XI. Meeting of the PCC, Moscow, 20 August 1970
Editorial Note 

The first meeting of the PCC that followed the consolidation of the Warsaw Pact in March 1969 showed how much the incipient détente had already changed the thrust of the alliance and Moscow's treatment of its members. The meeting was all but exclusively about the Soviet-West German treaty concluded in Moscow earlier in the month, on 12 August, which the Soviet Union felt compelled to defend to reassure its allies. It was indicative of the sensitivity of rapprochement with West Germany epitomized by the treaty that even before starting negotiations toward signing an agreement with the new social democratic government of chancellor Willy Brandt, Brezhnev had already in December 1969 convened his Eastern European junior partners – though not within the framework of the PCC – to canvass their opinions and receive their input on the issue – an unprecedented example of Soviet interest in genuine consultation.

Brezhnev defended the treaty as a great success for the East. He said that that the negotiations with the West Germans had been difficult because of their insistence of formulas that would allow them to maintain their reservations about the finality of Germany's eastern border on the Oder and Neisse rivers and about international recognition of the GDR. But he claimed that in the end the Soviet Union struck a deal favorable to its interests and those of its allies. In describing the benefits, however, he was general rather than specific, dwelling on the discord the treaty generated within West Germany and within NATO and on the supposed boost it gave to East Germany's international position.

The allies, however, while ritually praising the Soviet accomplishment, chose to focus on the shortcomings of the treaty and the potential dangers that Brezhnev was trying to play down. At the plenary session, East German premier Willy Stoph took a favorable note of West Germany having been compelled to recognize the Oder-Neisse line – although the recognition was still qualified – but behind the scenes Erich Honecker reportedly complained to Brezhnev that by not exacting from Bonn the GDR's full diplomatic recognition the treaty actually made East Germany's international position more difficult.[1]

Brezhnev insisted that the Soviet Union now had a stake in Brandt staying in power and should not do anything that would complicate his position vis-à-vis his critics. But the Czechoslovak party chief, Gustáv Husák, warned against the danger of ideological subversion by the social democratic parties now in power not only in West Germany but also in Austria. Gomułka urged paying attention to West Germany and NATO seeing the treaty as a success for them rather than the East, particularly by providing them with an opportunity for the penetration of their enemies.

The allies understood more clearly than Brezhnev was willing to admit the potential threat that Soviet-West German rapprochement posed to the integrity of the Warsaw Pact. They realized, even if they did not say so, that by entering into an agreement with Germany as a normal state the Soviet Union had given up the pretense that it was an outlaw state – the pretense crucial to the Soviet argument that East Europeans needed the Warsaw Pact for their protection against German militarism and revanchism.

This was a tangible and immediate concession, whereas the West German concessions were open to interpretation and their eventual importance depended on future developments. By giving up its formal claim to the territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, the Bonn government gave up a claim to something it did not have in the first place. And by acknowledging the existence of the GDR, it made easier the pursuit of a "change through rapprochement" if it chose to do so.

In an implicit recognition that the balance of power between East and West depended increasingly on the balance of political rather than military assets, the participants re-emphasized the desirability of creating a Warsaw Pact body that would coordinate common foreign policy, but again got nowhere because of Romanian resistance

Vojtech Mastny

Notes

[1] M.E. Sarotte, Dealing with th Devil: East Germany, Détente and Ostpolitik, 1969-1973 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), p. 71.