Russia

It also tried to encourage specialization and a division of labour within the Soviet Bloc, but to this Romania objected. Its leaders objected to being split between two great regional zones as had been suggested. The economic planners had classified Transilvania, the northern third of the country, as semi-industrial, along with Hungary and Poland, but zoned the southern regions of Moldavia and Wallachia as agricultural, along with Bulgaria. This seemed to threaten the country’s national integrity. True, Romania was a backward Balkan country, predominately peasant both in social structure and in outlook, but its leaders were economic Stalinists whose Communism was intertwined with nationalism. For them the development of heavy industry was more than an element in economic modernization (one which even at that stage was beginning to seem outdated): it was a measure of Romanian achievement.

Soviet leaders had long since abjured Stalinist methods, so Romania was given sufficient latitude to thwart COMECON plans for economic integration. However another — voluntary — approach was to achieve limited success. By 1976 COMECON had promoted specialization in machine-building, created a large pool of railway rolling stock, and built a gas pipeline through the Bloc. It had also founded a joint nuclear research institute, a Bank for Economic Co-operation and had set up organizations to modernize the region’s steel industries and to co-ordinate the manufacture of ball-bearings and chemicals. The fact that the headquarters of these new organizations were allotted to Budapest, Warsaw and East Berlin, rather than being retained in Moscow, mirrored EU practice and suggested that the dirigiste character of the Bloc had given way to a freer form of cooperation.

As for Romania, it continued to find occasion to defy Moscow. It was an effective way for leaders to advertise their patriotism to a population most of whom either resented Communists or were politically innocent. Unlike Czechoslovakia, Romania escaped punishment for stepping over Moscow’s line, but then it did not border a NATO state and it remained stable internally under the oppressive Ceausescu. It is curious, however, that after thirty years of Communism the economic pecking order of the East European countries was the same as it had been half a century, and indeed a century, earlier. The richest countries, in terms of average income per head, were still Czechoslovakia and East Germany; and the poorest were still Albania, Romania and Russia itself.

By 1970 the Soviet Union matched the United States in the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles deployed. The balance of nuclear power had reached the point of perfection. In these circumstances neither side wished to risk their use for fear of reprisal, and both now moved towards detente and to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons to other states. Anticipating this change in strategic circumstances, in 1969 both sides signed a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and talks began on Strategic Arms Limitation. ²⁹ Only China, jockeying for a better position in the race for world power and trying to seize leadership of the Communist movement from the Soviet Union, objected vehemently both to detente and to the Brezhnev Doctrine, viewing them as breaches of Marxist principle. Ideological purity had only ever had brief tenure in the Kremlin. Indeed, reasons of state had long since tended to shape the ideological line that Moscow laid down.

Despite detente, however, competition between the Soviet Union and the USA continued. During the 1960s Moscow’s influence in Africa had waned. The ousting of Kwame Nkrumah in 1966 meant the loss of Ghana as a client; Soviet influence in the Middle East diminished sharply after Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967; and after Nasser died in 1970, Egypt ceased to be an ally. Yet Soviet influence in other regions grew. Concern about Washington’s courtship of Pakistan and fear of China prompted an intensification of relations with India. This culminated in a treaty of considerable strategic significance signed in 1971. It made port facilities available to Russian ships at Bombay, Goa, Cochin and the Andaman Islands, and opened up an air corridor for Soviet aircraft from Tajikistan in Central Asia down to the Bay of Bengal. ³⁰ The Soviet Union thus became a power in south Asia and the Indian Ocean.