XIX. Meeting of the PCC, Sofia, 22-23 October 1985
Editorial Note
This was the first PCC meeting after Gorbachev came into office in March 1985 - apart from the 26 April 1985 Warsaw Pact summit held to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the alliance and renew it for another twenty years. Gorbachev's ascent marked the resolution of the protracted Soviet leadership crisis during the succession of ailing general secretaries Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. Since the previous PCC meeting in January 1983, however, the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the Soviet scare about a possible US surprise attack, and the adoption by NATO of its Euromissile program despite strenuous Soviet opposition showed the full magnitude of the challenge the new Soviet Union was facing by the Reagan administration.
As one of his first foreign policy acts, Gorbachev resumed arms control negotiations in Geneva, thus disregarding the previous Soviet vow that there would be no resumption unless the Euromissile program were first reversed. As he was meeting the Warsaw Pact representatives, he was also preparing for his first talk with Reagan, scheduled to take place a month later.
In his speech to the PCC, Gorbachev tried to rationalize the Soviet retreat in Geneva by suggesting that the United States had not been interested in stopping the arms race, and that only Soviet concessions had compelled Washington to negotiate. He grasped the deeper significance of the US armament program, including especially the SDI, in its being not only military but also signifying the goal of "securing permanent technological superiority of the West over the socialist community." He speculated that "some time at the turn of the seventies and eighties, calculations and hopes arose" in Washington that superior technology and economic power of the United States could be used to bring about "social revenge" against the communist bloc.
The assembled Warsaw Pact leaders still appeared confident in mastering the challenge. Honecker extolled the supposed "stable and dynamic development of the GDR economy" as a successful example of putting the "scientific and technological revolution" into effect.
Fresh from a visit to France, Gorbachev expressed his belief in cooperation with West Europeans to mitigate the US challenge. Countering that sentiment, Honecker was impressed by the growing unity of the capitalist countries in their waging a "common class struggle" to regain the positions they had been losing before.
In his report about the military condition of the Warsaw Pact, Kulikov insisted that although the enemy was strong and well-equipped the alliance was in a position to resist any attack. Acknowledging that the technological edge was turning against it, however, the PCC appealed to the United States to desist from deploying its new conventional weapons whose capacity approached that of the weapons of mass destruction.
Vojtech Mastny
