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Soviet Union [USSR] THE SOVIET UNION AND THE UNITED NATIONS
The Soviet Union has taken an active role in the UN and other
major international and regional organizations. At the behest of
the United States, the Soviet Union took a role in the
establishment of the UN in 1945. The Soviet Union insisted that
there be veto rights in the Security Council and that alterations
in the Charter of the UN be unanimously approved by the five
permanent members (Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and
the United States). A major watershed in Soviet UN policy occurred
in January 1950, when Soviet representatives boycotted UN functions
in support of the seating of China as a permanent member of the
Security Council. In the absence of the Soviet representatives, the
UN Security Council was able to vote for the intervention of UN
military forces in what would become the Korean War. The Soviet
Union subsequently returned to various UN bodies in August 1950.
This return marked the beginning of a new policy of active
participation in international and regional organizations.
For many years, the Western powers played a guiding role in UN
deliberations, but by the 1960s many former colonies had been
granted independence and had joined the UN. These states, which
became the majority in the General Assembly and other bodies, were
increasingly receptive to Soviet "anti-imperialist" appeals. By the
1970s, the UN deliberations had generally become increasingly
hostile toward the West and toward the United States in particular,
as evidenced by pro-Soviet and anti-United States voting trends in
the General Assembly. Although the Soviet Union benefited from and
encouraged these trends, it was not mainly responsible for them.
Rather, the trends were largely a result of the growing debate over
the redistribution of the world's wealth between the "have" and
"have-not" states.
In general, the Soviet Union used the UN as a propaganda forum
and encouraged pro-Soviet positions among the nonaligned countries.
The Soviet Union did not, however, achieve total support in the UN
for its foreign policy positions. The Soviet Union and Third World
states often agreed that "imperialism" caused and continued to
maintain the disparities in the world distribution of wealth. They
disagreed, however, on the proper level of Soviet aid to the Third
World, with the Soviet Union refusing to grant sizable aid for
development. Also, the Soviet Union encountered opposition to its
occupation of Afghanistan and the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia
and got little support (as evidenced by Third World abstentions)
for its 1987 proposal on the creation of a "Comprehensive System of
International Peace and Security."
The Soviet Union in the late 1980s belonged to most of the
specialized agencies of the UN. It resisted joining various
agricultural, food, and humanitarian organizations of the UN
because it eschewed multilateral food and humanitarian relief
efforts. During 1986 Western media reported that East European and
Asian communist countries allied with the Soviet Union received
more development assistance from the UN than they and the Soviet
Union contributed. This revelation belied communist states'
rhetorical support in the UN for the establishment of a New
International Economic Order for the transfer of wealth from the
rich Northern Hemisphere to the poor Southern Hemisphere nations.
Partly because of ongoing Third World criticism of the Soviet
record of meager economic assistance to the Third World and of
Soviet contributions to UN agencies, in September 1987 the Soviet
Union announced that it would pay some portion of its arrears to
the UN. This policy change also came at a time of financial
hardship in the UN caused partly by the decision of the United
States to withhold contributions pending cost-cutting efforts in
the UN.
During the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union made several
suggestions for increasing UN involvement in the settlement of
superpower and regional problems and conflicts. Although as of 1989
these suggestions had not been implemented, they constituted new
initiatives in Soviet foreign policy and represented a break with
the stolid, uncooperative nature of past Soviet foreign policy.
While the basic character of Soviet foreign policy had not yet
changed, the new flexibility in solving regional problems in
Afghanistan, Angola, and Cambodia, as well as problems in the
superpower relationship, indicated a pragmatic commitment to the
lessening of world tensions.
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Information on Soviet ideology and general foreign policy
orientations can be found in Erik P. Hoffmann and Frederic J.
Fleron's The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy; William
Welch's American Images of Soviet Foreign Policy; and
William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani's Untangling the Cold
War. Institutions and personnel involved in the formation and
execution of Soviet foreign policy are discussed in Robbin F. Laird
and Erik P. Hoffmann's Soviet Foreign Policy in a Changing
World; Seweryn Bialer's The Domestic Context of Soviet
Foreign Policy; Vernon S. Aspaturian's Process and Power in
Soviet Foreign Policy; and Jan F. Triska and David D. Finley's
Soviet Foreign Policy. Soviet foreign policy toward various
regions of the world is treated in Robbin F. Laird's Soviet
Foreign Policy; Richard F. Staar's USSR: Foreign Policies
after Detente; Seweryn Bialer's The Soviet Paradox; Adam
B. Ulam's Expansion and Coexistence, The Rivals, and
Dangerous Relations; and Alvin Z. Rubinstein's Soviet
Foreign Policy since World War II. Regional focuses on the
Third World include Jerry F. Hough's The Struggle for the Third
World; Andrzej Korbonski and Francis Fukuyama's The Soviet
Union and the Third World; and Carol R. Saivetz and Sylvia
Woodby's Soviet-Third World Relations. Soviet foreign policy
focusing on specific regions is analyzed in Christopher D. Jones's
Soviet Influence in Eastern Europe; Herbert J. Ellison's
Soviet Policy Toward Western Europe; Donald S. Zagoria's
Soviet Policy in East Asia; Ray S. Cline, James Arnold
Miller, and Roger E. Kanet's Asia in Soviet Global Strategy;
Ramesh Thakur and Carlyle A. Thayer's The Soviet Union as an
Asian Pacific Power; Cole Blasier's The Giant's Rival;
Alvin Z. Rubinstein's Soviet Policy Toward Turkey, Iran, and
Afghanistan; and Robert O. Freedman's Soviet Policy Toward
the Middle East since 1970. (For further information and
complete citations,
see Soviet Union USSR -
Bibliography.)
Data as of May 1989
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