TNAG-0894-FCO40-1104-Refugees-from-Vietnam-in-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-boat-people-1979 — Page 92

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За

The USSR also wanted to maintain its hold over Eastern Europe.

It seemed clear that if the events of 1956 in Hungary or of 1968

in Czechoslovakia were repeated, the Russians would act in the same

way

•

4. The USSR was guided by the desire to delay the emergence of China as a military, political and industrial world-power. At the same time, they aimed at increasing Soviet influence in the Third World

to the detriment of that of China and of the West.

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5. The main Soviet instruments were military strength and military

aid. The USSR certainly could not use economic weapons since its economy had not worked well (the agricultural record was particularly weak). Marxism-Leninism was a diminishing asset; the Soviet organisational model had not been imitated in more than a handful

of countries.

6. The Russians relied heavily on detente, of which the latest manifestation was SALT II. This was valuable in keeping relations

with the Americans on a calmer footing. Detente also helped the

Russians to obtain Western technology, doubly important to them in

that they were poor at innovation, with a built-in resistance to new ideas. They hoped that, over the long term, detente would reduce

Western resistance to Soviet power. It was important to remember

that the Russians firmly excluded from detente such matters as their

own military build-up and any possibility of change in their system and they firmly rejected the idea that detente would be used to maintain what they called "non democratic" regimes in the third

world.

7. There was a general obsession about China. However, a pre-emptive Soviet strike against China was not to be expected, given the latter's nuclear deterrent and the danger of the USSR's getting bogged down in a hostile country. Talks on trade and other matters would be held later this year, but no inter-state reconciliation was likely and certainly no ideological reconciliation since China could not accept Soviet leadership of the world communist movement.

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