International communism, as an organized movement directed by and automatically responsive to Moscow, no longer exists. Time and events have outdated the model of a “communist solar system” made up of communist parties, trade unions, and front organizations predictably revolving around the Red Star. Instead, as Robert Wesson, the editor of the 1983 Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, wrote, “the communist movement in the world gradually seems to be becoming more ambiguous and amorphous” (p. xxv). Nevertheless, the reader of The Red Orchestra is advised that the Soviet Union has been able to “orchestrate” the vast and diverse array of anti-Western, primarily anti-U.S. forces to accomplish the dual purpose of weakening the U.S. position in the world, and promoting the spread and viability of Marxist-Leninist parties linked to the U.S.S.R. and to the idea of proletarian internationalism.
The specific purpose of this volume, drawn from a conference sponsored by the Hoover Institution in Washington, DC in June 1984, is to bring scholarly discipline and perspective to bear on analysis of the Soviet use of proxy assets as an instrument of foreign policy—Cuba in Latin America and Africa are familiar examples. Yet the cause of scholarly analysis is not served by Michael Radu’s classification of assets that includes “autonomous,” “independent,” or “coincidental” actors as part of the “network” in Central America (p. 101). Nor does H. Joachim Maitre’s label of “disinformation” to describe the position of liberals and liberal organizations, however mistaken their views may be, contribute to the objectivity of the volume. More carefully considered is the essay by Francis Fukuyama, which discounts the notion that the U.S.S.R. has a grand strategy on the order of Hitler, but suggests that the Soviets are pursuing a systematic strategy in an effort to gain access to military facilities and undermine Western positions. Fukuyama also points to the Soviet development of new tactical principles, such as improving the quality of control over client states through more active interference in their internal affairs.
Space limitations preclude a more extensive comment on the seven essays that make up the volume, but I would agree that there is ample room for scholarly analysis of the relatively new use made by the Soviet Union of the military, intelligence, and technical assets of its client states in the pursuit of its policy in the Third World.
