The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Warsaw Pact in 1955
by Vojtech Mastny

The establishment of the Warsaw pact in 1955 - the Soviet bloc's counterpart to NATO - has long defied a satisfactory explanation. Why was it created six years after NATO - at a time when East-West relations were improving rather than deteriorating, while the threat of war was diminishing rather than increasing? And once the new alliance was launched, why was it not given enough military substance until several years later? What were the Soviet expectations for the Warsaw pact and how did they compare with the results?

Although it was obvious to contemporaries that Soviet foreign policy had changed in 1955, the interplay between Moscow's political and military considerations was only dimly understood at the time and has remained elusive ever since. Was the creation of the largely superfluous alliance a political rather than a military move? How did it relate to the concurrent struggle for power in the Kremlin? Was it the result of a consistent policy or of a clash of competing policies? Did the formation of a rival alliance to NATO improve the chances for a breakthrough in the East-West confrontation that has retrospectively been presumed to have existed, or did it rather have the opposite effect?[1]

The examination of publicly available evidence has produced plausible but inconclusive explanations, ranging from the view of the Warsaw pact as the largely empty Soviet response to the expansion of NATO as a result of the admission of West Germany, to the interpretation of the new structure as mainly a device to better discipline Moscow's restive eastern European allies.[2] The mere trickle of inside evidence from the Soviet side that has long been available to scholars indicated discord in the Kremlin in those days, but did not adequately explain its nature and consequences.[3] Not until the collapse of the Soviet empire allowed partial access to the pertinent archives could that evidence be supplemented by a substantial quantity of original documents. Besides records of the Soviet foreign ministry, whose prominent role in the preparations for the Warsaw pact signals the alliance's nature as a political rather than military undertaking, former East German, Polish, and Czech records make it possible to draw a much clearer picture than could be done before.[4]

Stalin and His Successors

When NATO came into existence in April 1949, Stalin did not find it necessary to counter it by putting together an alliance of his own. He was evidently content with the network of bilateral mutual assistance treaties that he had been weaving since World War II, which put the military potential of his east European dependencies fully at his disposal.[5] Not only was he in a position to learn from his spies that NATO at its inception and for many months afterward did not materially enhance the military might of his Western adversaries, but he was also mistrustful of any institutional arrangements that could enable his foreign dependents to claim the status of partners rather than of subordinates.

This mistrust underlay Stalin's abolition of the Communist International in 1943 and accounted as well for the fading away of its successor, the Cominform, scarcely three years after it had been founded in 1947 to counter the West Europeans rallying behind U.S. leadership following the introduction of the Marshall plan. Nor did the Comecon, the Soviet bloc's organization for economic cooperation launched in early 1949 as an awkward response to the success of the Marshall plan, amount to more than an empty shell for the remainder of the dictator's life.[6]

Instead of risking the harnessing of the recently subjugated and sullen eastern European nations into an alliance that might prove difficult to manage, Stalin concentrated his efforts on trying to undermine the Western military grouping, which always looked more shaky than it actually was, particularly to someone beholden, as he was, to the Marxist preconceptions about the supposedly irreconcilable conflicts of interest among capitalists. The task of splitting NATO to render it harmless became all the more urgent for Moscow once the mounting Cold War, made worse by the outbreak of the Korean war, prompted the United States to provide the alliance with the military substance it had been lacking so far. In addition, a project for the European Defense Community (EDC) was being promoted by Washington with the goal of mobilizing West Germany's military potential for a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Although Stalin's efforts to avert these untoward developments were notable by their failure, his successors were initially not discouraged from proceeding along the same lines. One of them, Nikita S. Khrushchev, later recalled that "we went on as before, out of inertia. Our boat just continued to float down the stream, along the same course that had been set by Stalin."[7] The fundamental continuity of Soviet foreign policy was ensured by its being directed by his experienced former aide, Viacheslav M. Molotov, to whose expertise in matters international other members of the ruling team were ready to defer, whatever misgivings some of them may have harbored about the wisdom or feasibility of his hard line.[8] On the fallacious Stalinist premise that the contradictions among capitalists were irreconcilable and therefore liable to exploitation, Molotov's strategy was calculated to drive wedges between the United States and its western European allies rather than seek accommodation with NATO as a whole.[9]

As the building of the Western defense system was inexorably progressing, with Germany as its intended European linchpin, Molotov sought to block it by maneuvers remarkable for their clumsiness. At the 1954 Berlin conference of foreign ministers, he unveiled the proposal for a European security treaty which would exclude the United States and supersede NATO.[10] Rebuffed, he proceeded with the outlandish suggestion that NATO be expanded (and consequently diluted out of existence) by opening itself to the admission of new members, including the Soviet Union.[11] When his Western counterparts "laughed out loud," he explained that he did not want to abolish NATO but prevent the EDC.[12]

This is indeed what the Soviet foreign ministry had intended to accomplish by conceiving the collective security proposal as a ploy to rally western European critics against the EDC, which it considered even more objectionable than NATO because of the expected prominence there of West Germany.[13] But when the French National Assembly voted down the project in August 1954, thus dealing a blow not only to the West German rearmament plan but also to the cohesion of the whole Western alliance, it did so mainly for reasons of domestic politics. Moscow understandably hailed this "deeply patriotic action" as its own victory, pressing further for the replacement of NATO by a European security system.[14] Conversely, the uncanny speed with which the Allies in less than two months found a substitute for the EDC by resurrecting the dormant Western European Union to usher West Germany into NATO through the back door shocked and dismayed Moscow.[15] The outcome raised fundamental questions about the wisdom of Molotov's strategy in the new situation.

The Soviet response to the October 23 Paris agreements, which set the timetable for West Germany's admission to NATO and fixed 5 May 1955, as the target date, still followed and, if anything, reinforced the familiar Molotov line. On the same day the agreements were signed, Moscow reiterated its proposal for an all-European security conference, calling for a meeting of the four powers' foreign ministers to prepare it.[16] When the West ignored the proposal, the Soviet government threatened to convene the conference anyway, which it subsequently did on November 29 in Moscow, with only its own allies attending.[17] It was at this rump gathering that the project of a separate communist alliance was first broached.

Disagreements in the Kremlin

The idea of an alliance came from the mouth of Czechoslovak Premier Viliam Široký in the form of a suggestion that discussions be held about special security arrangements between his country, Poland, and East Germany as those supposedly most directly endangered by the recent developments in the West.[18] Besides raising the prospect of taking organizational and other measures to bolster their defense, the conference participants declared that if West Germany established its own armed forces, East Germany must do the same.[19] The meeting was followed next month by a gathering in Prague of parliamentarians from the three "northern tier" countries which on December 30 vainly made a last-minute appeal to the French National Assembly to desist from the ratification of the Paris agreements.[20]

Moscow's intention to bring into life German armed forces of any kind may seem difficult to reconcile with its pervasive fear of German militarism. Yet by 1955 the Soviet authorities had already created in East Germany a sizable force of militarized police, composed largely of repatriated prisoners of war who had been successfully indoctrinated during their captivity, although the force had not been sufficiently trusted to be organized for combat duty.[21] It was only the approaching West German rearmament that made it all but impossible, for political and prestige reasons, for Moscow to behave as if it did not trust "its" Germans as much as the Western powers trusted "theirs." Besides, the East German communists badly wanted to have a real army to bolster the credibility of their state.[22]

The necessity of finding a proper institutional framework for such an army added to the growing pressure on the Soviet leaders to make up their minds about the German question while the clock set into motion by the Paris agreements was ticking. At the secret January 1955 plenum of the party central committee, Premier Georgii M. Malenkov was criticized for his close association until 1953 with the disgraced politburo member Lavrentii P. Beriia who, shortly before being deprived of power and executed as a traitor later that year, had indicated a preference for a neutral united Germany rather than the preservation of a communist regime in its eastern part.[23] During the subsequent maneuvering calculated to thwart West Germany's rearmament, Moscow had never brought up such a heretical notion, although the Soviet-sponsored conference of handpicked parliamentarians and other public figures, convened in Warsaw in February 1955 to address the German question, came tantalizingly close to reviving it.

The gathering passed a resolution which not only commended the recently ennunciated plan of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden for internationally supervised all-German elections - a recipe for voting the East Berlin regime out of existence - but also called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Germany as well as all Soviet troops from Poland. Indicating that different signals had been emanating from Moscow, the resolution appeared in the Polish press on February 9 but not in the Soviet media.[24] What did appear there on that day was the sensational news that Malenkov had been ousted from office.

Although the case against Malenkov concerned mainly his alleged mismanagement of domestic policy, the accusations against him had important implications for foreign policy. At the January plenum, Khrushchev inveighed against him for not being "a sufficiently mature politically and hard enough Bolshevik leader." While not questioning his honesty, Khrushchev found him lacking in character and backbone. Referring particularly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's desire for a summit meeting, Khrushchev expressed the fear that Aif he were to come, and would talk with Malenkov alone, then Malenkov would be scared and give up.[25] Given the Soviet habit of retrospectively exaggerating disgraced leaders' faults, none of this shows that Malenkov had actually promoted a policy radically divergent from the rest of the leadership, as his son would later assert,[26] yet some of his thinking on important issues was undoubtedly different.

Malenkov's party critics referred to his advocating a shift of emphasis from the traditional Stalinist priority of investment in heavy industry, deemed necessary to prepare the country for a looming military confrontation with the West, to the production of consumer goods, more affordable if the danger of war had diminished. The shift tallied with Malenkov's public statement on 12 March 1954, which - at variance with the Stalinist orthodoxy - Casserted that a nuclear war would be an intolerable disaster to the world regardless of political and social systems.[27] This prompted Molotov's rebuke at the plenum that "a communist should not speak about the 'destruction of world civilization' or about the 'destruction of the human race' but prepare and mobilize all forces for the destruction of the bourgeoisie."[28] At the heart of the dispute was the proper assessment of the situation since Stalin's death and the question of what policy consequences should follow.

Whatever else the replacement of Malenkov as premier by Marshal Nikolai A. Bulganin and the simultaneous succession of Bulganin as defense minister by Marshal Georgii K. Zhukov may have signified, it signaled unequivocally the rejection of conciliation in dealing with the West. It is less clear what, if any, alternative strategy was pursued by the two winners in the reshuffle, Khrushchev and Molotov. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that eventually Khrushchev would get rid of Molotov, too, and become the undisputed supreme leader. It does not necessarily follow, however, that at the beginning of 1955 they were each pursuing clear and mutually exclusive courses in foreign policy.

Khrushchev vs. Molotov

For the time being, Molotov remained foreign minister while Khrushchev merely increased his capacity to influence the conduct of foreign affairs - something he had not notably attempted to do before. They both had a common interest in safeguarding and promoting Soviet power in a situation complicated by the conclusion and prospective implementation of the Paris agreements. In trying to address the situation, however, their personalities and styles made a difference. Molotov was the quintessential Stalinist bureaucrat, disciplined, inflexible, and formalistic, while Khrushchev was a genial improviser and accomplished schemer. The former was a cynical Realpolitiker, the latter a true believer in the canons of communism - the last to hold the highest office in the Kremlin.

As early as February 8, the differences could already be detected in Molotov's keynote speech on the international situation, which showed signs of last-minute revision to iron out disagreements.[29] While harping on the old theme of a threat of war, which the admission of West Germany into NATO would supposedly increase, it struck a new note by suggesting that the conclusion of the long-pending state treaty with Austria could be accomplished if only guarantees were given against its joining with Germany. Molotov also noted the possibility of better relations with Yugoslavia, although he attributed it to the allegedly more forthcoming attitude of the Belgrade government rather than to any change in Soviet policy.

Until then, Molotov had been conspicuously identified with Soviet efforts to block the Austrian treaty by making it hostage to a satisfactory resolution of the German question.[30] The creation of a neutral Austria independently of the German settlement was Khrushchev's innovation. At the July 1955 plenum of the party presidium, which retrospectively discussed the subject, Khrushchev reported having asked Molotov: "What do you want to accomplish by having our troops stay in Vienna? If you are for war then it would be right to stay in Austria. It is a strategic area, and only a fool would give up a strategic area if he is getting ready to go to war. If we are against war we have to leave."[31] Despite his misgivings, Molotov nevertheless cooperated by implementing the new course on Austria, after abandoning his original idea that the Soviet Union should reserve the right to reintroduce troops into the country if West Germany's remilitarization required it.[32] 

Having been prominently responsible for precipitating Stalin's break with Tito in 1948, Molotov deferred to Khrushchev the task of repairing it. He did not differ about the merit of mending fences with the renegade Yugoslav chief, mainly to prevent Tito's rapprochement with the West, although he later criticized Khrushchev for pursuing reconciliation on not only the governmental but also the party level. Molotov was encouraged by Belgrade's recently distancing itself from the West, downgrading its recently concluded Balkan pact with NATO members Greece and Turkey, even extending secret feelers to Moscow's ally Bulgaria.[33] Yet he was embarrassed when Tito angrily rebuffed Molotov's suggestion that it was Yugoslav rather than Soviet policy that had been changing. Pravda published the rebuff with implied approval, thus hinting that Khrushchev was now in charge.[34]

Once the Soviet bid for Austria's neutrality opened on February 25 with Molotov's outlining to its envoy, Norbert Bischoff, the possibility of a speedy settlement[35] - which Moscow eventually proved ready to conclude on terms less favorable than those it had been resisting for six years - wary Westerners suspected a ploy to disrupt NATO's lines of communication from Germany through Austria to Italy.[36] Yet for Moscow this was only a secondary benefit of the primary goal of preventing Austria's Anschluß with Germany - the code word for its probable integration into the ascendant Western alliance which West Germany was poised to dominate. It was the political rather than the military consequences of its forthcoming NATO membership that mattered most at a time when the Soviet Union - acting on Khrushchev's, if not Molotov's, conviction that the danger of war had substantially receded - embarked on a demilitarization of the East-West conflict.

Concurrently with the new course on Austria and Yugoslavia, Moscow was preparing a new disarmament proposal to the West and a new security treaty with its own allies. All these projects were to be implemented about the time the Paris agreements would come into effect at the beginning of May - unless the simultaneous Soviet efforts to derail them by appealing to disgruntled segments of the Western public opinion would unexpectedly bear fruit. In March, the party presidium began to move away from the long-standing Soviet position that the only acceptable arms cuts would require one-third reductions across the board, and instructed the Soviet delegation at the UN Subcommittee on Disarmament in London accordingly.[37] Earlier that month, the Central Intelligence Agency reported that Soviet military attachés from the eastern European capitals had been summoned to Moscow - a move which its director Allen W. Dulles rightly guessed foreshadowed the formation of a Soviet-run military alliance.[38]

 

The Road to Warsaw

Already on the last day of 1955 Molotov's assistants had prepared drafts of a multilateral alliance as well as a mutual defense treaty between the Soviet Union and East Germany.[39] For the first time since the onset of the Cold War, the Soviet groping for a response to NATO's forthcoming enlargement provided the East Europeans with an opportunity to make a modest input into Moscow's policy in accordance with their own interests. The East Germans, supported by the Czechoslovaks, advocated a tripartite military arrangement between their two countries and Poland - a small grouping that would maximize the role of East Germany's nascent army. Alternatively, the Poles championed a collective defense treaty linking all of the Soviet allies with Moscow in a larger alliance that would make the Polish army rank second only to the Soviet one and integrate more tightly the East German military forces.[40] By the end of February, the latter option won the Kremlin's favor, as shown also in the choice of Warsaw for the alliance's inaugural meeting. The text of the proposed pact was then forwarded to Molotov by his subordinates for further action while the draft treaty with East Germany was shelved.[41]

While the share of Molotov's foreign ministry in the project had so far consisted mainly the drafting of the appropriate texts, Khrushchev positioned himself for its later political exploitation. In sending the draft of the treaty to the party secretaries of the prospective signatory states on March 4, he justified the proposed alliance by alluding to the all but certain ratification of the Paris agreements.[42] But beyond that, referring to the Soviet-sponsored security conference in Moscow the preceding December, he described the forthcoming meeting in Warsaw as "The Second Conference of European Countries for the Preservation of Peace and Security in Europe." The description suggested that more was intended to be accomplished there than a mere formalization of military ties within the Soviet bloc.

Moscow's intention to create an Eastern counterpart of NATO became public knowledge on March 21, when a Soviet press statement to that effect was issued shortly before the crucial vote in the French Senate that would conclude the process of ratification of the Paris agreements.[43] The statement mentioned recent consultations among the participants in the December Moscow conference, although nothing more was involved than timid comments on the Soviet draft.[44] As an inducement for anti-NATO opposition in West Germany, the East Germans "cautiously" proposed to Soviet ambassador Georgii M. Pushkin a declaration that the pact would be invalidated in case of Germany's unification - an idea approved by Molotov as expedient.[45] But no such approval was given to the Polish suggestion that a demand for the removal of US bases in western Europe be included in the treaty's preamble - a demand liable to weaken the justification of Soviet military presence in eastern Europe.[46]

On April 1, the Soviet party central committee decided to convene the Warsaw conference to approve the treaty three weeks later. Only at this late stage did it bring in the military, instructing Zhukov at a very short notice to draft a document on the establishment of the alliance's unified command.[47] The defense minister delivered the text on the 18th, by which time the date of the gathering had been postponed until mid-May. Four days later, Polish premier Józef Cyrankiewicz was in Moscow to receive instructions about how to organize the event.[48]

For his part, Khrushchev during a visit to Poland in the same month publicly discounted the military significance of the prospective alliance, dwelling instead on the desirability of a European collective security organization, which he insisted would provide the necessary safeguards against German aggression.[49] His inclusion of the United States in such an organization made it appear more attractive than the previous variations designed by Molotov. By this time the last hurdle on the way to the implementation of the Paris agreements had been overcome, thus setting the stage for the admission of West Germany into NATO on May 5, as well as for Moscow's countermeasures. These began with the formal renunciation of its obsolete World War II alliances with France and Great Britain.[50]
More importantly, on May 10 the Soviet Union submitted in London its most sweeping disarmament project so far.[51] The document, prepared at Khrushchev's initiative by the foreign ministry despite obstruction by Molotov's aide Iakov Malik,[52] adopted several of the Western - though more British and French than American - positions that Moscow had previously ruled out as unacceptable, notably the limitation of conventional forces by means of numerical ceilings rather than proportional cuts. It also advanced new ideas, such as a moratorium on nuclear tests starting in 1956 and the evacuation of all foreign troops from Germany. According to one of the authors of the proposal, A. A. Roshchin, Moscow expected a positive response, and was disappointed when Washington, still regarding rearmament rather than disarmament as the top priority, raised obstacles to prevent an agreement.[53] It is "not in the security interests of the United States," the Joint Chiefs of Staff insisted, "to have any disarmament for the foreseeable future." Since the Soviet Union's position was weakening, they maintained, "we should accordingly hold its feet to the fire ... [and better continue the] arms race rather than to enter into an agreement with the Soviets."[54]

The disarmament initiative, coinciding with the Western invitation to hold a four-power summit long desired by Moscow,[55] was a prelude to the Warsaw meeting where the signing of the new military pact was calculated to provide an additional incentive for the West to reconsider the strategic situation in Europe. The Soviet-furnished text, adopted at the gathering without even the semblance of a discussion,[56] bore similarities to the NATO treaty, such as the provisions for twenty-year validity and the establishment of a political consultative committee analogous to the North Atlantic Council. Article 11 of the document envisaged the abolition of both alliances upon the conclusion of a general European security treaty - the stated Soviet goal. If this were to happen, the West would be left with no substitute for its dissolved alliance while the Soviet Union would still benefit from the network of bilateral mutual assistance treaties with its eastern European dependencies. Hence NATO officials appropriately described the Warsaw pact as "a cardboard castle, ... carefully erected over what most observers considered an already perfectly adequate blockhouse ... no doubt intended to be advertised as being capable of being dismantled, piece by piece, in return for corresponding segments of NATO."[57]

The pact differed from its Western counterpart by providing no unequivocal security guarantees to its members, particularly not an automatic commitment to their defense. In case of an attack on any one of them, each signatory state pledged to consult with others, and then render such assistance as "it may consider necessary." In the German version of the text, the pronoun used was "they," implying a decision to be made collectively rather than individually.[58] Commenting on the formulation, apparently intended to preclude the East Germans from making any decisions on their own, party chief Walter Ulbricht noted the discrepancy, yet prudently withheld any objection.[59]

The East German leader interpreted the provision in the treaty that left it open for other states to join "irrespective of their social and state system" as meaning that such additional states would not necessarily be entitled to be defended. In view of the Soviet drive for the neutralization of Austria and reconciliation with Yugoslavia, this conveyed Khrushchev's innovative idea, alien to Molotov's Stalinist mind, that nonaligned states could be won over to the Soviet side as political rather than military allies. For other reasons as well, the ostensibly military pact qualified as primarily a political document. Its call for "the strengthening of economic and cultural relations" among its signatories - shorthand for their organizational and ideological streamlining - assumed particular significance in anticipation of the conclusion on the next day of the state treaty with Austria, whose enviable neutrality some of the Soviet allies might otherwise be tempted to regard as an attractive example to emulate.

Stage-managed by Moscow, the Warsaw conference featured ritualistic "discussion during which amendments of only secondary importance were offered," most probably after having been previously commissioned by the Soviet organizers.[60] All the documents, prepared by them in advance, were subsequently published, except the one concerning the troop contingents to be contributed to the alliance by its different members. After a copy had been sent to the party secretaries less than two weeks earlier, [61]the particulars were now simply announced by Zhukov at a secret meeting without even a pretense of a discussion. Polish colonel Tadeusz Pióro, who took the record, later recalled how it had been subsequently whittled down by the Soviet managers to a meaningless one-page document, which left the military dimensions of the alliance entirely at Moscow's discretion.[62] All considered, the launching of the Warsaw pact by Stalin's successors was even more thoroughly orchestrated than the creation of the Cominform in 1947 had been by the master himself.

In his tour d'horizon presented to the Soviet allies assembled in Warsaw, Khrushchev's mouthpiece Bulganin explained that the international situation resulting from the Paris agreements required greater coordination than was possible under the existing system of bilateral treaties, but he did not specify military coordination. He emphasized that the new alliance did not mean the end of efforts to achieve an all-European security pact.[63] Indeed, its conclusion became Khrushchev's foremost priority at his approaching summit with the Western leaders, scheduled to meet in Geneva on July 18.

Revamping European Security

Once West Germany entered NATO, leaving the Soviet Union no choice but to accept this, Khrushchev went on the offensive to create favorable conditions for pursuing at Geneva a radical plan for the alteration of Europe's security environment. On the last day of the Warsaw conference, he stunned the world with the news of his forthcoming visit to Yugoslavia which, once accomplished later that month, all but foreclosed any possibility of Belgrade's inclusion in the Western defense system. On June 7 he announced the Soviet intention to sign with East Germany a treaty which would formally give it a sovereign status similar to that of West Germany and expressed willingness to establish diplomatic relations with the Bonn government, wooing it with the prospect of unspecified concessions.[64] Khrushchev also seized the initiative in the Third World, paying highly successful state visits to India and Burma.

Because of the risks involved, such a Cold War of movement was an anathema to the Cold war of positions that had been Molotov's specialty. The ambivalent outcome of Khrushchev's trip to Belgrade - where the reconciliation with Tito had been achieved at the price of legitimizing his interference in eastern Europe[65] - and the prospect of ending the hostile isolation of West Germany sharpened disagreements in the Kremlin. At the contentious secret meeting of the party central committee at the beginning of July, Khrushchev and Molotov clashed over the policies toward Austria and Yugoslavia, the latter of which Khrushchev reportedly favored admitting into the Warsaw pact.[66] This would have made little military sense but would have added pressure on the West to take his drive for the reorganization of European security more seriously.

As the Cold War rivals positioned themselves for the summit, much depended on how strong each side perceived itself to be and how strong it was perceived by the other. The United States interpreted Soviet concessions on Austria as a sign of weakness. Brushing aside the creation of the Warsaw pact as mere posturing, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles came to the conclusion "that we are now confronting a real opportunity ... for a rollback of Soviet power. Such a rollback might leave the present satellite states in a status not unlike that of Finland... . The big idea is to get the Russians out of the satellite states and to provide these states with a real sense of their freedom. Now for the first time this is in the realm of possibility."[67]

In Dulles's estimate, the Soviets, having effected a "complete alteration of their policy,"[68] would be unable to proceed with the same energy and imagination as before. He thought "Khrushchev had power but impressed him as a man who talked without thinking [and] ... Molotov he felt was in a weakened and uneasy position. He had been impressed by his lack of sure-footedness at Vienna as compared to past occasions."[69] Such disdainful American assessments did not augur well for the forthcoming Geneva summit, but neither did the Soviet attitudes.

Khrushchev later described in his memoirs how painfully aware he had been of his country's backwardness, even comparing the clumsy Soviet aircraft on which he traveled to Geneva with the fancy machines flown by his capitalist counterparts.[70] Together with Bulganin, he therefore all the more implored the Western leaders not to make the mistake of thinking the Soviet Union was weak.[71] This was nevertheless the conclusion they reached, although they condescendingly pretended how much they were impressed by Soviet strength. But neither were they themselves as self-confident as they tried to appear; even Dulles, on his way to the summit, privately confessed his being "terribly worried about this Geneva conference"[72] because of the disposition of the NATO allies.

The secretary of state was "deathly afraid our allies might not come up to scratch and that even President Dwight D. Eisenhower might succumb to Russian smiles" - particularly those of his wartime comrade-in-arms, Zhukov - and "upset the apple cart." Dulles was exasperated with the French and British willingness to take the Warsaw pact seriously. French Prime Minister Edgar Faure found "attractive the idea to establish a similarity between the Western bloc and the Warsaw organization and consider them as organizations of the same type and seek contracts between them."[73] And his British colleague, deluding himself that the Russians were eager to bolster his country's status by treating it as a bridge between the two superpowers,[74] seemed to be hopelessly infatuated with anything that could be labeled "Eden Plan," such as the establishment of a demilitarized strip in central Europe through some "harmonization between NATO and the Warsaw alliance."[75]

To prevent anything of that sort, at the Paris tripartite meeting preparatory to the summit Dulles sought to impress upon America's allies that the Warsaw pact was nothing but "a device whereby the Soviet Union projected its frontiers into the center of Europe." He insisted that "the West should not do anything that would sanctify or consolidate a situation which he felt was abnormal and must change before the peace could be consolidated." Hence it was appropriate to mention "the organization as little as possible" lest it be given "an appearance of a real security system".[76]

Once in Geneva, each side was worried about its own weakness while exaggerating the readiness of the other to make concessions out of weakness, and tried to test its limits by tabling patently unrealistic proposals. The United States challenged the Soviets to allow changes in eastern Europe that would have amounted to surrendering their control over the region and proposed disarmament measures, particularly Eisenhower's Aopen skies plan, that would have spelled the end of the closed Soviet society.[77] For their part, the Soviets reiterated their May 10 disarmament proposal (as if Washington had not made its incompatibility with US security requirements abundantly clear) and pressed their idea of a European collective security system (as if NATO could be reasonably expected to collaborate on its own demise after it had recently so successfully enlarged itself).

US deputy secretary of defense Robert B. Anderson and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Arthur W. Radford agreed in their estimates that all the Soviets were "willing to concede is the superficial fruits of their own recent efforts such as the Warsaw Treaty to counter such organizations as the North Atlantic Treaty and the Paris accords."[78] Yet the amendments Moscow offered to make its proposals more attractive were suggestive of a belief that the West could be compelled to entertain them. They envisaged advancing in steps: at first NATO and the Warsaw pact would remain in place, later they would be dissolved, and finally all foreign troops would leave Europe.[79] At variance with Molotov's earlier proposals and in accordance with Khrushchev's April speech in Poland, the prospective collective security system was to include the United States (though not Canada) as a full member rather than mere observer.

The Soviet draft of a "General European Treaty on Collective Security in Europe," presented to the Geneva conference on July 20,[80] revealed most clearly the Warsaw pact's original purpose as a blueprint for the continent's new security system. Many provisions of the new document were identical or built upon the Warsaw model. The identical ones included the principle of open admission, the prohibition of any treaty contrary to the present one (but also the preservation of the signatories' obligations under treaties entered into previously), the promotion of economic and cultural cooperation, and the establishment of a political consultative committee (with terms of reference yet to be specified) as well as a "military consultative organ." Consistent with but reaching beyond the Warsaw text were passages in the Geneva document providing for a mutual pledge against the use of force or the threat of force, the freezing of the current troop and armaments levels in preparation for their reduction, and consultation in case of an armed attack on any of the signatories.

The consultation clause was more nebulous than in the Warsaw pact. Its stated goal was merely determining the procedure to be used in the collective effort to preserve peace, thus making the proposed treaty all but useless as an instrument for repelling aggression. Evidently its Soviet architects did not envisage it to be tested in a crisis but rather used for altering the East-West balance in a fashion that would not only make Moscow more secure but also allow it to position itself as the arbiter of European security.

In trying to encourage open-ended and wide-ranging discussion, Soviet representatives in Geneva further sought the conclusion of a "treaty between groupings of states now in existence in Europe,"[81] besides the reduction of conventional forces and gradual elimination of nuclear arms. In the meantime, the signatories were to pledge not to use force against one another and, "as one of the first measures, to halt nuclear testing."[82] Bulganin described his government's priorities as being, in descending order, European security, disarmament, and the German question.[83] Since this was the reverse order of American priorities, no substantive discussion about security ensued. Before the conference ended, the heads of state therefore directed their foreign ministers to tackle the unresolved issues at another meeting later.

The Languishing Alliance

Later on, both Khrushchev and his Western partners would retrospectively deprecate the summit. According to Khrushchev's sneering commentary, Bulganin had been lazy and not properly prepared, Faure ineffective, Eden bright but indecisive, and Eisenhower not up to the task either, behaving "not as a maker of policy but as an executor of Mr. Dulles's policies."[84] Yet at the time most estimates of Geneva were more favorable. Dulles thought its outcome to be "very much on the plus side for the West," even musing that "we might get [German] unification in the next two years."[85] But Khrushchev concluded the very opposite: in his view, the conference was a success because it would presumably not allow Adenauer to sleep well.[86] Choosing to believe what they wanted to believe, both sides showed how far apart their mutual understanding of each other was.

"In connection with the change of the international situation following the Geneva conference", Khrushchev in mid-August directed the eastern European allies to reduce the size of their expected troop contingents for the Warsaw pact and announced the reduction of the Soviet Union's own forces by 640,000 men before the end of the year.[87] He thus signaled a reluctance to vigorously pursue the building of the alliance despite the appointment later that month of its Soviet supreme commander and Soviet chief of staff, followed by the promulgation of a secret statute equipping the top officer with sweeping powers.[88] This later caused much resentment among the alliance's subordinate members, but otherwise bore scant relevance to Khrushchev's grand design for European security.[89]

Pending the uncertain outcome of the design, the immediate utility of the Warsaw pact pertained to the nascent East German army. Attesting to its undecided status at the time the treaty was concluded, alone among the signatories the GDR's contribution was left open. But the outcome of Geneva encouraged Khrushchev to press forward his concept of two German states, which required giving the Eastern one the appropriate trappings of sovereignty. On his way home from the summit, he stopped in Berlin to publicly vow not to accept any German settlement at the expense the communist state.[90] At the same time, over Molotov's misgivings, Khrushchev took the lead in normalizing relations with West Germany during the September visit of its chancellor Konrad Adenauer to Moscow.

The Soviet Union cemented the division of Germany by formally bestowing sovereignty on the German Democratic Republic on September 20.[91] The treaty substituted for a bilateral alliance between the two countries, the absence of which had so far distinguished East Germany from Moscow's other European dependencies. It advanced military collaboration by entrusting the protection of the country's boundaries to East German border troops.[92] Ulbricht promptly requested Soviet weapons for his incipient army, supplementing them with starting the GDR's own production of small arms.[93]

Misjudging Moscow's readiness to make concessions out of weakness, the Western governments deluded themselves in expecting progress at the forthcoming foreign ministers conference. They expected Moscow to seriously entertain German unification of Western terms, in return for which the British Foreign Office was inclined to sign "any reasonable security treaty with the Russians."[94] The State Department actually prepared such a treaty, including the reduction and control of armaments by stages in part of Europe, although the Joint Chiefs of Staff sidetracked the proposal.[95] But Moscow had ruled out in advance any Western plans for zones of reduced armaments linked with German reunification, showing mild interest only in Eden's plan for such a zone in central Europe that avoided the linkage, for which reason it was not supported by Washington.[96]

In view of these circumstances, Khrushchev was more realistic in harboring no illusions about the success of the foreign ministers conference, nor could any be reasonably expected given the Soviet desiderata he mentioned to the Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson during the latter's visit to Moscow on October 12.[97] Dismissing the suggestion of Western security guarantees for the Soviet Union in return for German unification as humiliating, Khrushchev insisted that "you should let us into NATO - we have been knocking at the door for two years." Thus, in his opinion, the Soviet Union would at least be put on equal footing with NATO's other members rather than being dependent for its security on the West's goodwill. He said he might consider the guarantees if the number of the countries underwriting them were increased to include both Germanys, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Canada, and perhaps others - a scaled-down version of the collective security pact.

When the foreign ministers reconvened in Geneva in October, Molotov, by then unmistakably on his way out of power, did not press the Soviet cause very hard. He resubmitted Moscow's already rejected proposals for treaties on European security and the creation of a joint council of the two German states.[98] Otherwise the conference marked time by pointlessly debating such hypothetical questions as what would happen if a reunited Germany joined NATO or the Warsaw pact.[99] At the end Molotov attempted to slip in a document summing up in vague items the subjects on which agreement had supposedly been reached, but was corrected by Dulles that this was in fact not the case. The conference disbanded without accomplishing anything. By then Khrushchev, now fully in command of Soviet foreign policy, was moving in other directions.

With Khrushchev's bid for a European security treaty failing, the Warsaw pact no longer had an important place in his scheme of things. His real priority was building down rather than building up the militaryChis most innovative revision of Stalin's thinking about security. "After we created the Warsaw Pact," Khrushchev later reminisced, "I felt the time had come to think about a reduction of our armed forces."[100] In July 1955, without consulting his allies, he inaugurated the first of his successive cuts of conventional forces.

Moscow's announcement of a unilateral reduction of its armed forces by 640,000 was widely received with disbelief.[101] Yet the reduction, while having little effect on Soviet troop strength in central Europe, was genuine. Pressing the Warsaw pact allies to cut their armed forces as well, the Soviet Union made Poland and Czechoslovakia reduce the size of their military establishments while extending their modernization over a period of five years.[102] Khrushchev's attempt to shift the thrust of Soviet security policy from the traditional emphasis on massive conventional forces to minimal nuclear deterrent, thus freeing the country's resources and reducing its excessive dependence on military force to maintain its international status, amounted to a radical new departure.

Soviet allies contemplated with trepidation the consequences of Khrushchev's policy. At the secret Moscow meeting of party secretaries on 6 January 1956, Czechoslovakia opposed further unilateral cuts. Its militarized economy found it difficult to adjust to the reduction of defense expenditures from 9.4 per cent to 7.3 per cent of the GNP and to the forced modernization which required excessive imports from the Soviet Union and the underutilization of the domestic manufacturing capacity.[103] In a speech dwelling on economic rather than military priorities, Khrushchev told the meeting that more IL-14 warplanes than needed were being produced in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

In contrast to Molotov's dire assessment of the international situation, which dwelt on the alleged persistence of the threat of war, Khrushchev urged his audience not to be provoked by the warmongering Western "imperialists," for the Soviet hydrogen bomb was bound to have a sobering effect on them. He insisted that the military, political, and moral strength of the communist bloc was now colossal, but must be used reasonably. He concluded that no opportunity must be missed to strengthen its economy.[104]

The one important military decision of the January 6 meeting was the establishment of East Germany's "National People's Army."[105] Its integration into the Warsaw pact perpetuated the alliance as the vehicle for the utilization and control of the East German armed forces which, analogous to the West German Bundeswehr, were incorporated into the alliance in their entirety. This distinguished them from its other members, who retained the privilege of merely subordinating specified contingents to the unified command. At the same time, the Warsaw pact opened for the pariah East German regime an important new avenue to enhance its international status and eventually wield growing bargaining influence, if not necessarily bargaining power, within the Soviet bloc.[106] As a result, none of the alliance's other partners, including the Soviet Union, acquired greater vested interest in its preservation and consolidation than did the GDR - its weakest but most ambitious member.[107]

At the party secretaries' meeting, Ulbricht welcomed plans for closer economic cooperation but noted that the communist allies should pay more attention to their Western adversaries because of NATO's superior organization. The meager results of the first meeting of the Warsaw pact's political consultative committee, held in Prague on January 27-28, supported that estimate.[108] Other than approving the incorporation of the newly created East German army, the committee failed to act on its stated intention to create further institutions of the alliance, particularly a unified secretariat and a standing commission that would make recommendations for common foreign policy. Nor was the committee's decision to meet at least twice a year implemented in practice. While trying to manage the Soviet allies by revitalizing the dormant organization for economic cooperation, the Comecon, Khrushchev would henceforth use the Warsaw pact as little more than a conduit for his various disarmament initiatives.

 

* * * * *

 

It has been said that "alliances which fail to increase [their] partners' security levels almost never form."[109] The Warsaw pact at its origin was such an exception. Far from prefiguring the later turn of the Cold War into a confrontation between two military alliances, it was an episode in the efforts of the post-Stalinist Soviet leadership to wrestle with Stalin's untenable legacy of rigid confrontation with the West. At issue was responding to the ascendancy of NATO, dramatized by the Paris agreements and the rise of rearmed West Germany, more effectively than the dead dictator and his disciple Molotov had been able to do. The challenge gave Khrushchev an opportunity to undertake, in successful competition with less imaginative members of the Kremlin leadership, his unprecedented attempt at a demilitarization of the European security environment, in which the launching of Moscow's new military alliance incongruously played a key role.

The struggle within the leadership led to the most substantive foreign policy disagreements in the Kremlin since Stalin's death, briefly allowing Moscow's eastern European allies limited input into policy as long as their Soviet superiors did not make up their minds. Once Khrushchev prevailed, however, he enforced his line with a vigor reminiscent of Stalinist practice. But the preservation of the Warsaw pact organization - despite the failure of Khrushchev's trying to use it to compel the West to negotiate a transformation of the European security arrangements in Moscow's favor - would eventually turn against him. In the nineteen-sixties, the opponents of his controversial drive for the reduction of conventional forces would utilize the alliance to again bolster those forces and finally help oust him from power. Afterwards, the Warsaw pact would surge to become the framework for organizing actual warfare in Europe - a far cry from the role originally intended for it in 1955.

VOJTECH MASTNY, the PHP coordinator, is  Senior Research Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Senior Fellow at the National Security Archive, both in Washington, D.C. He has been Professor of History and International Relations at Columbia University, University of Illinois, Boston University, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, as well as Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and the first Manfred Wörner Fellow of NATO. His most recent book, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 1997 George L. Beer Prize.

Abbreviations

AAN	[Archiwum Akt Nowych] Modern Records Archives, Warsaw
APRF	[Archiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii] Foreign Policy Archives of the Russian Federation, Moscow
AÚV KSČ	[Archív Ústředního výboru Komunistické strany Československa] Archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
BAB	Bundesarchiv, Berlin
BA-MA	Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau
CPSU	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
FRUS	Foreign Relations of the United States
GDR	German Democratic Republic
KC PZPR	[Komitet Centralny Polskiej Zjednoczonej Partii Robotniczej] Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party
IMS	International Military Staff, NATO
MfAA	Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der DDR
MR	Ministerrat der DDR
NARA	National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
NATO-A	NATO Archives, Brussels
NSA	National Security Archive, Washington, DC
PAAA	Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin
SAPMO	Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin
SÚA	[Státní ústřední archív] Central State Archives, Prague
TsKhSD	[Tsentr Khraneniia Sovremennoi Dokumentatsii] Center for the Preservation of Contemporary Documentation, Moscow
ZPA	Zentrales Parteiarchiv [der SED], Berlin

Notes

[1]. Internal evidence from Soviet archives has made such chances appear more apparent than real. On the allegedly missed opportunities throughout the Cold War, see Deborah Welch Larson, Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations during the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), on those presumably existing in March 1952, compare the conflicting interpretations by Rolf Steininger, The German Question: The Stalin Note of 1952 and the Problem of Reunification (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), and Gerhard Wettig, "Die Deutschland-Note vom 10. März 1952 auf der Basis diplomatischer Akten des russischen Außenministeriums: Die Hypothese des Wiedervereinigungsangebots," Deutschland-Archiv 26 (1993): 786-805, and on those after Stalin's death in 1953, by John W. Young, "Cold War and Détente with Moscow," in The Foreign Policy of the Churchill Peactime Administration, 1951-1955, ed. John W. Young (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988), pp. 55-80, and Vojtech Mastny, "Missed Opportunities after Stalin's Death?", paper presented at the conference "The Crisis Year 1953 and the Cold War in Europe," Potsdam, 10-12 November 1996, subsequently published as "Promarněné příležitosti po Stalinově smrti?" [Missed Opportunities after Stalin's Death?], Soudobé dĕjiny [Prague] 4, no. 1 (1997): 64-74.

[2]. For the best older accounts of the origins of the alliance, see Robin A. Remington, The Warsaw Pact: Case Studies in Communist Conflict Resolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), pp. 11-27, and Lawrence S. Kaplan, NATO and the Warsaw Pact: The Past, in The Warsaw Pact: Political Purpose and Military Means, ed. Robert W. Clawson and Lawrence S. Kaplan (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1982), pp. 67-91.

[3]. Besides the Khrushchev memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 193-95, the evidence included especially the testimony by the knowledgeable Polish defector, Seweryn Bialer, about the July 1955 plenum of the Soviet party central committee, published in US Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, part 29, session of June 8, 1956 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957), pp. 4389-92.

[4]. For the list of the archives used in the preparation of this study, see "Abbreviations," above.

[5]. Piotr S. Wandycz, "The Soviet System of Alliances in East Central Europe," Journal of Central European Affairs 16 (1956): 177-84.

[6]. Grant M. Adibekov, Kominform i poslevoennaia Evropa, 1947-1956 gg. [The Cominform and Postwar Europe] (Moscow: Rossiia Molodaia, 1994), pp. 7-10, and his "Popytka kominternizatsii Kominforma v 1950 g.: Po novym arkhivnym materialam" [The Attempted Cominternization of the Cominform in 1950: New Archival Materials], Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 1994, no. 4-5: 51-66. On the origins of the Comecon, Michael Kaser, Comecon: Integration Problems of the Planned Economies (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 9-26.

[7]. Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 73.

[8]. Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 171-85.

[9]. James G. Richter, Khrushchev's Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 41-44.

[10.] Soviet proposal, 10 February 1954, FRUS, 1952-54, vol. 7, pt. 1, pp. 1190-92.

[11]. Notes by Soviet government, 31 March and 24 July 1954, Denise Folliot, ed., Documents on International Affairs 1954 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 39-43 and 46-51.

[12]. C.D. Jackson to Marie McCrum, 10 February 1954, FRUS, 1952-1954, vol. 7, pt. 1, pp. 1032-33.

[13]. Proposed measures in connection with forthcoming proposal on all-European security conference, 06/13/9/2/1-2, AVPRF.

[14]. Statement by Soviet Foreign Ministry, 9 September 1954, Folliot, Documents on International Affairs 1954, pp. 51-55.

[15]. Analysis of the Paris agreements by Gromyko, 28 October 1954, 06/13a/28/27/20-39, AVPRF.

[16]. Note by Soviet government, 23 October 1954, Folliot, Documents on International Affairs 1954, pp. 96-101.

[17]. Note by Soviet government, 13 November 1954, Folliot, Documents on International Affairs 1954, pp. 58-61.

[18]. Speech by Široký, A 14631, MfAA, PAAA.

[19]. Declaration, 2 December 1954, Folliot, Documents on International Affairs 1954, pp. 64-70.

[20]. Beate Ihme-Tuchel, Das "nördliche Dreieck": Die Beziehungen zwischen der DDR, der Tschechoslowakei und Polen in den Jahren 1954 bis 1962 (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1994), pp. 64-68.

[21]. Norman M. Naimark, "To Know Everything and to Report Everything Worth Knowing:" Building the East German Police State, Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 10, (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1994), p. 25.

[22]. Bruno Thoss, Volksarmee schaffen ohne Geschrei!: Studien zu den Anfängen einer verdeckten Aufrüstung in der SBZ/DDR 1945-1952 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994).

[23]. "Delo Beriia (Plenum TsK KPSS, Iiul 1953 goda: Stenograficheskii otchet)" [The Beriia Affair: Stenographic Record of the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in July 1953], Izvestiia TsK KPSS, January 1991: 143-44, 162-63.

[24]. Trybuna Ludu [Warsaw], 9 February 1955. Cf. Michael Howard, Disengagement in Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), p. 21.

[25]. "Postanovlenie Plenuma TsK KPSS o tov. Malenkove, G.M." [The Decision of the Plenum Concerning Comrade G.M. Malenkov], 31 January 1955, 2/1/110/38-42, TsKhSD.

[26]. Andrei Malenkov, O moem ottse Georgii Malenkove [My Father, Georgii Malenkov] (Moscow: Tekhnoekos, 1992).

[27]. Pravda, 13 March 1954.

[28]. L.A. Openkin, "Na istoricheskom perepute" [At the Crossroads of History], Voprosy Istorii KPSS, 1990, no. 1: 109-10.

[29]. "The International Situation and the Foreign Policy of the Soviet Government," New Times [Moscow], 12 February 1955.

[30]. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria, 1945-1955 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 143-59.

[31]. Record of the CPSU central committee plenum, 12 July 1955, 2/1/176/282-95, TsKhSD, copy at NSA. Khrushchev paraphrased his statement in a conversation with US Vice President Richard Nixon on 26 July 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. 10, pt. 1, p. 366.

[32]. Record of the plenum of the party presidium, 4-12 July 1955, 2/1/172/86-108, NSA.

[33]. Study on the Balkan pact by Zimianin, undated [ca. October 1954], 06/13a/28/27/89-92, AVPRF.

[34]. Pravda, 10 March 1955.

[35]. Vojtech Mastny, "The Kremlin Politics and the Austrian Settlement," Problems of Communism 31, no. 4 (July-August 1982): 37-51, at pp. 42-43.

[36]. P. H. Vigor, The Soviet View of War, Peace and Neutrality (London: Routledge, 1975), pp. 182-83.

[37]. Record of the CPSU central committee plenum, 9 July 1955, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 10 (1998): 39-40.

[38]. Memorandum of discussion at the 239th meeting of the National Security Council, 3 March 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 24, p. 29.

[39]. Drafts by Gromyko, Zorin, and Semenov, 31 December 1954, 06/14/12/1/1-11, AVPRF.

[40]. Ihme-Tuchel, Das "nördliche Dreieck", pp. 75-80.

[41]. Gromyko and Semenov to Molotov, 19 February 1955, 06/14/54/4/1-8, AVPRF.

[42]. Soviet party central committee to Czechoslovak party central committee, 4 March 1955, AÚV KSČ, 62/2/36/48, SÚA; Khrushchev to Ulbricht, 5 March 1955, J IV 2/202-244 Bd 1, SAPMO.

[43]. Pravda, 21 March 1955.

[44]. The lack of evidence of any formal consultations is noted in the East German foreign ministry dossier, A 14630, pp. 31-34, MfAA, PAAA.

[45]. Molotov to Soviet party central committee, 9 May 1955, 06/14/54/4/99, AVPRF.

[46]. Decision by Soviet party central committee, 1 April 1955, 06/14/54/4/39, AVPRF.

[47]. Ibid.

[48]. Report of 22 April 1955, 06/14/54/4/88, AVPRF.

[49]. Pravda, 21 April 1955.

[50]. Soviet note to British government, 20 December 1954, in Folliot, Documents on International Affairs 1954, pp. 212-15; Pravda, 7 May 1955.

[51]. "Proposal by the Soviet Government on the Reduction of Armaments, the Prohibition of Atomic Weapons and the Elimination of the Threat of a New War," 10 May 1955, US Department of State, Documents on Disarmament, 1945-1959, vol. 1 (Washington: US Department of State, 1960), pp. 456-67.

[52]. Record of the CPSU central committee plenum, 9 July 1955, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 10 (1998): 39-40.

[53]. A.A. Roshchin, "Gody obnovleniia, nadezd i razocharovanii (1953-1959 gg.)" [The Years of Renewal, Hopes, and Disappointments] Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, 1988, no. 5: 127-47, at p. 131.

[54]. Quoted in Richard H. Immerman, "'Trust the Lord but Keep the Powder Dry': American Policy Aims at Geneva," in Cold War Respite: The Geneva Summit of 1955, ed. Guenter Bischof and Saki Dockrill (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), pp. 35-54, at p. 53.

[55]. Tripartite note to the Soviet Union, 10 May 1955, in US Department of State, The Geneva Conference of Heads of Government, July 18-23, 1955 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1955), pp. 6-7.

[56]. "Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance," 14 May 1955, in Documents on International Affairs 1955, ed. Noble Frankland (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 193-97.

[57]. Quoted in Robert Spencer, "Alliance Perceptions of the Soviet Threat, 1950-1988," in The Changing Western Analysis of the Soviet Threat, ed. Carl-Christoph Schweitzer  (London: Pinter, 1990), pp. 9-48, at p. 19.

[58]. The German text is printed and analyzed in Boris Meissner, Der Warschauer Pakt: Dokumentensammlung (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1962), pp. 97-101 and 40-48.

[59]. Ulbricht to Khrushchev, 9 March 1955, ZPA, J IV 2/202-244 Bd 1, SAPMO.

[60]. Stenographic record of meeting, 12 May 1955, 0447/1/1/1, AVPRF.

[61]. Khrushchev to Ulbricht, 2 May 1955, ZPA, J IV 2/202-244 Bd 1, SAPMO.

[62]. Tadeusz Pióro, Armia ze skaz: W Wojsku Polskim 1945-1968 (wspomnienia i refleksje) [The Defective Army: In the Polish Army, 1945-1968 (Memories and Reflections)] (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1994), pp. 210-13; copy of the record provided by Gen. Pióro.

[63]. Speech by Bulganin, 11 May 1955, ZPA, NL 90/461, SAPMO.

[64]. Soviet note, 7 June 1955, in Frankland, Documents on International Affairs 1955, pp. 245-48.

[65]. Khrushchev Remembers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 379-82.

[66]. Testimony by Seweryn Bialer about the July 1955 plenum of the Soviet party central committee, in US Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, part 29, session of June 8, 1956 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1957), pp. 1590-91.

[67]. Memorandum on discussion at the 249th meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, 19 May 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 182-89, at p. 184.

[68]. Statement at the same meeting, quoted in Ronald W. Pruessen, "Beyond the Cold War - Again: 1955 and the 1990s," Political Science Quarterly 108 (1993): 59-84, at p. 66.

[69]. Memorandum of Dulles-Adenauer conversation, Washington, 13 June 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 224-28, at p. 226.

[70]. Khrushchev Remembers, p. 395.

[71]. Memorandum of conversations at President's dinner, Geneva, 18 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 372-78.

[72]. C.D. Jackson Log Entry, 19 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 301-305, at pp. 301-302.

[73]. Memorandum on conversation at tripartite luncheon, Geneva, 17 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 343-54, at p. 349.

[74]. Antonio Varsori, "Le gouvernement Eden et l'Union soviétique (1955-1956): de l'espoir à la désillusion," Relations internationales 71 (1992): 273-98, at p. 284.

[75]. C.D. Jackson Log Entry, 19 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-57, vol. 5, pp. 301-305, at p. 301, and Delegation at the Tripartite Foreign Ministers Meeting to Department of State, 15 July 1955, ibid., pp. 319-21, at p. 320.

[76]. Memorandum on conversation at tripartite luncheon, Geneva, 17 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 343-54, at p. 349.

[77]. Walt W. Rostow, Open Skies: Eisenhower's Proposal of July 21, 1955 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).

[78]. Anderson and Radford to Secretary of State, Paris, 19 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 384-86, at p. 385.

[79]. Statement by Bulganin at Geneva, 18 July 1955, in US Department of State, The Geneva Conference, pp. 35-43.

[80]. "General European Treaty on Collective Security in Europe," 20 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 516-19.

[81]. US Delegation at the Geneva conference to Department of State, 21 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 447-48.

[82]. Proposal of the Soviet delagation, 21 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 519-20, at p. 520.

[83]. Record of seventh plenary session at Geneva, 23 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 503-12, at p. 504.

[84]. Record of Khrushchev-Humphrey conversation on 1 December 1958, dated 8 December 1958, USSR 1958, Records of the Policy Planning Staff, 1957-1961, Box 145, RG-59, NARA; record of Khrushchev-Harriman conversation on 13 June 1959, dated 26 June 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, vol. 10, pt. 1, pp. 269-81, at p. 276.

[85]. Minutes of National Security Council meeting, 28 July 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, p. 531.

[86]. Khrushchev's statement at reception by East German government in Berlin, 24 July 1955, KC PZPR 2630/2-8, AAN.

[87]. Khrushchev to Bierut, 12 August 1955, KC PZPR 2661/3, AAN; Izvestiia, 13 August 1955.

[88]. "Polozheniie ob obedinennom komandovanii vooruzhennykh sil gosudarstv-uchastnikov Varshavskogo soveshchaniia" [Statute of the Unified Command of the States Participating in the Warsaw Conference], Khrushchev to Bierut, 7 September 1955, KC PZPR 2661/2, 16-19, AAN.

[89]. Vojtech Mastny, "'We Are in a Bind': Polish and Czechoslovak Attempts at Reforming the Warsaw Pact, 1956-1969," Cold War International History Project Bulletin 11 (1998): 23-43.

[90]. Pravda, 27 July 1955.

[91]. Soviet-East German treaty, 20 September 1955, Frankland, Documents on International Affairs 1955, pp. 200-202.

[92]. "Aktennotiz," 20 September 1955, Strausb. AZN 32437, BA-MA.

[93]. Ulbricht to Bulganin, 6 December 1955, ZPA, J IV 2/202-244 Bd 1, SAPMO.

[94]. Memorandum by Ivone Kirkpatrick, 16 December 1955, in Michael Gehler, "Westintegration und Wiedervereiningung - Adenauers Démarche bei Kirkpatrick am 15. Dezember 1955 ein Mißverständnis?" Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 43, no. 8 (1992): 477-88, at p. 477.

[95]. Kenneth W. Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1955-1956 (Washington: Historical Office, Joint Staff, 1992), pp. 118-22.

[96]. "Plans of the Western Powers Concerning the Creation of a 'Zone of Reduced Tension' in Europe," paper by Foreign Ministry Committee of Information for Khrushchev, 18 October 1955, 89/70/1, TsKhSD.

[97]. Lester B. Pearson, Memoirs 1948-1957: The International Years (London: Golancz, 1974), pp. 206-207.

[98]. Soviet draft treaty on security in Europe, 31 October 1955, Frankland, Documents on International Affairs 1955, pp. 53-55.

[99]. FRUS, 1955-1957, vol. 5, pp. 633-802.

[100]. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, p. 220.

[101]. Matthew Evangelista, "Why Keep Such an Army?" Khrushchev's Troop Reductions, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper no. 19 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1997), pp. 45; record of the session of NATO Military Committee, 9 December 1955, IMS, NATO-A.

[102]. Khrushchev to Bierut, 12 August 1955, KC PZPR 2661/3, AAN.

[103]. Karel Kaplan, Československo v letech 1953-66: Společenská krize a kořeny reformy [Czechoslovakia in 1953-55: The Social Crisis and Roots of Reform] (Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1992), pp. 72 and 131.

[104]. Records of the meeting of party secretaries, 6 January 1956, ZPA, J IV 2/202/193, SAPMO.

[105]. Communiqué of the meeting of the Political Consultative Committee, 28 January 1956, in Meissner, Der Warschauer Pakt, pp. 103-104.

[106]. The fine dictinction drawn by Hope M. Harrison in "The Bargaining Power of Weaker Allies in Bipolarity and Crisis: The Dynamics of Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1993, p. 13.

[107]. Jörg K. Hoensch, "The Warsaw Pact and the Northern Member States," in Clawson and Kaplan, The Warsaw Pact, pp. 27-48.

[108]. Stenographical record of the meeting, 775/1/1/1, AVPRF.

[109]. Michael F. Altfeld, "The Decision to Ally: A Theory and Test," Western Political Quarterly 37 (1984): 523-44, at p. 538.