III. Meeting of the PCC, Moscow, 4 February 1960
Editorial Note
The meeting took place in the heady atmosphere of the deceptive triumph Khrushchev believed to have accomplished during his Camp David talks with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in September of the preceding year. The Soviet leader was still under the impression that the United States would feel compelled to acquiesce in his proposal for the resolution of the Berlin question on his terms - an outcome which, together with his diplomatic advances in the Third World, would lead to the Soviet Union's overall international ascendancy. In anticipation of these gratifying developments, suitable to confirm Khrushchev's belief in the efficacy of political rather than military power, the Soviet leader had shortly before the PCC gathering publicly inaugurated substantial reductions of Soviet conventional forces, to be followed by similar reductions of the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact allies.
The PCC meeting had been immediately preceded by a conference of foreign ministers which, in accordance with the established practice, approved the Soviet-prepared agenda and a declaration that the PCC participants were expected to adopt without substantive discussion. Khrushchev's secret introductory speech, which set the tone of the meeting, was ebullient in its optimism. He praised international developments since 1958 - the year he had provoked the Berlin crisis - as having been unequivocally favorable to the communist world, as its capitalist adversaries allegedly realized that they had "either to co-exist or not exist." Praising his recent and forthcoming meetings with Western leaders as diplomatic breakthroughs, Khrushchev insisted that responding to Western hostility by détente was more beneficial than hardening the line. He expressed confidence in an early conclusion of a German peace treaty.
Khrushchev welcomed the recent lull in nuclear testing and appeared confident in reaching disarmament agreements, including the establishment of nuclear-free zones in the Balkans and elsewhere, because their necessity was presumably generally recognized. He singled out for praise the establishment of the UN ten-nation disarmament committee because of the parity of representation it accorded to the Warsaw Pact and Western countries. Apart from the recent troop cuts, Khrushchev raised the question of the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Hungary and Poland, and even went so far as mentioning the desirability of a transition from a standing army to territorial forces.
While the East European participants and Warsaw Pact supreme commander Marshal Ivan S. Konev dutifully seconded Khrushchev's main themes, differences in emphasis gave hints of their discomfort. Konev stressed the need to respond to nuclearization of NATO and opposed the reduction of forces of the East European allies. East German and Czechoslovak press reported about the outcome of the meeting less effusively than did the Soviet media.
The four Asian observer countries were strongly represented - Mongolia at the highest level through its party chief, Yumjaagiyn Tsedenbal. If, however, Khrushchev had wanted to use their presence to demonstrate the extent of Soviet global reach, he was to be disappointed. The Chinese representative, Kang Sheng, delivered at Mao Zedong's personal instructions a speech designed to question Khrushchev's upbeat assessment of the international situation and the propriety of his policies. Kang dwelt on the abiding threat of US "imperialism" and, referring to what he described as an improved power position of the Soviet Union and its allies, urged confronting the threat by taking a more militant rather than a more conciliatory line. He served notice that China would not be bound by any disarmament agreements to which it was not a party.
Kang's presentation was a landmark in the evolving Sino-Soviet dispute going public. Contrary to the understanding that all speeches delivered at the PCC meeting should be kept secret, Beijing published his speech in full, prompting Soviet protest. The aftermath of the meeting tended to vindicate the skeptical Chinese rather than Khrushchev's optimistic view of the Soviet policy toward the West. His appeals for negotiations on disarmament and the German question, supported by the PCC resolution, did not elicit the US interest he had expected. It soon became evident that he had misjudged Eisenhower's readiness for accommodation, thus leading to a premature end of the deceptive détente.
Vojtech Mastny
