IV. Meeting of the PCC, Moscow, 28-29 March 1961
Editorial Note
The PCC met two months after the inauguration in Washington of the new Democratic administration of President John F. Kennedy, in which Khrushchev placed high hopes for a more accommodating American attitude toward his proposals on the future of West Berlin. Like the similar expectation about the attitude of the Eisenhower administration that had permeated Khrushchev's management of the Committee's previous meeting the year before, the hopes again rested on a misjudgment, possibly resulting from a misreading of the information received by Soviet intelligence about the alleged disposition of Kennedy's closest advisers.
Khrushchev's secret speech at the PCC meeting provides a remarkably coherent statement of Soviet perceptions and strategy at a critical stage in the development of the Berlin crisis. He defended a conciliatory line toward the new US administration by arguing that all capitalists are not the same, and informed the East European leaders of his still confidential acceptance of the President's proposal for a summit meeting, which would take place in Vienna five weeks later. Khrushchev described his strategy as being aimed to force Washington to negotiate on the main outstanding issues, namely, disarmament, the German question, and trade.
If the United States proved responsive, Khrushchev explained, the Soviet Union would be interested in concluding agreements; if not, it would still want to continue negotiations in order to impress upon the West that agreements were both possible and necessary. He insisted that "we really want to achieve an improvement of relations [with the United States]" to provide the basis for a peaceful coexistence between the two blocs and assured his audience that "we will not needle without reason." Yet this was precisely what he would when he would meet Kennedy in Vienna, thus showing how much his announced strategy was subject to improvisation.
On the German question, Khrushchev said he intended to seek an interim agreement on West Berlin and tackle the issue of a peace treaty issue only after negotiations have taken place between the two German states - an unlikely event in view of their profound mutual mistrust. While stating that the Soviet goal was the conclusion of peace treaties with each German state, Khrushchev admitted that the road toward that goal would not be easy. He did not consider it advisable to push, since the West was unlikely to agree to treaties that would undermine the position of West Germany as the centerpiece of NATO.
In Khrushchev' opinion, the Western powers might agree to a temporary German settlement provided Moscow could impress upon them that they had no choice. In the event Kennedy proved unresponsive to pressure, the Soviet Union would sign a separate peace treaty with the GDR, a draft of which had already been prepared by the Soviet and East German governments. At the same time, since the conclusion of such a treaty was certain to aggravate the international situation, Khrushchev tried to reassure the Warsaw Pact members that he would not proceed without first consulting with them. In the meantime, he thought it appropriate to prepare for the development of economic, cultural, and other relations with West Berlin as if the city were to become a separate political entity for an indefinite period of time. He thus left his strategy sufficiently flexible in order not to foreclose any options that he might deem to be in Soviet interest.
With his own interests foremost on his mind, the East German leader Walter Ulbricht did not contradict Khrushchev but tried to pin him down on options that would not only enhance the GDR's international status but also ensure its effective control over West Berlin. He played down the difficulties this was likely to create in relations with the Western allies. "It is well known," he wanted the PCC audience to believe, "that President Kennedy and the US government do not wish to take any initiative in the German question," preferring instead to concentrate on the expansion of US influence in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Ulbricht predicted confidently that "Kennedy will not become engaged in the German question and will leave it to the two German states" - a dangerous illusion if seriously believed.
The GDR prepared a five-point plan, which qualified as a propaganda exercise since none of the points was known to be acceptable to the Western powers responsible for Germany, much less the Bonn government. The points included a ten-year no-use-of-force agreement between the two Germanstates, cessation of hostile Western propaganda, freeze on armaments, a nuclear-free zone consisting of both German states and the neighboring countries, and a Warsaw Pact-NATO nonaggression pact. Despite the illusory nature of these proposals, Ulbricht appeared confident that the Western powers could be compelled to accept the transformation of West Berlin into a "free city" and did not hide his expectation that this would merely be a transitory stage on the way toward its absorption by East Germany - something that Khrushchev did not consider prudent to commit himself to at this time. The PCC meeting nevertheless confirmed the East Germans in their belief that the Soviet Union was committed to sign a separate peace treaty with them.
Ulbricht dwelt on his country's precarious economic situation, urging its reluctant Warsaw Pact partners to provide, presumably in their own interest, massive subsidies to keep it afloat. He attributed East Germany's economic distress and the accelerating exodus of its population to the West to machinations by the Bonn government rather than to the disruptive effect of the Soviet-made Berlin crisis. The available records of the PCC meeting show no evidence of any discussion about stopping the GDR's hemorrhage by constructing a barrier to prevent free movement from the eastern to the western part of the city - the future Berlin Wall - thus suggesting Soviet reluctance to risk a confrontation with the West that the sanctioning of such a drastic solution was likely to provoke.
The PCC issued a lackluster public declaration, reiterating familiar Soviet precepts for the solution of the Berlin question and vaguely hinting at measures necessary to increase the defense readiness of the Warsaw Pact. Far more significant than this published document, however, were two secret resolutions passed at the end of the meeting. The first document, adopted in response to a statement by supreme commander Marshal Andrei A, Grechko, testified that Khrushchev's optimism about the Soviet Union's ability to achieve its preferred solution of the Berlin question by diplomatic means did not preclude preparing for a possible military confrontation should diplomacy fail. The second resolution, however, showed that the alliance might be falling apart.
The resolution on defense readiness envisaged a five-year plan for the restructuring and modernization of the Warsaw Pact's armed forces in 1961-65, the shortening of alert times, creation of stocks of supplies and ammunition, conclusion of new agreements on the organization of the alliance as well as the size and equipment of its national contingents, new rules of engagement in case of enemy violations of air space and territorial waters, and appointment of the supreme commander's permanent representatives in the member countries - in addition to the Soviet military specialists stationed there temporarily to provide technical assistance. Indicative of the discomfort of some of the Soviet allies about the aggravation of the German problem was the Polish proposition that the Warsaw Pact take the initiative toward the creation of an European collective security system as well as the Romanian opposition to the establishment of a permanent committee of the alliance's foreign ministers. These were to become recurrent themes in the two countries' distinctive policies.
The second resolution and related documents provide the details of the Soviet-Albanian split, the extent of which outsiders could long merely guess. Invoking alleged threat from Yugoslavia, Greece, and the US Sixth Fleet, Albania had previously attempted to take control of several dozen warships provided by the Soviet Union at the naval base of Vlorë. Following scuffles between Soviet and Albanian sailors, both sides presented their respective versions of the incidents to the PCC. In the declaration approved by the committee, the Soviet Union demanded that all the vessels must be manned exclusively by Soviet crews, or else withdrawn.
The Albanians subsequently rejected the demand and promised to help evacuate the ships, but in the end only the Soviet crews left while Albania brazenly kept several of the ships. The infuriated Khrushchev complained bitterly to the visiting Czechoslovak party chief Antonín Novotný, lamenting that he had trusted the Albanians because "the location of the base was very advantageous." "Who could have imagined," he exclaimed, " that after all that they had gotten from us they would spit in our face. Only pirates act like that. Evidently they have it in their blood after their ancestors," hypothesized the Soviet leader.
Despite its seemingly unremarkable public outcome, the PCC exposed the weaknesses of the communist alliance at the very time the approaching climax of the Berlin crisis would test its cohesion in view of the possible military conflict provoked by a Soviet attempt at a unilateral solution of the crisis. While the breach with Albania proved irreparable, the crisis would give an impetus for the transformation of the Warsaw Pact from mainly an accessory of Soviet diplomacy to something more akin to a military alliance.
Vojtech Mastny
