyatin, in Sovetskaya Rossiya, also maintained that 'the role of the Security Council … should be expanded', and repeated that 'the removal of foreign forces, moreover of all foreign forces, is the key condition that can … put an end to external interference in Cyprus's internal affairs'.[73]
At first it seems peculiar that the Soviet leaders should appear to prefer a political solution to the Cyprus question other than the restoration of the government of Archbishop Makarios. The special attention devoted by the Izvestiya commentary to the UN can be attributed to the newspaper's function as mouthpiece of the Soviet government. The absence of mention of Makarios from all commentaries, however,[74] would seem due not only to the Soviet desire for a role in a settlement from which he appeared increasingly likely to be excluded, but also to the marked switch of their focus, from Cyprus in particular to the eastern Mediterranean more generally, which is indicated by the ensemble of newspaper headlines.
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Following Ankara's second military offensive, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Minic visited Greece and Turkey to promote communication between the two belligerents.[75] Following Minic's visit, Turkish Foreign Minister Gunes was optimistic, telling a Yugoslav television correspondent, 'in order that the two peoples [of Cyprus] may live under the auspices of a single state, the only solution which we can see lies in a federal system, and we are convinced that countries which have adopted the federal system will look with sympathy on such a solution'.[76] Soon thereafter, on 21 August, Greek Foreign Minister Mavros told Soviet Ambassador Ezhov that Greece would withdraw her troops from Cyprus before Turkey did if the USSR could guarantee that the latter would then follow suit.[77]
Mavros also told Yugoslav television that the forum for resolving the Cyprus problem might be enlarged to include all permanent members of the Security Council, plus a representative of the non-aligned countries. The USSR picked up this suggestion the very next day, proposing the convocation under UN auspices of an expanded conference concerning Cyprus. The conference would be attended by representatives of all members of the Security Council, plus those of Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. Michel Tatu noted in Le Monde that 'Moscow's proposal comes at a good time':
Since Greece does not at present wish to return to Geneva, it 'objectively' helps Greece on the procedural level. … The Security Council's president until the end of the month is the Soviet delegate, Mr. Malik, who thereby has some means to advance the project; also, UN Secretary General Waldheim begins at the end of this week a mission to Cyprus, Athens, and Ankara. Even if [he] concerns himself primarily with [UN troops on Cyprus] and refugees, there is nothing to keep him from trying to use his 'good offices'. …
Thus, at a moment when the British themselves avow a pessimism concerning the chances of resuming the Geneva negotiations and when Mr. Kissinger is keeping his reserve, Moscow's appeal has the best chances of being heard.[78]
These developments put pressure on the Turks. Ecevit had spoken with Soviet Ambassador Grubyakov on 23 August about Cyprus, but then said that he had not been officially informed of the USSR's proposal. In reference to the trilateral Geneva talks that Greece was refusing to attend, Ecevit then added: 'For the time being, we are bound to a resolution in the framework which was set up by the UN Security Council'.[79] Later that day the Soviet ambassador returned and submitted his country's proposal in writing.[80] Attempting to find a response other than outright rejection, the Turkish government delayed an answer for several days; but late on the evening of 27 August it indeed rejected the proposal outright.
The net effect of the Turkish rejection on the Soviet pursuit of their own proposal was next to nil. Long before the Turks rejected the proposal, Malik had discovered that the members of the UN Security Council had a generally negative reaction to it. As President of the Security Council for the month, he had given some of his colleagues the impression that he was not prepared to call a meeting of that body to discuss his government's proposal,[81] but he appeared nevertheless to use his option to convene the Security Council as a means through which to conserve his country's diplomatic momentum and to restrain other initiatives. As the correspondent for Le Monde wrote toward the end of the month, 'it is not excluded'
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… that Malik, the Soviet representative whose presidency of the [Security] Council ends [31 August] at midnight, may seek endorsement of the Soviet proposal. … For several days it has been anticipated at the UN that the USSR should seek this approval, and the interpretation now is that Turkey's negative attitude has slowed this initiative only slightly …[; t]he fact that the Moslem members of the Security Council—Indonesia, Iraq, and Mauritania, as well as Cameroon—are increasingly disposed to side with Turkey has had a certain influence on Soviet conduct.[82]
The reaction of the Soviet press to the Turks' rejection of the proposal provides an opportunity to assess the whole Soviet press campaign since the proposal was first made. Several prominently placed reviews of favourable foreign journalistic reactions to the proposal inaugurated the Soviet propaganda offensive on its behalf. No Soviet newspaper appears systematically to have selected any particular sort of reaction. The only notable differences among the newspapers are that this phase of the campaign lasted two days in Izvestiya, whereas in all others it lasted only one; and that the relevant foreign press review in Krasnaya zvezda is only half as long as the next shortest.[83] The day when most of these commentaries appeared, 24 August, was also the day that Pravda published a programmatic article, signed by B. Vladimirov, attacking NATO still further and pushing the proposed conference still more strongly.[84]
Two characteristics of this later coverage stand out in contrast with the earlier periods. The first of these is the almost complete monopolisation of signed commentary on the topic in Pravda (the exceptions being the weekly column in Trud and the monthly column in Izvestiya reviewing international affairs). The second is the near-identity of coverage across all newspapers, i.e., the verbatim reproduction of identical Tass reports. Some qualitative observations supplement and reinforce this impression of uniformity. On the few occasions when the Tass dispatches are abridged, the layout of the newspaper page clearly indicates that the abridgements were made only for reasons of space. Most cuts consisted simply of dropping all paragraphs after a certain point in the article; whenever a paragraph was not reproduced verbatim, the first sentence or perhaps two were printed and the rest of the paragraph was dropped. This is indicative of editing for reasons of space. In earlier coverage, individual sentences were selectively eliminated from otherwise intact paragraphs, and phrases from otherwise intact sentences.
With this background we can interpret the Soviet coverage of Turkey's rejection of the Soviet proposal to convene an international conference under UN auspices to deal with Cyprus. The whole published report, in Soviet media, datelined Ankara, was the following:
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that in the opinion of the Turkish government, the settlement [uregulirovanie] of the Cyprus crisis should be accomplished by Turkey, Greece, and England, but also by representatives of the island's Greek and Turkish communities.
However, it is known that the Greek and Cypriot governments decline to participate in such a sort of negotiations, which have already demonstrated their worthlessness.[85]
An accompanying 'Commentator's Column' in Pravda did not even mention Turkey but instead hammered further on the old theme that 'the aggressive circles of the NATO now trying to use it to stoke military tension further in the eastern Mediterranean'.[86] All this was accompanied by continuing
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reports of favourable comment on the Soviet proposal, from Prague to the UN Secretariat.
The UN Security Council met on 29 August, at the request of the Cypriot delegate, to consider humanitarian measures on behalf of the 200,000 Greek Cypriots who had fled the part of the island held by Turkish troops, who were not permitting them to return for fear of guerrilla warfare. Malik again mentioned the Soviet proposal for an expanded international conference but did not raise it formally at this session, apparently recognising that any vote would be unfavourable. The next day he supported a resolution sponsored jointly by Austria, France, and the UK—labelling it nevertheless 'inadequate'—that called on Greek and Turkish Cypriots to resume direct negotiations and to work with the UN in solving the refugee problem.[87]
Subsequent Soviet press commentary continued to emphasise the Greece-vs.-NATO theme, and increased its criticism of China's reticence to take any position that would reflect negatively on NATO.[88] Further Soviet commentary reasserting the timeliness of the Soviet proposal confirms that its rejection by Turkey did not affect the USSR's advocacy of an expanded international conference.[89] Deputy Foreign Minister Il′ichev toured the capitals of the principal protagonists in mid-September on a stock-taking trip, but nothing noteworthy resulted from it. The Security Council resolution of 30 August marks a definitive end to the Cyprus conflict of the summer of 1974.
Table 5 summarises the evolution of the press debate over time. Analysis of the first phase (see Table 2) established a contrast in coverage between Trud, Krasnaya zvezda and Komsomol′skaya pravda on the one hand, and Pravda and Izvestiya on the other. Soviet press commentary during the second phase (see Table 3) evinces a threat-sensitive bias among Sovetskaya Rossiya, Trud, and Krasnaya zvezda, with Pravda significantly less threat-sensitive than those three together. Izvestiya adopted a position between those two poles during the second phase, whereas Komsomol′skaya pravda was silent, suggesting its withdrawal from the debate. During the third phase (see Table 4) the trio of Krasnaya zvezda, Sovetskaya Rossiya, and Trud again appeared on the 'left', with Pravda and Izvestiya on the 'right', while Komsomol′skaya pravda continued its silence.
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Soviet press coverage in the fourth phase did not vary enough to be suitable for analysis. Indeed, the striking similarity—verging on uniformity—of Soviet press treatment of Cyprus after publication of the Soviet diplomatic proposal, suggests strongly that strict and specific rules on such coverage were issued to the Soviet media. This in itself is not surprising. However, the pattern of coverage after the Soviet diplomatic initiative makes much more unconvincing the argument that the more intricate pattern observed earlier was the result of a centrally directed propaganda strategy. For the absence of uniformity of that press coverage as well as its variation make putative propaganda directives very difficult to implement and to monitor centrally. Further, the regularities detected in the earlier period argue against the proposition that the observed data are merely the result of random editorial practices. So the analysis of the last phase of press coverage goes quite a distance toward validating the inference that earlier differences were neither functional effects of the differentiation of the media nor random effects of editorial practices.
These findings strengthen the premise—and so also our interpretation—that there exist 'opinion groupings' that revolve around journalistic editorial boards and reflect differing cognitive predispositions. The qualitative analysis of commentaries published at the end of July even discovered evidence in the primary sources that these differences are mutually recognised by the participants.
Do these results tell us anything about how Soviet foreign policy making is related to the Soviet system? The best known and most specific theory concerning the subject is Vernon Aspaturian's. Indeed, he provides two versions of the same theory.[90] But Jahn's assertion that Aspaturian alters arbitrarily his categorisation of groups that seek respectively to increase and to decrease international tension, is not accurate.[91] More to the point is Dawisha's observation that a distinction is often not made 'between groups which might be said to represent specific bureaucratic [i.e., institutional] interests …, and those whose membership is drawn from diverse institutions but who coalesce along functional or issue-oriented lines'.[92] The difference between the two versions of Aspaturian's theory is precisely that the first version is based on bureaucratic categories and the second on functional categories. Using the second version, according to which there is a polarisation between a security/producer/ideological grouping that seeks to increase international tension and a consumer/agricultural/public-services grouping that seeks to decrease such tension, let us see how the propaganda behaviour of each newspaper examined corresponds with the interest that Aspaturian imputes to the institution of which it is the press organ.
1. The clearest case of correspondence with Aspaturian's theory is Krasnaya zvezda. The press organ of the armed forces—an element of the security sector (which also subsumes the police and the defence industry)—takes a consistently threat-sensitive position that emphasises the existence of tension over Cyprus.
2. The readership of Trud includes broad strata of the Soviet working class; therefore, it may be logical to impute to the newspaper a connection with the consumer or public-service sector. However, the tension-reducing propaganda behaviour that this representation would entail is nowhere evident. A possible explanation of this 'deviant case' in relation to Aspaturian's theory is 'high politics': previous research suggests that Shelepin, as chief of the trade unions, used the newspaper to articulate opposition to
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Brezhnev's foreign policy, particularly as regards the Middle East.[93] An alternative explanation, which does not necessarily exclude the one just stated, is that the press organ should be identified not with the Soviet workers who read it but with ideologues whose concern is the international working class and its world-historical, anti-imperialist role.
3. The propaganda behaviour of Izvestiya is consonant with the interests attributed by Aspaturian's theory to the consumer sector, which includes light industries and bureaucracies interested in increasing foreign trade: interests regularly ascribed to the state, in opposition to the Party. Izvestiya is the only press organ which changes its stance during the period under study. This change occurs precisely at the time when the Soviet government was formulating and announcing its position on the complex events during the second half of July. The most evident interpretation of this propaganda behaviour is as a reflection of the newspaper's role of government press organ in the political system.
4. To Pravda, following Aspaturian, would be attributed the interests of heavy industry, construction, and transport—bureaucracies belonging to the 'producer sector'. From his theory, and especially in view of the expectation of shared perspectives between heavy industry and defence industry, we would expect Pravda to assume a position rather like Krasnaya zvezda. The only explanation for Pravda's deviance from this expectation is its editors' consideration of the newspaper's international readership: speaking for the Party, Pravda could be motivated to temper threat-sensitive and tension-seeking propaganda, if it sought specifically not to alarm or to provoke foreign governments.
5. Sovetskaya Rossiya is known to be a focus of interest aggregation for certain agricultural circles. One might therefore expect its propaganda behaviour to be moderate, in reflection of the common cause that agriculture and light industry, according to Aspaturian, have as against defence and heavy industry. But Soviet journalists confirm that Sovetskaya Rossiya has a special institutional role in the Soviet propaganda system: particularly through special features such as Zamyatin's articles, it provides ideological text for agitators and other Party activists at the local level in the propaganda sphere. (The response of Pravda to Western treatments of Sovetskaya Rossiya as authoritative, through Bragin's long article of 26 July, also tends to confirm this interpretation of the newspapers' respective roles concerning international affairs commentary.) And in fact, Sovetskaya Rossiya reflects only a Russophile, neo-chauvinist interest that is as much cultural as it is agricultural. Thus the non-institutional grouping around the newspaper happens to partake of the same ideas that the institutional role of the newspaper, in the propaganda system, leads it to articulate.
6. Komsomol′skaya pravda is the official press organ of the Communist Youth League, which is known to be dominated by hardline ideologists intent on instilling an uncompromising communist world-view among future Party members. For the first phase of the analysis, Komsomol′skaya pravda shares a threat-sensitive, tension-seeking perspective with Trud and Krasnaya zvezda; during the second phase, it drops this perspective and ceases to have anything to say about Cyprus.
We may conclude that Aspaturian's theory is, by and large, supported by the findings of this case study; however, to say it is validated would be unwarranted. The theory is a useful heuristic, but it calls for a more sophisticated conceptualization of the
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organisational processes that animate Soviet foreign policy making.[94] The interpretation it yields must be combined with other partial evidence.
For example, it is worthwhile to note Jackson's analysis of the changes in and evolution of Soviet images of the United States as a competitor in the strategic field. He shows that between the middle of 1972 and the end of 1974 there were in the Soviet Union 'divergent perceptions of the strategic relationship and [of] the U.S. as a nuclear adversary'. [95] In particular, Jackson demonstrates by examining a series of election speeches from June 1974 that the members of the Soviet Politbureau 'were not of one mind about the "war danger" issue'.[96] (Recall the editorial response of Krasnaya zvezda to Komsomol′skaya pravda, where the armed-forces newspaper opined that it would be 'extremely dangerous if a view prevailed in social circles … that the danger of war has been eliminated'.) Although the assumption of a direct connection between newspapers and Politbureau members is entirely unsubstantiated, [97] the coincidence of patterns between this study and Jackson's must be noted: here it was found that Pravda and Izvestiya articulated moderate views whereas Krasnaya zvezda, Trud, and Komsomol′skaya pravda voiced alarmist ones; Jackson found Brezhnev and Kosygin moderate on the war danger issue, and Grechko, Shelepin, and Suslov alarmist.[98]
It follows that the 1974 Cyprus conflict taps into fundamental issues and attitudes in Soviet foreign policy, issues and attitudes that extend so broad and run so deep as to touch directly on the strategic balance between East and West. Other research has shown that the two most significant attitudinal dimensions for understanding the behaviour of actors in world politics are 'image of Self' and 'image of Other'.[99] Precisely those images are implicated here.
Jönsson has used the two dimensions, 'image of Self' and 'image of Other', in an attempt to cumulate knowledge from the relatively few existing case studies of Soviet foreign policy making. He categorises domestic Soviet interests into a two-by-two matrix in which the Soviet image-of-Self is either (1) a parochial state without deep-running interests outside its own delimited sphere of influence in Europe, or (2) a great power with not only global interests but also instrumentalities for pursuing those interests around the world; and in which the Soviet image-of-Other—i.e., image of the United States or of 'international imperialism'—is either (1) a monolithic cabal of cold-warriors who have not given up the dream of destroying socialism, or (2) a differentiated entity composed of two tendencies that respectively advocate and oppose coexistence and detente with the world socialist system.[100]
Jönsson admits the difficulty in finding any Soviet expression of a combination of the parochial image of Self with the dualistic image of Other; and Spechler, in a study Jönsson does not consider, also evinces this difficulty.[101] Although the paucity of data demands caution, it is irresistible to observe that this pattern—the vacancy of one cell in a four-cell matrix—is also present in a graphic portrayal of Table 3 (see Figure 1). Moreover, this pattern corresponds to Griffiths's delineation of tendencies in Soviet foreign policy.[102]
The analytical significance of this reading of images of Self and Other, and their reference to Soviet foreign policy making, lies in three points. First, its logic provides a
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concrete connection between general philosophic attitudes and particular policy preferences. Second, the explanation it provides reinforces our confidence in the validity of the left-right continuum as a measurement strategy. Third, the revelation that the underlying basis of that continuum may not be unidimensional highlights Dallin's caution about its use as an interpretative rule.[103]
The practical significance of this interpretation is that each of the two images of Self corresponds to one of two conflicting goals that have been posited by one Western analyst of Soviet policy toward Cyprus: (1) the long-term goal of dismantling the potential threat from NATO's southeast flank by neutralising the countries in the region; and (2) the short-term goal of increasing Soviet political and military influence, counterbalancing the NATO and American presence as a prerequisite for extending Soviet influence into the Middle East and beyond, toward Africa and the Indian Ocean.[104] These goals, which distinguish contrasting images of Self in world politics, have practical reference to and empirical referents in the policy debates over Cyprus that have been uncovered here, most strikingly in the phase at the end of July 1974.
The empirical examination of Western theories of Soviet foreign policy linkages to domestic interests reveals the need for a more sophisticated conceptualisation and a more thorough understanding of how the Soviet foreign policy making system works, especially its relationship to the Soviet propaganda making system. This research has contributed elements to the completion of such a project. The Appendix systematises those elements bearing directly on this case study that will prove most useful to analysts concerned with that project.
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It is worthwhile to explicate the inferential method used in the analysis of the case study, for four reasons. First, it makes replicable the inferences that are reported here. Second, it permits the method to be more widely applied by others and so to be further refined. Third, it allows particular inferences made during the course of this study to be used to illustrate some general connections of Soviet organisational process with Sovietological analysis. And fourth, it leads, for all three preceding reasons, to a keener appreciation of the virtues and limitations of the organisational process approach as a tool for analysing Soviet foreign policy formation.
The starting point of this inferential method is the distinction, made by pedagogues of Soviet journalism, among three levels of abstraction, each of which has a different function in the construction of a news dispatch or commentary. In the systematic instruction received by every Soviet journalist, a 'fact' (fakt) is defined as 'what has happened, … a definite objective occurrence, empirical knowledge about reality'.[105] On this basis the distinction is made among 'event', 'phenomenon', and 'essence'.
… An event [sobytie] is a more significant and weightier fact of social or personal life, a socially important fact. A phenomenon [yavlenie] is that in which the essence of a fact is revealed.
Marxist-Leninist philosophy regards essence and phenomenon as closely interdependent, reflecting different sides of the issue and of the processes of objective reality.
The essence [sushchnost′] is that fundamental intrinsic meaning that characterises issues and appearances, revealing their basis. A phenomenon is considered as the extrinsic form of the expression of the essence.[106]
Thus sobytiya are reports containing non-evaluative records of the characteristics ('facts') chosen to portray the 'events' that compose the situation being reported. Following terminology developed in Western propaganda analysis, let us call them Situational Content Characteristics.[107] In practice these are the unsigned Tass reports that a Soviet newspaper publishes.[108] Differences in the editing of Tass reports across newspapers are due to Non-purposive Propaganda Behaviour and to Purposive Propaganda Behaviour. Non-purposive Propaganda Behaviour is motivated by the standard operating procedures of journalistic composition, notably the abbreviation of dispatches for reasons of space.
Non-situational Content Characteristics, in contrast to Situational Content Characteristics which appear in Tass reports, are evaluative assertions. They rarely appear in unsigned Tass dispatches and are found almost exclusively in signed commentaries and other interpretative texts. The visual composition of the newspaper page, together with textual comparisons across newspapers, if necessary, give a clear and unambiguous answer to the question, whether standard editorial procedures have affected the editing of Tass dispatches in the particular instance. For this reason it is in practice quite easy to decide whether observed Situational Content Characteristics are due to Non-purposive Propaganda Behaviour. Non-situational Content Characteristics may be used as confirmatory data. (For examples of this procedure, see the discussion of Table 2 supra. This inference is portrayed as step 1 in Figure 2.)
Purposive Propaganda Behaviour is motivated by readership targeting. It is purposive in its relation to the principal categories of readership of a Soviet newspaper: a given topic or theme may, as a result of central propaganda directives, be emphasised by all propaganda organs for the purpose of creating a certain climate among a universal readership; a theme directly related to a newspaper's functional concern may be articulated (including organ-specific directives as part of a differentiated universal campaign) for the purpose of motivating a specialised readership; or articulations in support of a particular point of view on current policy debate may appear, for the purpose of instigating an esoteric readership to aggregate and further to press its policy-relevant interests. If an analysis of the frequency of appearance of different content characteristics
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(sobytiya) yields data that cannot be explained by a given press organ's specialised readership targeting, taking Non-purposive Propaganda Behaviour into account, and if the content characteristics observed do not appear to result from central propaganda directives motivated by attention to a universal readership, then we may infer the existence of a cognitive predisposition informing a possible policy preference articulated toward an esoteric readership (step 2 in Figure 2). Such a cognitive predisposition is behaviourally expressed in an aggregate of edited Tass reports, as a preponderance of Situational Content Characteristics (sobytiya) which define the phenomenon (yavlenie) being observed; Western propaganda analysts have called this the Estimate of the situation.[109] This inference (step 3 in Figure 2) is exemplified by the discussion of quantitative data from Table 2.
In the case of signed commentaries, 'content characteristics which "indicate" (permit the analyst to infer) the propagandist's goal or strategy can be readily spotted'. [110] These Non-situational Content Characteristics, coupled with the inferred Purposive Propaganda Behaviour, motivate this inference to Propaganda Goal/Strategy (step 4 in Figure 2), also influencing the previously inferred Estimate. From there the analyst of a signed commentary may move, by way of the writer's evident Propaganda Goal/Strategy, directly from the latter's Estimate of the situation to his Expectation, i.e., to his interpretation of how the 'essence' of the 'phenomenon' will manifest itself through which 'events' characterising the situation's further evolution. This procedure (step 5 in Figure 2) was employed in the quantitative analysis of the articles listed in Table 3, as well as in the qualitative analysis of Kudryavtsev's article in the journal SShA.
From a propagandist's Expectation the analyst, controlling for Propaganda Goal/Strategy, infers the Intention underlying the Policy Preference. For example, Soviet commentators who emphasise the long history of Greco-Turkish hostility around Cyprus and who discount NATO as the
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principal cause behind the events on the island would be likely to interpret the Cyprus conflict as less threatening than those commentators predisposed to perceive imperialist threats, which latter would not fail to note that armed forces from NATO countries were sent onto the island as a result of the conflict between Greece and Turkey, which conflict would then be interpreted as a machination of NATO. The discussion of data from Table 4 exemplifies this inference, which in Figure 2 is portrayed as step 6.
Grateful acknowledgment is made of the following support and advice. The original draft of this article was written at the Summer Research Laboratory of the Russian and East European Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where the author was Research Associate (Summer 1981). William Zimmerman read and commented generously on that draft and on most of its numerous revised forms. His aid at this stage is rightly said to have been indispensable. Richard Herrmann and Philip Roeder commented on the version presented to the Fifteenth National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Kansas City, Missouri (October 1983). The interviews mentioned in the text and footnotes were conducted principally during the author's tenure of an IREX Exchange Scholarship in Moscow (1982–83); others had been possible earlier through the Gallatin Fellowship of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva (Summer 1980). The benevolence of the interviewees, who out of necessity remain anonymous (though the author will answer personal inquiries for documentation), is also deeply appreciated. The final preparation of this article was supported by the Post-doctoral Fellowship of the W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, Columbia University (1983–84).
[Note 1]. For a comprehensive review of the literature to 1973, see Arnold L. Horelick, A. Ross Johnson, and John D. Steinbruner, The Study of Soviet Foreign Policy: A Review of Decision-Theory-Related Approaches, Report R–1334 (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, December 1973). Relevant monographs since then are discussed in Robert M. Cutler, 'The Formation of Soviet Foreign Policy: Organisational and Cognitive Perspectives', World Politics, Vol. XXXIV, No. 3 (April 1982), pp. 418–36.
[Note 2]. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
[Note 3]. Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 11 (original emphasis omitted).
[Note 4]. Author's interviews with former Soviet journalists in Western Europe and with current Soviet journalists in Moscow, 1980 and 1982–83. Specific source documentation available upon request.
[Note 5]. The term 'interest grouping' is used, as distinct from 'interest group', to indicate that such an aggregation of individuals is not necessarily constant across issues or over time.
[Note 6]. The Letopis′ gazetnykh statei and Letopis′ zhurnal′nykh statei were also searched for references to primary sources. Translated and transcribed Soviet radio broadcasts were also used, as indicated in the notes infra.
[Note 7]. The notion of a 'decisional flow' is used in Karen Dawisha, 'The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, 1968', in Michael Brecher (ed.), Studies in Crisis Behaviour (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978), pp. 143–71. Cf. James N. Rosenau's idea of a foreign policy 'undertaking', in reference to 'the serial, purposeful, and coordinative nature of foreign policy behaviour', in his 'Moral Fervor, Systematic Analysis, and Scientific Consciousness in Foreign Policy Research', in Austin Ranney (ed.), Political Science and Public Policy (Chicago: Markham, 1968), p. 221.
[Note 8]. An English translation of Makarios's letter, with explanatory notes, may be found in 'The letter that sparked it off…', Sunday Times (London), 21 July 1974, p. 15.
[Note 9]. Mario Modiano, 'Athens fear of military intervention by Russia', Times (London), 17 July 1974, p. 8. In the event, the Soviet Union merely sent three rapid escort vessels through the Bosporus; Enrique Manera, 'Chipre, victíma de geopolitica', Revista de Política internacional, No. 135 (September–October 1974), p. 73.
[Note 10]. 'Soobshchenie Tass', Pravda, 16 July 1974, p. 1.
[Note 11]. Turkish Radio and Television, reported by Ankara Domestic Service in Turkish, 16 July 1974, translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Middle East and North Africa [hereafter FBIS-MEA], 17 July 1974, p. Q/2. The Tass statement had not included the words, 'that is, with'.
[Note 12]. The only critical evaluation of the news was provided by the New York Times, 20 July 1974, p. 1, which noted in square brackets that 'qualified analysts' in Moscow had 'said there were indications that the Soviet Union might have placed one division on alert, and probably not more than that'.
[ page 85 ]
[Note 13]. 'Soobshchenie Tass', Pravda, 21 July 1974, p. 5; 'Tass Denies Soviet Troop Alert', in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Soviet Union [hereafter FBIS-SOV], 22 July 1974, p. G/8; Eric Rouleau, 'La présence au large de navires soviétiques pèse sur la situation', Le Monde, 21–22 July 1974, p. 2, esp. col. 5; 'Bobards et fausses nouvelles', ibid., 23 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 14]. Ibid.
[Note 15]. Nikolai Bragin, 'Mnenie obozrevatelya', Pravda, 17 July 1974, p. 5.
[Note 16]. UN Document S/PV. 1780.
[Note 17]. 'Zayavlenie Sovetskogo pravitel′stva', Pravda, 18 July 1974, p. 1; the readers of Izvestiya received a similar interpretation in the background column, 'Iz dos′e "Izvestii": Respublika Kipr', Izvestiya, 18 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 18]. The unsigned Tass reports that a Soviet newspaper publishes are drawn from the Tass bulletin of the lowest level of secrecy, chosen, depending upon space available, at the discretion of the individual editor, who cannot change their wording but is empowered to omit wording, from a phrase to a sentence to paragraphs. Lev Vladimirov, The Russians (New York: Praeger, 1968), pp. 91–93, describes this system and asserts on the basis of his experience that the editor's prerogative to exclude or include text is limited to the unit of the paragraph. A former ranking official of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, now in the West, maintains on the basis of his experience, which post-dates Vladimirov's, that this prerogative extends to the unit of the sentence but that changes within sentences are not allowed. (Author's interview; specific source documentation available upon request.) Most recently, K.M. Nakoryakova, Redaktirovanie materialov massovoi informatsii: Obshchaya metodika raboty nad tekstom (Moscow 1982), pp. 102–3, gives guidelines according to which changes within sentences are permitted. Editors' discretion in the matter has increased over time. Also it should be noted that censors do not review material taken directly from Tass; such items are published on the responsibility of the appropriate editor. On this, see Martin Dewhirst and Robert Farrell (eds.), The Soviet Censorship (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973), p. 68.
[Note 19]. 'Niti zagovora vedut v Afiny i NATO', Pravda, 17 July 1974, p. 5; V. Matveev, 'Gnevnoe "net" – putchistami', Izvestiya, 18 July 1974, p. 4. On this practice, see Tass deputy editor-in-chief E.M. Fadeichev, 'Istochniki informatsii: TASS i APN', in Problemy informtasii v pechati: Ocherki teorii i praktiki, ed. S.M. Gurevich (Moscow 1971), p. 189.
[Note 20]. 'Zayavlenie Sovetskogo pravitel′stva', Pravda, 21 July 1974, pp. 1, 2.
[Note 21]. Ecevit, quoted by the Turkish press agency Anatolia in English, 1015 GMT, 23 July 1974, cited in FBIS-MEA, 23 July 1974, p. Q/5.
[Note 22]. 'Zayavlenie Sovetskogo pravitel′stva,' Pravda, 29 July 1974, p. 1.
[Note 23]. It is likely that the end of July represented a deadline for Soviet policy decisions, because the USSR's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York had to leave the Soviet Union (where he was on holiday) to assume the presidency of the Security Council by 1 August.
[Note 24]. See Pravda, 25 and 26 July 1974.
[Note 25]. Vik. Kudryavtsev, 'Vokrug "kiprskogo krizisa"', SShA, 1974, No.9 (September), pp. 72–75.
[Note 26]. This Viktor Dmitrievich Kudryavtsev should not be confused with the Izvestiya columnist in international affairs Vladimir Leont′evich Kudryavtsev.
[Note 27]. V. Drobkov, 'Naprasnyi zvon: mezhdunarodnye zametki', Pravda, 12 August 1974, p. 3. For clarification of how and why Soviet journalists in international affairs select Western press citations, see S.P. Glushko, 'Nekotorye osobennosti informatsionnoi sluzhby v "Pravde": Mezhdunarodnaya informatsionnaya polosa', Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, ser. 11, Zhurnalistika, Vol. XX, No.4 (July–August 1974), p. 25.
[Note 28]. Kudryavtsev, 'Vokrug "kiprskogo krizisa" " p. 74 (emphasis added).
[Note 29]. Ibid. For conflicting East European interpretations, cf. Belgrade Tanjug in English 1926 GMT, 18 July 1974, cited in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Eastern Europe [hereafter FBIS-EEU], 19 July 1974, p. I/2, and Magyar Nemzet, 21 July 1974, quoted by Budapest MTI in English 0608 GMT, 21 July 1974, cited in ibid., 22 July 1974, p. F/2.
[Note 30]. The September issue was signed for the press on 15 August 1974. Kudryavtsev mentions the Greek withdrawal from NATO, which was announced on 14 August, at the end of a paragraph, where the news fills out a line of type that would otherwise have remained half-empty. The article had therefore already been set in type for some time, and further evidence of the hastiness of the change is that although this addition changed the subject of its sentence from singular to plural, the number of the corresponding verb remained unaltered. The system of specialists' reports is described by the author's interviewees and in Oded Eran, 'Soviet Foreign Policy—Random Institutional Observations', International Problems, Vol. XXIII, Nos. 1–2 (June 1973), pp. 89–90.
[Note 31]. Leonid Zamyatin, 'Vosstanovit′ mir na Kipre', Sovetskaya Rossiya, 23 July 1974, p. 3. Nor is this article an expression of Zamyatin's personal opinion. Had he wanted to make known a point of view divorced from his institutional role, he would have written in another newspaper, most probably Literaturnaya gazeta. Author's interviews; specific source documentation available upon request.
[ page 86 ]
[Note 32]. E.g., Peter Osnos, 'Moscow Indicates That It Supports Return of Makarios', Washington Post, 24 July 1974, p. A/14.
[Note 33]. N. Bragin, 'Neot″emlemoe pravo kipriotov', Pravda, 26 July 1974, p. 4.
[Note 34]. Interview with Roland Delcour in Le Monde, 25 July 1974, p. 4. Note that Le Monde is published in Paris at noon on the day before the date on the masthead.
[Note 35]. Bragin, 'Neot″emlemoe pravo kipriotov', op.cit.
[Note 36]. Philip KnightIey, 'Ankara aims for partition at Geneva peace talks', Times (London), 24 July 1974, p. 7.
[Note 37]. For a discussion relevant to this procedure, see Raymond Cohen, Threat Perception in International Crisis (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), chap. 1.
[Note 38]. A. Vasil′ev, 'Posle prekrashcheniya ognya', Pravda, 26 July 1974, p. 5.
[Note 39]. 'Press-konferentsiya G. Kissindzhera', Pravda, 24 July 1974, p. 5; 'Press-konferentsiya G. Kissindzhera', Krasnaya zvezda, 24 July 1974, p. 3; 'Press-konferentsiya G. Kissindzhera', Trud, 24 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 40]. 'Trekhstoronnye peregovory', Trud, 28 July 1974, p. 3; 'Na trekhstoronnykh peregovorakh', Krasnaya zvezda, 28 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 41]. V.D. Pel′t, 'Sobstvennyi i spetsial'nyi korrespondenty', in Teoriya i praktika sovetskoi periodicheskoi pechati, ed. Pel′t (Moscow: Izdatel′stvo MGU, 1980), p. 83; and author's interviewees (specific source documentation available upon request).
[Note 42]. E. Grigor′ev and I. Mel′nikov, 'Peregovory na Kipru nachalis′' Pravda, 27 July 1974, p. 7.
[Note 43]. M. Mikhailov, 'Niti vedut v NATO', Izvestiya, 25 July 1974, p. 3; British Broadcasting Corporation, Summary of World Broadcasts, Part I: The U.S.S.R., 2nd series [hereafter BBC–SWB], p. SU/4661/A4/2.
[Note 44]. 'Kipr: slozhnaya obstanovka', Izvestiya, 28 July 1974, p. 2.
[Note 45]. Tass reports about Cyprus in Sovetskaya Rossiya during the week preceding the 28 July statement were brief and relatively few in number, carrying no implication for policy.
[Note 46]. G. Oganov, 'Razryadka: nastoyashchee, budushchee', Komsomol′skaya pravda: 'I. Real′nost′ mira', 30 July 1974, p. 3; '2. Dogmy i istina', 31 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 47]. 'V interesakh bezopasnosti narodov', Krasnaya zvezda, 31 July 1974, p. 1.
[Note 48]. E.g., 'For a Firm Reply to the Forces of War and Reaction', unattributed commentary in Arabic to the Arab World 1600 GMT, 22 July 1974, translated in FBIS-SOV, 23 July 1974, pp. G/4–5; 'The Cyprus Events and the Middle East', unattributed commentary in Arabic to the Arab World 1600 GMT, 24 July 1974, translated in ibid., 25 July 1974, p. G/2.
[Note 49]. Pavel Demchenko, 'Mezhdunarodnaya nedelya: obozrenie', Pravda, 28 July 1974, p. 4; Vladimir Ermakov, 'Mezhdunarodnaya nedelya: obozrenie', Pravda, 4 August 1974, p. 4. The theme had appeared earlier once very briefly in the press: V. Pustov, 'Myatezh i ego organizatory', Krasnaya zvezda, 19 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 50]. E.g., L. Tolkunov, 'Blizhnii Vostok: put′ k spravedlivomy miru', Izvestiya, 1 August 1974, pp. 3–4.
[Note 51]. Reported in Christian Science Monitor, 2 August 1974, p. 4.
[Note 52]. But after a meeting with the Turkish Defence Minister, Ambassador Grubyakov told critical reporters in Ankara on 29 July: 'Read [the 28 July Soviet government statement] very carefully. Go over and study well every announcement the Soviet Union has made since 16 July. You will be pleased'. And two days later Prime Minister Ecevit indeed opined at a press conference that 'since the very start of the Cyprus events the attitude of the Soviet Union, in our view, has been very understanding and constructive from the point of view of Turkey's position'. FBIS-MEA, 30 July 1974, p. 0/6; and 2 August 1974, p. Q/1.
[Note 53]. Viktor Ivanovich Minin, head of the Middle East Department at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, was to be a counterpart to US Assistant Secretary of State William Buffum. Minin appears to have been in Geneva all the while, however, and to have kept himself hidden until the meetings were about to break up, when he put in an appearance. It is likely that the USSR, announcing his 'imminent arrival', wished only to make a show of involvement; the announcement ironically accelerated the Western negotiators' efforts to settle the dispute. See New York Times, 30 July 1974, p. 2; ibid., 31 July 1974, p. 2; Paul-Michel Villa, Hong Kong AFP in English 2328 GMT, 30 July 1974, cited in FBIS-MEA, 31 July 1974, p. O/6.
[Note 54]. Soviet delegate Safronchuk called a special meeting for Sunday night, 28 July, merely to read the new Soviet government statement, which inconsideration led to acerbic exchanges with the representative of the United Kingdom, Ivor Richard. When the latter asked Safronchuk pointblank whether the USSR favoured the withdrawal of Turkish troops as well as Greek, Safronchuk replied that he preferred the withdrawal of 'all foreign troops'. UN Document S/PV. 1786.
[Note 55]. UN Documents S/PV. 1787; draft resolution S/11399. New York Times, 30 July 1974, p. 3; Le Monde, 30 July 1974, p. 3.
[Note 56]. The Soviet Union had contended, since the creation of UNFICYP, that the force violated provisions of the UN Charter concerning the size and composition of UN forces, and Malik's deputy had reminded the Security Council more than a week before the veto that the USSR had abstained from voting on the operative paragraph of the resolution originally creating the force. See UN Document S/PV. 1782.
[ page 87 ]
[Note 57]. Malik's veto is reported and justified in Izvestiya, 2 August 1974, p. 3, but goes unmentioned in Pravda, 2 August 1974, p. 5. See also UN Documents S/PV. 1788, 1789; and London Reuters in English 1556 GMT, 1 August 1974, cited in FBIS-MEA, 2 August 1974, p. O/1.
[Note 58]. B. Svetlov, 'Bez provolochek i zatyazhek: K voprosu 0 Kipre', Pravda, 8 August 1974, p. 4.
[Note 59]. L. Koryavin, 'Opasnyi platsdarm', Izvestiya, 11 August 1974, p. 2; B. Stolpovsky, 'Mezhdunarodnoe obozrenie', Trud, 13 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 60]. 'Na Kipre bez peremen', Izvestiya, 11 August 1974, p. 2.
[Note 61]. Stolpovsky, 'Mezhdunarodnoe obozrenie', op. cit.
[Note 62]. 'Polozhenie na Kipre', Krasnaya zvezda, 8 August 1974, p. 3; 'Polozhenie na Kipre', Krasnaya zvezda, 9 August 1974, p. 3; 'Peregovory v Zheneve', Krasnaya zvezda, 10 August 1973, p. 3; 'Na peregovorakh po Kipru', Krasnaya zvezda, 11 August 1974, p. 3; 'Na trekhstoronnykh peregovorakh v Zheneve' and 'Neustoichivaya obstanovka', Krasnaya zvezda, 13 August 1974, p. 3; 'Na peregovorakh po Kipru', Krasnaya zvezda, 14 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 63]. 'Na peregovorakh v Zheneve', Sovetskaya Rossiya, 14 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 64]. 'Na peregovorakh po Kipru', Krasnaya zvezda, 14 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 65]. 'Na peregovorakh v Zheneve', Trud, 14 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 66]. Cf. Zamyatin's feature radio commentary, 'On the Situation in Cyrpus', Moscow Domestic Service in Russian 1645 GMT, 16 August 1974, translated in FBIS-SOV, 19 August 1974, p. G/6.
[Note 67]. UN Document S/PV. 1794; Le Monde, 16 August, pp. 1, 2. Malik's remarks were reported differently in the Tass English Service and in the Moscow Domestic Service; See FBIS-SOV, 20 August 1974, p. G/2.
[Note 68]. See also Zamyatin's commentary, translated in FBIS-SOV, 19 August 1974.
[Note 69]. V. Pustov, 'Posledstviya nedostoinogo torga: nash kommentarii', Krasnaya zvezda, 15 August 1974, p. 3. The unusual terminal punctuation suggests that the message is intended for a readership that had recently been unreceptive to the argument; this would not have been the military, nor the broad Soviet public.
[Note 70]. Viktor Maevsky, 'Mezhdunarodnaya nedelya: obozrenie', Pravda, 18 August 1974, p. 4.
[Note 71]. V. Pustov, 'Kipr: napryazhennost′ sokhranyaetsya; mezhdunarodnoe voennoe obozrenie', and V. Vinogradov, 'Izrail′: kursom provokatsii; mezhdunarodnoe voennoe obozrenie', Krasnaya zvezda, 18 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 72]. B. Vladimirov, 'Gretsiya i NATO', Izvestiya, 23 August 1974, p. 2.
[Note 73]. Leonid Zamyatin, 'Eshche raz o Kipre', Sovetskaya Rossiya, 19 August 1974, p. 3. The authoritative nature of Zamyatin's commentaries in Sovetskaya Rossiya, in determining the Soviet propaganda line, is suggested by the wide currency that this argument of his immediately obtained: for the Tass Russian-language International Service, see FBIS-SOV, 20 August 1974, pp. G/7–8; for the English-language Radio Peace and Progress (to South and Southeast Asia), see ibid., pp. G/1O–11; for the Greek- and Turkish-language services of Radio Moscow, see BBC–SWB, 21 August 1974, p. SU/4683/A4/2.
[Note 74]. An early exception is Zamyatin's commentary, broadcast 16 August, translated in FBIS-SOV, 19 August 1974, pp. G5/6.
[Note 75]. On the reasons for the Minic trip, and a Yugoslav evaluation of the situation prior to it, see Milika Sundic's commentary on Zagreb Domestic Service in Serbo-Croat 1830 GMT, 18 August 1974, translated in FBIS-EEU, 10 August 1974, pp. I/4–5; and also the Tanjug report in English of Borba remarks 2100 GMT, 19 August 1974, cited in ibid., 20 August 1974, p. I/2.
[Note 76]. Reported by Belgrade Tanjug Domestic Service in Serbo-Croat 1417 GMT, 21 August 1974, translated in ibid., 22 August 1984, p. G/5.
[Note 77]. Paris AFP in English 1145 GMT, 21 August 1974, cited in FBIS-MEA, 22 August 1974, p. G/5.
[Note 78]. Le Monde, 24 August 1974, p. 2.
[Note 79]. Ecevit quoted by Ankara General Service in Turkish 1700 GMT, 23 August 1974, translated in FBIS-MEA, 26 August 1974, pp. Q/3–4.
[Note 80]. Ecevit quoted by Ankara General Service in Turkish 1300 GMT, 24 August 1974, translated in ibid., p. Q/6.
[Note 81]. Le Monde, 25–26 August 1974, p. 2.
[Note 82]. Le Monde, 29 August 1974, p. 7.
[Note 83]. 'Kipr: trevozhnoe polozhenie', Pravda, 24 August 1974, p. 5; 'Trevozhnye dni Kipra', Izvestiya, 24 August 1974, p. 3; 'Vazhneishaya mirolyubivaya initsiativa', Izvestiya, 25 August 1974, p. 2; 'Ogromnyi rezonans', Krasnaya zvezda, 24 August 1973, p. 3; 'Kipr: polozhenie ostaetsya trevozhnym', Sovetskaya Rossiya, 24 August 1974, p. 3; 'V interesakh mira i bezopasnosti', Trud, 24 August 1974, p. 3.
[Note 84]. B. Vladimirov, 'Kipru – mir i nadezhnaya bezopasnost′', Pravda, 24 August 1974, p. 4.
[Note 85]. 'Vazhnaya initsiativa', Pravda, 29 August 1974, p. 5.
[Note 86]. Vladislav Drobkov, 'Kto nagnetaet napryazhennost′', Pravda, 29 August 1974, p. 5.
[Note 87]. UN Documents S/11449/Rev. 1; S/PV. 1794, 1795; for the Anglo-Austro-French resolution, S/11479.
[ page 88 ]
[Note 88]. Nikolai Bragin, 'Krizis uglublyaetsya', Pravda, 3 September 1974, p. 5; Viktor Maevsky, 'Pekinskaya podporka NATO', Pravda, 5 September 1974, p. 5; Vitalii Men′shikov, 'Gretsiya i NATO', Pravda, 6 September 1974, p. 5.
[Note 89]. B. Vladimirov, 'Real′nyi put′ k uregulirovanie kiprskoi problemy', Pravda, 7 September 1974, p. 5; Nikolai Bragin, 'Mezhdunarodnaya nedelya: obozrenie' Pravda, 8 September 1974, p. 4.
[Note 90]. Vernon V. Aspaturian, 'Internal Politics and Foreign Policy in the Soviet System', in R. Barry Farrell (ed.), Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 212–87, reprinted in Aspaturian, Process and Power in Soviet Foreign Policy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), pp. 491–551; and Aspaturian, 'The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex: Does It Exist?', Journal of International Affairs, Vol. XXVI, No.1 (1972), pp. 1–28.
[Note 91]. Egbert Jahn, 'The Role of the Armaments Complex in Soviet Society (Is There a Soviet Military-Industrial Complex?)', Journal of Peace Research, Vol. XII, No. 3 (1975), pp. 179–94.
[Note 92]. Karen Dawisha, 'The Limits of the Bureaucratic Politics Model: Observations on the Soviet Case', Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol. XIII, No.4 (Winter 1980), p. 317. N.b., the issue of bureaucratic vs. functional interests dominates the exchange between Dimitri K. Simes, 'The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Limits of Kremlinology', and Jiri Valenta, 'Rejoinder', both in Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol. VIII, Nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1975), pp. 174–80 and 181–82 respectively.
[Note 93]. Dina Rome Spechler, Domestic Influences on Soviet Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978); Ilana Kass, Soviet Involvement in the Middle East: Policy Formulation, 1966–1973 (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press. 1978).
[Note 94]. See the author's paper, complementary to this article, 'Organizational Process in Soviet Foreign Policy Making', presented to the Twenty-Fourth Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 27–31 March 1984.
[Note 95]. William D. Jackson, 'Soviet Images of the United States as Nuclear Adversary, 1969–1979', World Politics, Vol. XXXIII, No.4 (July 1981), pp. 624–28. Cf. E. Beukel, 'Analysing the Views of Soviet Leaders on Nuclear Weapons', Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. XV, No.2 (1980), pp. 71–84, where Brezhnev, Grechko, and Gromyko are discussed.
[Note 96]. Jackson, op. cit.
[Note 97]. The assumed connections would be; Pravda, Brezhnev (Party); Izvestiya, Kosygin (government); Krasnaya zvezda, Grechko (armed forces); Trud, Shelepin (trade unions); Sovetskaya Rossiya, Solomentsev (RSFSR); and—since the Politbureau does not include the head of the Komsomol, an organisation reputed to be dominated by the ideologists—Komsomol′skaya pravda, Suslov. Evidence from the author's interviews suggest that such assumptions are more appropriate to the 1950s than to the 1970s.
[Note 98]. Jackson, op. cit, p. 628. Jackson does not survey Solomentsev's speeches, but the specialised domestic media role of Sovetskaya Rossiya argues against the newspaper's connection to him. According to the analysis in Grey Hodnett, 'Succession Contingencies in the Soviet Union', Problems of Communism, Vol. XXIV, No.2 (March–April 1975), p. 10, fig. 2, Solomentsev's speeches portray a pro-detente attitude over the period 1970–74 as do—in contradiction to Jackson's analysis—Shelepin's.
[Note 99]. For an example outside the Soviet field, see Daniel Heradstveit, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1979). A different typology is suggested by Ole R. Holsti, 'The "Operational Code" as an Approach to the Analysis of Belief Systems: Final Report to the National Science Foundation Grant No. SOC75–15368' (Duke University, December 1977). Cf. also Theodore H. Friedgut, 'The Domestic Image of Soviet Involvement in the Arab-Israeli Conflict', Research Paper No. 26 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Soviet and East European Research Centre, August 1977).
[Note 100]. Christer Jönsson, 'Foreign Policy Ideas and Groupings in the Soviet Union', in Roger E. Kanet (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy and East–West Relations (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1982), pp. 1–26.
[Note 101]. Spechler, Domestic Influences on Soviet Foreign Policy, op. cit.
[Note 102]. Franklyn Griffiths, 'Images, Politics and Learning in Soviet Behaviour towards the United States' (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1972), summarised by Seweryn Bialer, Stalin's Successors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 278: '… a sectarian tendency, inward-directed to the socialist camp and isolationist in its effects [i.e., parochial Self and monolithic Other]; a dualistic activist tendency which combines a commitment to pursue peaceful coexistence with the mobilization of external counterforce vis-à-vis the West [global Self and monolithic Other]; and a reformist tendency which in the competition of the contending camps stresses the force of example and political-economic forces over the political utility of military forces and places a premium on the development of stable cooperative arrangements with the West [global Self and dualistic Other]'.
[Note 103]. Alexander Dallin, 'The Domestic Sources of Soviet Foreign Policy', in Seweryn Bialer (ed.), The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 344–47, esp. p. 345.
[Note 104]. Uwe Steinbach, 'Die Sowjetunion und die Zypernkrise', Osteuropa, Vol. XXV, No. 5 (May 1975), p. 343. For an exchange between Soviet commentators that would seem to be informed by these divergent
[ page 89 ]
perspectives, see the radio feature from Moscow in English to Great Britain and Ireland 2100 GMT, 4 August 1974, cited in FBIS-SOV, 5 August 1974, p. G/4. Whether these broadcasters were speaking spontaneously or reading from a script does not affect the point being made.
[Note 105]. V.M. Gorokhov and V.D. Pel′t, 'Zakonomernosti zhurnalistskogo tvorchestva', in Teoriya i praktika sovetskoi periodicheskoi pechati, p. 182.
[Note 106]. Ibid., p. 183.
[Note 107]. See Alexander George, Propaganda Analysis: A Study of Inferences Made from Nazi Propaganda in World War II (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1959), p. 61.
[Note 108]. On how these are chosen and edited by a newspaper, see n. 18 supra.
[Note 109]. See George, Propaganda Analysis, pp. 45–57; adapted by Cutler, 'The Formation of Soviet Foreign Policy', pp. 426–33.
[Note 110]. George, Propaganda Analysis, p. 60.
Dr. Robert M. Cutler [ website — email ] was educated at MIT and The University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has specialized and consulted in the international affairs of Europe, Russia, and Eurasia since the late 1970s. He has held research and teaching positions at major universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia, and contributed to leading policy reviews and academic journals as well as the print and electronic mass media in three languages.
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