VI. Meeting of the PCC, Moscow, 26 July 1963
Editorial Note
As had become the established practice, the PCC met in response to momentary Soviet political requirements rather than following any regular schedule. In July 1963, the requirements pertained to the severe deterioration of Soviet-Chinese relations, dramatized by Mongolia's application to join the Warsaw Pact, and the possible improvement of Soviet-US relations as a result of the signing, the day before the PCC meeting, of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Khrushchev had only summoned the meeting at ten days' notice, once he had decided to sign the treaty.
As in 1962, the PCC gathering was preceded by that of the Comecon. This was a contentious affair, marked by Romania's successful opposition to the Moscow-dictated division of labor that would have reduced the country to a supplier of raw materials while hampering its industrialization. In an unmistakable sign of diminished Soviet authority, its foundations shaken as a result of Khrushchev's ill-advised Cuban adventure, the Comecon adopted instead the principle of a voluntary division of labor, dropped the plans for a central planning body, and established a mechanism for bilateral consultations between its members.
The main item on the PCC agenda was the Mongolian membership application, which Khrushchev had endorsed prior to the meeting. So did Hungary and other Warsaw Pact members, although Polish foreign minister Adam Rapacki had composed a memorandum opposing Mongolia's admission on several sound grounds. When the subject came up for discussion, however, only the Romanians vaguely questioned the wisdom of the admission. Still, it was not they but the Soviets themselves who killed the idea they had originally supported, pointing out a contradiction between the Warsaw Pact's enlargement as a signal of threat and the test ban treaty as a harbinger of détente. In the end, the applicant himself, the Mongolian party chief Yumjaagiyn Tsedenbal, proposed to postpone decision, whereupon the alliance's members disposed of the Mongolian issue by agreeing not to discuss it anymore.
According to the account of the meeting by the Hungarian party chief János Kádár, none other than Marshal Grechko, the Warsaw Pact's supreme commander, "said encouraging things" and proposed "a draft resolution that went far beyond all previous resolutions." When published, the brief resolution did not go all that far in praising the test ban but it did express the hope that the "treaty will be conducive to a relaxation of international tension."
More important than the treaty, however, was the collapse of Soviet-Chinese relations that provided the background to the meeting. The Soviet managers informed accurately the Eastern European participants about the insults hurled upon the Kremlin leaders by Mao's envoy Deng Xiaoping during the recent talks that had ended in an impasse.[1] For Khrushchev, the main goal of the PCC gathering was to rally the Warsaw Pact members behind him; it was for the last time that they met before he would fall from power the following year.
Vojtech Mastny
Notes
[1] Compare the Russian record of the talks, "Stenogram: Meeting of the Delegations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party," 8 July 1963, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 10 (1998): 175-79.
